How can I put Windows 10 on?

[Thailizardking]

MY notebook is now 4 years old and I like to have a better program.

Is Windows 10 better? Please let me know the pros and cons, please.

Thank you very much for your time.

[KhunBENQ]

Better than what?

What OS do you have now?

Any current problems?

Does the notebook have a touchscreen?

Windows 10 can be fully reverted to the previous OS within 30 days.

Try it out.

I have switched on both devices to W10 but tweaked it in a way that I don't feel a big difference to W7.

Switching off almost all the "calling home" stuff, the Cortana assistant stuff wanting to read about everything in my mails, calendars etc.

Switching off the ultimate Trojan horse

So honestly I run W10 like a W7 plus and I did it out of curiosity, staying up-to-date.

An untypical use.

Edited July 21, 2016 by KhunBENQ

[Pib]

Yes it's better. You can google the pros and cons...tons of info out there on Win 10, Win 8, and Win 7 comparisons, pros, cons.

Remember 29 July 16 is the last day to upgrade to Win 10 from Win 8.X or Win 7. After that you would have to buy it if you want it.

If nothing else you might want to do the free upgrade to Win 10 (I'm assuming you are already running Win 7 or 8), see if the upgrade goes well for you, but if the upgrade does not go well then just roll back to your previous Win 7/8 from within Win 10...you have 30 days to do that. Or, reload an image backup you made just before doing the upgrade.

Even if you revert back since you have done the Win 10 upgrade the Microsoft activation servers will remember you have already registered that machine for Win 10 and if you do decide to give Win 10 another try after 29 Jul you can reload Win 10 and it will be activated.

****Can't stress the importance of having an very recent image backup to protect what you have sweated to load onto your computer over the months to years whether you are going to upgrade to Win 10 or not. When stuff goes to hell in a hand basket, like a corrupt system, hard drive that died, an upgrade that didn't work out, etc., reloading that recent image returns you computer to life again as of the date/time you made the image....just like going back in time when all was well.***

[KhunBENQ]

Even if you revert back since you have done the Win 10 upgrade the Microsoft activation servers will remember you have already registered that machine for Win 10 and if you do decide to give Win 10 another try after 29 Jul you can reload Win 10 and it will be activated.

And that is a good marketing move and an almost must-do argument to upgrade before the period expires.

On the desktop PC I am running W10 since May and on the laptop since beginning of this month and I didn't find a reason to revert.

Having to do with Windows since the late 80s I was surprised how smooth the upgrade was.

Edited July 21, 2016 by KhunBENQ

[Pib]

I've had Win 10 on one Lenovo laptop since 29 Jul 15 (day one of Win 10 public release) and on another Lenovo laptop since around Nov 15. Both working fine with Win 10. Sure better than Win 7 or Win 8.X. Your results may vary.

[chrisinth]

Yes it's better. You can google the pros and cons...tons of info out there on Win 10, Win 8, and Win 7 comparisons, pros, cons.

Remember 29 July 16 is the last day to upgrade to Win 10 from Win 8.X or Win 7. After that you would have to buy it if you want it.

If nothing else you might want to do the free upgrade to Win 10 (I'm assuming you are already running Win 7 or 8), see if the upgrade goes well for you, but if the upgrade does not go well then just roll back to your previous Win 7/8 from within Win 10...you have 30 days to do that. Or, reload an image backup you made just before doing the upgrade.

Even if you revert back since you have done the Win 10 upgrade the Microsoft activation servers will remember you have already registered that machine for Win 10 and if you do decide to give Win 10 another try after 29 Jul you can reload Win 10 and it will be activated.

****Can't stress the importance of having an very recent image backup to protect what you have sweated to load onto your computer over the months to years whether you are going to upgrade to Win 10 or not. When stuff goes to hell in a hand basket, like a corrupt system, hard drive that died, an upgrade that didn't work out, etc., reloading that recent image returns you computer to life again as of the date/time you made the image....just like going back in time when all was well.***

In regard to the 29th July being the last day to upgrade (for free) to W10, there are possible ways of keeping the 'free' upgrade possible after this date. A lot of what you have already said Pib. I have followed Leo for a number of years now and he does come out with some really good tips, even for the savvy....................

