Windows 10 - So Far So Good But Pay Attention To The Install!

[DougGuy]

So the impending doom is decended upon us and it's time to upgrade.. Well, not nowhere near that bad.. When you run the install of this new OS, two things are necessary to pay attention to and make the right choices. First, choose to "Install Windows 10", check this box, and choose to "Keep Personal Files And Apps" these two should already be checked by default. Leaving these checked will let Windows 10 migrate itself onto your machine and it will remember and keep all your bookmarks, installed applications, it keeps all your customized desktop settings, it will even remember your previous browsing session in Firefox and restore that if you want it to!

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/Windows%2010/Untitled%201%20Custom_zps6g3qpk9c.jpg (http://s1202.photobucket.com/user/DougGuy/media/Windows%2010/Untitled%201%20Custom_zps6g3qpk9c.jpg.html)

The next part of the install (I will try and get some screenshots of this) the screen will come up and it will have a choice of "Express Settings" down at the lower right, over on the left it will say "Customize Your Settings" or somethiing like that, DO NOT choose EXPRESS! Choosing Express will let the installer turn ON all the bloatware and cr@p that M$ wants to install and it will want to share your pictures, videos, share your location, your contacts, it will want to auto-connect to any WiFi access point it finds, OMG the pure bullch1t that comes packed into Windows 10 and set to run by default!

Instead, choose and click on "Customize" over on the left and it will walk you through a bunch of screens where you can use your mouse and turn OFF a bunch of the settings that are turned ON by default. You might want to turn off everything except the automatic updates, and to report problems to Microsoft, those are two good ones. You will see how ridiculous some of the things they have turned on are, pretty sad really..

Then you will come to a screen with 4 choices where you can turn off everything BUT the "Edge" which is I guess Internet Explorer 12? I kept the Edge, even though I am a FF user.

Once the installer finishes with Windows 10 and you are up and running, there are more settings that can be tweaked, things you can turn off or uninstall but that's not the scope of this post. I posted this to guide unsuspecting users through this install so that the obvious is nipped in the bud and not allowed to take over your computer and foist all your photos and data and contacts all over the web for no good purpose that I can see.

First thing, if you like your XP or Win 7 start menu, go get Classic Shell and install it, it's free and it gets rid of the horrid Metro screen in Win 8 and 8.1, this thing's a true gem!

http://www.classicshell.net/

Then if you want to explore a bit, here is 4 pages of stuff I found fairly useful to help you get around under the hood a bit and make Windows 10 behave like it should:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2875600/windows/windows-10-the-best-tips-tricks-and-tweaks.html#slide1

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2952717/windows/the-10-best-hidden-features-of-windows-10.html#slide1

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2874400/windows/windows-10-the-10-coolest-features-you-should-check-out-first.html

And finally, no it is not a total fix for everything M$ managed to break in previous windows releases:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2949827/windows/10-things-windows-10-failed-to-fix-or-flat-out-broke.html

Enjoy boys and girls, I will try and get some screenshots of an install where I can more or less do a walk-thru and show you exactly what *I LIKE* to turn off during the install and then what I like to do afterwards so that my machine behaves (and looks) not much unlike an older Windows XP machine..

[ShooterAZ]

I installed it, simple with no problems. You can go to settings/privacy and you will have 13 options to turn on or off if anything that is disturbing to you. I had no problems with 8.1, but decided to go ahead and get 10. It's a huge download...so make sure your computer is capable of handling it.

[jonp]

Thanks. I have a little window notice thing I put on my computer some time ago that will let Microsoft notify me when the new system has been auto downloaded to install but it has not done so yet. Can I go to Micro and do it manually or do I have to wait for them to notify me?

[SciFiJim]

You can download and install the upgrade now if you wish.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/1/9083501/microsoft-windows-10-update-download-how-to-guide

I am currently at 70% on the upgrade on my laptop. I will wait for the first service patch before I install it on my desktop machine. The laptop is not critical if it melts down, the desktop is.
This will also give me the chance to put it through its paces before upgrading my main computer.

