Windows 10: New 10 user, observations and questions

Hi all. As I said in my first thread... this is my second... I migrated over from Sevrenforums.com, where I'd gone for support since 7 came out with my then-new Desktop PC. I was reluctant to try 10, thinking it was completely different in the way of user interface, and who knows what kind of file system. And partly because I'd had a Win8 phone and wasn't impressed, thinking the Win10 desktop might look similar.

I'd been using computers in my office machines job(now retired) since the late '80s with an IBM 8088. Never a power user, but I could build a PC out of a scrap heap and make it work well. Fast forward to Win7 and that was as close to PC heaven as Microsoft had ever been. I gradually compiled a folder of info to fall back on if the system crashed.

My main tools to keep it lean and clean were NIS, which was previously, through the XP years, a horrible kludge, but seemed to work. Then, with 7, either Norton tightened up, or 7 was powerful enough to use it to its fullest. With ERUNT backing every boot, Malwarebytes every so often, Ccleaner prior to every weekly backup, and Acronis TIH 2009 to create those full images, it cruised along glitch-free and I had a machine that I trusted to be dependable and secure. I could forget about rebooting for days, and mostly only if I'd been handling lots of picture files or simple video crunching with WMM, and before backups. I was reluctant to change.

Then my seven year old Win7 PC began showing signs of a failing power supply and the last of the smoke got out a week ago. So here I am with my new Win10-64 bit HP Pavilion 550 a114, 8GB ram and a 1 TB drive. I'm pleasantly surprised. It looks very familiar to Seven. I didn't need to buy a new Office suite with MS Publisher after all, even the salesman told me I needed to upgrade. And Norton transferred over seamlessly. It's noticeably faster and easy to customize. However I'm accumulating questions.

Finally to the point:
1. I bought a Backup Plus Slim 2TB Seagate external drive. I thought it would have a full system image backup function, but it only copies data files. So if my system crashes, I can't just restore the whole thing with its little dashboard. Is there any reason I can't just format it as a bootable NTFS drive and use Acronis like I did with my Seven system? And if Acronis 2009 worked on Win7, do any of you know if it will work with Win10?

2. Which leads to the next question. I needed to open my Acronis backup on the old external drive to copy my data files over to the new box. I tried plugging in my flash drive with the Acronis recovery software, but could not get this new thing to boot anything but Win10. In the BIOS I disabled Fast Boot and Secure Boot, and enabled Legacy Support. Then changed the boot order in Legacy Sources to both USB Floppy/CD for the flash drive, and also to ATAPI CD/DVD for an identical CDROM. Still boots to windows. Some day I will need for this to work, can someone tell me what I missed?

But finally, I installed Acronis on the new machine only to access the encrypted backup on my old external drive, and got the job done. I don't recall if I had to set it for compatibility mode or not. Any ideas if I can trust Acoinis 2009 on this computer, or should I buy a newer version? I want to do a full image backup every week. It bailed me out a couple of times over the years, almost like magic.

3. Is it okay to use Sysinternals Process Explorer instead of task manager? It seems to work when I tested it. I did find that Sysinternals Autoruns will not work.

4. MBAM and Ccleaner work fine, but what about the registry backup/restore program ERUNT and ERDNT? Any reason it can't be trusted with Win10?

5. Should I leave Fast Boot disabled in the BIOS? It seems better to reload everything, at least on a cold boot. Am I understanding correctly that Fast Boot just reloads a hibernation file from the previous session?

6. It came with a trial version of Office 360. Can it be installed alongside of Office 2007? I mostly need MS Publisher, but maybe the newer Word and Excel 360 might be better. Would there be conflicts running the two side by side, and is it worth spending the $$ to upgrade? If not, is it safe to uninstall Office 360 without botching the Office 2007 application?

Sorry for the essay, it was a sort of introduction combined with questions.
Thanks,
Rusty

:)

 

Just an observation and question.

A few months back I noticed that my RAM had dropped by 1Gb. The machine has and recognizes 8Gb, but says 7 useable. This seems to have started with the updates and whatnot with Windows 10. After checking and even reflashing the BIOS, which is not set to
"Do not wake on LAN" the drivers provided by Microsoft seem to have bypassed this. I installed Windows 10 a couple of weeks ago, and at first it recognized all 8Gb, and again I have this same issue. It still persists after resetting and again reflashing the
BIOS.