Check the link:

https://askleo.com/saving-free-windows-10-upgrade-later/?awt_l=Kpe5x&awt_m=IjMaHHoHF3dfbL

Edited July 22, 2016 by chrisinth

[Pib]

And for ultimate procasternaters who like to wait to the last minute but plan to take advantage of the free upgrade I don't know if the 29 Jul date means the first second or last second of 29 Jul. And it's probably referenced to U.S. west coast date/time.

So I wouldn't procasternate until 29 Jul.

*******

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12435/windows-10-upgrade-faq

Important

Don’t miss out! The free upgrade offer to Windows 10 will end on July 29, 2016. Here's how to get Windows 10 for free while you still can.

[xylophone]

Yes it's better. You can google the pros and cons...tons of info out there on Win 10, Win 8, and Win 7 comparisons, pros, cons.

Remember 29 July 16 is the last day to upgrade to Win 10 from Win 8.X or Win 7. After that you would have to buy it if you want it.

If nothing else you might want to do the free upgrade to Win 10 (I'm assuming you are already running Win 7 or 8), see if the upgrade goes well for you, but if the upgrade does not go well then just roll back to your previous Win 7/8 from within Win 10...you have 30 days to do that. Or, reload an image backup you made just before doing the upgrade.

Even if you revert back since you have done the Win 10 upgrade the Microsoft activation servers will remember you have already registered that machine for Win 10 and if you do decide to give Win 10 another try after 29 Jul you can reload Win 10 and it will be activated.

****Can't stress the importance of having an very recent image backup to protect what you have sweated to load onto your computer over the months to years whether you are going to upgrade to Win 10 or not. When stuff goes to hell in a hand basket, like a corrupt system, hard drive that died, an upgrade that didn't work out, etc., reloading that recent image returns you computer to life again as of the date/time you made the image....just like going back in time when all was well.***

Quote: " if the upgrade goes well for you, but if the upgrade does not go well then just roll back to your previous Win 7/8 from within Win 10...you have 30 days to do that. Or, reload an image backup you made just before doing the upgrade".

Thought I would take advantage of the free upgrade as my computer kept reminding me that the end of the freebie was coming soon, so after much deliberation I decided to upgrade from my Windows 7 ultimate to Windows 10 – – – what a nightmare!

I had already made enquiries and found out that my Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software needed to be upgraded as well to be able to work on Windows 10, so I purchased the latest software for that ($75) and installed it.

Then came the Windows 10 download, and it was too slow to be true, probably because of my Internet connection and nothing to do with Windows, so I had to leave it overnight to do its stuff. Well nothing had worked, so I had to try again the next morning only this time it seemed a bit quicker taking only a couple of hours to download and then going through the process of installing it and looking for updates etc.

It was about half way through when the dreaded message appeared: "Modern Set up has stopped working".........so had to start over again, but the problem is that nothing is saved so it can't begin again where it left off, so back to square one, so a lot more time wasted until the message popped up again, this time at a different place in the download, so at least I was a little hopeful that I was making some progress, so started again and the same thing happened.

I then got on to Google and found out that there was another way which was through setting up a download through a USB, so decided to go down this route and all seemed to be going well until just at the point where it said it needed to restart my computer I got the "modern set-up host has stop working" again and everything stopped.

Tried one more time and the same thing happened so I closed the computer and went to bed.

The next morning I turned on my computer expecting to have my normal Windows 7 back to where it was, but no this was not to be because it tried to install Windows 10, then came back with a message to say it couldn't and then came back with another message to say it was reverting to my previous version of Windows, which it tried, only to find out that it went back into the Windows 10 download mode again.

This was then a vicious cycle with Windows 10 failing to install and the programme failing to revert to my previous Windows 7, in fact I couldn't get into the computer at all as this kept repeating itself, over and over again.

I tried just about everything I knew including "shift-F8" and different start-up options, but every time it just kept going back into that never-ending loop.

