Windows 10 upgrade nightmare

Man I must have gotten lucky.

I upgraded my home built computer and had a couple bsod issues till I figured out my memory wasn’t compatible then it worked flawlessly.

Then I upgraded my Sony vaio laptop against songs instructions and in the process got rid of sonys bloatware. Now the laptop runs better than ever.

When you get it up and running, remember to create a restore point before changing settings. Then you can roll back if need be. It’s best not to do too much at once either or you have no idea what it was that caused the problem.

More like: a few people are unlucky (the OP is one of them, it seems) - we’ll only tend to hear about the cases where it didn’t go well, and it’s easy to misinterpret that as an indicator of poor general reliability, which is a shame.

Not that I don’t sympathise with the OP. It’s bad when a major upgrade doesn’t go smoothly, but Windows 10 (indeed Microsoft in general) does not have a monopoly on this sort of risk.

If it doesn’t grind itself clear of this problem, it might be possible to do a system restore from boot (instructions here) - back to a point just after the upgrade.

did any of these folders under users contain your missing files?

I also upgraded with no problems. This does not negate the OP’s sitch or that of others who did have major issues. And I have had major catastrophes like his in the past. It finally made me a backup convert.

I have two 2T external drives and I back up to each one alternately. (I used to do it every day, but now that I’m retired, I do it every week, as I don’t create new stuff every day like I used to.) Before I pushed the WIN10 upgrade button, I backed up EVERYTHING to each drive. Cloud backup is fine and dandy, but what if you can’t connect to the internet?

Just as an aside to those reading this in terms of contemplating upgrading to Windows 10:
**
Think of it in terms of risk vs. benefit.** I’ve been using PCs since DOS (before Windows 3.0). I applied and/or bought each new major upgrade of Windows (except for Windows Me which was pointless). But only after I felt the benefit outweighed the risk. I didn’t move to XP for several years because I was already using Windows 2000. 2000 was just as rock-solid as XP, they’re essentially the same core OS. It simply didn’t have the new Metro GUI interface (which even when I did up to XP I never switched to) nor product activation. In fact I only finally bought XP because I bought the latest version of Adobe Premiere and it required it.

From what I’ve seen of Win10 its all flash and not much new, core OS functionality. And most importantly: It is designed for touchscreens. It is the desktop version of Windows Phone. When Microsoft released Win8 they should have done it in two versions: Desktop and Tablet. The only reason they didn’t was because they’re hurriedly trying to play catch-up with Apple and Android so they forced their phone OS GUI on everyone. And desktop users hated it. So they had to quickly release 8.1 bringing back the Start button. Windows 10 is simply another, albeit somewhat better, attempt at doing this.

My advice: If you’re using Windows 8.1 or, *especially *if you’re still using Win7, DO NOT bother with the Win10 upgrade. Unless there is an indispensable ‘killer app’ that you use that requires 10 simply wait until it’s time for a new PC (or better, a Windows tablet) so that it comes pre-installed.

For what it’s worth- I’m using a store-bought Dell desktop with no modifications (other than an internal SSD and external 1.5TB hard drives). It came with 8.1 pre-installed (my previous PC was Win7). I always use the ‘Boot to Desktop Mode’ and never use ‘Tiles’. When it came out I downloaded the Win10 upgrade, it installed without any major problems, but after using it for only a few hours it was obvious to me that its new UI was less functional (for me) than 8.1 had been and I rolled it back.

I had been dithering about upgrading my Win-7 machine, but this thread has convinced me finally. By the time they stop supporting Win 7 (around 2020, I’ve heard) I will undoubtedly have replaced this machine and the new one will have Win-10 (or later).

This is exactly my (totally uninformed) inclination, so I’m delighted to see it posted by someone who sounds like they know what they’re talking about. :slight_smile:

Actually, that is how I’ve done it since forever: I upgrade my OS when I buy a new computer. Starting from my beloved KayproII and CP/M.

What I fear is that they keep playing games with the W10 upgrade – moving it from optional to recommended and back, sometimes pre-ticked to DL, sometimes not – and sooner or later I might fail to noticed it among the dozen or more other upgrades they dump out about the second week of the month.

I find it a little sad that the people with negative opinions about new versions of Windows seem to carry some sort of authority, even if (as is very often the case) they havent actually used the new version except briefly in a shop perhaps.

Windows 10 is a decent product. It combines many of the under-the-hood strengths of win8 (yes, there really were some) with the familiar interface of win7 and prior.

If you’re on win7, and you’re not a user of windows phone or Microsoft’s cloud offerings, you’re probably not missing a lot. If you’re on win8.x, and still hating the loss of your start menu, you should certainly consider moving to 10.

