# Windows 10 for free???



## MIL8 (Jun 1, 2015)

I noticed a new icon in my taskbar today, I clicked on it and it says its a free upgrade to Windows 10. I'm currently running Windows 7 64bit pro. I'm happy with it, having no problems. I'm usually one that subscribes to the "If it isn't broke don't fix it" philosophy, but I also don't want to pass up on something that is worthwhile for free. Anyone else seen this?


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## Chokey Chicken (Jun 1, 2015)

I heard about it not too long ago, but never looked into it. I'm pretty sure it's free for anyone who has windows 7 or newer.


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## MIL8 (Jun 1, 2015)

I also meant to ask. Is this a good idea to do as just an upgrade? I usually always do a fresh install. I remember trying to upgrade versions a long time ago and it didn't seem to work well.


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## MaxOfMetal (Jun 1, 2015)

Look into Windows 10, there's tons of info out there. The download won't actually occur until July 29th. 

From what I understand, it'll be free for the first year, so even after the 29th of July you'll have 12 months to decide if it's right for you.


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## QuantumCybin (Jun 1, 2015)

Windows 10 comes out July 29th I believe, and any Windows 7 or 8 users can get it for free if you want. I'm going to download it but I'm not sure if I'll install it, as I want to make sure for both gaming and music related things that Windows 10 is efficient. I personally love Windows 7 and don't feel any need to upgrade but we'll see.


EDIT: 'd by Max


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## MaxOfMetal (Jun 1, 2015)

Since they're allowing such a long window (no pun) for the free upgrade I'd wait a couple months before doing anything. See how the first wave of users are doing. 

When it comes to software updates like these it's usually good to wait for the first round of updates.


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## MIL8 (Jun 1, 2015)

I wonder if it will download as an installer then you can do a fresh install? Or it will only work as an upgrade. Sounds like I have plenty of time to figure it out.

Thanks.


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## MaxOfMetal (Jun 1, 2015)

MIL8 said:


> I wonder if it will download as an installer then you can do a fresh install? Or it will only work as an upgrade. Sounds like I have plenty of time to figure it out.
> 
> Thanks.



From what I gather it's going to work like an upgrade, but I'm sure someone more tech savvy will correct me.


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## AngstRiddenDreams (Jun 1, 2015)

I really hope you'll be able to download it separately so I can use parallel windows and run Windows 8 and 10.


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## chopeth (Jun 2, 2015)

Any way to get rid of the icon in the taskbar?


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## asher (Jun 2, 2015)

AngstRiddenDreams said:


> I really hope you'll be able to download it separately so I can use parallel windows and run Windows 8 and 10.



I'm curious why you'd want to do that?

I've got a friend who's been using the test build. He's been loving it.


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## Señor Voorhees (Jun 2, 2015)

To me, it really just depends on if there are driver issues as has been mentioned previously. I intend to sit back and watch as Max has said. If people aren't running into issues with audio/video drivers or whatever, I'll gladly upgrade. No real reason not to, imo. Windows 7 and 8 are largely the same thing, and I'm imagining 10 won't be a drastic departure. (I'm talking xp to vista level of departure where 75% of the drivers didn't work.) I really ought to look into it, as I have literally no knowledge of what 10 changes from 8. Might be worth it, at least for my computer that's still running 7.


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## asher (Jun 2, 2015)

8 is WAY faster and more resource efficient than 7


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## Señor Voorhees (Jun 2, 2015)

asher said:


> 8 is WAY faster and more resource efficient than 7



These are things I don't notice too often, or at all really. My DAW/gaming experience didn't change a bit when I bumped from 7 to 8, and that's essentially all I do with my computer. 

When all is said and done, all I care about is if the software I use functions correctly. If it does, I upgrade because why not? So I'll wait a couple months after it officially releases before snagging it. Better yet, I'll probably install it on my wife's computer to personally get a feel for it before upgrading myself, since she doesn't do much other than browse the internet. I'll no doubt upgrade in the future, it just depends on how stable it is out of the gate.


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## teddy_baca (Jun 2, 2015)

Just had the same icon pop up on me today. Pretty excited for windows 10 actually, I hated windows 8 at first... But now that I use it as my main OS, there is no denying that it is a lot faster then 7.


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## OmegaSlayer (Jun 2, 2015)

Dunno, Windows 8 is giving me more troubles than 7...I'm so skeptical about 10...and why no 9? 
I guess Microsoft skipped 9 as it was the only stable build working


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## leftyguitarjoe (Jun 2, 2015)

I used Vista until this year. I'll stick with 8.1 until 2020 or so


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## asher (Jun 2, 2015)

OmegaSlayer said:


> Dunno, Windows 8 is giving me more troubles than 7...I'm so skeptical about 10...and why no 9?
> I guess Microsoft skipped 9 as it was the only stable build working



Have you popped up to 8.1?

It's actually pretty funny why there's no Windows 9:

Why Windows 10 isn't named 9: Windows 95 legacy code? | PCWorld


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## Pav (Jun 2, 2015)

Come on people, it's every _other_ Windows OS that actually works.  We've made it through Windows 8 so 10 should be a winner.


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## leftyguitarjoe (Jun 3, 2015)

I hated 8 until I got a thing that forces it to have a regular desktop and start menu and not that stupid xbox looking thing.

Look up Classic Shell.

My computer runs flawlessly with 8.1. I really dont see why we even need a new OS now.


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## asher (Jun 3, 2015)

leftyguitarjoe said:


> I hated 8 until I got a thing that forces it to have a regular desktop and start menu and not that stupid xbox looking thing.
> 
> Look up Classic Shell.
> 
> My computer runs flawlessly with 8.1. I really dont see why we even need a new OS now.



Among other sundry improvements, DX12 and lots of future proofing for some really neat stuff down the line that's in progress at MS (such as straight compatibility with HoloLens).


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## Repner (Jun 3, 2015)

There are plenty of videos from people using the developer preview, and to me, it looks really good. It really appeals to both keyboard and mouse users and touchscreen users. In one mode, pressing the start button brings up the start menu with tiles along side it for those who want to use them, and if you're using a touch screen, you can switch it to touchscreen mode that makes the start/tile menu full screen (like 8 and 8.1). They've added Cortana, if that interests anyone as well.

I'll no doubt get this, but I think I'll wait a few weeks, as with any new OS.


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## ferret (Jun 3, 2015)

I will likely wait 2-3 months to let the first waves settle and any huge bugs get stomped. Then I'll upgrade my rig, wait another 1-2 months, then upgrade the rest of the house.


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## Electric Wizard (Jun 3, 2015)

leftyguitarjoe said:


> I hated 8 until I got a thing that forces it to have a regular desktop and start menu and not that stupid xbox looking thing.


This is one thing that puts me off of 10. I'm not really fond of the approach that MS seems to be taking in making an OS that tries to suit both regular PCs and tablets.

That start menu is one of the things, as well as the system search that also gives internet results and trending topics, or voice search. All of it seems cluttery and annoying on a desktop. Hopefully customization options will be decent without needing third party fixes.


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## Glass Cloud (Jun 3, 2015)

I only just upgraded from XP to windows 8.w/e when I got a new comp a few months ago. I'll probably get windows 10 after all the bugs are worked out since it will be free for a year from it's official full release but if it doesn't have a regular desktop like 8 then I'll wait until the last week it;s free


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## CrushingAnvil (Jun 3, 2015)

An operating system is only as good as the dickhead who is using it, I always say


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Jun 5, 2015)




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## ferret (Jun 5, 2015)

Yep. That's the same way the $15 upgrade from Win7 to Win8 worked. Got a new key in my email and can reinstall Windows 8 fresh from downloadable iso (Or any official disc) with it.


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## myrtorp (Jun 7, 2015)

I dont have the icon, My brother and all my friends have it! I feel left out. I have Windows 7 Home Premium and I've updated Windows and everything. Hmm!


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## MaxOfMetal (Jun 7, 2015)

myrtorp said:


> I dont have the icon, My brother and all my friends have it! I feel left out. I have Windows 7 Home Premium and I've updated Windows and everything. Hmm!



Go to the Windows website, there will be some links that you can click to "pre-order" Windows 10. 

Don't worry about it, you'll have plenty of time.


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## loqtrall (Jun 7, 2015)

Loved it when I saw the icon pop up on my taskbar.

I can't wait for Windows 10, I've even been tempted to try it's early builds. Since I don't do much anymore with my PC besides browse the web, I'll definitely be one of those "first day" upgrade people, and I'll let all you skeptics know how it is.

I guess I'm just going off of Windows' track record. We went from XP to Vista, which was crap, but got Win 7 out of it. Then went from Win 7 to Win 8, which was crap, but now we're getting Win 10 out of it (for free).

From all I've been seeing since I started doing a little research and looking through some videos, it's looking great so far.


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## Hollowway (Jun 7, 2015)

It is a free upgrade, but the actual details, like exactly who all can upgrade, and under what circumstances, are still a little murky. I think that generally, if you're running a legitimate version of 7 or 8, and are not in a business, it should be free.


