The minute the word “free” was mentioned I had decided to upgrade my PC to Windows 10. I have not had any bad experiences from any previous windows upgrades that I’ve done so I decided to go for it.
I didn’t wait on the official notification from Microsoft because it had started to bother me that it was now the 2nd August and I could see social media lighting up with advertisements and experiences (good and bad). So I decided to take the plunge, what could go wrong, right?
So dived into my email to pick out one of the many emails Microsoft had sent about upgrading to Windows 10, downloaded the media creator tool and started the process. The media creator tool allows the user to upgrade right away (with all the caveats of “make sure you have a backup”, ringing in your ears.) or download a version of Windows 10. I chose the second option first and created my backup then downloaded my media in the iso format.
The installation itself went okay. It told me at the beginning that my version of Acronis True Image was not compatible (fine, I’ll upgrade) and it was reasonably quick.
The issues came when I first logged in, when I clicked on the Start menu I got nothing. The same with settings and action centre. I could however right-click on the start button and get options to sign out. A quick Google showed a number of people were getting the same issue and were running a this command in Powershell to solve the issue.
Press Windows Key + R on your keyboard. Key in PowerShell and hit Enter. Right click on the PowerShell icon on the taskbar and select Run as Administrator. Now paste the following command in the Administrator: Windows PowerShell window and press Enter key:
Get-AppXPackage -AllUsers | Foreach {Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register “$($_.InstallLocation)\AppXManifest.xml”}
This command did not work for me so I quickly created a new profile to see if it was anything to do with the installation. I was fearing at that point I would need to revert the upgrade back to Windows 7. That was only a concern because of the tinkering that I may need to do to get it working as before. When I created the new profile everything just worked, although all my settings had gone as you would expect.
At this point concerned that the problem might be do with local accounts I checked another profile (Mrs I.D, the only profile that really matters in our house) and it was working as expected (phew!).
I decided to press on with the new profile for the minute to test out the new Acronis True Image 2015 (compatible with Windows 10), it was this point where I hit the blue screen of death (which wasn’t actually blue, more turquoise) and this restarted my computer. This was consistent. I didn’t try running it with any different settings because it explicitly stated that it was for Windows 10. Every cloud has a silver lining through because I found this backup tool which fulfils my needs, Bvckup 2 and decided to ditch Acronis for good after a few weeks trialling Bvckup 2.
Another issue I had recently was between Chrome and Comodo Firewall. The latest upgrade to Chrome (45) stopped working and this was caused by an incompatibility in Comodo I think. One of the fixes was to install Chrome x64 but I have got that running. The fix that worked for me was
- Going to Advanced View of Comodo
- Click on HIPS
- Finding Detect shellcode injection
- Click on the Exclusions link
- Add the location for the chrome.exe into the exclusions.
This error was caused by the guard32.dll in Comodo and although it is not strictly recommended, it was one of three workarounds given until a permanent fix can be found.
My Bluetooth headphones have also been a bit temperamental. I could not get them to connect and had to go various cycles of pairing without success. Then the other day they just connected and have worked every since. My drivers are up to date and everything I’ve checked looks okay.
So the only thing left for me to do now was to set up the new profile so that I could continue to use my machine day to day. I’ve not had many problems since and I continue to try and work out what the problem is with my Windows 7 profile but so far nothing has worked. It will no doubt be my pet project until I get a new machine.
I have also upgraded another computer to Windows 10 without any issues at all so in conclusion, my experience was not that bad, yes there were problems but nothing I couldn’t fix or recover from. Windows 10 being new there was always going to be small issues. Would I do it again? Absolutely! Even it was just to frustrate myself.
Until next time……
The Inner Donkey Sanctuary 