It’s amazing how reliable that rule has been – all out of the window now of course (I can almost visualise the meeting at MS “how do we avoid the perception that the next OS after this one is going to be shit?”)

Upgraded my 7 after a full back up first.

Then after registering my key, did a complete format and installed Windows 10.

Works well.

Edge browser sucks and is a slug.

Rest of it is fine and all my drivers loaded up.

Still getting a Mac after using my GF’s MacBook Pro laptop for 3 months for video editing.

Oh 8.1 was stable, the days of flakey nonsense went with ME, I just didn’t think it was appropriate for a desktop environment. Clearly not enough people did or they wouldn’t have brought back so much in 10 which seems to be the best bits of 7 combined with the improvements made in 8.

That said I am getting more into the 8 way of doing things wrt start menus and just using search, I think personally they did it in the wrong order and if it had went from 7 to 10 to 8 the transition would have caused less grief and more acceptance. But hey ho, this is where we are.

Thanks for all the feedback on this. At least I know there are some other people in the same boat. I was reasonably happy with 10 other than some graphics issues (NVIDIA) but when it locked me out of the Admin user, it just had to go. The big problems started for me with the 2 latest Cumulative Updates as I could not open my pictures with the Photos App and some other built in 10 Apps would not work either.

I don’t think there was anything wrong with Windows 8, apart from it was set up appallingly badly out of the box for desktop PC’s. If you spend a couple of hours tweaking it, it was OK.

I’m not defending Windows 8….I think MS were incredibly misguided in the way they delivered Windows 8 to desktop users, but IMHO, it’s not like Windows 98 or Vista, where there were fundamental problems with the OS.

God no, I avoided those car crashes altogether, every other rule innit?

I never upgrade the OS, just buy new hardware when the old one is kaput. On W7 with my laptop, in its 6th year and use it everyday at work plus home use (self-employed).

When it goes ‘pop’ I’ll buy another one with whichever OS it comes with.

Thank you Jim.

I’m now a much happier W10 user. The right click is ace

+1. Although I was pretty happy with 10 anyway.

I had a funny issue with microsoft security/windows defender after doing the upgrade in the summer so have done a clean install to a new SSD this afternoon. It was pretty straightforward and my 8 year old laptop (originally on Vista, free upgrade to 7 when it came out, and now upgraded to 10) is still running well.

I think Windows 10 is OK and would love to use it more. If my effing machine wouldn’t just stop crashing! Keeps dropping with BAD_POOL_CALLER and no drivers in the stack apart from MS ones – NTFS.SYS last time and NTOSKERN the time before. I’ve raised a ticket with the vendor (HP) but I don’t hold high hopes. It may be the hardware, it was always freezing with Win8.1.

Apart from that this is the first Windows in absolutely ages I thought was OK. Still, I wish it was a Macbook Pro and I had bootcamp on there for my windows needs.

Works fine for me but I haven’t really used it much yet. All my main software works the same as on 7 and everything looks a bit nicer so I can’t complain.

it’s not like Windows 98 or Vista, where there were fundamental problems with the OS.

What was wrong with Windows 98?

If my effing machine wouldn’t just stop crashing!

I’d be running Memtest+ on that, matey.

What was wrong with Windows 98?[/quote]

Or Vista?

My clients are famously technophobic change terrifies them

We’re still on NT at work…

What was wrong with Windows 98?

Nothing from memory, in fact it was so good they decided to rewrite it and make a second edition to really blow peoples minds 😉

We’re still on NT at work…

You win. Are you an engineering archeologist or digital forensics based? Bet you’re not…

Vista wouldn’t sleep without crashing, (ne répond pas) would appear just as you were about to save something you’d been working on for an hour. It wouldn’t run any of my son’s computer games as there was no backwards compatibility. It was a sieve for computer viruses, trojans etc. You could make coffee in the time it took to boot.

That’s a tip I can add about 10. If a programme won’t run at all or you get a black screen then manually select the edition of Windows it was designed for when you launch it.

You must’ve had a different version to me. I had Vista when it first came out, it survived six months on a faulty hard drive, being cloned to a replacement drive, and being upgraded in situ to W7. The last time I personally had a virus was in Windows 98 days. Oh, and it ran every game I threw at it, including ones designed for DOS.

In fact, there are currently two PCs, three laptops, three netbooks, an Android tablet and an iPad in this house, and I’ve not seen a virus on any of them in over 10 years. The last time I saw a non-fault infection (ie, not as a result of years-old unpatched apps or someone clicking on something stupid) was on XP pre-SP3.

Vista family edition. The McRae rally game was the one that annoyed as the Windows 98/Millenium was better than later editions.

