Windows 10 Having INFINITE problems since I switched to Windows 10

[prvnp]

I switched again to Windows 10 a couple of days ago from Windows 7.
Previously, I had upgraded to Win 10 when it was launched, but at that time, my laptop was not even able to move the mouse cursor. The OS was so much lagging in every aspect.
I reverted to Win 7.
But a few days ago, I decided to re-install Win 10.

I formatted the root directory and installed Win 10 Enterprise version.

I have downloaded all the updated drivers available on the manufacturer's website that were compatible with Win 10. But since the moment I have installed Win 10, I am bombarded with a number of issues/ problems. Sharing them here. If somebody knows how to solve them... Please tell. I was thinking about reverting back to Win 7 but I love a few features and interface of Win 10, so don't wanna go back.

My problems:

1. The power button do not make the laptop to move into SLEEP mode many times. Whenever I end my work in the night and press the power button to switch to the sleep mode, the laptop actually doesn't sleeps. In the morning when I switch it ON, it doesn't starts and the RED light for LOW BATTERY shows up. I have to force restart it by long pressing the power button. In this case also, it starts afresh unlike Win 7 in which whenever the laptop was out of power, it went into hibernate mode and preventing any loss of work.
2. The mouse freezes many times. I have the dell touchpad driver installed on my laptop, but it ceases to operate. Its gesture support doesn't works.
3. The folders (generally with many files) open very late. Sometimes it takes so long that they never opoen, and have to close it and try again. I also get the green bar in the address bar of all the folders, meaning that the contents are still loading. This green bar never ends. If this thing doesn't happens, the the folder that I have opened shows "Working on it..." and it never opens, so have to close the window and again try to open it.
4. The boot time is around 5 minutes. I updated the BIOS with the latest version available, but still it takes this much time.
5. Sometimes, when in sleep mode, it doesn't wake up so I have to force restart it. It shows an error regarding windows had faced a serous error (blue background with white text, don't remember the exact text of the error).
6. The wifi shows limited connectivity/ warning icon even when it is working fine.

My laptop configuration

Manufacturer: Dell
Model: Inspiron 3542
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4210U CPU@ 1.70GHz 1.70GHz
RAM: 4GB
System Type: 64-bit
Hard Disk: 1TB
Display drivers: Intel(R) HD Graphic Family ; NVIDIA GeForce 820M (2GB)


Thanks in advance.

 

[Neemobeer]

Well first off why are you using Enterprise? This version is only upgradable through corporate infrastructure (SCCM, WDM etc)

Problems 1,2,5, and 6 are most likely due to out dated drivers.

Problems 3 and 4 are most likely related to the age of the computer. One or more of the following could be true.

• Dirt build up on the CPU and/or heat sink can cause throttling and slow down the computer
• Hard drive could be near failure I would run a long drive fitness test on it

The sleep behavior can be controlled in the power settings <current power plan> >> advanced settings
Problems waking up can be driver related

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

My opinion is that your are not going to see any benefit running Windows 10 on a computer of that age with those specs.
You would be better off just sticking with Windows 7 until you get a new computer that's designed to run with Windows 10.

Mike

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Hold on a bit guys..that lappy is only 3 years old if that. Reviews are from 2014. Specs are certainly Ok to run W10. I've upgraded several laptops older than that to W10 and they work just fine. My assessment is that laptops or PCs built in 2012 or newer have a very high probability of running W10. The real kicker here, as we know from many posts from kemical; is what does the manufacturer website say? Do they have BIOS and Driver support for W10 with downloadable drivers on their website? In this case: the answer is YES!! In fact here's the link on the Dell Support site:
Support for Inspiron 3542 | Dell US

If the OP brought this laptop to me, other than possible hardware failures (HDD, RAM sticks, or Mobo), this Dell should be able to run W10; probably 98% chance IMO.

Also, the OP mentions he erased the root directory; using what, Windows Explorer? Or a utility? If he didn't erase the entire Partition Table, including formatting of the partitions, that could certainly be one reason it failed. He could also have multiple driver issues and app issues as neem mentions. The way to check that is for the OP to run the W10 COMPATIBILITY TEST; OP didn't state he ran it; so lingering issues he bypassed could have been caught by running the Test. (Link here to run the Test for OP: Get Windows 10 app - Check Compatibility Report for Windows 10)
Remember; about 95% of home users attempting W10 upgrades on their own fail, and not running the Compatibility Test is one of the big contributing failures for this result. That's also because Microsoft does a poor job of informing the General Public this needs to be done.

