Windows 10: Should I Be Concerned and Extra Cautious

I signed up for the Windows 10 Upgrade program and it is clearly time to bite the bullet.

I put a good month into sorting out how to move from XP/Pro to Win7/Pro x64. I bought my copy of Win7 (7 Professional Upgrade [Old Version] SKU 882224883443) late in the game and paid dearly for my procrastination. In the end I downloaded an ISO file from

Windows 7 Direct Download Links, Official Disk Images from Digital River

(Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1 (old) X17-24281.iso) to match as closely the product I'd purchased. I did manage to get it activated. I did manage to get it activated. The resulting installation has worked fine...

I have concerns that running the Windows 10 upgrade may cause problems. Should I be concerned?

I have my 'data' files on a drive that is physically different from the SSD I use for the OS and program files, so I can unplug that one (and other unused drives) when I run the upgrade. I can run MozBackup and also save the critical bookmark, password, email, etc. files and reinstall them after the upgrade. Are there other critical files associated with other software?

I also use 'legacy' software, e.g., Acrobat 8 Professional, Autosketch 9, and MS Office 2000 (MS Word 2000 & MS Excel (9.0.2720) for example, and have no desire to abandon them since I know how to use them efficiently. I've been reassured that Windows 10 is 'just like' Windows 7 (only better) so I trust that these programs will still run under the new OS.

My system specs seem to exceed the minimum requirements by enough that I trust I will still be able to operate.
They are available below.

Do I need to take special precautions in upgrading? (When I went from XP to Win7 I spent at least a week swapping cables and BIOS settings between a HDD with the OS and programs on it and an empty SDD for the new installation which I believe would be considered a 'clean install.' That required me to spend another week reinstalling software and finding and installing drivers, etc. I still have an empty matching SDD. I could learn how to clone the one I'm using now onto the empty one and try to use that to upgrade to Win 10. That would leave me the fallback position of reinstalling the SDD with Win7 I'm now using. Do I need to be this paranoid and cautious?

thanks



:)

 

Should I be Concerned

hi dsb18

I don't think that nokia is going to leave non-touch mobile phones. It is just making a big show to propagate there new product (although N97 is not there first touch screen mobile) and about E52, i think this phone is a mistake that Nokia works hard to forget
or to fix ( but sound that there trys are so far unsuccessfull).

But i can tell you, don't drop the hope away cause i believe that Nokia is not going to disappoint there customers buy keeping the bugs in E52 , 'cause it will be shamefull

 

Should I be Concerned

I have an E71 and an E52, the E52 is very buggy so I check on a number of Symbian sites each day for news of a firmware update, what I am noticing more and more is the complate lack of news or development of the non touch symbian devices. I know they are
bringing out new models i.e. E72 but all the news and exciting happenings are about touch screens. I like having uptodate technology but it also has to have style and my friends N97 is far too gimmicky and everthing looks shoe horned into it, I have another
friend who has a HTC Hero and I was blown away by this device with its total intergration. I dont want to start a which is better Symbian or whatever but I would like other peoples views on non touch screens devices, are we heading down a blind ally with them
and Symbian (I dont include Maemo) or is the future bright.

 

I worked on a system recently with O2000 - it was not good, and I recommend updating Office, or you may have problems.

 

Thank you simrick,

Thanks for the reply. What was 'not good?' Was it vulnerability to attack or incompatibility with the OS?

I have had LibreOffice on my machine for a few years and defaulted to it when MS Office could not open an 'old document.' In most cases, LibreOffice had no problems. It is 'just different enough' so that it has a significant learning curve. Learning about 'styles' is an example. It is probably no more daunting than the learning curve for a more recent MS Office. I certainly cannot get excited about the 'annual subscription' model version of MS Office my wife installed when the 'one year is free' version on her new Dell ran out.

I am interested in a 'best place' to ask about a handful of features I use regularly in Word and Excel, i.e., 2 column pages with inserted images or spreadsheets with XY (scatter) charts viz. graphs. Any opinions on where to ask?

I had a frustrating experience with Adobe (registering Acrobat Professional 8.0) after I reinstalled it under Win7. I tried for a week and their servers were 'down' along with their entire line of products on the 'Cloud.' I do all of my work at my desktop. I can't find much to love about 'cloudy computing.'

At 76 years and counting I'd rather be using my software than learning how to use the 'new features.'

thanks,

 

It was problems with incompatibility; mostly how O2000 handles databases, is what I saw on this particular user's machine. I can't remember exactly, just put it in the back of my mind, that it's not a good idea to mix W10+O2000.