I tried so many things and could find nothing until I took a chance on the Windows 10 install process and found a little link tucked away at the bottom just before the install window came up (yet again) which said "repair my computer" so I gave this a try and it set me off on a different pathway where I could choose to do certain things and eventually I managed to find something which supposedly allowed me to get back to Windows 7, yet lose some of my installed programs, so I was desperate, and gave it a try.

Well I'm back into Windows 7 now, however it's not working as well as it did and there seem to be a few bugs in the system which I have to deal with on an ongoing basis, and as for the nightmare which was the Windows 10 download, well I won't be going through that again and I shall stay with Windows 7 until such time as I have to replace my laptop in a few years time and I will look for a PC with Windows 10 already installed and bug free.

If this is an example of the best that Microsoft can do, then I am only too happy to wait a few years time to get the thing bug free.

[WhizBang]

And that is why you should make a disk image BEFORE starting any win10 update.

[Aussie69]

MY notebook is now 4 years old and I like to have a better program.

Is Windows 10 better? Please let me know the pros and cons, please.

Thank you very much for your time.

Have you not been getting Windows 10 upgrade messages for the past 12 months?

You have 1 week to take advantage of free upgrade (for screens above 10")

[xylophone]

And that is why you should make a disk image BEFORE starting any win10 update.

There is one on my back-up disk and tried to reboot/repair from this but it doesn't work.......gives me a message: "A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed" and no matter how many times I go through the repair/reinstall/sys recovery/install from image/etc modes, the same message comes up and not one program has identified what supposedly is missing!!

Can now get into W7 (as you can see) but my computer will not start automatically and I have to go through a convoluted boot system!!

Looking on Google it is packed with this W10 install and download problems.........and the one solution which SEEMS to work is a rather complicated one involving removing registry files but warns it can be "dangerous". Hmmm.

[lostinisaan]

Yes it's better. You can google the pros and cons...tons of info out there on Win 10, Win 8, and Win 7 comparisons, pros, cons.

Remember 29 July 16 is the last day to upgrade to Win 10 from Win 8.X or Win 7. After that you would have to buy it if you want it.

If nothing else you might want to do the free upgrade to Win 10 (I'm assuming you are already running Win 7 or 8), see if the upgrade goes well for you, but if the upgrade does not go well then just roll back to your previous Win 7/8 from within Win 10...you have 30 days to do that. Or, reload an image backup you made just before doing the upgrade.

Even if you revert back since you have done the Win 10 upgrade the Microsoft activation servers will remember you have already registered that machine for Win 10 and if you do decide to give Win 10 another try after 29 Jul you can reload Win 10 and it will be activated.

****Can't stress the importance of having an very recent image backup to protect what you have sweated to load onto your computer over the months to years whether you are going to upgrade to Win 10 or not. When stuff goes to hell in a hand basket, like a corrupt system, hard drive that died, an upgrade that didn't work out, etc., reloading that recent image returns you computer to life again as of the date/time you made the image....just like going back in time when all was well.***

Quote: " if the upgrade goes well for you, but if the upgrade does not go well then just roll back to your previous Win 7/8 from within Win 10...you have 30 days to do that. Or, reload an image backup you made just before doing the upgrade".

Thought I would take advantage of the free upgrade as my computer kept reminding me that the end of the freebie was coming soon, so after much deliberation I decided to upgrade from my Windows 7 ultimate to Windows 10 – – – what a nightmare!

I had already made enquiries and found out that my Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software needed to be upgraded as well to be able to work on Windows 10, so I purchased the latest software for that ($75) and installed it.

Then came the Windows 10 download, and it was too slow to be true, probably because of my Internet connection and nothing to do with Windows, so I had to leave it overnight to do its stuff. Well nothing had worked, so I had to try again the next morning only this time it seemed a bit quicker taking only a couple of hours to download and then going through the process of installing it and looking for updates etc.