[DougGuy]

You can download it directly from Microsoft. Use the Media Creation Tool to download it onto your PC and then install it, you can also choose to save it and convert it to an .iso file. This is how I installed it on two machines here, and I ran the tool again and then saved the file as an .iso that I can burn to a DVD+R disc.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/media-creation-tool-install

[dragon813gt]

Lots of reports of driver issues already. Forcing updates is going to lead to a lot of problems w/ third party software and hardware. Especially if they force their drivers on you. If they don't do an about face on the automatic mandatory updates I won't be using Windows once they strop supporting 8.1. I don't want to stop using Windows but forcing updates rubs me the wrong way.

[SciFiJim]

I got the update finished. I don't care for the look and feel of Win10 yet. I will give it a week of so to grow on me. If it doesn't, I will roll my laptop back to Win7. I did a complete system backup before I started the upgrade process.

[DougGuy]

Install Classic Shell it works great.

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/Windows%2010/Untitled%202_zpsxm0x3roz.jpg (http://s1202.photobucket.com/user/DougGuy/media/Windows%2010/Untitled%202_zpsxm0x3roz.jpg.html)

[MaryB]

I am not going through the fight to rewrite the laser engraver driver to make it work again. I fought with it for a week before it ran right on Win 7!

[dragon813gt]

I am not going through the fight to rewrite the laser engraver driver to make it work again. I fought with it for a week before it ran right on Win 7!

You won't be able to win the fight w/ 10 because it forces the driver it sees fit upon you.

I do second Classic Shell or an app like it. I use one called Start8. Everything is back where you'd expect it to be and you have a start button. Figured they would have brought it back w/ 10 because everyone complains about not having it. Glad they listen.

[tygar]

I'm screwed. I lost bookmarks, can't find tools or any dam thing else. Need to undo this & start over if I can. I hate this computer crp!

[imashooter2]

L
You won't be able to win the fight w/ 10 because it forces the driver it sees fit upon you.

I do second Classic Shell or an app like it. I use one called Start8. Everything is back where you'd expect it to be and you have a start button. Figured they would have brought it back w/ 10 because everyone complains about not having it. Glad they listen.

Well that leaves me out. I'm still running an HP 1012 with cobbled drivers under 7. I'm not throwing that printer away until it breaks.

[jcwit]

I downloaded it on the 29th IIRC, was unable to find my fav's or most anything. Took it to a computer shop I deal with, he showed me how to navigate the system, I had lost nothing at all, asked for $10 bucks, gave him 20.

So far I really like it.

[tryNto]

So far, Nothing but happy.
Speed of operation is greatly increased.

[pressonregardless]

Has anyone found that 10 does anything better than XP ?

[ShooterAZ]

It's much faster, and audio & video are vastly improved. Also, it is still supported by Microsoft. Other than that, I'm still in the learning process. No big deal so far. I did not lose anything when I downloaded it. Still had my original screensaver.

[CGT80]

MS can keep Win10.

The change from XP to 8.1 was bad enough. Classic start menu makes it usable and it runs great on my new build with a SSD. I did have to uninstall the update they used to advertise win 10. There was no way to completely dismiss the update dialogue, and I hate advertisers. If they had let me permanently do away with the icon by clicking that I decline to upgrade, it would have not been a big deal.

Someone on Calguns posted some of the privacy/security issues with win10 and it looks typical of the direction software companies are going. Most software companies could care less about privacy of information and they do just enough to cover their butts. Unfortunately there seems to be great business with using or sharing data and many people don't mind putting their lives on a billboard for others to see.

MS wants to force you into changes and wants access to your info and Google/Android has done the same. They push out software without really testing it and they no longer leave options to customize the look to what you want. Maybe win 10 gives more freedom to set the look, but the privacy issues and their reputation with the previous versions are enough for me to stay with 8.1. If I ever see that metro or tile **** again, it will be too soon.

