Windows 10 Well, it's going to be a busy week!

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

The last week before it's too late to install Windows 10.
I'm creating a backup image of my wife's computer right now, then I'm going to upgrade her computer.

Several of my friends have also decided that it's time for them to catch up as well, so I'll have to make the rounds and supervise them too.

And then on August 2 Windows 10 Anniversary will hit everyone.

This will be a complete reinstall of Windows again.

I haven't been doing the early adopter thing so I'm interested to see what the new Windows 10 version will have in the way of improvements.

Maybe you will finally be able to tell Cortana where you really live?

Anyway I'm killing time until my wife's computer is backed up and then I'll start the upgrade.

Mike

 

[bochane]

....Several of my friends have also decided that it's time for them to catch up as well, so I'll have to make the rounds and supervise them too....
Mike

Yes, it is almost time and now your old friends show up: "Can you help me, on ...." and they think you can do it in halve an hour or so.
"No, I need much more time" and there I go again for at least 2 days: backing up / clean up / installation / setting up W10 as easy as possible / instruction of what is new..

Henk

 

[kemical]

This will be a complete reinstall of Windows again.

I'm not sure that it will mean a re-install Mike as the Anniversary Update is an 'update' and not an 'upgrade'.

New features coming soon with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi Kemical

What I read said that Windows Anniversary is a major redo much like a service pack for earlier versions of Windows and will be a complete reinstall leaving all of you software and files as they are.

I'll see if I can find where I read that but I'm pretty sure that it was on a Microsoft page.

I can say that they have finally fixed Cortana so you can type in your street address and let her know where you live.
When I got my wife's computer updated the first thing it asked me when I opened Cortana was "Where are you?".

It then opened a window that let me type in my location.

When I asked her, what's the phone number of the pizza place on Belding road she immediately responded with the correct number, without me being more specific then that.

Mike

Well, I went back through my history but I can't find the page I'm looking for.
So I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I never seem to be able to find what I'm looking for in the history when I go back.
Too many pages in too short a time, I zipped through a bunch of pages about Aniversary.

 

[ussnorway]

What’s in a name… a spade is still a spade regardless of what Microsoft calls it and yes the need to rebuild your system has been widely reported from people in the test program but they are using beta builds and that may in itself be the deciding factor.

I don’t know yet and always back up your system is the most honest answer at this point.

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Amen to that, Norway!

@MikeHawthorne: I read that somewhere too; will check my Bookmarks to see what I have. I have a W10 folder on all 4 of the browsers I use on my main desktop; Edge, IE11, Chrome, and Firefox. Right now, I'm just trying to buy a downloadable License Key for my W10 Pro I installed on my Vista-era desktop. No luck, as yet. Eventually, I'm gonna have to buy a legit W10 retail box license for this machine and reinstall it using W10 Pro retail media--but, at least I can buy it on discount. Looking at $138-$186 or so online. We're all hanging in there...

@Henk: Too funny! No one wants to call the Computer guy when it's upgrade/update time I know! What are we, like the Dentist or something? And since no one likes Dentists, who hangs out with Dentists (or Computer Geeks) but other Dentists? All of my friends are Computer people, pretty much no friends who don't do computer stuff (except my Wife). I know; that's weird. It's also funny that my only Customer whose on an actual annual service contract had me do his laptop last weekend (W8.1 Home-->W10 Home) for free. His wife's company is our best Customer. That W10 upgrade actually went pretty smoothly, but I also work on that one several times a year (due to the Maintenance Contract). I haven't done a W10 upgrade from W7 or W8x for several months now.

At my local Computer Club's Christmas Party in July earlier this month I made the announcement about the July 29th deadline date and the Aug. 2nd Anniversary update/upgrade; and people were still confused; even though I've been talking about it our members since last April 2015! This did give me a chance to remind people of doing backups on their computers who had W10 or people who are now jumping on the "me-too" bandwagon trying to get their free copy of Windows10 and waiting for the last 2 weeks before the deadline to do so. I certainly expected a flood of calls from my computer club "friends" after that announcement--but zero calls!! Right?? Ha! I also suggested to people that they do image backups with Macrium, Acronis, EASETodo, or whatever they had <Aug. 2nd just in case.