So, prvnp, take a read through what I just mentioned, and realized it's highly likely you can get that laptop to run W10; but W10 upgrades are problematic, and 9/10 home users make lots of mistakes trying to do it. You can fix the mistakes; backup your personal data to external media and repeat the upgrade attempt by doing a W10 CLEAN INSTALL as we often recommend to someone who has such a badly scrambled W10 upgrade!

Mistakes you made:
1.) Using W10 Enterprise version; this is NOT for home Users, as neem pointed out; so unless you are IT professional or a College Student taking a computer class, this is NOT for you!!
2.) Erasing file structure from a W7 hard drive does not remove it completely; you need to use the W10 install program to do this and removal of ALL PREVIOUS W7 PARTITIONS IS MANDATORY; ALONG WITH FORMATTING THE NEWLY CREATED PARTITIONS AS WELL!!
3.) Not running the W10 COMPATIBILITY TEST
4.) Not testing your laptop hardware including HDD, all RAM sticks, and the Mobo with advanced diagnostics! Most home Users don't know how to do it, which means if any one of these has a fault, it can scramble your upgrade if you don't know about it. This is another reason I have my Clients and friends let me do their W10 upgrades for them; in almost all cases they run into post-upgrade issues since they don't know what they need to do PRIOR to attempting the upgrade itself.

The good news is, if you're willing to do the work, you should be able to get the W10 upgrade to work on this Dell laptop!
The bad news is, you need considerable computer skills to do so. And if you try again and fail; I might suggest you take it to a licensed Computer Tech and pay him to do it for you. He will test your hardware and if you do have any hardware failures; he should quote you a estimate cost to replace them along with the labor to properly perform the W10 upgrade for you. This could be from $50-$180 US or more depending on hardware replacements (not the Mobo) are needed.

Best of luck,
<<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>>

 

[prvnp]

Thanks for such useful information. My laptop is as of now, 1 year and 10 months old (purchased in April 2015).

I did the compatibility test and it showed no error, and that's why I decided to move to Win10.
Regarding the hardware, I have a friend with an older hardware (2GB RAM and an old AMD processor) and running Win10 as smooth as butter. His boot time is hardly 30-40 seconds (which in my case is around 4-5 minutes).

The Dell Support shows that the laptop is compatible to run Win10 and I updated all the available drivers that were needed for it.

I am a student, and generally use my laptop for MATLAB, Python, C++ for my engineering related work. Other than that, I also use it for graphic related work (on Adobe Photoshop and After Effects). So I guess Enterprise will be a good choice. If not, then please suggest the version that is most suitable and suffice my purpose.

I guess, since I only formatted the root directory, and not all the directories that were present when I was having Win7, the problem is probably due to that. I will do a clean install and then see whether I get rid of these issues.

Hold on a bit guys..that lappy is only 3 years old if that. Reviews are from 2014. Specs are certainly Ok to run W10. I've upgraded several laptops older than that to W10 and they work just fine. My assessment is that laptops or PCs built in 2012 or newer have a very high probability of running W10. The real kicker here, as we know from many posts from kemical; is what does the manufacturer website say? Do they have BIOS and Driver support for W10 with downloadable drivers on their website? In this case: the answer is YES!! In fact here's the link on the Dell Support site:
Support for Inspiron 3542 | Dell US

If the OP brought this laptop to me, other than possible hardware failures (HDD, RAM sticks, or Mobo), this Dell should be able to run W10; probably 98% chance IMO.

Also, the OP mentions he erased the root directory; using what, Windows Explorer? Or a utility? If he didn't erase the entire Partition Table, including formatting of the partitions, that could certainly be one reason it failed. He could also have multiple driver issues and app issues as neem mentions. The way to check that is for the OP to run the W10 COMPATIBILITY TEST; OP didn't state he ran it; so lingering issues he bypassed could have been caught by running the Test. (Link here to run the Test for OP: Get Windows 10 app - Check Compatibility Report for Windows 10)
Remember; about 95% of home users attempting W10 upgrades on their own fail, and not running the Compatibility Test is one of the big contributing failures for this result. That's also because Microsoft does a poor job of informing the General Public this needs to be done.

So, prvnp, take a read through what I just mentioned, and realized it's highly likely you can get that laptop to run W10; but W10 upgrades are problematic, and 9/10 home users make lots of mistakes trying to do it. You can fix the mistakes; backup your personal data to external media and repeat the upgrade attempt by doing a W10 CLEAN INSTALL as we often recommend to someone who has such a badly scrambled W10 upgrade!