It was about half way through when the dreaded message appeared: "Modern Set up has stopped working".........so had to start over again, but the problem is that nothing is saved so it can't begin again where it left off, so back to square one, so a lot more time wasted until the message popped up again, this time at a different place in the download, so at least I was a little hopeful that I was making some progress, so started again and the same thing happened.

I then got on to Google and found out that there was another way which was through setting up a download through a USB, so decided to go down this route and all seemed to be going well until just at the point where it said it needed to restart my computer I got the "modern set-up host has stop working" again and everything stopped.

Tried one more time and the same thing happened so I closed the computer and went to bed.

The next morning I turned on my computer expecting to have my normal Windows 7 back to where it was, but no this was not to be because it tried to install Windows 10, then came back with a message to say it couldn't and then came back with another message to say it was reverting to my previous version of Windows, which it tried, only to find out that it went back into the Windows 10 download mode again.

This was then a vicious cycle with Windows 10 failing to install and the programme failing to revert to my previous Windows 7, in fact I couldn't get into the computer at all as this kept repeating itself, over and over again.

I tried just about everything I knew including "shift-F8" and different start-up options, but every time it just kept going back into that never-ending loop.

I tried so many things and could find nothing until I took a chance on the Windows 10 install process and found a little link tucked away at the bottom just before the install window came up (yet again) which said "repair my computer" so I gave this a try and it set me off on a different pathway where I could choose to do certain things and eventually I managed to find something which supposedly allowed me to get back to Windows 7, yet lose some of my installed programs, so I was desperate, and gave it a try.

Well I'm back into Windows 7 now, however it's not working as well as it did and there seem to be a few bugs in the system which I have to deal with on an ongoing basis, and as for the nightmare which was the Windows 10 download, well I won't be going through that again and I shall stay with Windows 7 until such time as I have to replace my laptop in a few years time and I will look for a PC with Windows 10 already installed and bug free.

If this is an example of the best that Microsoft can do, then I am only too happy to wait a few years time to get the thing bug free.

You can't blame MS for a shitty internet connection, sorry.

I've made about 25 upgrades and all machines are working well. None of them went back to 7 and everybody is happy.

Software is only as good as the people who are using it. Similar to driving a car, if you're a bad driver, you'll crash.

You can use a memory stick and the Microsoft Media Creation Tool , even for another PC and do the set up when you want to.

Why didn't you download it from a faster connection? A great way is to use Rufus, a tool to create a bookable memory drive.

I've got all set up and all programs on one little drive.

Edited July 23, 2016 by lostinisaan

[xylophone]

Quote: You can't blame MS for a shitty internet connection, sorry.

I've made about 25 upgrades and all machines are working well. None of them went back to 7 and everybody is happy.

Software is only as good as the people who are using it. Similar to driving a car, if you're a bad driver, you'll crash.

You can use a memory stick and the Microsoft Media Creation Tool , even for another PC and do the set up when you want to.

Why didn't you download it from a faster connection? A great way is to use Rufus, a tool to create a bookable memory drive.

I've got all set up and all programs on one little drive.

As I alluded to, the slow connection was the first effort so fixed that with modem reboot. After that pretty speedy and I tried both methods including the USB and Media creation tool many times, but the vicious cycle came into play and there are literally hundreds if not thousands of problems like this posted on the internet and even Microsoft have suggested ways to overcome it including downloading fixes, because it isn't always the user's fault. This esp when the error message comes up..........."Modern Setup host has stopped working"...........many fixes suggested for this, again not always the fault of the installer.

In fact this cycle of W10 failing and the W7 reinstall failing seems common, hence the never-ending cycle.

I believe I am a good driver, but have no control over a stub axle breaking (has happened) or a water pump failing (happened)............!!

Thanks for the suggestion and will look at Rufus tomorrow.

[xylophone]

For the record, my only interaction (driving) was to press the download tab, enter my product key and press the "confirm" button as the the prog wanted to remove Windows Media Player.

That was it and it went along happily on its own for some time. Then it said to be aware that my computer might restart several times as it was now installing W10..............then the "Modern set host has stopped working" message, then into the revert to W7 message, then to W10 install window and so on, round and round.

