WINDOWS 10 Upgrade NIGHTMARE...!

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retiredVTT
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WINDOWS 10 Upgrade NIGHTMARE...!

Unread post by retiredVTT » Sat May 14, 2016 11:40 am

Hope you can avoid this nightmare..!

For months now, I have been receiving requests from Microsoft to upgrade my computer operating system for FREE from Windows 7 to Windows 10. I have been happy with 7 so I have declined. The other day I get a message that..."on May 12th at 11pm your PC will be upgraded to Windows 10". Sure enough at 10:45pm May 12th I get a message that "close all programs, an upgrade is about to take place". It said that it could take up to 90 minutes and that the PC would be restarted several times.

So I watched and it appeared to be completed in around 40 minutes. The Windows 10 program opened, with of course a different look than Windows 7, I played around a bit, and for some reason I decided to open my banking connection. Well, after trying three times to enter my correct password, I get the message to call a I-800 number to the MasterCard people to verify who I am. By this time it was late so I shut down the computer for the night. I had my concerns, but figured I could get it corrected in the morning.

Next morning I turn it on and it tries multiple times to load the new operating system but cannot complete this operation.
I call the shop I bought it from, and was told that the actual program may have needed several hours to properly load, and that I could now have a major problem. By this time it's around 11am and I get my son involved on his computer (which is a Mac..!) to dig into the "net" to see what other people have to say. And of course we discover that what we have on my PC is a "BOOT LOOP problem" where the machine is going around in circles trying to load Windows 10.

So starts the marathon.....for the next 20 hours the two of us are fixated on the repair. First I call a second PC shop and get informed, "yes, it's screwed, and the charge will be $135. plus tax, bring it in, and we will put it in the queue, it will likely be a few days...have a good day..!"

Several hours later and after applying several Microsoft "fixes" as stated online, we now have the choice of opening Win10 ..or getting back to Win7...so I think "great, let's get back to 7"...but no, just as it looks like 7 will open, up pops a message that a certain file is missing.
So I hang with it until midnight, then pack it in, figuring the machine has beat us and is headed for the repair shop.

At 8am this morning, my son tells me that all is well, and the repair is completed. He hung in there, reading and reading Microsoft documents, and getting a third computer that was here with Windows 7 on it fired up; from which he "burned" several discs, which in turn he loaded into this PC which allowed it to fully reopening Windows 7. Bottom line he tells me is that before anyone starts this upgrade...make sure you have a Windows 7 Repair Disk available.

The first thing I learned was that I should have gone online to check out this "free Windows 10 upgrade". I would have found dozens or maybe hundreds of dis-satisfied people whose machines got caught in this "BOOT LOOP Win10 problem". It's almost unbelievable..!

Maybe, the second thing I learned..a-g-a-I-n...is beware of the FREE stuff..!
The third thing is..my son hates to give in to a problem..!
I gotta get him a pack of theater tickets; he earned it..!

cheers,
Bill
Bill
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saboo
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Re: WINDOWS 10 Upgrade NIGHTMARE...!

Unread post by saboo » Sat May 14, 2016 12:38 pm

To prevent similar problems, you may wish to do the following.

1) make sure all Windows 7 updates are applied and the system rebooted.
2) Run the free version of Malwarebytes from malwarebytes.org to confirm that you do not have lingering malware. Reboot after removing items.
3) Once it starts go away. For hours. Do not interrupt it. It may take 3 to 4 hours to complete. It usually does not take so long. But let it go overnight without interruption. It may update after the install, and this update is usually important. Interrupting may cause 'issues'.
4) Once you have an install that works, you still have 30 days to roll back to Windows 7.

if you wish to prevent the update from happening get the freeware program called Never10.exe from Gibson Research. http://www.grc.com.

Steve Gibson is a well know, respected, and very talented individual. He is somewhat a bit of contrarian. Running the never10 program stops the update from happening. You can enable the update again using the same program.

If you wait until after July 29th to upgrade, the current position from Microsoft, is that it will cost you to buy the upgrade.

You can install Windows 10 now, activate it, roll back to Windows 7 and update again later. The unique hardware identifier is supposed to be stored on Microsoft servers. This is supposed to allow you to reinstall and reactivate later.
Nothing like the smell of electrons in the morning ;-)

astroflyer
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Re: WINDOWS 10 Upgrade NIGHTMARE...!

Unread post by astroflyer » Sun May 15, 2016 5:40 pm

I had similar frustrations and tried to roll back to seven, but no go. Windows 10 was working on my system, but it ran very sluggishly. Hence the attempt to get back to seven.

Luckily while I had 10 running I had downloaded the Windows 10 program separately. I just burned it to a DVD and reinstalled version 10 as fresh install. Just the operating system installed and none of my photos etc were lost as no format took place. I did lose access to any of the programs that 7 had installed in the program files folder. Simply reinstalled the programs I really needed and all was well.

Also during this hassle there were two "old Windows" backups created and all of my data and data folders for various programs were backed up there. The files for the ASRCM website for instance were backed up there and I only had to copy them to the proper folder in Windows 10 to get things back to where I wanted.

All in all I have to say for me Windows 10 is the best operating system ever. It changed an older slower computer to a blistering fast machine. Took a bit to get used to though.

Bill, you should download the Windows 10 full program and save it in case you format down the road. A net search will find it for you. There is a time limit on downloading it for free and it's probably getting close to that expiry.

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bdg
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Re: WINDOWS 10 Upgrade NIGHTMARE...!

Unread post by bdg » Sun May 15, 2016 7:45 pm

It's all great when it works!

Similar to Al, I upgraded a laptop but from W8 --> W8.1 --> W10 (probably 6 months ago for the W10... shortly after it was released). I was never very impressed with W8.1 and was hoping for some improvements. Everything seemed ok at first but then the antivirus was not compatible. Fairly easy fix. It *seemed* to be working better but then W10 was very problematic. To be fair, it had locked up several times and that resulted in a hard reset / power down which really just perpetuates the problem.

The final solution was a reinstall of W10. Getting to the option took some digging but it reinstalled the W10 OS and kept the files intact... with the loss of every program as previously installed. That was expected and resulted in clean installs.

So far - and it has been maybe 2 months since this - everything is working well. I am not quite as happy as Al with this laptop, but it is stable and is working.

Patience... and more patience.... is required when sorting through these issues!

Good luck!

Brian

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