I have also found that old-format Office (Word) files have problems at the ends of the files. When you get them open, you can't modify the last line or two of the document without completely losing it. You have to re-type the last 2 lines, (above the original last two lines), and then delete the original last two lines, hopefully deleting the hidden formatting/coding that is causing the problem. It's something to do with end-of-document coding/formatting that has changed over the years, and is now incompatible. I discovered this with another user who was trying to update documents from Office XP files, if I remember correctly. So, I just know you're going to have problems of some sort or another.

LibreOffice is the best free, open-source office suite out there. It does not, however, auto-update. It only lets you know when an update is available. The current version is 5.1.4 for Windows. They also have a separate Help file download, so you can have that locally on the machine. LibreOffice is even able to open Publisher files now - something that no other free office suite can do.

They have a user forum, and also IRC chat available to help you with questions. I have never used these, but I am sure any questions you have would be answered for you there.

If I remember correctly, Acrobat (7 and/or 8) was released to the public a few years ago, along with CS2, when Adobe retired their servers for those products. They don't "activate" any more at all; they just install and run. I am not a big fan of cloud computing either, and I certainly have no love for subscriptions as well, (although they do have their advantages), so I understand where you're coming from. *Smile

You're quite welcome! From the little bit I'd used of LibreOffice, it appeared to me that the interface was similar to the older versions of MSOffice, (i.e. O2003), and therefore easier for me to get around in, much more so than the new versions of MSOffice, which had quite a learning curve for me starting in O2007. I absolutely hated the ribbon feature.

Kudos to you for mastering the XP>W7 upgrade! Let's talk about the W10 upgrade upon which you're about to embark (see next post).

Cheers!

 

Here's what I would recommend as preparation for W10:

• Install Macrium Reflect Free and make an IMAGE of your entire hard drive as it is now, on an external drive. Make sure you have the verify option selected, so you know you have a good image. Be sure to create the rescue media it needs to boot your system from, should you have to restore the image. Then, make sure you can boot the system from the rescue media. Restoring an image will put everything back exactly as it was, including all programs and data.
• Go to your OEM's web support site and download all updates relevant to your system, especially BIOS and chipset updates.
• Use ShowkeyPlus to grab your current W7 keycode and write it down.
• Remove O2000 and install LibreOffice.
• Open an Admin Command Prompt and run sfc /scannow
• Install 7-zip
• Install Driver Magician Lite (free) - to back up your current drivers (in red) to an external hard drive.
• Scan your system with Malwarebytes Antimalware Free to verify it is clean.
• Update all software to current revs and delete any software that is not active/updated regularly or compatible with W10.
• Run Belarc Advisor and print out the system inventory it provides.
• Remove any 3rd-party anti-virus software, hard drive monitoring software, and Speccy if you have it.
• Run Ccleaner Free on the registry.
• Download the W10 ISO from MS TechBench
• Disconnect everything from the computer except, keyboard mouse and monitor. Do not have any drives besides the OS drive connected during the upgrade.

Read the tutorial and watch the video in the link below, and please ask any questions before you begin.

Watch the preparation part at the beginning of the video and then go to about 16:00 to view how to upgrade a W7 system using an ISO (this would be part #7 in the tutorial).
Windows 10 - Upgrade Installation - Windows 10 Forums

Doing this via an upgrade will retain your programs and data. Alternatively, you could clean install W10 on a bare hard drive, and use your W7 key to activate it before the 29th of this month. But, that would require installing all necessary programs and restoring your data - a lengthy process, but would yield a more stable system in the end.

Hope that helps!

 

*Thumbs*Thumbs*Thumbs*Thumbs*Thumbs

 

Hello Cliff,

Do I understand correctly that the 5 "thumbs up smilies" are to tell me that you are in complete agreement with simrick or did a comment you intended to make somehow get lost in posting to the thread?

Besten Danke,


Gen2 American - son of immigrant Sept 1929- father born in Stangenbach
(Die erste überlieferte Erwähnung einer Ortschaft im Gemeindegebiet ist 779 die Schenkung eines Besitzes in Stangenbach an das Kloster Fulda.) (Wikipedia – Die freie EnzyklopädieWüstenrot)

 

@baumgrenze (treeline in english)
Yes simrick covered all bases.
Specially her first point:

That way, if Win10 doesn't work out for you, or your software that you need has too many hiccups, instead of reinstalling everything, you just need to reimage and you're up and running again.