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## cjms1997 (Jun 7, 2015)

Pav said:


> Come on people, it's every _other_ Windows OS that actually works.  We've made it through Windows 8 so 10 should be a winner.



This guy gets it. 

Windows 10 is going to be the windows 7 of windows 8. God that was confusing. 
And from what I've heard, it ISN'T a test trial or anything. Once you have it, it's yours. It's only that first year that you can get it for free though. After that, you have to pay to upgrade. Meaning, if you download and install it in that first year, it's yours forever. 

Overall, I am VERY excited about 10. It's very sleek looking, and much more resource efficient. Not to mention it's going to be free. I'll be among the first wave of people to get it, so if anything is funky with it, I'll warn you guys. From what I've seen thus far though, it looks amazing.


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## troyguitar (Jun 7, 2015)

What can you use instead of media center in win10?

I have win7 on my HTPC and it is used for 3 things:

watching TV through media center with a tv tuner card
watching dvd's
watching other random video via web browser

win10 takes away 2 of those options natively but I wouldn't mind having the newer more efficient OS if I can make it do the things I need easily enough


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## Jarmake (Jun 8, 2015)

I use win7 on my desktop gaming rig and win8.1 on my livingroom media center laptop. I reserved win10 for both systems and I'm going to upgrade my laptop first. If it's good I'll upgrade my desktop too.


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## HighGain510 (Jun 8, 2015)

Hollowway said:


> It is a free upgrade, but the actual details, like exactly who all can upgrade, and under what circumstances, are still a little murky. I think that generally, if you're running a legitimate version of 7 or 8, and are not in a business, it should be free.



From what I've read it seems like it's free as long as you have a Windows 7 or 8 license currently (legit license, sorry pirated folks! ) and businesses will have to pay for the subscription to the Windows 10 service (they're moving towards the "OS as a service" model). Not sure what is murky beyond that?  That's the circumstance.  If you have a legit Window 7 or 8 license and you're not a business, it's free to upgrade. If you're a business, just like always, you have to pay for the business license agreement deal. 

I'm looking forward to this, I've used my Windows 7 desktop for a while and I got to play with a few Windows 10 devices at work and didn't really mind it. Pretty stable and if they made fixes with some stuff that was having issues in Windows 7, I'll be happy.


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## goherpsNderp (Jun 9, 2015)

i have a Samsung Series 9 ultrabook that came with Windows 8. it has the popup about upgrading to 10, so i think i'll bite. my laptop is only for internet use and watching videos etc.

i have a desktop i custom built and it's running Windows 7 Pro 64. i think i'll pass on the upgrade for now until i get a feel for it on the laptop. i have a lot of software and apps on the desktop that might not work right on 10.


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## Dusty Chalk (Jun 9, 2015)

PSA to all you young'uns too young to have learned their lesson with both MS and Apple by now -- never get the first official release. Never. Give it time to stabilize, let other people work out the bugs. When you stop hearing people complaining, _THEN_ you can upgrade.


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## MaxOfMetal (Jun 9, 2015)

Dusty Chalk said:


> PSA to all you young'uns too young to have learned their lesson with both MS and Apple by now -- never get the first official release. Never. Give it time to stabilize, let other people work out the bugs. When you stop hearing people complaining, _THEN_ you can upgrade.



If you wait for folks to stop complaining you'll never upgrade. Ever.


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## asher (Jun 9, 2015)

MaxOfMetal said:


> If you wait for folks to stop complaining you'll never upgrade. Ever.





Especially when their complaints are stupid and only worth ignoring.


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## loqtrall (Jun 9, 2015)

I'm specifically upgrading day one so _I would be able_ to tell others what's wrong with it. Nothing wrong with doing a little testing. I upgraded day one with Windows 7 and had very few problems, actually.


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## asher (Jun 10, 2015)

loqtrall said:


> I'm specifically upgrading day one so _I would be able_ to tell others what's wrong with it. Nothing wrong with doing a little testing. I upgraded day one with Windows 7 and had very few problems, actually.



Don't remember about Vista (probably) but I ran 7, or 8, or both early on the RTCs. Vista had some issues but honestly I've had almost no issues with ANY of them.


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## Dusty Chalk (Jun 10, 2015)

I won't disagree with any of that. I think it's a matter of whether or not one considers oneself a "computer geek" or a "proletariat". That advice was for the proles.


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## AngstRiddenDreams (Jun 10, 2015)

asher said:


> I'm curious why you'd want to do that?
> 
> I've got a friend who's been using the test build. He's been loving it.



Cuz I love 8, have all my programs on it and only have one computer. So if I dislike 10 I don't wanna be stuck with it.


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## jonajon91 (Jun 18, 2015)

If I upgrade to Windows ten, Guitar pro five will probably not work so ill pass.


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## Pav (Jun 18, 2015)

I cannot wait for DX12 so I'll likely be upgrading as soon as possible. This sounds like one of the most efficient DirectX upgrades they've ever made. But gaming is basically the top priority for my PC so I think I'm an odd man out here.


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## Rev2010 (Jun 20, 2015)

chopeth said:


> Any way to get rid of the icon in the taskbar?



You've probably figured it out by now but I just uninstalled KB:3035583 which is the update notification. You can also choose to hide the nofitication by choosing the specific exe (it's named gwx.exe) and hiding taskbar notifications from it.

Yeah, I too am neurotic enough that having the icon there permanently on my newly built DAW was annoying enough that I had to remove it. 

Rev.


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## Kryss (Jul 1, 2015)

here you go enjoy the new "free" windows nsa backdoor edition


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## Jarmake (Jul 2, 2015)

Kryss said:


> here you go enjoy the new "free" windows nsa backdoor edition



NSA is welcome on my computer... I'll even make them a folder that consists only of pictures of my rectum.


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## loqtrall (Jul 2, 2015)

Yeah, the NSA can feel free to watch me sit on SSO, Facebook, YouTube, and Battlefield 4 all day, if that's really their thing.


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## Pav (Jul 2, 2015)

Kryss said:


> here you go enjoy the new "free" windows nsa backdoor edition



These "back doors" were first discovered 2 years ago and confirmed as being present in every Windows version since 95. Why people are beginning to pitch a fit about it again now is beyond me, but I also welcome government idiots who want to waste their time watching a college student play PC games.


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## Kryss (Jul 10, 2015)

true it's nothing new as I've been in the IT support world for 20 years. doesn't make it right and what they can do now far exceeds what they can do then.


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## Glass Cloud (Jul 11, 2015)

I've never upgraded an OS before(just bought a new comp with a new one) so idk how this works. Will it just completely overwrite my current windows(8.1), And be just like me factory resetting my computer now? Or will I have both versions as the same time. Cause I'm just using one of those notebook things so I only have like less than 20gigs of hd space.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Jul 11, 2015)

You keep your files how they originally were, but everything will be updated to the new OS. It won't keep both OSes, it'll overwrite the existing one, but you keep all your files, apps, programs, and whatnot. You'll have the oprtion to reboot if you burn a disc or put the Windows 10 iso on a USB drive.


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## Don Vito (Jul 29, 2015)

Not a fan of the super flat UI, but the Edge browser is actually a little faster than Chrome for me. Cortana works well even on my ....ty laptop mic. So far so good, but I wish I had it installed on an SSD or something.


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## Emperor Guillotine (Jul 29, 2015)

Today is the day.

So, what's the word on Cortana? It has interested me. (I remember when I first heard about Cortana and its development as an AI when I was researching personal assistants over a year or so ago.)


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## loqtrall (Jul 29, 2015)

Well, I've had it since midnight, it preloaded on my PC in a hidden folder in C:\ for a while.

So far....the first impression isn't the greatest.

So first install I decided to just do the upgrade. Keep all my stuff. So I do this, it installs pretty quickly, etc.

I get in, it's sleek, new, shiny. So far I like it. Account creation, etc, is easy as always. So I start updating my drivers. Right off the bat:

My webcam driver won't install. It encounters an error no matter what I do, as does installing Razer Synapse for my Razer Naga mouse.

I don't let that bother me, I continue installing drivers and updates. Finally decide to restart. Bam, stuck on a black screen after the Windows 10 logo/loading screen. I waited for a good 45 minutes before deciding it was a lost cause to wait for it to load (for the 5th time) so I factory reset it.

Now, before this, realize that the startup (so far) for Windows 10 (for me, at least) is VERY, VERY long. I'm talking several minutes. As in every time I'd restart to see if it would load, I'd go play a video game on my xbox because I didn't want to sit there waiting for it to load. That's quite bothersome, Windows 7 booted on my laptop in seconds, this one takes around 2-3 whole minutes.

So now this is a CLEAN install of Win 10. This time, it freezes in the account setup. Completely unresponsive for around 20 minutes. I restart and there's two accounts on the computer: Defaultuser and Defaultuser0. Both have passwords. Both are inaccessible.

