Windows 10: Windows 10 - poor customer support and lack of media player

I tried Windows 10 but first, I could not download my CD music to my MP3 player. Next I tried it with my Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS5. It warned me not all components are supported.

As a photographer, I rely on Photoshop. Windows really messed up with this so called "up grade" You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig!

I have always been against Apple but this is the best Microsoft can do I am changing. There is no customer support live, just links to self help. My guess is unless they make some very quick changes, their customer base will drop considerably. Sell your Microsoft stocks!

Rob Langlois,
PhotoMagic Creatons

:)

 

Is it possible to use digital-license activation for "N" version of Windows 10, when I upgraded from "non-N" 8.1?

Yes, you can, but why would you want to? Windows 10 N is for customers living in Europe and lacks support for Windows Media Player.

 

My DVD is not displaying when I insert a DVD.

Just to clarify, Windows Media Player is still available in Windows 10, but it lacks DVD playback. I also support using VLC Player which works great.

 

Lack of What? Depends on which edition you tried upgrading to! Oh Welcome to the Ten Forums by the way! Travenston0

Upon looking over Windows 8 a few years back and finding WMPlayer was gone from the Home version while I would likely if then going for 8(ha ha ha ha hardy har har no way hose') would have had to download WMP 13 separately as I have always set WMP since it was first seen only as a separate download until Vista came along as the default player. 8 Pro and later however have the newer versions plus 10 now sees a Windows DVD Player if you look more closely at the Start>All Apps!





The Pro editions of 8, 8.1, and now 10 have WMP as well as 10 now seeing a separate dvd player since WMP no longer supportd dvd or video playback with MS saying there are already too many media players?! So this is what you get like it or not!

 

I think I read that at least for some users Microsoft does offer a DVD playback program, anyway, I have not investigated for whom exactly.

If the Media Player you want is Windows Media Player, then this can be installed, maybe after downloading it from the Microsoft website. I did not even have to do that - it was (still) there after the upgrade.

As for Photoshop Elements and CS: When you just use it, does it work, or are there functions, which are broken? I remember seeing the same message with CS3 some years ago when I did the upgrade to Windows 8 and in fact it is working without problems for me.

Anyway, the Get Windows 10 upgrade tool should have warned you about these problems. Just try Photoshop and remember that after your upgrade you have 30 days to switch back to your old version of Windows, if that is what you want. After these 30 days, switching back no longer is possible.

 

You can always use VLC Media Player *Smile

 

Well one thing I will say about Photoshop is that it is a 3rd party software not anything MS where the initial upgrade here wouldn't even allow much of anything such as drivers and the apps for expansion cards sound and tv tuner card as well as the antivirus software I have a lifetime subscription to! Finally it to the point where I simply upgraded over the upgrade and that in effect became a repair install of 10 to get things on that apparently didn't go on fully the first time around as far as seeing 10 go on! That was after several fails mainly due to having the two storage drives still plugged while the 7 host drive not presently however was unplugged for the temp copy of 7 to be upgraded over.

What does tell you? "Upgrades can be BUGGY"! in simple terms! If I saw a bugged up 10 when it went over a brand new fresh copy of 7 with absolutely no clutter in the registry or a million temp folders accumilated where does that anyone else who upgraded over their previous version that had been in use for some time? BUGGED UP BUGGIER THEN BUGGY most likely! Gee get a free upgrade and for the novice user the MS joke was just pulled on you! Now you have to start all over from scratch because a clean install that should have been seen in the first place as it has mainly for every other previous version now needs to go on! Backup your things!

 

Sure you should backup your things before starting something huge like an OS upgrade. For me the upgrade went smoothly, just like for millions other users as well.

 

I had created a System Image Backup in case I needed to upgrade over the previously seen 7 host drive if the fast temp install of 7 on the planned second OS drive didn't go through. After the several tries including the do it now option seen when running the MC tool was set to go on the first 7 drive it failed one more time!