Another thought some of us who do computer repair in the Computer club talked about was that if as Mike says, it turns out to be more of a service-pack type reinstall, people should be reminded that they need to do cleanup and maintenance on their computer's hard drives prior to letting this Anniversary Update scramble their computer. We also mentioned the fact that if they haven't had maintenance in a year of owning a W10 machine (either new or upgraded), that the chances of failing the Anniversary Update/Upgrade would probably be much higher; and thus our Backup/Backup Image warning.

Whoever gets the most calls next month, August, from Clients who didn't backup their W10 computers before the Anniversary Update/Upgrade should get awarded like 10 trophy points from the forum or something? Might be fun to count up our calls and post back at the end of August.

Cheers!
<<<BBJ>>>

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

That's one of the main problems when I go and help someone.

First I have to scan the hard drive, run their antivirus software, and CCleaner.
On my computers I also defrag the hard drive, but I skip that step other places that don't plan ahead.

Then before I can do anything I have to download and install backup software, make a backup, create a boot disk and then I can start the upgrade process.

I've tried suggesting that people make a backup image before I get there but they never do.

Tomorrow is the last one, my friend's wife's computer, it's exactly like my wife's computer which went smoothly and like my wife's has almost nothing on it. It's just used for internet and email.

Mike

 

[bochane]

@Henk: Too funny! No one wants to call the Computer guy when it's upgrade/update time I know! What are we, like the Dentist or something? And since no one likes Dentists, who hangs out with Dentists (or Computer Geeks) but other Dentists? All of my friends are Computer people, pretty much no friends who don't do computer stuff (except my Wife). ....
Cheers!
<<<BBJ>>>

Since I am retired I am helping some 80+ aged friends. I love to do that, but you don't want to see their computers (the other day I got one ransomed by some virus - see that thread)....

Henk

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Well, my last ones done, no problems, like you said my friends are all in their 70s and 80s.
The one I did today has nothing on it at all.

All she does with it is play card games and do her email, not even any photos or documents on it to back up except for her desktop photo just in case, and after running her malware tools and sfc /scannow I just told it to go ahead.
Less than an hour later it was done.

I didn't even make an image file since it was a laptop and had a recovery partition anyway.

Unlike my wife's computer hers had already downloaded Windows 10, so it just started right in on the install.

I created a Microsoft account on her husband's computer while it was doing it and it and when it was done I was able to log right in.

Now we wait until the 2nd of August and see what happens then.

Mike

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

@Mike: Cool beans, Man!! I just bought a product key for my W10 Pro online yesterday and got it in today and applied it and it worked! Have done a cold shut down and rebooted-still Ok. Waiting for July 30th and Aug. 3rd to make sure it sticks; but it activated easily.

I have a 9 year old dell inspiron E530s desktop I built earlier this year with Win7 Ultimate on it. I had one of my good customers bring me a 13-year old clone desktop with Intel Mobo about 3 weeks ago. I diagnosed it and found he had a faulty Mobo--tested it w/ 4 different PSUs and it's dead and gone. Anyway, I offered to sell him this dell E530s desktop for like $75 as he just needed the tower, and it's a secondary PC on his home network. He's a retired teacher like me, so he knows how to use it. Talked to him yesterday, and he wanted to make sure that it would update to W10 before Friday, July 29th, so he could get his free W10 upgrade before it expires. This sounding familiar to you?