So I'm....livid...to say the least at this point. I decide to factory reset once more.

This time everything goes according to plan (even though startup is still LONGGGGGG). My account is created, etc. But now, when I log in, it freezes for a random amount of time on the desktop, again, completely unresponsive.

It doesn't stop this lagging and freezing on the desktop until a little icon appears (my guess, something heavy loading in). It disappears so quickly that I can never tell what it is (because until it loads, my mouse is frozen). The icon looks like a circle with a dot in the middle of it, I'm assuming it's Cortana. 

If it is Cortana causing this, I would gladly go without it.

But right now I'm posting from Google Chrome and it's going pretty smooth after all the freezing/loading/lagging stopped.

______________________________________________________

Now some bugs I've noticed so far.

- Taskbar likes to lag and freeze A LOT. Sometimes it takes several minutes for the start menu or notifications to even pop up. It's not my CPU, because the icons still highlight at normal speed, etc. It's just when you actually click on them, nothing happens. Then some time later, while you're trying to do something else, the start menu you clicked on 1-2 minutes ago will finally pop up and everything will start working smoothly again.

- The minimize and close buttons at the tops of windows are buggy. Sometimes when I minimize an application, it will completely close it. And sometimes when I close an application, no matter what, it will freeze up and start bugging out. The closing while minimizing happens a lot with Microsoft Edge

- Everyone told me Microsoft Edge was pretty great, for a browser. Not my experience. For me it's slow, buggy, takes quite a while to load some webpages that aren't even that demanding. Sometimes it takes a while to start up, and a lot of the times it will just freeze or close for absolutely no reason. I just downloaded Chrome and so far I'm having NO problems with it, I'd highly recommend using something other than Edge.

- No matter what (for me), start up always takes AGES. It will go to the Windows logo at the beginning of startup, show the loading circle, and then the screen will black out and stay that way for about 1-3 minutes, then out of nowhere the login screen will just appear. It takes WAY, WAAAAAYYYYYYYYY, WAYWAYWAY longer than when I had Windows 7.


_________________________________________________

My consensus - Wait to upgrade so they can fix all the bugs, unless you feel you just absolutely have to try it out.

I swear if I have to factory reset and have to go through all these 3 minute restarts again for the 4th time, I'm going to start ripping my own hair out.


The good news, though!

When I had Windows 7, for whatever reason (even the tech I took it to couldn't explain), my graphics card WOULD NOT let me upgrade it's drivers. When I updated the drivers, no matter which source I pulled it from, be it AMD, HP, Microsoft, etc, my display would go into 800x600 mode with 16-bit colors, and when I brought up my display, it used to say that my display adapter (GPU) doesn't even exist. This happened ANY TIME I try to update my driver, no matter where I got the driver from and no matter which version it was. I tried factory resetting, everything, and it didn't work. This made playing some games impossible, because the older drivers would crash while playing and cause the game to close. On top of that, AMD's Catalyst Control Center didn't even work and would freeze my PC when I tried to open it.

Windows 10? It updated without problems in seconds. My jaw dropped to the floor when the driver installation completed and not a single bad thing happened to my display, and CCC works fine and lets me adjust all settings.

So that fix is a plus for me, at least. If I can get Steam installed on this thing without it bugging out, crashing, or freezing, I might be able to play some games without them crashing for the first time in a while.

_______________________________________________________

*EDIT:*

After waiting through all the restarts and loading and installing of drivers, getting an anti-virus, etc., it actually runs fairly smoothly. So far no hiccups at all after I finally got all my basics installed and all the restarting and loading done. I've downloaded Steam, downloaded a game, it runs fine consistently. Tried out a bunch of little features that are new, everything is running great.

UI is very sleek and smooth-running. I rather enjoy how very simple it is. It's growing on me already.

Going to try streaming Xbox One, Battlefield 4 64-player Multiplayer, see how it handles. Will report back.


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## MrYakob (Jul 29, 2015)

Been on it since pretty early in the Technical Preview, so I've actually been on the RTM version since Friday. It's been absolutely great for me so far, I've run in zero compatibility issues and all my games and software have worked great!


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## Don Vito (Jul 29, 2015)

Emperor Guillotine said:


> Today is the day.
> 
> So, what's the word on Cortana? It has interested me. (I remember when I first heard about Cortana and its development as an AI when I was researching personal assistants over a year or so ago.)


Well the voice recognition is good. She's caught everything I've thrown at her, and I don't have to alter my accent at all. Understands Spanish as well.

Of course I've mostly just asked her what her favorite music is and we'll she be my gf, ect..


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## asher (Jul 29, 2015)

Cortana's jokes are awesome terrible jokes. Siri's jokes are just terrible 

So I haven't popped 10 on anything yet, and I just had to refresh my 8.1 desktop the other day because it wouldn't get past the mobo splash (failing hardware I think). But I can speak to Cortana on Windows Phone:

It's pretty cool.

If you give her all the permissions she can do stuff like detecting an upcoming plane trip based on getting an email with the itinerary or something and track it for you. Notice places you spend a lot of time and let you define them for more relevant stuff, like time from home to work with current traffic in the morning and vice versa in the afternoon. The voice recog is rather good, too.


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## Glass Cloud (Jul 30, 2015)

Said .... it and am upgrading now. I have a month to roll back if anything messes up. Only thing I'm slightly worried is since automatic upgrades are forced(really dumb idea specially since it's a brand new OS) if something bad happens and they roll out an upgrade with some serious problems or someone hacks into it we are all ....ed. Oh well hoping for the best. I'm just a casual user and it doesn't seem too different from 8.1 so that's cool. 



Well I upgraded to it but when my computer restarted.... windows 8.1 loaded up. ok


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## loqtrall (Jul 30, 2015)

Update so far,

I'm liking it. Despite the still long startup times and loading hangups after logging in (Mainly because Razer Synapse doesn't seem to be optimized with Win10, so I got rid of it), it runs very smoothly. After everything's loaded, the only hiccup I've run into is random crashes with the Xbox app. I'll just randomly switch tabs and it will close by itself.

But the app itself runs great. I can keep up with all my Xbox friends, read my messages, see my notifications, track achievements, and even start a party from my PC. Tried game streaming but my wireless connection was too weak, going to try a wired connection later and see how it pans out.

But so far I'm very pleased. It's pretty impressive. Comfortable and effortless transition straight from Windows 7. So far everything is working fine apart from some long boot/load times.

The Weather App impresses me a lot for some reason. It just seems pretty in-depth for being such a simple feature. I just think it's the overall simple, sleek theme that gets me going. Also, multiple virtual desktops at the click of a button, ftw.


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## Mike (Jul 30, 2015)

I have a media center pc that I decided to use as a test bed. It's an Optiplex 7010 that was running Win 7 Pro with zero issues. I did the inplace upgrade and thought the install (independent of download time) was much slower than a typical windows 7 upgrade. Logging in seems to take a long time, probably almost 2 minutes which is unacceptable for a local login. My wireless mouse and keyboard (logitech mk520 set) are also taking turns being slow to start responding after a startup/reboot. Checking device manager, I had all of my drivers except one. The one for my netgear wnda4100 wireless adapter. I've been dragging my feet on running cable to the PC, but I might have to now as it seems according to the HCL my adapter is no longer supported. I'm pretty pissed because the adapter is only a year old and it was compatible with 8.1, but there seems to be no way to get it working with 10.

I'll mess around a little more today with trying to optimize performance, but right now this PC is useless to me without network connectivity.

Also here's the compatibility checker: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compatibility/CompatCenter/Home?Language=en-US


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## ghostred7 (Jul 30, 2015)

Installed it yesterday too. So far, no major issues to report. Like others, I had some driver missing issues at first, but once the series of restarts, etc finished, i'm good. I like the mail client better. So far it operates more smoothly on my machine than 8.1. I have NOT tried my DAW or anything like that yet though.

What I have tried it for works fine. I definitely like the UI better than the 8.1 tile thing.


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## Chokey Chicken (Jul 30, 2015)

I got impatient and updated. Start up is rediculously long, but otherwise I'm fine with it. I needed to manually update graphics driver, which device manager told me I was up to date when I wasn't. I've yet to try my daw, which will be the deciding factor of if I'm keeping it.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Jul 30, 2015)

I'm debating on getting a cheap 8gb flash drive to I could use it for future clean installs and whatnot, but I have a couple of spare blank DVDs (with cases, spiffy ) to burn the ISO to instead. I've never installed an OS via USB drive, but would there be any advantages of using a USB drive over a DVD, or am I better off saving the $6 and just burning to a DVD?


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## synrgy (Jul 30, 2015)

Food for thought:

I can't help but wonder if those of you going from 8.1 to 10 who are feeling that it's slower to load/login, might have (unknowingly?) had 'fast startup' and/or hibernation enabled on 8.1?

I haven't upgraded yet, but I recently turned off all the settings related to fast startups/hibernation, because I needed the disk space.

