Windows 10 Update complete (whether I wanted it or not)!

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Well I've been putting it off because I was going to clean install Windows 10 build 10041 on a different drive as a clean install, but Windows suddenly announced that it was rebooting to install "Windows".

The only options were do it now or do it later so I said "Go" and after about 45 minutes or so it booted into the new version.

I had the usual 20 minute struggle to get my sound working again.
I finally got it to work but it did so while I was installing the Creative drivers from the CD and the install program just sat there for 15 minutes without progress, I figure the sound is working, so I stopped the installer using Task Manager.

The second I did that the sound stopped working again.

So I uninstalled the Sound Blaster card again, and told it to remove the software again, once it booted back up, I tried the install of the drivers once more and this time it competed.

When it rebooted again the sound was working.

I haven't found anything else so far that isn't working basically as it did in the last build.

So far I don't see a lot of difference other then the design of some of the screens.
If everything is working I'll skip the clean install until then next go around.

Mike

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Interesting, Mike. How'd you get build 10041; I'm only on Build 9926 and I just installed it last week.

Thanks,
MarcB

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

You must have installed just before the new build became available on the slow path.

I didn't install it until yesterday, and didn't really want to then, but 10041 is the current build.

Unfortunately it went ahead and updated my current install with out giving me an option to say no.
I used my system image to go back after having problems with both my sound and video.

You can download an ISO file for it now, I did and created an install disk and I'm going to try and install it on a different drive so I don't have to give up on 9926 yet.

Link Removed

Mike

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Thanks, Mike for the heads up and where to get it. I'm doing a Win10 presentation for my Computer Club next month and want the latest build to demo. Just have to find another hdd lying around to swap out the 9926 hdd build setup with. I agree I don't want to mess that one up since it's running so nicely!

Cheers-Marc

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Looks like we aren't going to have an option, just after my last message I got the notice that I have to update again.
I put it off for 8 hours but tomorrow it's going to force me, unless it lets me put it off again.

I may have to reinstall Windows 8 on my other drive so I have an OS that I can depend on until I get the new build to work.

Up to this point I haven't had a lot of problems and I've always been able to fix the sound but it the new build I couldn't get it to work and had problems with my video that I didn't pursue after I booted into a black screen.

I guess I'll start next time by reinstalling my video drivers as soon as I can, and then try and fix the sound.
It didn't wait 8 hours, I just got the "Your computer needs to restart message".

So here I go again.

Mike

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Wow! I'm wondering something. I used your link and downloaded the x64 ISO image, but haven't yet burned to a disc for the install on another hard drive. I'm fighting some stomach bug, so I had to quit for today. While reading the info on that page, it mentions that M$ pushed out the 10041 build to the "SLOW RING" users, so that means that any one running 9841 or later would automatically get the 10041 update offered via the Tuesday weekly update push. I intentionally signed up on the "FAST RING" to get the builds quicker since I'm approaching the Win10 Presentation thingy at my Computer Club I mentioned. The goal there is to show them the latest and greatest--of course, it has to work for the demo, so I'm prepared to show them the 9926 I installed earlier this month. It was quite a process to run the 9926 update to get to a version new enough to get me to the PC SETTINGS area which let me sign up for "FAST RING" releases on the Win10 Store Insider Hub. (Whew!).

Anyway, perhaps it could be the reason that M$ update is asking you again for the 10041 Build update is because you opted for the "FAST RING" release mode in your previous Win10 Build (9926?). Maybe you could opt to change back to "SLOW RING" release mode, and see if next week's release won't nag your for the 10041 Build update again? Just a thought for you.

BTW, I like your idea of attempting to install your Video drivers first and then fix the Sound. But, of course that's the contraindicated install order. Would you mind post the Specs of the machine you're using for your Win10 playpen? I will post mine as soon as I plug my machine back in-it's been off since last week. Basically, it's a Dell Dimension E520 originally installed with Vista circa 2008, with Intel Core2 Duo processor. I've got 2 hdd's in it; one with a Win7 HomePrem hdd as a upgrade, and the Win10-B-9926. This was a machine I got donated from a Customer who I updated to a Win8.1 laptop. It had a bad Mobo, so I ordered a used one for $20 from ebay and repurposed it into this Win10 guinea pig. The first 2 Win10 builds (9841 & 9926) went like a dream on this machine! It's not especially powerful or fast, but very stable. No Video or Audio or even Wifi issues to speak of. Is your test machine a desktop or a laptop? I'm wondering about that, because some laptops have some weird stuff with their GPU drivers; especially if your machine has dual GPU capability?? I can comment more on that once you post back your machine specs.

Talk to you later on this..good stuff!
<<<BBJ>>>

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

It's 2 am and I finally got everything working.
I'm making a system image right now before anything stops again.

A little research showed me that the Nvidia drivers for my video card were a later version then is available to the general public and are supposedly designed for Windows 10.

I also found posts saying they were very buggy.
I backdated to the latest ones available from Nvidia, and that solved my video problems.

The sound wasn't as easy, after uninstalling and reinstalling the sound card over and over with different drivers and having no luck I was about to call it quits.

I had tried to install my old drivers that do work from 2011.
But every time I did the install would fail.

I'm installing from the original install files that came with the card and I've never had any problem doing it.

Finally I just uninstalled the sound card in device manager, and rebooted, my intent was to make one last stab at getting the drivers to install.

When it rebooted my sound was working!

I looked to see what drivers it was using, (hoping that the Windows drivers had finally started to work) and discovered that my old drivers had somehow finally gotten installed.

Now I'll have a system image with everything working, so if it quits again I can get it back in about 17 minutes with out all the messing around.

Mike

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

That's great Mike! Nice work there.

For the other Win10 folks struggling to make things work with their machines, can you tell us whether you have a desktop or laptop machine installed?

Best,
<<<BBJ>>>

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

I'm running a high performance desktop made by Falcon Northwest, with an i7 3.6 GHz processor, 32 Gigabytes of ram, 2, 1TB internal hard drives, a Nvidia GTX 680 video card and a Sound Blaster Recon3D PCie sound card.

The sound card seems to be my sticking point, it will not work correctly with any drivers other then the ones on the disk that came with it, either from Microsoft or Creative Labs.

I've contacted Creative Labs several times and never gotten any kind of solution.

Mike

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Hi Mike,

Wow! an i7 core; very nice. Thanks very much for posting back your system specs!! Your system is quite a bit newer than the one I'm using. In fact, my best system is 6 years old; 2008. The Dell I am using is 8 years old used for my 10041 as above specs are:

DELL DIMENSION E520
CPU: Intel Core2 Duo 4300 CPU @1.80GHz; L2=2MB.
Chipset: Intel P965/G965; Southbridge: 82801H(IC8DH).
BIOS: Dell v2.3.2; 3/30/2007.
Video: NVIDIA GeFORCE 7300LE; 128MB Shared RAM.
Audio: Intel HD Audio.
RAM: 4GB-DDR2; PC2-5300.
HDD: Seagate ST3200826AS, SATA II-200GB.
Network: Intel 82562V 10/100 Ethernet embedded.
******************************************************************

For you and for the other people who are Win10 early adopters using the Tech Previews, I found a couple of odd glitches might be worth mentioning from my Presentation run-through yesterday at my Computer Club.

#1: When trying to run SAFE MODE anti-virus/anti-spyware scans, SAFE MODE locks up the keyboard and mouse as well as the START MENU. Tried 3 times to exit using Task Manager and other methods; nothing worked, so I had to completely reinstall Win10 Build 10041 after wiping the HDD completely.

#2: The reinstall of Win10 is similar to Win8/8.1 in that just booting off the install disk will not start the reinstallation program, it just bypasses the CD/DVD drive altogether. This is similar to newer machines that use UEFI BIOS and have the Starup of a removable device defaulted from the factory. This machine however has no UEFI BIOS; so I had to use GPARTED CONTROL to reformat the entire drive to NTFS. Once done, the Win10 reinstalled nicely as before.

#3: IE11 hangs after 3-10 seconds of use and doesn't seem to work. This is the new SPARTAN browser, which was not the same IE version as in Build 9926. It is supposed to be an early release of SPARTAN, but it's quite interesting that they didn't call it IE12 as advertised. It's 11.0.10010.1 I think. Anyway, that's not working at all. Perhaps M$ will relabel the IE release number to IE12 when the RTM occurs in June-August timeframe.

I do need to let everyone know that the Seagate 200GB HDD I grabbed for this test, did have a number of read sector erros on it, and it came from a Customer machine. So, it's not in pristine condition. The HDD I used for the earlier 9926 Build was also used but was in much better shape. It's entirely possible that Items #1 & #3 could be caused by a poor quality HDD. But, I wanted everyone to know that was a possibility. But the other 2 HDDs in this machine; 1 for Win10 Build 9926, and Win7 Home Premium 64bit work perfectly.

I have ordered a brand new 120GB SSD drive for the Build 10041 test, as I would like to know whether or not these 2 failures are related to a bad HDD, or that the Build 10041 software is simply flawed. I will post back to this thread in a week or so and report my observatioins.

I was wondering how your IE11(SPARTAN) browser worked, or if it worked on your succesful rebuild? Also, Chrome worked perfectly; did not test Firefox as I don't use that frequently.

Thanks again for this very helpful thread. Have a great week.

<<<BBJ>>>