The first clean install of 7 replaced a clone of the 7 host drive for the upgrade to bring everything together but due to storage drives and boot files, temp folders ending up on the wrong drives I first assumed the cloned 7 was another problem. By that time i had found out the second drive wasn't bootable on it's own despite the 7 host already being unplugged and a boot entry for the second temp install of 7 was added in the original's BCD,

10 decided to place the boot files on one drive and the temp install folders on the other storage drive since those two were Sata 3 drives while the 7 and 10 drives are Sata II. *Eek Following the second clean install of 7 to the second drive 10 suddenly decided to play normal and went right on to upgrade over that second install of 7 but despite that nice and clean fresh 7 system registry to work with 10 had another dirty trick to pull. It came out BUGGY AS ALl..... !!!

As for backing things up here I backup as I go along as well as create an occasion system image for any emergencies and why there were two not one 1tb storage drives with one first used for system images and later when not seeing any OS on the second drive and having had a Linux distro on the front half of the drive it had been split in two until prepping for 10. I also have both editions of Home as well as Pro saved as ISO images for ready write to flash drive or if needed blank dvds while everything with 10 so far is leaning towards usb.

 

The more your system is away from that of a mainstream user the more likely will you run into trouble. This is true more or less always and also during this upgrade.

For now just install Media Player and test Photoshop. Should you run into trouble, report back and we will see, what we can do.

 

If you have the Pro edition not the Core or Home edition of 10 on you won't need to worry about downloading anything but simply go in and set up WMP 15 or whichever number it is now since 8 was 13 as well as seeing the Windows DVD Player in at the bottom of the All Apps portion of the Start menu. I can't tell you how well that works yet since I haven't had a chance to try that out yet. I know he WMP however will not play video files as well as having lost dvd support for 8.

One reason I simply skipped over 8 and 8.1 besides the Start menu seeing only METRO Mares! *Rolleyes*Sad was how MS decided to strip WMP right out of the Home edition with a lame excuse after it was brought as an included feature with Vista and continued on with 7. I can imagine a good number of people were suddenly uttering "choice words" at all that! "rag a freaking rocus lame move brain dead wonders blah blah blah *Devil " *Eek*Roflmao2

 

Windows Media Player is working fine for me with Windows 10. If you run into codec problems, make sure that the missing codec actually is installed; however, for me what comes with WMP by default, can play close to everything I have. The few AVIs with strange content can be converted using ffmpeg, if you really need them.

 

Everything here is in mp3 format as far as audio files. mpeg II files no longer according to blogs about MS removing that type of support from WMP for 8. Upon seeing Windows DVD Player listed among the apps that come included MS apparently wasn't going to striip everything out of Windows but split it up by taking WMP apart along with it being a separate download if you went for the Home edition. Pro was left seeing WMP included in Windows since MS was already charging more for it!

The main "excuse"? according to some of those early 8 non MS blogs about that upcoming version prior to it's release back in 2012 was that MS was making the claim that WMP no longer needed to see dvd playback and video codecs since there are already so many players on the web people can choose from. The problem is is that a good number of so called freebies often see IE toolbar installers or some other forms of adwares that get picked up by the updated forms of web filtering some av programs feature. The download for the freebie is often flagged and contained in a vault by the filtering processes some security wares offer!

One of the few free players that come the closest to WMPlayer is called MPlayer for Media Player which I had downloaded for a laptop that while having 7 and WMP 12 was unable to play dvd movies on it for some reason. That was on the 32bit 7 Home Premium edition that came preinstalled on an HP laptop. So why is it that a clean install of 7 HP on a mini tower case doesn' run into the same problem? MS knows!

 

WMP in fact can play mp3 and also mpeg files. Maybe you miss some components there? Installing WMP again should fix that.

Microsoft already had removed DVD support in Windows 8 - they just did no longer want to spend the licensing fee. Most computer manufacturers then responded by delivering their own DVD Player with their PCs. This player should then be able to play DVDs and maybe (I have not tested that), with the codec which this manufacturer provided DVD player brings, maybe with this codec also WMP can play DVDs again.

 

As things turned it wasn't so much of removing so much out of WMP as it was seeing MS not include WMP any longer in the Home edition of each new version of Windows starting with 8 but still seeing it listed as a free player listed at the MS download center. The Windows DVD Player on the other hand is something new MS is toying with that has MS providing likely generic codecs which by they can then get around the previously seen licensing fees.