As a result, I still get to login screen very quickly, but logging in now takes roughly 2 minutes - a big increase from the 7 seconds it used to take.


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## synrgy (Jul 30, 2015)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> I'm debating on getting a cheap 8gb flash drive to I could use it for future clean installs and whatnot, but I have a couple of spare blank DVDs (with cases, spiffy ) to burn the ISO to instead. I've never installed an OS via USB drive, but would there be any advantages of using a USB drive over a DVD, or am I better off saving the $6 and just burning to a DVD?



In most cases, I think USB 2.0 (and up) is going to be faster than the write-speeds of the average DVD drive.

Approximates:
DVD 1x write speed = 1.39MB/s.
DVD 24x write speed = 33.24MB/s.
USB 2.0 write speed = 35MB/s.


----------



## ferret (Jul 30, 2015)

I've installed on 3 PCs with zero issues, performance as good or better than 8.1.

The fourth PC, a slightly older machine, crashed during the upgrade, but successfully rolled back to 8.1. I'm going to try it again tonight.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Jul 30, 2015)

Well, I caved in and downloaded it. 

So far everything seems smooth, but Cortana doesn't hear me. I'm guessing that has to do with my audio drivers needing to update. 

Also, Firefox doesn't want to work. It opens, but it's unresponsive.

I'm liking Edge a lot, but I need my addons dammit.


----------



## asher (Jul 30, 2015)

Ew, Firefox


----------



## ghostred7 (Jul 30, 2015)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> Also, Firefox doesn't want to work. It opens, but it's unresponsive.
> 
> I'm liking Edge a lot, but I need my addons dammit.



After all was said & done, I did an extra, not-prompted manual reboot. My FF works fine and is my current default browser. Not sure if this was b/c of drivers finishing up on last manual reboot.

Screw Edge. I hated IE on 8.1 and hate Edge on 10.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Jul 30, 2015)

asher said:


> Ew, Firefox



I've gotten used to it over the past year or two because it never gave me memory problems like Chrome did recently. Waterfox was ....y for some sites, so I switched back to Firefox and never bothered switching back. I'm gonna try Waterfox.

Yeah, I'm gonna try to restart. Hopefully that fixes it.

EDIT: DIdn't fix it. Tried using a new profile and that fixed it, but now I have to start from scratch. Even then, I'm having problems while using google websites. 

.... it, too lazy to fix it. I'll just go back to using Chrome for now. 

EDIT2: Fixed the problem. I guess some extensions weren't compatable with Win10. I made a new account, synced it to my email, and quickly tried to remove the addons I didn't use. Works smoothly now. As for the google websites thing, it's Avast causing the issues, so I just disabled HTTPS scanning for the time being.


----------



## Don Vito (Jul 30, 2015)

I went back to Chrome because Edge won't work anymore. Every time I try to use it I get an error about the page not responding or something.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Jul 30, 2015)

I upgraded from 7 to 10. No problems so far and the performance actually seems a little faster, but yeah the start up times are a little much.


----------



## loqtrall (Jul 30, 2015)

I'm glad to see it's not just me with the startup times. I'm running 8 gigs of RAM and an i7, I was wondering why it was taking so long for me.

Well, erasing the Razer Synapse installer got rid of the load hanging after log-in, but startup times are still pretty abysmal. Sometimes it takes so long I can start up my Xbone, get a game loaded, and start playing before it gets to the log-in screen.

I really hope they fix this with an update soon, if it's at all fixable. Because the OS just came out and I see a lot of updates requiring a restart in the future, as well as drivers requiring a restart popping up for a lot of software.

Just thinking of dealing with more restarts after the 50 or so I did yesterday trying to get this thing running in tip-top condition makes me cringe.


----------



## Pav (Jul 30, 2015)

Oh man, I just want to game in DX12.


----------



## VBCheeseGrater (Jul 30, 2015)

OmegaSlayer said:


> ...and why no 9?



seven ate nine, dude


----------



## jonajon91 (Jul 30, 2015)

Does anyone know if Guitar pro 5 works on windows 10? I never downgraded to GP6


----------



## Alex Kenivel (Jul 30, 2015)

Why should I upgrade to 10 for free when you couldn't even pay me to like 8/.1?


----------



## tacotiklah (Jul 30, 2015)

jonajon91 said:


> Does anyone know if Guitar pro 5 works on windows 10? I never downgraded to GP6


Yep, I have 5.2 and it works just fine. 



So far I like it. I get a few extra frames per second in games thanks to dx12, and I'm actually liking the new edge browser more than chrome because it takes less resources and gives nearly the same experience. It's nice not to have a bunch of RAM tied up into a browser, so I can game and get tips online if I get stuck. Graphics on games like Skyrim look especially sexy as I can now run it with mods on ultra and still play at 144 frames per second. My character was spending a bit of time in Dawnstar and the snowfall looked really good. Better than I remember it being. 

The start menu looks good, but when you open it, it still has that windows 8.1 vibe that I didn't like. If no one enjoyed it the first time around, why oh why Microsoft did you have to bring it back? 

Another really cool feature is that in the Edge browser, it has autocorrect similar to what's in Microsoft word. If you accidentally mistype a commonly used word, it will automatically fix it for you. No more excuses for improper spelling! 

Taskbar is nifty and Cortana can be useful at times. Not as fun as Siri imho, but still capable of finding and looking things up for me when I need them. Programs from my 8.1 version seem to work just fine on 10, with no real issues that I can tell. I still have to give my interface and DAW a run through just to be sure. From what I can tell though, 10 is very backwards compatible.


----------



## Repner (Jul 30, 2015)

Goddammit! I've been trying all day to get Windows 10 to download properly. It just fails every time. Nothing works. This should just happen automatically.


----------



## ghostred7 (Jul 30, 2015)

tacotiklah said:


> The start menu looks good, but when you open it, it still has that windows 8.1 vibe that I didn't like. If no one enjoyed it the first time around, why oh why Microsoft did you have to bring it back?



LOL. I think I saw why first hand a little bit ago. Over at the ex-wife's house talking to my kids about stuff, I noticed the ease of which their littlest brother/half-brother could navigate around 8.1 due to the big tiles and ease of recognition (i think he's 3 or 4). Having the tiles in the start menu allows kids his age to still easily transition and function.

I could be off, but I suspect this is a possible influence over their reasoning.


----------



## tacotiklah (Jul 30, 2015)

Okay, now after playing with it a bit more, I think I figured out the start menu a bit better. All the start menu shortcuts that I'm used to seeing upfront are now under the heading "all apps". So you have to go through an extra hoop to get to it. Slightly annoying but it won't kill me. It does make up for it a little bit by putting everything in alphabetical order, with each letter having its own heading. That does help keep things organized.

So there's some obvious trade-offs, none of which are deal breaking for me. Yep, so far I dig it.


----------



## ThePhilosopher (Jul 30, 2015)

My update still hasn't rolled out yet, but I'm just going to burn to disk and wait to update until I finish school because I don't know how SAS is going to play with Windows 10.


----------



## ghostred7 (Jul 30, 2015)

After hearing about everyone's load up times...I timed my system.

Dell XPS 8700 i7 
8GB RAM

Boot --> POST/BIOS --> Log in screen: 25.66s
Entering credentials --> most app functionality: 1m 04s
Secondary app things like Adobe Creative Cloud booting, checking for updates, etc, an additional 45s


----------



## asher (Jul 30, 2015)

Upgrade on my Surface Pro 2 was easy-peasy, but I haven't actually had a chance to use it much yet.

Shiny, though.


----------



## Chokey Chicken (Jul 30, 2015)

synrgy said:


> Food for thought:
> 
> I can't help but wonder if those of you going from 8.1 to 10 who are feeling that it's slower to load/login, might have (unknowingly?) had 'fast startup' and/or hibernation enabled on 8.1?
> 
> ...



I hated quick startup. My computer is power hungry so I hated having it more on than it needed to be. The load times aren't a huge deal, but its certainly noticable. (Much longer than 8.1 non-hibernation startups.)


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Jul 30, 2015)

The bootups were slow at first, but after a few restarts, it started to get better. 

I can't test it right now to see if it's a placebo or not, given I heard of this happening before I tried the restarts. Won't be at my computer until tomorrow.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe (Jul 30, 2015)

ghostred7 said:


> After hearing about everyone's load up times...I timed my system.
> 
> Dell XPS 8700 i7
> 8GB RAM
> ...



Anyone try this with a solid state?


----------



## BlackMastodon (Jul 30, 2015)

I have a solid state in my laptop and am curious if the loadtimes will affect me as well. I'm probably gonna install it clean, though.

And do I just need to go to their site to install it? I was supposed to get a notification in the little windows app they put on my laptop that would notify me when it's ready. 

Edit: It might be because my laptop is still registered as Canadian and they haven't started rolling it out in other regions, yet? It'll probably take at least a few days since they said they are rolling it out in phases.


----------



## ferret (Jul 30, 2015)

I have SSDs on my primary PC. I don't even consider sleeping the machine because it's up in like 30 seconds or less, logged in and ready to go.