I don't need touch screen, voice commands, apps, games, and I don't do facebook or any other social site like that and can do without their cloud setup. I use Firefox for browsing and sync to my tablet and phone, from my desktop.

Free is not free! I don't do any surveys, giveaways, contests, etc. because there is something in it for the other party and it usually involves the participants being advertised to. There is a reason MS is giving away Win 10, but I am not exactly sure what it is, and Win 10 would just have it's own set of issues to deal with. I don't recall having any major problems with using win XP, other than the fact it wasn't as fast or stable as 8.1, and it was not geared toward all of this internet connected sharing ****. Man do I feel old, at 34 years of age. I started with DOS 3.0 IIRC. How things have changed..........

[dragon813gt]

People need to face the facts. Desktops are dying for personal use. Businesses will continue to use them. But they are almost dead in the home. This leaves laptops, tablets and phones. All of which work great w/ a touchscreen. I can imagine the frustration of trying to use 8 w/out a touchscreen. But w/ a touchscreen laptop it works great. Even in desktop mode which isn't designed entirely for it.

It also makes sense for them to have one OS that works across multiple formats. No one likes change at first. Hopefully it works out to be a great OS. I have my doubts as long as they force updates on people. Even Apple is not dumb enough to do this as they know there will be a lot of bugs at first.

[pressonregardless]

All of which work great w/ a touchscreen. I can imagine the frustration of trying to use 8 w/out a touchscreen. But w/ a touchscreen laptop it works great.

Evidently MS thinks everyone using a notebook these days uses it like a facebook toy, I
would do anything to be able to turn this 'swipe' function off on my Asus notebook. My
notebook does not have touchscreen, what it does have is a swipe function that if you
touch the touchpad in a certain way, the text may become microscopic, or full blow poster size.
Whoever thought this was good idea should be horsewhipped. I deal with 150-200 emails a day
along with 25-30 multi page spreadsheets, I do not need the size of the text to expand & contract
due to my making contact with the touchpad. I have just about worn the paint off the CTRL +/- keys.

[DougGuy]

I would do anything to be able to turn this 'swipe' function off on my Asus notebook.

I like to use a wireless mouse with a laptop, I dislike touchpads. If you use a mouse you can probably turn off the touchpad in the machine's cmos settings.

Then there is this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/turning-off-swipe-feature-on-trackpad-on-asus-with-windows8.700550/

[dragon813gt]

I like to use a wireless mouse with a laptop, I dislike touchpads. If you use a mouse you can probably turn off the touchpad in the machine's cmos settings.

I'm the same way. I only use the touchpad for quick sessions. The swipe function would drive me nuts so thankfully I haven't ran into the problem. But now that you mention it my Stepdaughter's laptop has the same issue and she's running Win7. More of an issue w/ Asus then the OS.

[pressonregardless]

I like to use a wireless mouse with a laptop, I dislike touchpads. If you use a mouse you can probably turn off the touchpad in the machine's cmos settings.

Then there is this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/turning-off-swipe-feature-on-trackpad-on-asus-with-windows8.700550/

Thanks Doug, I found the 'gestures' in the 'control panel', switched everything off that didn't look like a basic
mouse function, if this don't do it I'll be getting me a mouse.

[CGT80]

Phones, tablets, and notebooks are useless and inefficient for most of what I do on my computer. I use my phone for maps and quickbooks and did use my tablet for the same. I have to have mobile devices for business use.

A desktop is much more efficient when I am at home and can sit and use it. Typing on anything other than a full size ergonomic keyboard is useless, for me. The 22" monitor is a nice size and stays in place vs. a laptop. My chair is comfortable. It would be pointless for me to have to lean forward and swipe a screen, even if my desktop was a touch screen. A mouse and keyboard takes less movement than a touch screen and I don't have to block the view of the screen. I can type and use the mouse without having to look at them.