Mistakes you made:
1.) Using W10 Enterprise version; this is NOT for home Users, as neem pointed out; so unless you are IT professional or a College Student taking a computer class, this is NOT for you!!
2.) Erasing file structure from a W7 hard drive does not remove it completely; you need to use the W10 install program to do this and removal of ALL PREVIOUS W7 PARTITIONS IS MANDATORY; ALONG WITH FORMATTING THE NEWLY CREATED PARTITIONS AS WELL!!
3.) Not running the W10 COMPATIBILITY TEST
4.) Not testing your laptop hardware including HDD, all RAM sticks, and the Mobo with advanced diagnostics! Most home Users don't know how to do it, which means if any one of these has a fault, it can scramble your upgrade if you don't know about it. This is another reason I have my Clients and friends let me do their W10 upgrades for them; in almost all cases they run into post-upgrade issues since they don't know what they need to do PRIOR to attempting the upgrade itself.

The good news is, if you're willing to do the work, you should be able to get the W10 upgrade to work on this Dell laptop!
The bad news is, you need considerable computer skills to do so. And if you try again and fail; I might suggest you take it to a licensed Computer Tech and pay him to do it for you. He will test your hardware and if you do have any hardware failures; he should quote you a estimate cost to replace them along with the labor to properly perform the W10 upgrade for you. This could be from $50-$180 US or more depending on hardware replacements (not the Mobo) are needed.

Best of luck,
<<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>>

 

[prvnp]

Thanks Neem for the suggestions.
I am engineering graduate and generally use my laptop for MATLAB, Python, C++ and sometime for Graphic related work (Photoshop and After Effects). So I guess Enterprise version will be good. If it isn't, then please suggest which one should I go for that serves my needs.

Well first off why are you using Enterprise? This version is only upgradable through corporate infrastructure (SCCM, WDM etc)

Problems 1,2,5, and 6 are most likely due to out dated drivers.

Problems 3 and 4 are most likely related to the age of the computer. One or more of the following could be true.

• Dirt build up on the CPU and/or heat sink can cause throttling and slow down the computer
• Hard drive could be near failure I would run a long drive fitness test on it

The sleep behavior can be controlled in the power settings <current power plan> >> advanced settings
Problems waking up can be driver related

 

[Jimbo22]

Did you buy the Enterprise edition? Or is this the free trial version? The enterprise edition is for commercial and industrial business's not for an individual user.

For the individual user; use either windows 10 home or 10 Pro. I personally suggest windows 10 pro.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

You're welcome! Glad to help. I agree with Bass on the W10 Pro recommendation for what you are doing. Also, Good Job on running the W10 Compatibility Test prior to attempting the original upgrade.

And you should still test your Hardware. Besides doing a Clean Install, if that doesn't decrease your Boot time significantly, your hard drive or RAM memory sticks could be failing or faulty and should be replaced! If you decided to do this yourself, take a look at the Troubleshooting Gide I wrote here: Windows 10 - Unclickable Task Bar
This will help you do the Hardware Testing as well as the W10 Clean Install.

Upon switching to the W10 Pro version and installing; test your Boot time again. If it's not significantly reduced; I might suggest you purchase a SSD Boot Drive and replace the Mechanical HDD you have in the laptop now. This should speed up your laptop a bit. I've done this on my own Sony laptop (8.5 yrs. old) as well as on a few Customer laptops. It makes a BIG difference in Boot time. Mine went from 4 min. to just under 1 min. after I switched to SSD HDD! SSDs are now really inexpensive, and can be had for as little as $35 US.

<<<BBJ>>>

 

[prvnp]

You're welcome! Glad to help. I agree with Bass on the W10 Pro recommendation for what you are doing. Also, Good Job on running the W10 Compatibility Test prior to attempting the original upgrade.

And you should still test your Hardware. Besides doing a Clean Install, if that doesn't decrease your Boot time significantly, your hard drive or RAM memory sticks could be failing or faulty and should be replaced! If you decided to do this yourself, take a look at the Troubleshooting Gide I wrote here: Windows 10 - Unclickable Task Bar
This will help you do the Hardware Testing as well as the W10 Clean Install.

Upon switching to the W10 Pro version and installing; test your Boot time again. If it's not significantly reduced; I might suggest you purchase a SSD Boot Drive and replace the Mechanical HDD you have in the laptop now. This should speed up your laptop a bit. I've done this on my own Sony laptop (8.5 yrs. old) as well as on a few Customer laptops. It makes a BIG difference in Boot time. Mine went from 4 min. to just under 1 min. after I switched to SSD HDD! SSDs are now really inexpensive, and can be had for as little as $35 US.

<<<BBJ>>>

Thanks for the valuable suggestions... I will perform a clean install tomorrow and will report if any issues occur...
Regarding SSD, it is very expensive here in India... Approx $250-300 from brands like Samsung.
I am presently having "Samsung Spinpoint M8 ST1000LM024 1TB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s" which is around $75 in US. But in India it is $110. So there is a huge price difference in terms of Indian currency.
Should I switch to Win10 Pro or the Enterprise version is suitable, keeping in mind the future use as I am doing my post graduation in the field of Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence? Because there is hardly any difference between the functionality offered other than a few security related things... And I want the best thing available which can be used for the coming 1-2 year at least.