----------



## Rev2010 (Jul 30, 2015)

ferret said:


> I have SSDs on my primary PC. I don't even consider sleeping the machine because it's up in like 30 seconds or less, logged in and ready to go.



SSD's are so awesome aren't they? My new DAW build boots into Windows 7 to where I can start launching programs in 8.42 seconds! I timed it with my phone. Now, this is solely a DAW, not used for anything other than music making so no Antivirus or anything and I keep the NIC disabled unless I ever need to get it online like for updates. But man it's soooo fast! I use a kvm and can't even get my second monitor turned on and set to the second input before it's booted most of the time 


Rev.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Jul 30, 2015)

I'm using an SSD and I was having the boot time issue. But I'm using a Samsung 840 EVO, which were known for having some issues.


----------



## loqtrall (Jul 31, 2015)

Yeah, I'm still having the boot time trouble. 

It's not that bad, just inconvenient and bad for someone as impatient as I am. 

Just saying, this is completely clean, the only thing I have installed on it is my anti-virus and Steam, literally nothing else. 

On Win 7 w/ several programs that run on startup and around 30~ games and hundreds of gigs worth of different programs, my speed from pushing the power button to surfing the internet was like 20-30 seconds. 

This is a clean boot of Win 10 with TWO programs installed, nothing else done to it at all, and it's taking me well over a minute, maybe even two, just to get from cold-boot to login screen.

Again, doesn't kill the experience for me, but I'm a little impatient, especially when it comes to something as simple as starting up a PC. It's just a little bothersome because there are so many updates and driver restarts I needed to go through that it was starting to drive me insane.

On the other hand, I have it running perfectly right now, smooth, no hiccups, no errors, no crashing, and it wakes up from sleep mode pretty quickly. So, for now at least, I won't have to worry about restarting so much


----------



## Pav (Jul 31, 2015)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> I'm using an SSD and I was having the boot time issue. But I'm using a Samsung 840 EVO, which were known for having some issues.



How does your boot time for 10 compare to whatever you upgraded from?


----------



## Don Vito (Jul 31, 2015)

I have W10 installed on a hard drive that took music classes in the 90's(it's LOUD and SLOW). It boots up fast, but loading pictures and videos takes a couple seconds longer than 8.1


----------



## KristapsCoCoo (Jul 31, 2015)

How many of installed software does it preserves/transfers to the OS? Or does it wipe anything you had installed?


----------



## ferret (Jul 31, 2015)

Nothing was wiped on my 5 upgrades. One PC with an older video card required reinstalling the driver though.


----------



## Masoo2 (Jul 31, 2015)

The only thing that didn't work for me was a program that was "installed at a later date"

*wink wink nudge nudge*


----------



## tacotiklah (Jul 31, 2015)

Yep, my interface and programs work just fine on it. The only thing I had to update for the upgrade was my video card driver. After a quick install and reboot, I'm rocking dx12 and the games look awesomesauce on it.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch (Jul 31, 2015)

I had to reinstall the drivers for my Scarlett 2i4 but that's all that I've found so far. It was being weird and telling my Axe FX to change the modulation on my delay.


----------



## KristapsCoCoo (Aug 1, 2015)

Updated my laptop a few hours ago and everything runs fine besides a glitch - when I write it randomly deletes a word that I am writing. Really weird and annoying. 
And it seems that my task bar flashes once in a while.


----------



## VBCheeseGrater (Aug 1, 2015)

ferret said:


> I have SSDs on my primary PC. I don't even consider sleeping the machine because it's up in like 30 seconds or less, logged in and ready to go.



Yup, ssd here too on 8.1. Boot time is crazy fast....enough to where I don't worry about it anymore.


----------



## asher (Aug 1, 2015)

Running great on my Pro 2.

The tower though. Logging in thrashes my disc at 100% for like, ten-fifteen minutes. My audio card's drivers' installer is being dumb about W10, so I don't have any sound through the 1/4" out. I thiiiiink my nvidia drivers are fresh, but the installs keep failing. And Edge is using WAAAAAAY too much ram, jesus christ.

But it's also the machine that wouldn't get past mobo splash last week and got refreshed, and has still locked up three times post-10, so I'm mostly going to blame hardware problems.


----------



## Repner (Aug 1, 2015)

So yeah. Days later and it still isn't working


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Aug 1, 2015)

If you have a computer you built yourself, it might not work. 

I had to go to the registry and edit something for me to be able to install it.


----------



## asher (Aug 1, 2015)

The W10 media creator DL app to make a USB or ISO boot media should have an upgrade option too.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Aug 1, 2015)

Yeah, it does. Does it re-download the Win10 install files, though? When I edited the registry, I just refreshed the Windows Update and I was installing within a minute.


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## asher (Aug 1, 2015)

It downloads W10 itself, so it should be OK.

Of course, as soon as I started that, the W10 app FINALLY showed up in my tray


----------



## tacotiklah (Aug 1, 2015)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> If you have a computer you built yourself, it might not work.
> 
> I had to go to the registry and edit something for me to be able to install it.



I built my system from scratch back in February and Windows 10 works just fine on my system. I actually had trouble getting 10 on my Dell laptop.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Aug 1, 2015)

It works fine for me too, it's just that I had to add a string in the registry to actually install it. It worked fine after installation. I just remember reading that it depends on the motherboard or something like that.


----------



## lemeker (Aug 1, 2015)

I just installed it on one of my 3 computers. So far I've not run into any major problems, but I've only been live since thursday. Install was clean. I did it through the creator. All my drivers work, only sound and video. I haven't upgraded my system that I record with so I'm not sure about my mbox driver yet. I'm coming from 7 and like it for the most part. Some things are really simplistic, and it bothers me a bit, but network wise it sees all my other computers and all that jazz so i'm satisfied to this point.


----------



## Pav (Aug 1, 2015)

Wtf how did I not realize Win10 was directly available from Microsoft's website?  Time to start downloading instead of waiting for the update notification!


----------



## loqtrall (Aug 2, 2015)

I don't know what causes the hangup in startup times, but I just experienced one of, if not THE, longest startups I've ever had on a PC.

I mean, the old Dell Inspiron I had with a 1.2Ghz CPU and 512mb of RAM using Win XP booted up eons faster than what just happened.

I don't know why, but the boot (after the Windows splash icon loading screen) took about 2 1/2 entire minutes to get to the log-in screen.

Then after log-in, it took about a minute to get to the desktop. Once on the desktop, the only thing that loaded on the taskbar was the notifications icon, the clock, task view icon, and the start menu icon. Nothing else was loading in, and I couldn't open any programs at all, start menu wouldn't pop up, etc. I waited around 5 minutes for it to load everything, but absolutely nothing happened.

I tried to go to task manager, but pressing ctl + alt + delete produced freezing for a moment, then a black screen, then an error popup stating that the system option for the shortcut ctrl + alt + delete are not functioning correctly, which then took me back to the completely unresponsive, non-loading desktop.

I restarted the PC and left the room to go play a video game, came back 10 minutes later and everything was up and running fine, waiting for me to use.

It's not a problem now, everything is running fine. But if it happens again in the future, and god forbid if it happens frequently, it's going to leave a very sour taste in my mouth.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Aug 2, 2015)

Well, I'm back on my computer. After entering my PIN, it took about 5 - 7 seconds to load back in. It's not blazing SSD speeds, but both my SSD and HDD are pretty full. 

I believe at first, it took 15 - 30 seconds to load up when I first installed it. But yeah, it sped up significantly after several restarts.

EDIT: This time,0 when I unlinked my Microsoft account and used a local account instead, it was even quicker. 2 seconds.


----------



## Jarmake (Aug 2, 2015)

Did the upgrade manually on both of my computers. Laptop went fine and worked perfectly out of the box, but my desktop was slower than sloth after upgrade, so I had to reset the whole shibang. After resetting and installing w10 again with the windows' own tools the computer wouldn't start up anymore, it just said that boot media unavailable. So I had to dl the w10 again and make a bootable dvd out of it (usb just wouldn't work at all.) and install it 3rd time. Third time's the charm I suppose, since it worked after that. Only my nvidia drivers seem to fck up when updating, but that isn't going to be a problem.


----------



## asher (Aug 2, 2015)

Mine did that also, but I managed to also actually have the most recent driver version, so whatevs. Games run great.


----------



## Randy (Aug 3, 2015)

Thoughts on this?

Windows 10 is spying on almost everything you do &#8211; here&#8217;s how to opt out | BGR



> Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to: 1.comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies; 2.protect our customers, for example to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of the services, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone; 3.operate and maintain the security of our services, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or 4.protect the rights or property of Microsoft, including enforcing the terms governing the use of the services &#8211; however, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property of Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer&#8217;s private content ourselves, but we may refer the matter to law enforcement.


----------



## asher (Aug 3, 2015)

It's basically saying they'll retain information when served a warrant, which they're legally obligated to do...