The problem is as follows: When I used to turn the machine off the connection LED on my router would shut off. Now it stays on, but in a "standby" type setting. If unplug the router connection the light goes away. I have run several different anti-virus and
anti-malware scans, and even removed both drives and scanned them in a second machine has never been connected to the internet except to update definitions for diagnostic use. It includes MSE, AVG, Avast! and Norton's software for just this purpose.

It was suggested that since this meets the minimum requirements to run 7 and the 10 updates, has Microsoft bypassed this and made my machine available via software so the multi-platform compatibility to access the machine remotely is on in case someone "turns
off" their home machine?

I have several industry credentials, including Cisco and CompTIA training. To be blunt this is both confounding and bothering me. I've decided to post this to see if anyone else has this problem, or has heard of something that I may have missed?

Suggestions would be very helpful. I am a subcontractor for a State retraining program and this possible breach in the system has me thinking twice about even recommending Windows 10 in any form to both Home or Enterprise level users. That includes bringing
this issue to the attention of the State Comptroller's Offices. If this represents the latest concept in mobile computing, it could also be the biggest hole in this new Windows product line - and a major liability if this is the case.

Seriously, any suggestions and ideas would be helpful. The machine in question is a Dell Optiplex 755, and before some noobie shouts out, I've been doing this kind of work over 20 years, and ALL of the basic bases have been covered.

I thank you in advance.

Ozz

 

Just an observation and question.

Thank you Neox99,

Of course you do know that was the first thing I tried. It's not a memory issue. I have several matching sticks. Mostly new and in a box. They were replaced as a matter of practices learned when DOS was still a big thing. The machine has had a full low level
DX run on it. I can find nothing wrong with MoBo, or anything else attached.

Thank you for the suggestion!

Ozz

 

A lot of questions, and I can only advise on the bits I have experience of.

Acronis and W10 has (for many) been a minefield and a disaster. Just look at the Acronis forums to gauge how bad things have become. I've used Acronis for years but things really turned sour for me with TI2016 and W10 (both clean installed). I ditched Acronis, and now have just a clean W10 install. I believe anything before and including Acronis TI2014 isn't supported for W10.

If you have lots of user data in the form of Acronis images then I would quickly restore an image to a working compatible PC and copy the data over to a USB drive in native form (jpg,txt,doc etc) and copy those to the new W10 pc.

W10 includes a full disk imaging program that works faultlessly. Yes its basic in that it allows only full backups of the OS to be made (including any other partitions you care to tell it to image). It works. With a SSD drive in my laptop I can do a full image in around three minutes and a restore takes only the same time. Brilliant.

CCleaner/regbackups. In my experience with Vista/W7/8.1 and W10 these are not needed. Correct use of Windows built in housekeeping utilities is all that is needed.

W10 should be booting in around 15 seconds or less, and shutdown should be just as quick.

Keep your W10 install clean, in fact it might be worth you doing a clean install anyway.

 

1 Not sure about Acronis 2009 support for windows 10. I don't see why it shouldn't work (better to test it before relying on it), also there is free backup software like Macrium Reflect Free
etc that works with windows 10 just fine.
2. Give Macium a try its free and has lots of functionality that most home users would need. Sevenforums (should be same with win10) has Tutorials for Macrium too. Imaging with free Macrium - Windows 7 Help Forums.
3. Tasks manager was improved (click more details to see full task manager) in windows 8 and 10 from windows 7 give it a try I should be enough for most users . of course if you need more functionality, you need 3rd party tools.

4. There is a discussion do you really need reg cleaners for Windows nowadays and MS engineers says that you don't I haven't seriously (except some very rare cases) used one from Windows XP era, and din't find I need one. I't just a placebo effect probably.