Touchpads are less efficient than my wireless mouse with all of the extra buttons. A laptop is just a bigger mobile device and I have never liked using them. The screen is bigger, but the keyboards are awful for me, since I have to search for the right key and they are close together. I can not type well at all, on a laptop and a standard keyboard is very hard to use. I can type pretty quickly on my MS Natural keyboard.

I just don't see how people could get used to doing everything on a laptop.

Touch screens are a pita to type on or to click on links. I have the Droid Turbo, which is a nice sized phone, but it still limits me too much due to screen size.

[DougGuy]

People need to face the facts. Desktops are dying for personal use. Businesses will continue to use them. But they are almost dead in the home.

Newp.. Desktops are for hoarding stuff like years and years of downloaded music and files, decades of personal photos and videos. Desktops will stay around simply because you can make them fault tolerant with mirrored or striped arrays of disks. We don't have a "man cave" here we have a small office/network in the back bedroom strewn with computers and monitors and UPS power supplies. Some of my backups are going to the safe deposit box at the bank soon, two machines have several terabytes of RAID arrays each, this is nothing out of the ordinary for someone who wants to keep stuff and not lose it in the event a drive goes tits up which they will.

Laptops and other portable devices won't work very well for this, they are hard to type on, and their storage is limited to two rotational spindles and whatever memory you can cram into them. Nobody wants their stuff flung out into digital space on a "cloud" because sooner or later the info-sniffing hounds of tomorrow will be barking at your door demanding you give them access to all your stuff. Or accessing it as they please regardless of your knowledge or consent.

Laptops and smartphones are fine for traveling and on site work but they will never displace home computers as primary storage and internet usage.

I see rotational storage going the way of the dinosaur and quite soon at that, but that will be the biggest change for a while to come.


Thanks Doug, I found the 'gestures' in the 'control panel', switched everything off that didn't look like a basic
mouse function, if this don't do it I'll be getting me a mouse.

I HATE HATE HATE computers that annoy the cr@p out of me over and over again doing the same stupid stuff.

Win 8.1 had two or three very annoying habits, it would choose a randomly generated path to a folder you NEVER used, and ask to download a file there, INSTEAD of like maybe suggesting to put it in the LAST folder you saved a file in? Making me work to back out of the idiotic location, and navigate to the location I wanted to store the file in. It did this over and over and over.

Then it would open my file manager to my User profile location, and expand it so that the actual drives on my machine were all the way to the bottom, and you had to close the tree, then scroll omg I grew SO weary of it's behavior.

When you created a new folder, it would default to list view, and there was no way to change that to details view so for all the time I used Win 8, I had to constantly correct the folders and change them to details view. I bet I wasted at least 6 months of my life if you added up all the backtracking I had to do because I could not make ONE change, in one central place, that would have made it behave in an orderly, consistent fashion like I chose. Used to piss me off to no end.

So far, Windows 10 defaults to the last used folder to save a file to. YAYYYYYY!!!!!!! I could just jump up and down! It seems to remember details view but I am still going to search for a reghack that makes it system wide by default. And last but not least, it lets me choose "THIS PC" as my default view when the file manager opens! In a year, that will have saved me a countless amount of time.

[dragon813gt]

Laptops and smartphones are fine for traveling and on site work but they will never displace home computers as primary storage and internet usage.

I get laugh when people say things such as this. Ask anyone under 25 if they have a desktop at home. Younger people don't buy and use desktops anymore. Unless they're a gamer. I'm 36 and I don't have one anymore. W/ the price of external hard drives there is no need for desktops anymore.

I understand the use for them. But people aren't buying them for personal use. My parents ditched their desktop and each have their own laptop now. Every one of my 14yo step daughter's friends has a laptop. Wasn't long ago that the family had one desktop computer for everyone.