And, if after the 30 day revert period, you want to go back to your original OS, you can too.
The 30 days is NOT a set time limit, in the sense of permission/erlaubnis, it's just when Windows Automatic maintenance, runs Disk Cleanup as an Admin in the background, and cleans up the Windows.old folder and everything else to do with the upgrade, to give you back your disk space.
You can always go back, anytime, if you reimage or reinstall(too much work though*Smile).

I'm an american expat originally from New Hasmpshire, and have been living here since I was stationed here in Bamberg 27 years ago.*Smile

 

Thank you simrick and Cliff S!

What a complicated process....How many questions to answer before I can create and save the image file.

I have a BlacX Duet ST0014U. In it I have one of my original boot drives, a Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000 RPM OEM. It is connected to the eSATA port on my desktop. If I boot, then turn it on, it spins up but Windows Explorer does not recognize it. If I reboot, I can see the disk, but during the boot process I get a 'disk needs to be checked for consistency' warning ending in the error code 766f6c756d652e63_3f1.

1) Is it 'expected behavior' for a drive in this external bay to require a reboot to be found by Windows Explorer? (It is advertised as capable of hot-swapping, but I realize that this might be seen as different.)

2) What is the 'orderly' way to prepare this disk to store the backup image?

3) Once this is sorted out, my OS/Programs SDD is 75% full (30 GB vs 97 GB of 128 GB.) Different tools, WE, ZtreeWin, and TreeSizeFree give different numbers. It is clear that I could do some pruning. Do I create a backup, then prune and check to see that I can still boot and backup again?

4) I checked on the GigaByte website and the most recent drivers for my MOBO are for Win7. Is it probable that the drivers I used in March 2014 will also serve well for Win10?

I will stop here and await answers.

thanks

 

@baumgrenze @Cliff S
I've asked a moderator to move you to a new thread. Please see here:

Should I Be Concerned and Extra Cautious - Windows 10 Forums

 

I have a similar unit (different manufacturer), and have no problem plugging in a drive and it shows in Explorer. But I don't put bootable OS drives in there, so, I don't know if that makes a difference. I would use Passmark Diskcheckup to make sure the drive is completely healthy before trusting my image to it. Let it run for 30 minutes or so, to let the values settle in. Also, the verify option in Macrium will tell you if you have a good image too, so that will help.

All I do is make a folder called Macrium-images, and that's where I put mine. You'd probably want to identify yours as Macrium-images-W7. Then make another one for Macrium-images-W10, for future.

If you have enough room on the external drive, I would do an image, then make changes, then do another image - can't hurt. Ideally, once you are done, Macrium can be set to auto-image on a schedule, and you should keep at least 3 images at all times, so please make sure your drive has enough room. Images are approximately 2/3's the size of what's being imaged.

Probably should be fine then. *Smile

 

Thank you, simrick, for your kind attention!

Just to be clear, what I tried was booting, then turning on and connecting the external drive bay. Does it need to be connected and on before the boot for it to be recognized?

Since you say, "Images are approximately 2/3's the size of what's being imaged," it the drive is probably on the small side for the purpose. I make 2/3 of 97 GB to be 65 GB.

If I go shopping, I see that a 1 TB internal HDD goes for <$70. That ought to be big enough, no, or am I being 'penny-wise-and-pound foolish?' Is there good reason to avoid some brands over others?

Do I understand correctly that my MOBO is SATA-II so that the data transfer rates for a SATA-III drive will not improve performance for me?

thanks



I was prepared to clean and reformat the drive, but I will need a link to 'best practices' for that process. I certainly do not want to risk inadvertently wipe a data and/or boot/programs drive.

 

Mine works either way. I have a Kingwin brand. It's not a hot-swap type, but an external drive is seen as soon as I plug it in, or if it is in at boot. If I remember correctly, the docking bay itself is not seen if there is no drive in it. Not sure why yours is acting different?

Correct.

I usually recommend a 2TB (the prices are so close, for double the size!); multiple images + redundant data backup + drivers backup. they're all pretty much made in (you-know-where), but I do tend to stay away from Western Digital, now that their cost-save includes soldering the internal drive directly to the internal PCBoard. So, if the PCB fails (which is usually what fails), you can no longer open it up and take out your drive to get your data. I have had good luck with Toshiba, and even Seagate.

Correct.

No problem. We can cover that as well, later. *Smile