Windows 10: W8.1 to W10 Upgrade installation taking far to long.

I fancied trying the upgrade route, really as an educational exercise to see how well it would work, but am finding its way to slow. I suspect some process is running somewhere that is crippling the install procedure.

My 8.1 install is a very compact 25gb installation that includes a handful of programs and around 8gb of user files and data.

At the moment its showing 21% overall complete after more than two hours with the 'setup' currently at 71%. Its taking around 8 minutes for that to increase by 1%.

This can't be right !

:)

 

Windows 10....is it really pretty much safe to download and install

Personally I have upgraded 5 PC devices to W10, and I have had very few problems.

W10 is a better OS version than W8.1, and is far superior to W7.

Make sure you back up you device.

Check PC manufacturers website for drivers that are updated for W10.

Take your time and get to know W10, go for it.

 

Windows 10 "remove everything" made Asus Vivotab Note 8 go into a BSOD "inaccessible_boot_device", completely BRICKED!

Thanks for your experience!

How can you solve the matter about the Windows key?

I've installed W10 but it doesn't accept my Key of W8.1 (recovered from UEFI) so it's useless...

I would Reinstall W8.1 to put my Key and upgrade to W10 again...

The problem is that, if i create a bootable USB with W8.1, i cannot access to the BIOS and i don't understand why!

I will try to erase all partition, "hoping" that the system "forget" W10 and accept W8.1...

it's a crazy situations...

- i have the activation key for W8.1

- the system don't let me to install W8.1

- W10 doesn't accept the key (even if for upgrade was OK)

I've upgraded the system because i was confident about MS quality, but the process for upgrade is really buggy!!!

 

Mooly
It does not seem normal but has been happening to many members of this forum. I am one who left it upgrading all night long. Woke up in the morning and it had finished up.*Eek

 

Thanks Charlie. Its now on 81% (the set up part) so I will let it proceed as there are still (lol) a few hours daylight left here. As an upgrade it has not come across as a good customer experience because of this.

 

Still churning away. Its on 100% complete (total progress) with all steps at 100% but its just seemingly stuck at this now. The HD light has not gone out for the last 6.5 hours.

 

My update download from 10041 to 10049 took 24 hours and installation took 7 hours. Consider yourself fortunate. BTW, if you see this in time, after the download is complete but before installation begins, disable your Internet connection for the completion of the install. You will save yourself about 10 GB of additional download and comparable HDD storage. AFIK, MS has not corrected the flaw in the 10049 ISO that downloads all the languages in the world!

 

Thanks cbwilsha... things haven't worked out one bit trying this as an upgrade install over W8.1

The initial download of the ISO took only 25 minutes or so. Then there was the 7.5 hour upgrade time but after all that it was still no good. When the W10 desktop finally appeared I still had the HDD pegged at 100%. Nothing was usable, even the recycle bin took around 30 secondsto open. The Windows button (or using Windows key) did nothing. For some unknown reason two folders (about Media Player ?) aimed at users in South Korea had appeared on the desktop. By right clicking the Windows icon I could eventually bring the restart option up. That just froze though and so I had to do a forced shutdown. On reboot it was still the same, 100% HDD usage. Also the graphics were as if a default driver was installed, all a bit large and blurry.

In the end I had no option but to restore my W8.1 disk image.

 

I was sorry to hear you are having so much trouble getting W10 to work for you. One problem might be, judging by the details in your profile, you are trying to install a 32 bit W10 on a 64 bit W8.1 machine.

In any event, I would just start over. However, at this point, you might want to just wait a few days for the next Build which appears to be coming soon and spare yourself all the bugs and anomalies still existing on Build 10049.

BTW, the two Korean Folders were legitimate MS inclusions having been required by the South Korean government but got included in English downloads by mistake. If you try build 10049 again, just delete them when you are first setting up your finished install. They are NOT malware or a virus. Presumably they will not appear in English versions of future builds.

Good Luck with whatever you decide.

 

Taking a step back..... to when we started Beta Testing Windows 8. it was the recommendation by Microsoft and many old Beta Testers, that the Beta versions of Windows 8 NEVER be installed over the existing (main) OS on the computer.
That was good advise, because there was NO backup route if the new OS install went badly. And it often did!!!
People who had been using Windows 7, generally disliked Windows 8.

On the old Windows 8 forum, we posted and reposted the warning to NEVER install a beta test version of W-8 over the main OS on the same computer. And, every day someone who didn't adhere to the warning, would come on asking how to get back to Win-7 or whatever their original OS was. The only return path was a complete re-install of the original OS.

Now here we are, several years later, testing a brand new OS, with new builds coming out every few weeks, and again people are trying to install the Beta Test version (Technical Preview) right over the top of their everyday OS that they depend on.
For the life of me, I don't understand MS even allowing that, let alone advising it. "That does not compute!" quote "The Robot".

So far, I have every released build of Windows 10, both 32 bit and 64 bit, when available, on DVD's for future reference.
For each TP version, I always install on a fresh, formatted, partition and the install only takes about 30 minutes, more or less.
When a new build is available, I download it, burn it to a DVD and install it, again letting the installer reformat the C: partition for the new build.

A clean install, like you'd have on a brand new PC, is the only true way to test a new OS. Anything else, is questionable at best.
Just as an experiment, I did install build 10056 as an upgrade to build 10051, and the result was the loss of my AV program and a few other inconsistencies. I had to do a clean install of build 10056 to clean up the mess. It was just an experiment, and I won't do it again. [I have one laptop that I use only for OS testing, and I never use my main PC for such things.] So my precious data and programs are never at risk.

Just the thoughts of an old Tech.

Cheers mates!
*Cool

 

Thanks. It wasn't the best Windows experience I must admit.

Lol, can't really argue with any of that. My wanting to try the upgrade path was really just for curiosity... after all if W10 is going to be free to W8/8.1 users its going to be an upgrade route that the majority take. And that time is getting ever closer, problems should be getting fixed.

Personally I would never accept an upgrade, it would have to clean install every time. But I did want to see how it went.

My return path took around an hour.

 

Mine took about 3 hours from Win8.1 to 10041 then another two hours to 10049.

 

I have a 6 month old Dell laptop that came with Windows 8.1 on a 1 TB hard drive. The drive is 80% empty. The laptop is generic and stock from Dell, a 17r 5737 model. We have a fiber internet with a speed of 20mbs up/down. It took 6 hours for my laptop to install the Windows 10 version 10041. I used the online install.

Windows 10 ver 10041 works great for me with no problems, but I sure hope future upgrades won't take as long.

 

Thanks Antilope, that's interesting to hear and I'm pleased it has worked for you. Mine was Dell (a Vostro 3750) as you probably gather from the thread, and although the update took around 7 hours just to install it was a disaster failing to run properly. Download of the full image file only took around 25 minutes though... it was the install itself that was the killer.

 

Weird unexpected things can happen during a Windows install.

Just last week, my sister, who has a Dell Inspiron 17 N7110 had a dying hard disk. I backed up her computer, installed a new hard drive and attempted to re-install Windows 7 Home edition from a DVD. Twice, about 3/4 of the way through the install, the computer blue screened. I had been using the laptop touchpad for input, so at first I didn't notice that there was a mouse dongle in the usb port.

It was a USB, wireless MICROSOFT mouse dongle. I took the mouse dongle out of the USB port and the third attempt to install Windows 7 Home went smoothly.

Who would have thought that a standard piece of Microsoft hardware would cause a pretty generic computer to blue screen? But it did.

It's the little things that always seem to bite you. *Biggrin