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Windows 10 discussion


skaa

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As some of you may know, Microsoft is offering a free upgrade to the new version of their Windows operating system, which is Windows 10 (don't ask me where Windows 9 went). You need to have a genuine copy of either Windows 7 SP 1 or Windows 8.1 (but not the Enterprise version) in order to avail of the free upgrade.

 

This offer is being rolled out in batches over the next few days for those waiting for it to arrive via Windows Update. Being the impatient person that I am, I went ahead and downloaded Windows 10. I'll be installing it later. Meanwhile, I want to know if any of you guys have already received the upgrade. How is it? What are your thoughts on Windows 10? Have you tried dual-booting it with another OS? Did you experience any issues?

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I also went with the .iso download route - installed on my desktop and my Surface Pro 2 (and I've installed on on some of my family's devices too). 

 

I previously dual-booted the Tech Preview for Win 10 on a virtual hard drive - the dual booting worked fine. The particular builds I ran weren't so stable, though they were the first few builds of the preview. 

 

My experience so far is I'm happy with the start menu (though I do have it permanently locked to full screen mode on my surface - it works better on the device, I think). Haven't had any worries with crashes or anything. Cortana unfortunately isn't available in Australia yet (and I can't be bothered setting the region to US), but if it's anything like the Windows Phone version, that'll be cool. I like the notification hub thing.

 

The main things I'm not so fond of are some of the default settings re: Wifi (Wifi Sense has defaults to automatically connecting to public hotspots and the suchlike), but that was all easy enough to turn off. The Mail app and the OneNote apps, while largely good, both just need a few things added in before I'll be happy with them, and the same goes for the new browser (Microsoft Edge) - it's promising, and I'll likely use it for my primary browser in the future, but right now, still needs a bit more work (not happy with how the favourites work atm). There'll eventually be extension support for things like Adblock, so I'll likely give it a proper shot when that comes out. 

 

But yeah, overall, I'm happy with it. Now to learn the best way of using the multiple(virtual) desktops thing.

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That's great to hear! Right now the installer is "Getting updates", which I swear is taking much longer than the 3GB download of the ISO file. I wonder if my ISP is throttling me again... Storming Philippine ISPs and their data caps! :angry:

Update: Okay, so I guess my fear of an hours-long update process was pre-mature. Installation finished without a hitch, and now I'm testing all my applications to check for issues. Looks okay so far.

Edited by skaa
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I'm unfortunately on vacation, so I couldn't update my desktop the day it came out, but I did get to update my grandfather's computer, and it looks fine so far. I haven't done any real inspecting yet (as I don't feel as free to change settings and such, plus I'm on vacation :P), but I will when I get home.

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Okay, a few WTFs:

  • The Cortana search box on the taskbar is far too long, and there's no obvious way to resize it. I decided to just hide it since I could just type while on the Start Menu to initiate search.
     
  • Why is Auto-Correct turned on by default?!
     
  • This is the worst so far: After playing with Cortana for a while, the Filter Keys "feature" turned on all of the sudden, making me assume for a few minutes that my keyboard stopped working. That... was kind of bizarre. And annoying. But mostly bizarre.

 

@Kipper: It's good to know you're not having trouble with it so far. Fortunately my problems were easy to fix and quite minor. Let me see if I can find other WTFs before I go to sleep.

Edited by skaa
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Cortana is the coolest thing to me in terms of new and awesome stuff, but until my grandpa gets a freaking Microsoft account (being old, he is surprisingly resistant to the concept of "accounts"), I can't figure out about Cortana's supposed adaptive learning.

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Yeah, Microsoft's "digital assistant" was named Cortana after the Halo character. As you probably know, Halo is owned by Microsoft.

Edited by skaa
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I've been using Windows 10 for a couple of days now, upgrading from Windows 8. I don't yet know if it's much of an improvement. I really don't use any Microsoft programs or services, so while the upgrades to these are nice, I'm not likely ot ever see them (Groove music is a nice improvement over Windows Media Player - why both are included is beyond me. Then again, Windows 10 has both the new Edge browser and Internet Explorer. Whatever). The performance is nice for sure, but I have a fast PC and honestly Windows 8 performed well, too.

 

The start menu is, in my opinion, only a minor improvement. Definitely better because it's not full screen, but you can barely customize the all programs menu, which is something I've been doing since Windows XP (You can still put things in to folders, but it's so cramped, and the alphabet display is just annoying). I'm kinda hoping Stardock updates their Start8 program with some windows 10 features and compatability. I used that to make Windows 8 a happier place. (EDIT: After posting this, I went looking to see if start8 has been updated. Looks like they're making a Start10 instead. Good enough).

 

The free upgrade does make it worth it in my opinion. I don't think I would feel that way if I had to pay. Windows 8 would have been fine enough for a while longer.

 

I don't really have a verdict yet.

Edited by Vicious Parker
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You can hide it by clicking "hide," in the lower right hand corner of the post.

Edit: Hm, didn't realize that if someone actually followed my advice, this post would look awfully out of place.

Edited by Kipper
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...(don't ask me where Windows 9 went)... 

 

 

I can actually shed some light on that. Windows 9 was intentionally avoided for two reasons.

 

The first one is to distance themselves from windows 8, which was not particularly well received (this is the lesser of the two reasons).