Thanks again.

 

[prvnp]

You're welcome! Glad to help. I agree with Bass on the W10 Pro recommendation for what you are doing. Also, Good Job on running the W10 Compatibility Test prior to attempting the original upgrade.

And you should still test your Hardware. Besides doing a Clean Install, if that doesn't decrease your Boot time significantly, your hard drive or RAM memory sticks could be failing or faulty and should be replaced! If you decided to do this yourself, take a look at the Troubleshooting Gide I wrote here: Windows 10 - Unclickable Task Bar
This will help you do the Hardware Testing as well as the W10 Clean Install.

Upon switching to the W10 Pro version and installing; test your Boot time again. If it's not significantly reduced; I might suggest you purchase a SSD Boot Drive and replace the Mechanical HDD you have in the laptop now. This should speed up your laptop a bit. I've done this on my own Sony laptop (8.5 yrs. old) as well as on a few Customer laptops. It makes a BIG difference in Boot time. Mine went from 4 min. to just under 1 min. after I switched to SSD HDD! SSDs are now really inexpensive, and can be had for as little as $35 US.

<<<BBJ>>>

I re-installed Windows 10 today. Did a clean install by doing a complete format and re-partitioning the hard disk. The boot time has reduced to around 1 minute from the previous timing of 4-5 minutes.
But the problem of going into Sleep and Never Waking Up is still there.
I put my laptop on sleep mode just to check whether this issue has been resolved, but it was't. It shows the error UNEXPECTED_STORE_EXCEPTION. I tried the sfc /scannow command in CMD, but that too was ineffective and said Windows was unable to fix some errors.
Another issue that still persist is that folders with large number of files take too much time to load. It always shows WORKING ON IT... And continues to load and ultimately becomes NOT RESPONDING. Although the folder do get opened, but after a couple of minutes of being Unresponsive.

Please tell what to do. Have already lost some important notes which got lapsed when I did the force restart.

Thanks.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Answers to your last 2 posts.

Go with W10 Pro NOT Enterprise. That is not for individual Users as mentioned by us multiple times. Remove that from your options list. This will also get you into much trouble trying to use home apps or any apps given to you from your University people. The last thing you want to do is to incur a lawsuit for illegal use of software on your laptop by Microsoft!

Glad the complete reformat and reinstall improved your boot times. The Sleep problem appears to then be a definite hardware failure. You need to re-read my Post #8 and TEST YOUR HARDWARE!! I realize you can't afford the SSD drive solution I used. Really I do. But, if your Hard Drive and or your RAM sticks are failing or have failed; that's the least of your problems. That laptop will continue to degrade with those kinds of failures and it will eventually become completely useless to perform your needed tasks in Grad school (I attended 3 different Grad schools, so am quite familiar with this)! You need to determine if there is failed hardware in that laptop or not!

If there is, you have to identify it and fix it by replacing the faulty parts. Period!

If you are unable or unwilling to do this yourself you have 2 choices: (1.) Pay a licensed Computer Tech to identify and replace any failed components and get the laptop working again; or (2.) Scrap that laptop as junk; and purchase yourself a replacement laptop with W10 on it, powerful enough to last you at least about 5 years which should take you through most Graduate programs such as you describe unless you are also pursuing PhD program.

That's all. Good luck!

<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Or if it ran fine with Windows 7 just stick with it until you need a new computer.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

MIKE: That's certainly an option, Mike. OP didn't mention he specifically had to have W10 for his college purposes; he just liked it's new features.

You have several choices now. You can revert to W7, and stay where you are for about 2 years and then you'll be forced to upgrade as W7 will no longer be supported by Microsoft in 2019. You can test your Hardware and find out if you have failed hardware components, and replace them as required. That will allow you to run W10, but at a cost of replacing your failed components, which you mention are priced much higher than here in US. You could also take your laptop into a licensed Computer Tech and pay to have this done and get a repair estimate. If it turns out your Motherboard has failed; that could be a $400-$1,500 cost; surely more than the cost of a brand new Dell laptop. Brand new Dell laptops are on Sale here in US for $160. If the repair cost of keeping the old laptop is more than half the cost of a brand new W10 laptop, you should probably replace the old one, as it only has 2 years left on it anyway. If that is good enough as you mention, then Mike's suggestion might be the way to go. You would then have 2 years more use on it, and also 2 years to save for a new laptop in 2019 with W10 on it.

<<<BBJ>>>