There is a risk of any upgrade encountering problems (as in the case for this thread). That can happen with any upgrade to anything. I’ve seen it firsthand on Windows, Mac, Linux Android, Playstation and other operating systems. Upgrades can go wrong. Planes can crash. Jack’s liver can get cancer and kill Jack.

This was my experience about 6 months ago when someone else asked a similar question:

I assumed that somehow my 7 Professional wasn’t amenable to becoming 10 and I couldn’t be bothered wasting time trying to force it. Wait for the next purchase.

This is exatly what I fear too.

Maybe. But wrt W10; I’m more worried about privacy issues than about technical issues.

I already have a decent product.

At every update, the reaction from all the techies is always the same:
“I installed it, and after only 3 days of sweating blood, it lets me do almost everything I knew how to do before. It’s GREAT!!!”

Iive heard a lot of scare stories about privacy in new versions of windows (such as misinformed panicking about wifi sharing with contacts), but little of substance. What are the specifics of your cocern?

good for you. Stick with it.

Nonsense. Do you actually believe this describes a significant portion of user experience?
A small number of people have bad problems. That’s both unfortunate and nearly inevitable. A larger number of people fear change and have a rose-tinted view of the past, and a poor appreciation of what is necessary to customise a complex system. You’ll have spent days tweaking XP (or whatever your current version of Windows) to suit you. It’s the nature of things.

Aside from the fact that there is as optional tablet mode, I don’t see how this is true.

The Metro (later known as ‘Modern UI’) interface in windows 8 was designed for touchscreens. Windows 10 is designed to be more touchscreen friendly than win7, but yeah, it’s not really correct to imply that win10 is designed just for touchscreens.

I loved Win 7. I am exactly the user you described above.

When I purchased a new laptop, it came with 8.1, and I had no idea how much I would hate it. There was simply no way to make it work well for me. Those constantly-popping “charms” nearly drove me insane. There were supposed to be ways to turn them off, but no matter what I did, it never worked. I’m a decent user and I researched this issue to death. None of the “fixes” took.

I upgraded to 10 chiefly because of the above issue. I was nervous about the upgrade because I frankly couldn’t imagine that Win 8.1 was going to be such a kludge – and I worried that Win 10 would have some new hidden surprises for me akin to those “charms” that I hadn’t ferreted out in my research of it as an OS.

The upgrade took a long time and was interspersed with several lengthy black-screen-with-little-circle episodes. I found it troubling because I couldn’t tell if the machine was actually doing its upgrade thing or if it had stalled. I had been primed for a less-than-wonderful experience. However, once the upgrade was completed, I found I quite like Win 10. I was able to set it up to work for me and my own particular applications, which involve a lot more creating content than browsing it. And the miserable “charms” are gone at last.

More accurate is that Win10 is designed for both traditional desktop and for touch screens and tablets

Microsoft has a very methological approach to the upgrades. There are beta testers, early adopters and then “rings”. Long story short, Windows 10 upgrade tool analyzes the PC’s that need to upgrade against a hardward profile that has been tested to be successful in xx% of all cases. That ring with a success rate of x% (whatever x% is for example 98%), gets invited to upgrade. Issues with the upgrade are reported to MSFT (if that is turned on), and fixes are made to Windows 10 and pushed out. With each “ring” that is upgraded, bug fixes made and tested, the next ring preview (and pre-emptive fixes are made in Win10 and pushed out) tested and tuned until there is a comfort level that the next ring will hit the x% rate for a successful update, then the next ring gets the invitation to upgrade. (Apologies for the run on sentence).

Therefore, if your pc has an invitation to upgrade, it is unlikely to have issues. If you force an upgrade, there is more risk that your old hardware has drivers that haven’t been tested and/or updated yet for Win10.

MSFT could increase the number of Win10 upgrades dramatically if they were willing to accepted a lower successful upgrade rate.

To the OP, sorry you’re having trouble.

It is my understanding that the upgrade is available to Win-7 Home but not Pro. Did you have an icon at the bottom right of the taskbar that Win 10 was available? If not, updating was not a viable option.

I like Windows 10.

I built myself a new computer back in September, and i ordered a copy of Windows 7 for it. My plan was to upgrade to Windows 10 immediately, before i added any documents or set up any programs. I figured that, if i didn’t like Windows 10, i could just wipe and do a fresh install of Windows 7, without losing a whole bunch of settings and stuff, like the OP did.

Windows 10 has been fine. For almost everything, it’s functionally almost identical to Windows 7, and has a few little things that i find useful, like virtual desktops.