Ask anyone under twenty how they watch television. First they will say they don't. They watch everything on their laptop. Desktops are great for high resource tasks. But for general internet usage the phone/tablet/laptop have taken over.

[shooterg]

Loved XP. Just got used to 8.1 . Did the "upgrade", Laptop starts up slower now, the "Edge" deal doesn't work at all, which is fine, I'll stay with Chrome. If I had an "undo" button I'd use it !

[Handloader109]

My desktop converted OK, I've recently moved and my only issue I have had is getting my old LaserJet hooked up and running. Finding settings not as easy. My laptop won't install. Tried 4 or 5 times. Gets most of the way thru install and bails. I'm ignoring it now.

[docone31]

Windows 10, ate my front door page. I had to get a computer guy to fix it. Cost some bucks. Now, opens up without the first page, but 10 overall slowed down several items.
I will get used to it, but it sucks. I never voluntarily downloaded it either. It down loaded by itself.
In time. Just not now.

[CGT80]

I get laugh when people say things such as this. Ask anyone under 25 if they have a desktop at home. Younger people don't buy and use desktops anymore. Unless they're a gamer. I'm 36 and I don't have one anymore. W/ the price of external hard drives there is no need for desktops anymore.

I understand the use for them. But people aren't buying them for personal use. My parents ditched their desktop and each have their own laptop now. Every one of my 14yo step daughter's friends has a laptop. Wasn't long ago that the family had one desktop computer for everyone.

Ask anyone under twenty how they watch television. First they will say they don't. They watch everything on their laptop. Desktops are great for high resource tasks. But for general internet usage the phone/tablet/laptop have taken over.

I am 34 years old, don't play games anymore and have cable tv and internet, but only watch recorded shows on my Tivo. Many, but not all, people may be going mobile only. Mobile devices are an all around trade off to make them mobile. They lack screen size, a real keyboard, real mouse, and often times processing speed. On my android devices with firefox, they sometimes don't display web sites correctly or allow me to use their features even when I choose desktop site only.

Some people are willing to make due with these drawbacks, but I want the right tool for the job at hand. Sometimes the mobile devices are the right tool and the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, but my desktop is the most efficient for me. Maybe I am a bit too old.............I learned computers on an Apple IIe in the second or third grade and studied in the Cisco networking program in high school and college. Napster was big in high school and college and broadband internet for homes was not the norm yet, but was becoming more popular.

I am still sticking with 8.1 for now. I'm sure there are some things about 10 that are better, but I am not sold on the privacy issues and I don't want to get drug into a subscription where they charge every year and make major changes all of the time (I have heard they are already forcing updates on 8.1 so who knows if it will remain any better).

Different strokes for different folks!

[Jim Flinchbaugh]

Windoze 10 decided to install itself on my moms computer in the middle of the night last night. The squawking this morning was unbelievable!
The first thing I said is, "this screen looks like a dang phone!"
I was able to reverse the install back to Windows 7.

For those who think you don't need a desktop anymore, you obviously don't do any graphic design or photoshop work.

[dragon813gt]

No one said everyone doesn't need one. For the majority of people they don't. As much as I can handle all of my work on my phone I prefer to do it on a laptop.

[Cmm_3940]

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd195/cm6259/097c7cfc786a4751c0e726d0e112395a.jpg

Nope. When I can no longer run Windows 7, I'll go completely to Linux.

[charlie3tuna]

I upgraded to Windows 10 from 8.1. Absolutely love it !!

Since I am not an expert, I chickened out and had a knowledgeable friend do it for me. Gave him DougGuy's instructions, which he followed. He said it was a piece of cake....charlie

[Geraldo]

Younger people don't buy and use desktops anymore.

That's right! I'm 50 and haven't had a desktop since Windows 98. Why would anyone want a computer you can't take with you?

I did install Windows 10 and it's a work in progress at best. Some of the things I liked on 8.1 have showed up on 10 in updates.