----------



## Mrkensei (Aug 3, 2015)

Randy said:


> Thoughts on this?
> 
> Windows 10 is spying on almost everything you do  heres how to opt out | BGR



Your ISP is already keeping records of everythign you do on the internet too, they'll release the information if pressed, with or without a warrant in many cases.
Windows tracking your activites is totally irrelevant.


----------



## asher (Aug 3, 2015)

Further:

Cortana playing "fast and loose"? Citation needed.

Yes, you can turn the ad stuff off. Other than that, pretty much any data usage is solely to power the relevant services, which *don't function without them*.


----------



## ferret (Aug 3, 2015)

Doesn't bother me. They have most of the information already, and its easier to disable than this article tries to portray it. It isn't hidden. There's no "scoop" here.


----------



## Jarmake (Aug 3, 2015)

Don't really care. Turned almost everything off by default anyway.

Got my video card drivers on order and the games are working perfectly now. They feel a bit faster than on win7 actually, which is quite surprising for such a young OS.


----------



## Mike (Aug 3, 2015)

So what I'm reading is that any hardware changes to a pc with the free upgrade will invalidate the license. There's rumors floating around that this includes ram and graphics cards as well which I'm kind of skeptical about, but since the in place upgrade is treated as OEM licensing, changing a motherboard or hdd on your PC will void your license since Microsoft won't recognize that as the pc that your W10 upgrade was assigned to.

Lovely for gamers and ethusiasts or someone who has a drive crap out on them.


----------



## RobbYoung (Aug 3, 2015)

Changed my GPU and RAM, and I've still got a Win10 upgrade.

Although this was a custom build, so I don't have an manufacturer to "void" warranty with.


----------



## Pav (Aug 3, 2015)

Mother. Of. God.

36 hours later I'm finally upgraded and running Win10. It took me a full 24 hours to figure out that the only way to get and install it (at least at first) was to just "upgrade now". But no, I had to insist on reformatting my boot drive for a clean installation. 

Everything is finally working great except for activation. Apparently whatever product key I ended up with is good, but I click "activate" and Windows tells me activation isn't working, try again later.

Oh, and over the course of my googling generic product keys to try to activate Windows right now, I found one that automatically upgraded me from Home edition to Pro. Not what I meant to do but I'll take it.


----------



## asher (Aug 3, 2015)

Mike said:


> So what I'm reading is that any hardware changes to a pc with the free upgrade will invalidate the license. There's rumors floating around that this includes ram and graphics cards as well which I'm kind of skeptical about, but since the in place upgrade is treated as OEM licensing, changing a motherboard or hdd on your PC will void your license since Microsoft won't recognize that as the pc that your W10 upgrade was assigned to.
> 
> Lovely for gamers and ethusiasts or someone who has a drive crap out on them.



This sounds like a load of crap.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Aug 3, 2015)

It makes sense with motherboards, since they tie the license of the OS to that, but invalidating licenses because you get a new video card or new RAM sticks sounds like bull..... Even then, you should be able to call Microsoft to transfer your license to a new mobo.


----------



## asher (Aug 3, 2015)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> It makes sense with motherboards, since they tie the license of the OS to that, but invalidating licenses because you get a new video card or new RAM sticks sounds like bull..... Even then, you should be able to call Microsoft to transfer your license to a new mobo.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Aug 3, 2015)

asher said:


>



Well, the last part was true with Windows 8.1, or so I read. You're able to swap your OEM key to another motherboard if you plan on upgrading. But now I'm seeing people saying you can't swap OEM keys with Windows 10 if you're upgrading from an OEM key.


----------



## Mike (Aug 4, 2015)

asher said:


> This sounds like a load of crap.



As I said, I'm skeptical about the ram and gpu bit and really don't see that being true, but all signs point to the motherboard part being true. W10 OEM/ Free upgrade licensing is registered to the device not the user (Just as 8 was). More specifically, it's embedded in the BIOS/EFI. When you change a board, you change the chipset and thus the bios, cmos, etc.



> Q: What happens if I change the hardware configuration of my Windows 10 device?
> A: If the hardware configuration of your Windows 10 device changes significantly (e.g. motherboard change) Windows may require re-activation on the device. This is the same experience as prior versions of Windows (e.g. Windows 7 and Windows 8.1). The free upgrade offer will *not* apply to activation of Windows 10 in such scenarios where hardware changes reset Activation.



source: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...-upgrade/578d0b7f-57e4-4893-b9d1-6cfac0d6290a


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Aug 4, 2015)

It's been like that ever since Windows 7. OEM keys are tied to the motherboard. I also believe that retail versions of Windows 7/8.1 upgraded to Windows 10 CAN be installed on new motherboards, though.


----------



## TedEH (Aug 4, 2015)

I would assume that once you've done the upgrade, there's a new key associated with the instal that you could use if the hardware changed too much, right? I know the Win7/8/etc key is not the same as the 10 key you get from the upgrade, but if you do the upgrade, then use some sort of tool to find the new product key you were assigned, I'd imagine you could re-install or re-activate with that same key. I'm just guessing, but that would make sense to me.


----------



## Jarmake (Aug 4, 2015)

TedEH said:


> I would assume that once you've done the upgrade, there's a new key associated with the instal that you could use if the hardware changed too much, right? I know the Win7/8/etc key is not the same as the 10 key you get from the upgrade, but if you do the upgrade, then use some sort of tool to find the new product key you were assigned, I'd imagine you could re-install or re-activate with that same key. I'm just guessing, but that would make sense to me.



I dug out the product key when I first installed w10 and put it to safe place. If it doesn't work after upgrading my mobo then .... microsoft, I'll just pirate this .....


----------



## BlackMastodon (Aug 4, 2015)

Got tired of waiting and found an install link. Did a clean boot. Working pretty good so far. Haven't tried games but so far so good. Had to turn off/delete a lot of the garbage but that's expected.


----------



## Alberto7 (Aug 5, 2015)

Installed it a couple of days ago on my Dell laptop. I'm not a very heavy user, with the heaviest thing I push my laptop with being the Dolphin GameCube emulator to play Metroid Prime. I feel it runs slightly smoother than Win 8.1, and definitely looks better to me. Easier to use and to get to places as well. The only downside is that it takes slightly longer to boot. Then again, I do have Cortana activated and fully set up, and that does take a bit of time to get started.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Aug 5, 2015)

I'm in the same boat. It's not SSD speeds, but it's actually faster booting than 8.1 was for me. It can probably do with both my HDD's being 2/3rds - 3/4ths full, but I'm not sure. 

I'm still curious if they're still lax with the OEM keys. I've heard mixed things about switching mobos with them. If I do an upgrade in the future, I'm unsure if I'll be able to get the keys transferred or if I need to buy a new license.


----------



## Pav (Aug 5, 2015)

I've been struggling with product keys for the past three days. No matter what I do, Windows doesn't want to activate for me. 

Based on the info I've dug up thus far, changing hardware like your mobo will almost certainly require you to pay for activation.


----------



## tacotiklah (Aug 6, 2015)

Mike said:


> As I said, I'm skeptical about the ram and gpu bit and really don't see that being true, but all signs point to the motherboard part being true. W10 OEM/ Free upgrade licensing is registered to the device not the user (Just as 8 was). More specifically, it's embedded in the BIOS/EFI. When you change a board, you change the chipset and thus the bios, cmos, etc.
> 
> 
> 
> source: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...-upgrade/578d0b7f-57e4-4893-b9d1-6cfac0d6290a





Oh man, reading that bit has really irritated the hell out of me as Intel's Skylake just came out, and requires an 1151 socket mobo insteal of the regular 1150 that most intel users are currently rocking. It also requires upgrading your RAM to DDR4. 

So basically if you want to upgrade your system to 6th generation Intel, you're screwed for getting windows 10? F**k that!


----------



## asher (Aug 6, 2015)

I'm going to rebuild shortly. Will install my old 8.1 and then re-up to 10. I suspect I may just need a phone call.


----------



## ThePhilosopher (Aug 6, 2015)

Windows 10 wouldn't reliably load up on my machine (it upgraded anyway after I told it to upgrade later) - the task bar wouldn't load fully, the system tray would be half missing, the Windows start button never worked in any of the reboots I tried - safely back to Win7x64Pro.


----------



## BlackMastodon (Aug 6, 2015)

Only issue I've had with Win10 so far is whenever I close my laptop and let it go to sleep and then open it up again, the WiFi has a lot of trouble connecting again. A system restart fixes it, though. I haven't noticed Win10 taking that long to log in, either. It gets to the login screen within a few seconds and then after logging in, it's maybe about 10-15 seconds until everything is done and loaded. I don't use Cortana, though. Just have to load up Steam and Dropbox and a few other small programs (antivirus, etc.).