 

Okay, I'm glad I asked. Old habits die hard and I just assumed I needed to aggressively maintain my system. It's always worked for me in the past, but it sounds like I need to settle down and learn more about what I have in front of me. I did not know Win10 had an imaging backup program. I'll look for it. I assume, before I've finished my coffee, that it's in control panel tools somewhere. A full image in 3 minutes!? That sounds more like the magic I was calling Acronis' restore. Besides that, it means there is no need for an ERUNT backup anyway. The times I needed to use it, I had been screwing around in the registry and botched it myself. I don't remember why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Thanks VBs and Mooly.
Maybe if someone will drop in and address my BIOS and Office questions, and I'll be in good shape.
Rusty

 

Hi,

Office 365 and Office 2007 work fine on the same machine, I have got both installed
I have not tried uninstalling either to see if there are issues though

 

Yes, the disk imaging is excellent. There is an excellent tutorial on it here,

System Image - Create in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

I posted pretty extensively in that tutorial from around December 2015 and there are some screen shots at post #108

Important things to note:

1: Each time the backup is run it appears to the user to be a one off full image, however when you come to restore an image you find that you are presented with a list of all the backups made. In other words its like either an incremental or differential sequence but it seems a little different than that at the technical level (although to the user that is how it appears).

2: The backup folder created is always called WindowsImageBackup. You can rename these at will and move them around at will but to restore from them you must change the name back for it to be recognised.

3: You can create shortcuts for the Disc Imaging and for the Recovery options and place these on the start menu.

4: You can easily create a bootable rescue disc or flash drive from a one click option that's offered.

 

Windows 10
1. I am using Acronis 2015 so I would know about 2009
2. You have to use the RECOVERY from the original windows disk (or have told it load all when installing Windows 10)
Then you can restore your back up image from Acronis or Microsoft
3. Sysinternals: Process Explorer / Autoruns There is a new version for Windows 10 -- Download from Microsoft x32 and x64 versions
4. Like VB's said There is no need for Reg-Cleaners Causes more problems than it's worth..... Also Windows 10 has Built-in Malware and Anti-Virus Now Re-badged as "Defender" was "MS Security Essentials" + "Defender" Now ONE Product

**** Microsoft "Defender" is a great product (and they know where all the files are) ===> ONLY ISSUE ===> If you are running any pirated Software -- It will find it and Auto - Delete / Un-install IT. . . ****

5. Fast boot is a preference -- Todays modern machine with Quad Core / Dual Quad / Quad Quad CPU's are so fast that "fast Boot is now a preference more or less... slightly faster start-up times. Not a Game changer. . .
6. Windows 10 will run Office 2007 so if you have a copy use it / other wise use what you can afford. Even OPEN OFFICE works 4.1.2
The difference you will notice is speed x32 Vs. x64 most Office 2007 where x32 version -- but there where also x64 versions

 

I use Acronis True Image 2014 and it works well with Windows 10.
Autoruns and Process explorer work with Windows 10 as well. I use these often.

What happens when you try Autoruns?

 

Hi all, this is just a followup. I've gotten to know my system better now, and realize I have no need for third party backup and imaging SW. I guess I really didn't on Seven either and never realized it, but I've run an image onto my Seagate USB drive and will do so once a week as has been my routine for years. Also made a recovery disk on a DVD. I have plenty of external storage for pictures, music, etc. So that takes care of all the critical stuff that was botherig me, thanks for the pointers to the simple answers.

I downloaded a new version of Sysinternals PE and AR, they work fine. So does MBAM free. And I'm fine with my current Office '07 suite. I have no current need for Office 360.

The only remaining question from my top post now is #5 regarding disabling Fast Boot, seems like a good idea if I really understand what it does.

Since then, tonight for the first time I transferred a couple of pictures via Bluetooth from my Android phone and it was uselessly slow, so I'll continue to e-mail or cable files between the phone and computer if that's as good as BT works.

I set up a Onedrive account and it started pestering me for Microsoft passwords every time I did anything, and then rejecting them, so I kept resetting them with the same results... I ended up axing the Onedrive account, too much trouble for all that.

Since I'll never run out of questions, I'll call this thread solved and address them one at a time as needed.
Thanks for all of your input.
Rusty

 

Pleased to hear you are getting it all sorted.

You can get to OneDrive directly from the outlook email page (if you use outlook) and upload files that way. I'm set up as a local account on my PC's, mainly because I object to having to use passwords every time I switch on. I can drop files into OneDrive on the PC (can't remember if I needed to set anything up for that but there are certainly no passwords involved in use) but the big drawback is that doing this moves the file from its original location i.e. it doesn't duplicate it in OneDrive.

Fast Boot. I'm using default settings from clean installing W10 and find a cold boot only takes around 12 seconds to fully load everything.

There area couple of tutorials:

Fast Boot - Enable in UEFI Firmware Settings for Windows 8 and 10 - Windows 10 Forums

Fast Startup - Turn On or Off in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums