Windows 10 Upgrade - A Tale of Woe and Misery
Disclaimer: I am not a Microsoft employee, nor affiliated with Microsoft with any way. I don't own Microsoft's stock. I use Microsoft's software. In spite of advice to the contrary, from friends and colleagues, I went ahead and upgraded my home desktop computer to Windows 10. My primary motivation was not be an early adopter but to get rid of the shackles of Windows 8.1 that I was forced upon by BootCamp on my new MacBook Pro work laptop. Apparently, BootCamp shipped with latest MacBook Pros will no longer let me install Windows 7. I tried, but couldn't foot it. I had no choice. However, before I upgraded my work laptop to Windows 10, I wanted to let my home computer be the guinea pig. I use my home computer mostly for surfing the net and checking email. I got some applications that I use but with all my data and application installers backed up, I could be back online in a day. Losing a day at work, however, is not an option. Not with an impending release and some very critical feature updates, which, if they have a bug or two, would have the potential to bring the business heartbeat to a flat line. I thought I did my due diligence by reading up on the new Windows 10 features and the upgrade path. That free upgrade sure lured me in, hook line and sinker. I wanted to save $199, sometime in future. BIG MISTAKE Windows never booted up So, I downloaded the Windows 10 ISO from MSDN and started the upgrade process. I elected to start with a clean slate and choose to not keep any applications or data. It seemed a prudent choice since I had everything backed up. I didn't want the existing applications to get into any weird state and wanted to save my time troubleshooting them. Windows 10 informed me that my computer was not only eligible for the upgrade but also met all the criteria for a successful upgrade. That was good. So, I hit ok. My computer never booted up. The boot loader screen came up and then it got stuck at the blue screen of startup death. No matter what I did, and I didn't really have many options at that time, the computer would just not breathe. It was dead. The old faithful Windows 7 had been wiped out by this time and the new one refused to boot up. That promised saving of $199 evaporated in about 3 minutes. Auto Upgrade of Device Drivers Is A Very Bad Idea I kicked myself and booted direct from the the CD. The clean installation went without hitch except that this wasn't an upgrade, this was a direct install. This wasn't what I wanted, but I still had the option of going back to Windows 7, so I trudged along. The setup allowed me to connect to the wireless network and began the background processing of installing the updates. It wasn't the updates that killed my computer, it was the automatic update of the drivers that did it in. The old NVIDIA graphics card was updated to whatever Windows 10 thought was the latest. So, next time I booted the computer, the new driver kicked in and crashed. The display went dead silent after about 2 seconds of booting up. Windows 10 was working, display driver wasn't. I have had the occasion of using a computer without a mouse and in my testing of UI applications, it is almost a ritual test. Most applications can make it without a mouse. However, working with a computer with a dead monitor is not just hard, it is impossible. Rearranging The House Is Not Just Counter Productive, It Is Maddening. I don't mind if you move my cheese once in a while. I am an agile rat, I can find my way to the new cheese in a new maze pretty fast. However, don't rearrange the house the night before the morning flight. I need to find the clothes, the bag, the car keys, the coffee pot, et al, in their places so that I can make it to the airport in time for the morning flight. If you thought that removing the start button with easy access to the installed programs brought down the ire of the world upon Microsoft so much so that it forgo Windows 9, Windows 10 takes the rearranging the commonly found items to a whole new level. The start button is back, but it is utterly useless. Almost as useless as it was in Windows 8.1. All you get is "easy" access to the metro apps that no one is building. We had that access to apps in Windows 8 and we didn't like it. This old wine is no different in the new bottle. It took me about half an hour to find the setting that controls the automatic update of the device drivers after the second time I installed Windows 10 from scratch. This time, it was the first thing I did soon as the setup process finished. It is so hard to find the usual settings, the usual programs, the usual everything. Why in the name of good Lord would you do that?! It befuddles the mind. I Don't Want An Email Account For My Seven Year Old I have different login credentials for a zillion websites. Last thing I want is another account. When I tried to setup an account for a family member, Windows forced me to create an online account. Yes, syncing settings across devices and the globe is great, I get it. But if I am creating a separate "limited access" account for my son for him to play installed games and just that (read no surfing, no emailing, no nothing else), why would Windows 10 almost arm twist me into doing that? I refused to create an online account for my son. Later on I used the command line to create a local user account. Back To The Future Next weekend, I am going back to Windows 7, where I can live the computer life I want, not the life that Windows 10 wants me to live. It is suffocating to say the least. I guess, that's the price you pay for a free upgrade. It doesn't feel free at all.
How is your Windows 10 upgrade going?