Quite common on some installs apparently and HP laptops seem to have particular difficulty.

[Chicog]

This may be a space issue. How much free space do you have (after the download). Can you free some up?

[xylophone]

This may be a space issue. How much free space do you have (after the download). Can you free some up?

Thank you for taking the time to reply Chicog, much appreciated.

However the problem is not with the space because there is over 400 GB of it, the problem is that either my computer is not compatible with the program or the program is not compatible with my computer!

I did have a dodgy Internet connection on my first effort, however I reset the network adapter and everything was fine after that and it is True fibre-optic and is usually good.

The next two tries were at the behest of Microsoft and didn't get very far because I had quite a few error codes coming up with a request that I contact Microsoft. So I got on the appropriate website(s) and there were many hundreds of people wanting information on more error codes than I could possibly imagine.

After looking through volumes and volumes of workarounds and suggestions, and trying a few of them, nothing worked so I downloaded the Microsoft installation tool and carried on with that, and that was a lot better because all I had to do was to press the occasional okay button and confirm button and off it went.

Just when it seemed everything was going well and when the installation had just about completed, and in one case when it had completed and said it was "just cleaning up a few things" the dreaded message appeared, "Modern Setup host has stopped working".

Obviously I researched this on the Internet and came to the conclusion that many hundreds (if not thousands) of others had done, that it seemed to be a bug somewhere.

I then tried the creation of the media tool on a USB, this after I had completely cleaned and scanned it and that part went well. The next part followed the same pattern as the previous one with the setup host crashing.

Tried the Rufus route and the same thing happened again.

The problem with these crashes was that it was becoming increasingly difficult to get my program back and in one instance I just couldn't because it kept going round in a never-ending loop (and this is described quite often on the Internet as one major problem).

I kept on trying and was just about to give up on my seventh try when I thought I'd give it one more go and everything seemed to be going well – – the computer had been scanned and had plenty of room, Windows media Centre was removed, my preferences were confirmed, and just about everything else that it asked was done.

I was ever so hopeful because it got right to the very last "shutting down your computer" and the same message appeared, "Modern Setup host has stopped working".

Now that did it for me and I was adamant that I would stick with Windows 7, however this last effort had damaged it almost beyond repair and I couldn't get it to work, however did manage to get it to start in a rather circuitous way but could not open many of its key functions and kept getting messages like "the ordinal 840 could not be located in a dynamic link library" and others similar.

So I couldn't use Outlook, Word, and the whole system was pretty well useless so I tried something in desperation which was to effect a command prompt and use the code sfc/scannow to see if there was any registry damage which I suspected was the cause.

This was my saviour because it fixed most of the problems and I am now back into Windows 7 albeit with a couple of workarounds until I can get to the bottom of what's going on.

If it's of any consolation, only to me of course, I telephoned a guy I know here who has been in computers all his life, even builds them and has some part-time work here maintaining computers and computer systems for small companies and told him of my problems.

His reply was that he had the same problem with his friends computer and really could not solve it, and believe me this guy could solve just about anything on a computer, and then he asked if my computer was an HP and about four years old, and I replied "yes", why do you ask.

Out of desperation in trying to get his friends computer to accept Windows 10 he eventually got onto HP and managed to get to the bottom of it because one of the tech guys said that some of their computers built around this time were just not compatible and Windows 10 would never be successfully installed on them.

Of course they wouldn't want this to be known, so I would suggest they have kept it quiet, but I do believe this friend of mine because he really knows what he's doing as regards computer and has no axe to grind.

So now I'm back with Windows 7 albeit not running perfectly and trying to install Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 which I had purchased in lieu of the Windows 10 download, however that is finding some bugs in the Windows 7 system which I need to find and rectify – – probably because of some registry or other damage from the frequent crashes.

So to those people who have had success in the downloads, well I'm really happy for you, but everything I tried did not work on my HP G4 and I'm happy to have some sort of working program, this because I thought I'd lost everything.

[kkerry]

Lucky I didn't read of your troubles until just now.