So far, pretty decent. I just want Dell to release the Alienware software sh*t for Windows 10 so my laptop can be back to normal.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands (Aug 6, 2015)

tacotiklah said:


> Oh man, reading that bit has really irritated the hell out of me as Intel's Skylake just came out, and requires an 1151 socket mobo insteal of the regular 1150 that most intel users are currently rocking. It also requires upgrading your RAM to DDR4.
> 
> So basically if you want to upgrade your system to 6th generation Intel, you're screwed for getting windows 10? F**k that!




Well, the good news is that Skylake barely has a performance increase over Haswell, or even Sandy or Ivy, for that matter.


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## asher (Aug 6, 2015)

Also I was under the impression Skylake supports DDR3...


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## Jarmake (Aug 6, 2015)

I only had problems with nvidia drivers on win10. When the driver's wouldn't install the computer could get stuck before login screen, but it always booted up just fine after a reset. After I got the newest drivers in I haven't had a single glitch or problem. Runs fast as a bat out of hell on both my computers and works just wonderfully. I really like this more than win7, which tells a lot about this OS. I loved win7 and used the .... out of it for many many years. Win8 sucked, win8.1 sucked less and was actually usable, but this newest one is pretty cool after turning off all the ..... And it's not like I'd be able to use cortana anyway...


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## KristapsCoCoo (Aug 6, 2015)

Updated sound drivers and sound got fvckd up. -_- Like all the low-end disappeared.


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## tacotiklah (Aug 6, 2015)

asher said:


> Also I was under the impression Skylake supports DDR3...



Nope. It DOES support DDR3L, but that's not the same as the DDR3 currently being used. Also, not all Z170 boards will support DDR3L. Best bet for compatibility is to drop DDR4 in them. Hopefully by the end of the year, we'll see some enthusiast grade Skylake platforms. Getting real tired of Intel not wanting to push beyond 4 physical cores for consumer grade stuff though. 

More on topic, I tried to upgrade my Win 7 laptop to 10 and no dice. Then again, this laptop has an i5 2410M system so it's a pretty obsolete system. That might be a factor.


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## HoKrll (Aug 9, 2015)

A new MB or CPU pretty much constitutes a new PC. If it's a different model MB, then you will need to reformat the HDD anyways. 1 Windows license, 1 PC.
However, there's still a good chance you can do phone activation.

As for product keys, if you do an upgrade, there is no longer any key tied to your license. Your "key" is your hardware ID, which is created using your CPU/MB info.
With this ID, you can use the 8.1 or 10 download tool from Microsoft and it will auto-activate, no key required.

Also, if you have a 7 or 8.1 PC, you need to upgrade to 10 via the OS first. This is what gets you your new ID. (using the 10 media creator on that PC also works, as it will upgrade your current license.)
You are then able to do a clean install. Otherwise, it will not activate.

If you buy an off-the-shelf copy of 8.1 or 10, the key is only used for initial activation. At that point, the hardware ID is created, and a product key no longer used for future installs. It will auto activate as long as your hardware stays the same.

As for RAM, GPU, we have been doing these as normal at work and have yet to have 1 issue with Windows activation.

I work for Geek Squad, and all this info is from Best Buy's partnership with Microsoft. 
I have also witnessed it in practice.
Don't listen to those tin-foil hat bloggers.

And yes Windows 10 works amazingly, although it does have some hardware/software quirks they are still working out. To be expected of course.


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## Pav (Aug 9, 2015)

I'm loving how Win10 handles games and multiple monitors. I have an instant FPS boost in all of my games and Windows no longer insists on minimizing a full-screen application on one monitor when I alt-tab over to the other monitor! I'm actually so happy with this that if I can't figure out my product key issues, I may be willing to pay for it.


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## ferret (Aug 11, 2015)

I've actually seen some gaming improvements, little odd things.

Fallout 3 would not alt-tab for me correctly in Windows 8.1. It does now, in Windows 10.


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## synrgy (Aug 11, 2015)

Between yesterday and this morning, I upgraded both my machines - one was Win7Ult, and the other was 8.1.

I have to say, I'm incredibly impressed by how easy this process was. I backed my system drives up beforehand just in case, but in the end I didn't have to reinstall any of my programs except for Spybot, Ableton works fine, my MIDI stuff is working fine.. My hat's off to Microsoft! I've never had such an easy time upgrading an OS. Only had to mess with one driver on the Win7 system (I forgot to update it before the upgrade) and three drivers on the 8.1 side (because reasons?).

Not to say there aren't hiccups in the OS itself. I had grown quite accustomed to 8.1 - despite the haters - and I'm not sure how I feel about the new start menu, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. I also - just like in 7 and 8.1 - had to go in and manually modify some registry values, in order to ditch the god-awful login screen background.  Speed-wise, I'm not noticing any difference. Both systems seem to operate just as they did before. 

Relatively seamless. Amazing. Didn't think I'd ever see the day.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Aug 11, 2015)

Well, tried installing it to my friend's Win7 cheapo gaming build. No luck. We tried the "official" way of using the opt-in popup and the media tool. Both methods went back to using Windows 7. 

I'm not exactly sure what's going on. I don't remember the specs of his computer exactly, but from what I remember it's an ASRock B85M-HDS mobo and an Intel Pentium G3258 processor.

EDIT: Apparently the processor is a fault? I did some googling and apparently some people with the Pentiums are having issues with it.


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## VBCheeseGrater (Aug 11, 2015)

I made the leap from 8 to 10 last week - very glad i did. The only issues i have had have been a couple games that got fixed right up with compatibility mode. Have not had to jump through any hoops or anything to get anything working. The upgrade was super smooth - as soon as it was done I was playing a racing game with wheel, telemetry, all that working same as always.

Raceroom Racing Experience for whatever reason, saw a massive jump in performance, to where i could jack up the settings and still get smooth FPS at 1080x5760. This is an outlier, but all games seem to run at least as well as before if not better.

Very satisfied, even using cortana. the new start menu is a godsend vs win 8.


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## lemeker (Aug 11, 2015)

After a few weeks of using it on multiple machines, the only problems I have run into are an "occasional" video card crash. The other issue was on the system I have for my dad, the apps didn't work....they did on mine. All the networking and home group stuff was cool, just wouldn't see his mail, and couldn't get firefox to be an app like on my other 2 machines. That was through the update. I'm going to try it again through the website.

I never used 8, but I like 10 overall. As I stated earlier, I don't like some of the simplicity, like in the settings, but I'll get over it. Glad I stepped up, and am eagerly awaiting a service pack.


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## Repner (Aug 12, 2015)

Finally jumped from 8.1 to 10. Had to use the media creator tool to make an installation disc to do it. Really loving it so far. I'm not noticing any slow down during boot up at all.


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## HoKrll (Aug 12, 2015)

Any issues upgrading a Win 7 machine, may be due to the processor or motherboard not supporting UEFI, which has pretty much replaced traditional BIOS. We have seen limited cases of this with early Win 7 machines.
Also, any malware present, and some A/Vs can block it.


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## The Reverend (Aug 12, 2015)

I went from Windows 7 Home to 10. Not really noticing anything too outrageous about it. I like the visual design of it. Seems like they took a lot from the smartphone arena, which is cool in some ways. I feel like I'd get a lot more out of it if I were an XBone owner and had a Windows phone, as a lot of the connectivity and interplay between all of them is wasted on me. Android will always be master race to me. 

As far as nuts-and-bolts performance, I haven't noticed anything better or worse than it was before. I didn't really do anything strenuous on this computer anyway, so I'm not the best person to comment on that. I haven't run into any issues with drivers for any of my MIDI equipment, and every VST and program I run functions just as it did before. It's been a very seamless transition, aside from Cortana trying to pop up and tell me what she can do for me. Unless she can siphon all the musical ideas from my head and translate them into a finished product, I think I can function fine without her.


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## Curt (Aug 12, 2015)

Upgraded my laptop from Windows 7 to 10 a couple days ago. The "edge" browser takes up less RAM by far than Chrome, and so far seems just as fast. Definitely good since this is a 5 year old laptop with only 3GB RAM. clears up a bit more for what little multi-tasking I do as of yet. I plan to build a new PC by the end of this year for gaming/audio production stuff and will definitely be buying windows 10 for that as well. Nice improvement over 7, and I like it better than 8.1 when I tried it. It's like a nice mix of the two.


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## loqtrall (Aug 12, 2015)

Everything's been running swimmingly for me for the past week. 

There's still a little hiccup after log-in, but ONLY when I've just installed updates. Still a little lengthy start-up time, but nowhere near as bad as it was before. 

Get some awesome FPS boosts when it comes to gaming. Not sure what the difference was between Win 7 and 10, but it's noticeable when it comes to gaming. I absolutely ADORE the Xbox One app, and I can keep up with my gaming friends while my Xbox is sitting cozily off in the other room. They can even invite me to a party and invite me to games, which is pretty cool considering I don't have to physically go turn on my Xbone and check to see if anyone is online playing anything at the time I decide I want to play.

No problems from my end anymore. It's smoothed out quite nicely and I'm liking it more than Windows 7 every day.