 

The second reason is much more technical, and has to do with programming. Within the windows API (essentially, MS's framework for programmers to interact with windows) they have a call you can do to get the version of windows you are using. This returns a plain text name with something along the lines of "windows 95", "windows NT", or "windows xp". Which is all well and good, but the problem is 3rd party application developers. Back in the day, for compatability purposes, it was VERY common to look for windows OS's that START WITH "windows 9" in your code in order to catch both windows 95 and windows 98, because they were basically the same thing from a coding perspective. Therefore, there are TONS of applications out there that use this as a work around instead of checking for both windows 95 and windows 98 respectively when they're checking for the version of windows they're running on. If MS were to release an OS named windows 9, it would break all of this old code, and maintaining compatability is one thing MS tries VERY hard to do.

 

You can actually go out to code repositories and find code that has this problem, too. See here. There were even instances where java itself had spots with this sort of version checking in it, so that could potentially break java as a programming language on windows.

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@Eerongal: That's also what I heard. I didn't think I could explain it well to non-programmers, so I just turned it into a joke. I think you did a good job! *upvotes*

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I just got Window 10 yesterday, and so far it seems pretty good! It was actually a bit awkward, after using 8 for a year or two, that it went straight to the desktop. O.O  Cortana is a bit annoying, as you can give her commands to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat, but if you ask her to do anything she can't do, she searches it on the internet. With Bing. D6J6xRU.gif

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My home computer still has not downloaded the update, which is incredibly annoying. Does anyone know anything about "svchost.exe," and whether or not the Windows 10 download may be hindered by my anti-virus program blocking/terminating said executable file? I have no clue about the tech stuff. I just see a popup every time I boot now about svchost.exe being blocked, and I just wondered whether it had anything to do with the delay.

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It's been installing all afternoon and most of the evening, so I haven't had a chance to really see it up and running. I didn't like windows 8, so I'm hoping 10 stays away from that approach, but my biggest concern is actually if my old computer games that I struggled to get to work on 7 might not like 10 very much.

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My home computer still has not downloaded the update, which is incredibly annoying. Does anyone know anything about "svchost.exe," and whether or not the Windows 10 download may be hindered by my anti-virus program blocking/terminating said executable file? I have no clue about the tech stuff. I just see a popup every time I boot now about svchost.exe being blocked, and I just wondered whether it had anything to do with the delay.

 

svchost is a generic program windows uses to host various services. It shouldn't really have much/anything to do with the upgrade process.

 

That said, microsoft is rolling out the update based on your hardware configuration. They're waiting until there's "ample support" for your particular hardware setup before the update gets pushed out to you.

 

By now, your PC has probably already downloaded the update and is just waiting for MS to tell it to go ahead (assuming you have the "get windows 10 app" in your system tray). If you check your C: drive, and set it to show hidden folders, you should see a folder named "$windows.~BT", that's the actual install files for W10. I'm in the same boat where i haven't had the go ahead pushed out to me yet for update. It's possible to do some manual stuff to get it to update, most likely, but I couldn't tell you what to do off hand.

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So, I was trying to install Windows 10 on my dad's laptop the other day using my USB flash drive containing the ISO, but the installer was rejecting the product key for some reason even though the copy of Windows 7 Pro on the laptop was genuine. What's weird is that I was never asked for a product key when I installed it on my machine.

 

I was ready to give up, but then suddenly Windows 10 arrived on its own via Windows Update. Huzzah! I was saved from having to explain to my dad why I couldn't get the installer to work.

Edited by skaa
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So, I was trying to install Windows 10 on my dad's laptop the other day using my USB flash drive containing the ISO, but the installer was rejecting the product key for some reason even though the copy of Windows 7 Pro on the laptop was genuine. What's weird is that I was never asked for a product key when I installed it on my machine.

When I ran into that issue, it was because I was attempting to install Windows 10 Pro on a Windows 7 Home pc - it had been fine on the other Windows 8 Pro installs around the house. Downloading the Win 10 Standard Iso then worked. So maybe it was a different version to what you had on your other pc?

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Any thoughts on the keylogger issue?

 

It doesn't seem to really be an issue. The Technical Preview was meant to provide Microsoft with usage data, and that can't happen unless it records some input from the user, who presumably understood what he was getting into when he participated in the Technical Preview.

 

Later when I get home I will check if the feedback settings are enabled by default (it shouldn't be, since I'm not using the Technical Preview but the real thing). If it is, then I'll disable it, but only because my Internet connection is really slow and I don't want unnecessary data transfers happening. I'm not really worried about Microsoft trying to steal personal information from me for nefarious purposes.

 

 

When I ran into that issue, it was because I was attempting to install Windows 10 Pro on a Windows 7 Home pc - it had been fine on the other Windows 8 Pro installs around the house. Downloading the Win 10 Standard Iso then worked. So maybe it was a different version to what you had on your other pc?

 

Ah, you are most probably correct, though in my case it was the other way around. My personal laptop had Windows 7 Home Premium, so the ISO file I got was for Windows 10 Home, and that worked. My dad's machine (which is a company laptop), on the other hand had Windows 7 Pro, so I should have used the Windows 10 Pro ISO for that instead. D'oh!

Edited by skaa
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I have a very infuriating issue with windows 10 :/ When I had Win7, I could download popular torrents with ~5Mbps, now with the same torrents on windows 10 maximal speed is 500 Kbps :( I think this is caused by the drivers for my TP-Link WN822N, that are available only for Windows 8... I think I'll buy a new wireless adapter hoping it will solve the problem.

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I installed Windows 10 on my 8.1 but had to downgrade after a few days because most of my software crashed frequently and/or wouldn't run. Also, windows installer wouldn't install anything... I'll probably upgrade again towards the end of the free year when bugs are worked out :)

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