I decided to bite the bullet and take the free upgrade from W7 to W10 last night.

I went with the USB clean install method. Used the media creation tool to downloaded W10 on to a USB drive in about half an hour.

The basic installation took about 20 minutes on my desktop and about half an hour on a five year old low powered laptop.

W10 pretty much installed all the drivers automatically, meaning I didn't need to install a bunch of motherboard etc. drivers like I have in the past.

One thing that did have me concerned but I see they have fixed, is you can now use your W7 key for the W10 install.

No need to have to clean install W7 first and upgrade.

Took me about an hour and a half to install my programs and get things the way I wanted.

If you don't like the Metro feel of W10 then first item to install is Classic Shell.

Without it I would have struggled to stay with 10 but like anything I'm sure I would have got used to it.

Only major hiccup I had was when I installed a utility app for my wireless adapter.

It trashed my internet connection on the desktop. I gave up trying to get it back and reinstalled Windows.

For some reason my wireless internet speed is now only 70% of what it was with W7.

It's not the ISP because I'm still getting max. speed on my tablet and on phones.

Might have to upgrade the adapter (N-150) or use an ethernet cable.

Overall W10 is okay. I've already noticed a few glitches on my old W7 set-up have disappeared.

Give it a week and I will probably have forgotten W7 just like XP.

[xylophone]

Lucky I didn't read of your troubles until just now.

I decided to bite the bullet and take the free upgrade from W7 to W10 last night.

I went with the USB clean install method. Used the media creation tool to downloaded W10 on to a USB drive in about half an hour.

The basic installation took about 20 minutes on my desktop and about half an hour on a five year old low powered laptop.

W10 pretty much installed all the drivers automatically, meaning I didn't need to install a bunch of motherboard etc. drivers like I have in the past.

One thing that did have me concerned but I see they have fixed, is you can now use your W7 key for the W10 install.

No need to have to clean install W7 first and upgrade.

Took me about an hour and a half to install my programs and get things the way I wanted.

If you don't like the Metro feel of W10 then first item to install is Classic Shell.

Without it I would have struggled to stay with 10 but like anything I'm sure I would have got used to it.

Only major hiccup I had was when I installed a utility app for my wireless adapter.

It trashed my internet connection on the desktop. I gave up trying to get it back and reinstalled Windows.

For some reason my wireless internet speed is now only 70% of what it was with W7.

It's not the ISP because I'm still getting max. speed on my tablet and on phones.

Might have to upgrade the adapter (N-150) or use an ethernet cable.

Overall W10 is okay. I've already noticed a few glitches on my old W7 set-up have disappeared.

Give it a week and I will probably have forgotten W7 just like XP.

That's good to hear and sounds like you had a fairly trouble-free experience.

Believe me I would have welcomed the opportunity to get used to using Windows 10, but it was not to be as you saw in my post and I will not risk going through that scenario again, this especially as I find Windows 7 does everything I need to do, the majority of which is emails and reading online articles.

As I think I mentioned on another thread, give it another four years or so when this laptop decides to give up the ghost and I will be able to purchase a new model with perhaps Windows 10 already installed.

I'm fairly au fait with computers and troubleshooting, and just pressing a couple of keys in a download and install process is something that anyone can do, me included, so I don't think it was "cockpit trouble" (as the saying goes) but one of the many bugs which other folk are experiencing.

On that note, I pride myself on the fact I was able to get my Windows 7 ultimate back up and running when all seemed lost and I couldn't get system recovery to work properly.

Well done on your success.

[Pib]

Be sure to go to the driver/support website of your computer's manufacturer and download/install any drivers for Win 10 for you particular computer model.. Laptop's can be very picky about their hardware drivers...especially for Wifi and Bluetooth. While the generic Win 10 drivers should work and may have even been provided by the computer manufacturer to Microsoft, there can be delay of months to never in those updated drivers making it into a Windows update. Much better to get the drivers from your computer manufacturer's support website.

Win 10 is a lot better than Win 8.X and Win 7 IMO...I like it a lot better.

Edited July 27, 2016 by Pib