Now the story gets interesting as when I talked to him on the phone last week about buying the refurbished dell PC from me if he wanted me to upgrade him to W10. He said no, he wanted to do that himself. He's certainly tekky enough to do so, and I said sure no problem. He asked if the GWX flag was there and I thought I saw it right after I built it. After I talked with him today, I fired it up and checked the updates, and on the main update screen I get the dreaded "never-never" boxes that show updates to W7 were never done, and the last update to W7 were also never done. Ugggh! Anyway, I ran the M$ fix it tool for updates, and that fails with the ever lovely "8007000E" error message. I am now applying the usual kemical-recommended fix; chkdsk /r-->sfc /scannow-->dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth combo to see if that fixes it. It could be a Mobo incompatibility who knows. And, yes I upgraded the BIOS (it was from 2007) to 2011 version from dell website and it works fine connects to the Internet etc. Wish he'd told me he wanted to update a week ago instead of today as now I can't sell it to him if I don't figure it out by this Friday! Argghh! Oh, well, I've got 2 other W7 dells but neither of those have 4GB RAM or a decent size HDD in them (250GB). To upgrade them, I'd need to drop about $70, plus the $75 PC cost and I can't get the parts here until next week (after the July 29th free trial deadline passes), so I'd have to add an $90 W10 home license and he'd be at $235 plus my labor to do the upgrade and deliver and install it on his network. About $280 altogether. He can buy a brand new dell mini-tower at Best Buy for $225. Just another fun day with W10 upgrades, huh?

Thought you'd enjoy this little story...

Catch ya' later!
BBJ

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Tomorrows the last day, so after that everyone can stop dealing with the update.
Now we see what's going to happen on August 2nd.

I'm finding more things that Cortana can do that are handy.

I didn't know I could ask her what is 142 times 96 and get an instant answer (13,632), that's actually handy.
I don't have to open the calculator and then click in the numbers one at a time.

She definitely works a lot better then she did at the start.

Did you know you can ask her how to say things in German, Greek or Swahili?

Anyway I'm finally really finding things that are useful that she can do beyond playing my music.

Mike

 

[ussnorway]

finding more things that Cortana can do

she tells you to fuck off if you ask her to go away... Microsoft knows best... trust Microsoft!

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

A follow on to my latest last-minute W10 update customer request. I thought that the Win7 Ultimate I originally installed on this Dell 530s might be the problem, so I wiped the drive and did a scratch W7 Home install, and it got rid of the error! Or so I thought. I was able to install SP1 & IE11 no prob. All updates were put on overnight, and all was looking good. When I tried to Activate the W7, this nasty update error came back!!

I also tried the W7 Home clean install on a 2nd hard drive that I have tested and was low usage hours (<10,000 hrs.). no-Bueno!

My conclusion here is that the Mobo/chipset from this vista-era PC is incompatible with W10, possibly since it's a 32bit machine (it is dual-core).
I have 2 other Vista-era machines that I've upgraded to W10: my main desktop PC (Studio540) and activated with a legit license yesterday, and another desktop tower (Dimension E520), which is my test W10 machine and runs a non-activated W10 as well as my W10 Tech Preview loads [it has 2 hard drives in it]. Both of these 2 machines are 64bit; the Studio540 (2008) is a Quad-Core 8200 CPU, and the Dimension E520 is also a 64bit dual-core CPU. I've installed W10 Pro activated on the Studio540; and both W10 Pro & Home non-activated & Preview Trial on the Dimension E520 no problems.

My point is that could the Dell 530s 32bit machine be having a weird compatibility at the CPU/Chipset/BIOS level that's keeping it from working with W10? Also, I mentioned that I updated the 530s BIOS to latest from Dell site at 2011 version (original was 2007). HAVE ANY OF YOU RUN INTO THIS PARTICULAR PROBLEM UPGRADING A VISTA-ERA 32BIT MACHINE TO W10?? Just curious.

In any case, I only have 1 day left to get the free W10 upgrade on this machine; and that's now a bust! My last resort here is I'm doing a Clean Install W10, and will BUY a W10 product key to activate it and see if that works. That worked on my Studio540 yesterday (one of my 2 Dell 64bit machines). If this fails--my Customer will have to buy a W10 computer pre-loaded; either brand new or refurbished.

@Mike: when you said it was going to be busy this week, did you forget to mention how fun it was going to be too?

BBJ