Was running Vista up until less than a year ago here (when the laptop it was on finally died). Never had a virus (you need to check your son’s browsing habits), never had any of the other problems described, played CMc rally.

http://www.mastertronic.com/supportfaq/colin-mcrae-rally-04

To be fair, it’s hardly a damning criticism to say it wouldn’t run a game designed for an OS four generations previous. I do take your point though, some games can be problematic, but that was really down to the Wild West approach that was a product of its time.

There will always be compatibility issues with any OS changes as it’s impossible to cater for every app out there that might have relied on some odd quirk or other. It’s the same on Macs, on iPhones, on Android devices, hell the 128K ZX Spectrum wouldn’t play all of the 48K titles.

Incidentally,

That’s a tip I can add about 10. If a programme won’t run at all or you get a black screen then manually select the edition of Windows it was designed for when you launch it.

… this feature isn’t new to W10, it’s been around at least since Vista, and I’m pretty sure XP had it too.

My son picked up the “Gendarmerie Nationale” virus (which wasn’t stopped by the antivirus as you had to execute a file to get it which required being really, really stupid). I got a panic stricken phone call telling me he needed my credit card number to pay a Gendarmerie fine or he’d get done for downloading whatever it was he was looking at. How we laughed! Happily there was downloadable fix.

I’ve still got the hard drive with Vista on it that I use for storage, I got weary of it’s failings and bought a box with W8 in see if it was any good. I liked it from the start so “upgraded” to 8.1 when that arrived and now 10. The 8.1 upgrade went very smoothly but 10 has required some effort to get things working. So far so good, I might even try the old rally game.

Edit: thanks Cougar, I doubt that information was available a few months after the Vista launch.

Memtest86+ first thing run, for 14 hours without issue. Still crashing, no errors shown in memory.

The problem there, Edukator, is giving your son an Admin account rather than a user account.

Memtest86+ first thing run, for 14 hours without issue. Still crashing, no errors shown in memory.

It’ll run indefinitely till you stop it; sorry, perhaps should’ve given you that important snippet of information earlier. (-:

A checkdisk and sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt would be my next port of call.

You’re right Cougar. We decided not to use any parental control and let him learn about the world of the Net at home. It took him ages to discover private browsing and he wasn’t very good at tidying up so we could see roughly what he was doing until he was about 16. I backup stuff that’s important to me and if he totals the box it’s just too bad; it’ll cost less than his phone consumption.

It’s part of the learning process. I get home and ask what that horrible new tool bar is doing up top and why on opening the browser we get commercial rubbish. He then explains that he installed some new software and I ask why he didn’t untick a few boxes. I then go through getting rid of all the junk with him watching and hopefully learning. Learning about computers and nasty business strategies at the same time.

Absolutely no issues here, one of the cleanest & quickest new OS to date.

Will not be going back to Win 7, ever.

Keeping main gaming PC on win 7 for now but upgraded my lenovo laptop and its all been fine and dandy. (now I’ve said that it will no doubt die a blue screen death tonight!)

How is that the fault of the OS?

That one wasn’t, as I stated. Remember the virus that got almost every Microsoft user in the Vista years because of a hole in the OS? If not do some Googling. I remember USB keys being passed around schools with the fix on.

I’ve just checked some old posts on BM, the OS with the holes was XP not Vista. My first Vista box went back to the shop because I couldn’t get drivers for my ADSL box without connecting to the Internet. The shop took the box back rather than help sort out the problem. One of the viruses that got through XP was from BM!

BM?

Which virus are you referring to that “almost every Microsoft user” had? I can think of a few notably prolific infections, but can’t immediately think of any that hadn’t been patched for months prior to the epidemic.

Bikemagic.

Googling “windows XP virus epidemic” will remind you, Cougar. The point was that people din’t get the patches in time. Even NASA

Remember the virus that got almost every Microsoft user in the Vista years because of a hole in the OS?

No!

It didn’t GET almost every Vista user, even though almost everyone might’ve been vulnerable to it. I’m not sure it’d be possible for almost every user of any OS to get a virus, because they’d all have to be doing the same thing in order to get it.

@cougar – yes I know. We are sort of in the same business, remember? My DL980 servers are basically PCs with a superiority complex 😀

I’m just not willing to run memtest86+ indefinitely so that in some point in the future (which may be years) bit rot takes effect and I can go ‘aha!’. There has to be some point at which you say “enough is enough” and demand the manufacturer does something about it.

Just got the laptop back from the manufacturer. BIOS corruption apparently and they replaced the main board. Now much more stable, and am actually enjoying Windows 10. 🙂

I spun up a VM with Win10…..seemed OK….testing some of our software on it so will report back, but the odds seem to be stacked against it!