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## chopeth (Aug 13, 2015)

It seems like I'm the only person on Earth who went back from 10 to 7 again in no time. It took ages to start. I guess patience is not my greatest virtue, but my computer is old and something went wrong there. Too lazy to bother because 7 works just fine for me.


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## neotronic (Aug 13, 2015)

chopeth said:


> It seems like I'm the only person on Earth who went back from 10 to 7 again in no time. It took ages to start. I guess patience is not my greatest virtue, but my computer is old and something went wrong there. Too lazy to bother because 7 works just fine for me.



Yes, I'm not going to bother either. My computer is a tool to get my stuff done, and it performs well. if I do the upgrade, the best outcome might be, that it performs as well as win7 right now. So I dont see slightest benefit to it.

Since microsoft is going to support win7 until 2020, i have no reason to install anything else until than


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## Jarmake (Aug 13, 2015)

After upgrading from 7 ultimate to 10 pro on my gaming computer with ssd-drive the startup times went from "ok, that was reasonably fast" straight to "holy fvcking hell! It's on and ready to go already!".


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## Steinmetzify (Aug 16, 2015)

Hooked up my Mom's new laptop for her tonight and got to mess around with W10 a bit. Was pretty impressed, looks good and seems stable. DLing now.


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## ThePhilosopher (Aug 16, 2015)

chopeth said:


> It seems like I'm the only person on Earth who went back from 10 to 7 again in no time. It took ages to start. I guess patience is not my greatest virtue, but my computer is old and something went wrong there. Too lazy to bother because 7 works just fine for me.



Nope, I went back as well - my PC isn't terribly old but Win10 just wasn't working on my machine (see my previous post in the thread).


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## Steinmetzify (Aug 16, 2015)

Not sure I'm keeping it. I like it, it looks good, but feels a little buggy on my laptop....felt a lot smoother on my Mom's new machine. See what happens...


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## Pav (Aug 16, 2015)

Win10 has been oddly picky about hardware thus far it seems.

Apparently to properly get it to activate I'm supposed to reinstall my OEM copy of Windows 7 and then try upgrading again. The problem is that it turns out I have no idea where my Win7 copy is. I may be a little screwed here.


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## Steinmetzify (Aug 16, 2015)

Running a bit more smoothly now......had to restart to fix a couple driver issues and no other problems. No faster than 7 really, but whatever. It's on here now, no reason I can see to go back...


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## QuantumCybin (Aug 20, 2015)

Just installed it, definitely enjoying it so far. Haven't tried any gaming on it yet but I do like the interface. Call me crazy but I actually don't mind the new internet explorer, Edge, and this is coming from someone who uses Chrome. We'll see how it goes, though.


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## Dusty Chalk (Aug 21, 2015)

I'm having the dreaded memory leak problem. I got rid of the biggest one, so it's slowed down to a matter of days rather than a matter of hours, but still -- it corrupted one of my virtual machines, so I has a sad.


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## Steinmetzify (Aug 21, 2015)

QuantumCybin said:


> Just installed it, definitely enjoying it so far. Haven't tried any gaming on it yet but I do like the interface. Call me crazy but I actually don't mind the new internet explorer, Edge, and this is coming from someone who uses Chrome. We'll see how it goes, though.



I don't hate it either, but I didn't see anything wrong with IE. 

I had to adjust some host values because of ads on forums, but it got rid of them and I'm cool.


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## QuantumCybin (Aug 21, 2015)

Biggest problem with Edge right now is lack of add-ons...so for me, that means no AdBlock. But Microsoft says they're going to be adding add-on compatibility soon. So that's good news.


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## flint757 (Aug 21, 2015)

steinmetzify said:


> I don't hate it either, but I didn't see anything wrong with IE.
> 
> I had to adjust some host values because of ads on forums, but it got rid of them and I'm cool.



Trust me in saying it's needed. Microsoft makes web developers lives harder by being unnecessarily different from the other browser developers. It's been worlds better since 10, but from what I recall reading edge conforms to the standards better than they have in the past.

I think the naming convention is more about re-branding. In the developer community internet explorer is pretty much unanimously hated.


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## QuantumCybin (Aug 21, 2015)

^ Agreed. I have tried for years to get my dad to stop using internet explorer. He's actually a pretty tech savvy guy but he has always used Internet explorer. I've been trying since I was a teen to get him to use chrome or something but he's never bothered


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## asher (Aug 21, 2015)

Edge is leaps and bounds better. I would kind of like to switch after it gets addon support - it's got a smaller footprint than Chrome...


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## n4t (Aug 21, 2015)

IE has always worked for management consoles in enterprise software, routers, firewalls, etc - where Chrome and Firefox are hit or miss. Or terrible.

...so loading a non-ms browser is pretty much a waste of time for me. Occasionally chrome works better to order a pizza. 


We have a couple guys running 10 at the office, and they like it. I am content to wait for the inevitable SP1.


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## KristapsCoCoo (Aug 21, 2015)

Not sure if it's caused by W10, but my laptop have been getting slower ever since I updated. -_- 
Games and other heavier applications run as good as before or even a tiny bit better, but switching between programs lags more and Chrome seem to work pretty slow now. 
And it's getting a lot hotter than before too.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Aug 21, 2015)

I've started to notice that my programs start slower now, as well. 

And Steam sometimes doesn't even start. When it actually works, it chugs along and sometimes crashes. 

EDIT: I mean, it's either trade in slow-starting programs (Windows 10) for constant memory leaks (Windows 8.1)


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## flint757 (Aug 21, 2015)

asher said:


> Edge is leaps and bounds better. I would kind of like to switch after it gets addon support - it's got a smaller footprint than Chrome...



That's an understatement. 

Chrome uses sooooo much RAM. If it didn't nicely sync up my data and I didn't have 32GB of RAM I'd be using something else for sure.


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## ferret (Aug 21, 2015)

I like Chrome but it's a hog. I don't know if I could give up the convenience of my Android devices and PC being all synced and happy though.


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## Dusty Chalk (Aug 22, 2015)

Chrome uses so much RAM because it's a standalone program, whereas anything Microsoft (IE, Edge) is using the system to do its work.

And for those of you who want Chrome to use less resources, I highly recommend the Great Suspender.


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## KristapsCoCoo (Aug 24, 2015)

I got pretty serious problem. I finally got new adapter for my POD XTL and the thing do not work correctly - the PC sounds are not being heard in the POD's output channel. -_- 

It shows as interface, but it's not letting the system sounds through. Anyone else has problem like this?


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## flint757 (Aug 24, 2015)

Have you checked the audio mixer? Make sure you have your sources/destinations correct and any drivers you may need for the device installed.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Sep 9, 2015)

So, I'm under the assumption that something screwed up while upgrading to Windows 10, so I'm gonna goahead and do a clean reboot. 

Anyone know if a USB 3.0 drive will work? Or will I need to stick to a USB 2.0?


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## Pav (Sep 9, 2015)

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> So, I'm under the assumption that something screwed up while upgrading to Windows 10, so I'm gonna goahead and do a clean reboot.
> 
> Anyone know if a USB 3.0 drive will work? Or will I need to stick to a USB 2.0?



Be careful with that. I did a clean installation myself and found out Windows won't register itself the way it should unless you do it a specific way. Now I'm stuck with an unregistered version of Windows that I'll probably have to pay for since I can't find my Win7 disc to roll it back.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Sep 9, 2015)

I really got no other choice, unless I can figure out why my programs are starting so slowly. 

EDIT: .... it, I bought both.


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## flint757 (Sep 10, 2015)

You can register with a quick phone call on their automated hotline. I've done that probably a dozen times with my Windows 8 installs. As long as you know your Windows 7 license you can call it in and they'll give you the proper code to get it registered. No need to actually buy it all of a sudden.

It won't auto-register if you don't have internet when you install the OS. That's what happened to me with 8 and likely what will happen when I install 10 since I have to manually install my drivers.


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## HeHasTheJazzHands (Sep 10, 2015)

Well I still got my Win 8.1 disc and code, so we'll see how that goes in a week or two when I get my USB stick.


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## Don Vito (Jan 22, 2016)

I've insinuated a fresh install of Windows 10 onto an SSD. It performs great, but my laptop's fan is running at inconsistent speeds. One minute it's dead quiet, the next it's very loud. I've read this has something to to with the BIOS ability to detect cpu temperature and adjust the speed accordingly, and that Windows 10 isn't fully compatible because the BIOS firmware is old(lenovo business class circa 2010). 

I've also read that it could have something to do with "post processing", an event that occurs when you first install Windows(10 or otherwise), that resolves itself after a day or two. I have no idea what this does or how it works, but apparently it can affect fan speeds. I hope my issue is related to this, because my BIOS is up to date.


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## asher (Jan 22, 2016)

Can you manually override fan settings in your BIOS?


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## Don Vito (Jan 22, 2016)

Thanks for the suggestion! I went into the BIOS and noticed my cpu's power plan was set on maximum. I've reset it and it seems to have helped.


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## asher (Jan 22, 2016)




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