Windows 10

Windows 10 download page.

You can use this to launch the upgrade directly, or create media for a clean install.

Redherring wrote:

Windows 10 download page.

You can use this to launch the upgrade directly, or create media for a clean install.

Thanks! Passed it on

Had to quit Overwatch tonight because my disk activity went to 100% again with no actual reading or writing.
I'm pretty sure my old disk is still trashed, but this time I killed a svchost.exe that was running something like "LocalNetworkRestricted". It seemed to be looking at all my game files in Resource Monitor. I terminated it before I thought to look at task manager to see if I could find which exe it was hosting. I wasn't sure it was the one responsible.

Check to make sure you AV program is the latest (not just the definitions) as well as any backup program you may have running. Typically those can cause 100% Disk Activity. Baring that run Malware AntiBytes and make sure you are clean.

TheGameguru wrote:
Jakobedlam wrote:

So how silly would it be to upgrade from 8.1 at this point?
As opposed to a clean install. I'm told there are ways to still do the upgrade for free (legally, not looking to pirate anything), but that window possibly being closed, would paying for it make sense?

My work Surface Pro is W10, and I have not issue with it,other than the aesthetics. I was keeping 8.1 on my gaming rig largely because I didn't want to create problems. But it seems pretty solid these days.

Opinions?

Google how to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. There is still a legal way to do it.

I meant to say thanks for mentioning this! You saved me a $100 on my gaming PC. Installed it a couple weeks ago, and the upgrade went smoother than the original free update. That one took 5 days and a call to Microsoft tech support. This time I got Win8.1 installed and updated to 10 and activated within an hour.

I just installed Windows on a MacBook last week. I clean-installed Windows 10 and activated it using one of two Win7 keys I had from boxed copies of Windows I had bought several years back.

Curiously, these were just upgrade versions of Win7, not OEM versions that I used to upgrade two family members' systems from Vista.

Apparently Microsoft is still allowing free upgrades as long as you supply a valid key?

Installed the relatively recent Fall update yesterday. Now my PS4 controller wont connect at all. Any ideas?
Neither in games with native support, nor in DS4Windows. It is just not recognized at all.

Edit: Nevermind, seems like the issue was with windows not recognizing the USB port rather than the controller. Disconnecting the cable and inserting it again made it come to life, even though it had no effect to disconnect the controller from the cable.

I have noticed that my USB devices, especially multi-function ones with complicated drivers, occasionally need to be "woken up" after reboots by un- and re-plugging them. Just one of those things.

Robear wrote:

I have noticed that my USB devices, especially multi-function ones with complicated drivers, occasionally need to be "woken up" after reboots by un- and re-plugging them. Just one of those things.

Are all of their drivers up-to-date?

This happens to me with my Logitech F710 so I’ve gotten in the habit of leaving the dongle unplugged until I’m ready to play a game.

I'll check but I think the drivers are good.

Robear wrote:

I have noticed that my USB devices, especially multi-function ones with complicated drivers, occasionally need to be "woken up" after reboots by un- and re-plugging them. Just one of those things.

Every single time this has happened to me, it has been the mobo.

Robear wrote:

I have noticed that my USB devices, especially multi-function ones with complicated drivers, occasionally need to be "woken up" after reboots by un- and re-plugging them. Just one of those things.

By reboots, do you mean actually rebooting from the start menu, or just its offered shutdown and then power back on? The latter isn’t as complete a shutdown as it once was.

Kurrelgyre wrote:
Robear wrote:

I have noticed that my USB devices, especially multi-function ones with complicated drivers, occasionally need to be "woken up" after reboots by un- and re-plugging them. Just one of those things.

By reboots, do you mean actually rebooting from the start menu, or just its offered shutdown and then power back on? The latter isn’t as complete a shutdown as it once was.

Good point. There should be an option to do a full or hybrid reboot.

To be sure, I always alt-F4 from the desktop.

Actually choosing Reboot from the menu does a proper traditional reboot. You can force a complete shutdown by running "shutdown /s".

I meant from reboots due to updates or the occasional crash. Primarily updates.

So, let's talk about this new update. I HATE that it has in very clear letters on the lock screen "I forgot my password" What the heck!?! Great, now my computers are insulting me every time I log in. The way they designed that is just so incredibly dumb and kills any aesthetic appeal to that log in lock screen. If they have to put something there, it should be "Forgot password?" or maybe "Reset Password".

Apparently they're assuming everyone is going to sheepishly say "Uh. Whoops. I'm dumb. I forgot my password, computer. What do I do now? Maybe click on these letters?"

/rant

So I decided to run the update this afternoon, which ended up taking an hour and a half on this old rig. In the middle of this, NFL RedZone mentioned my starting tight end was inactive, so I had to scramble to swap players via my iPad which thankfully had my login for GWJFFL saved.

Just a blanket reminder to back up your data, folks.

My main storage drive holding my documents, games, and apps is dying, but luckily with a sort-of convoluted backup strategy between File History and drive image backups, I think all I need to do is swap drives and restore the latest image.

T-Prime wrote:

Just a blanket reminder to back up your data, folks.

Seriously. It's stupid simple. Give BackBlaze $50 a year, install their client, and let it run.

Optionally, if you want your stuff encrypted before being sent to BackBlaze, define a private key (basically a password) and keep that key safe somewhere.

Anyone ever known Windows 10 updates to mess with their BIOS? Updated mine this week (not out of choice) and all of a sudden my boot priority changed (and whatever else, I'm not sure). Only noticed because on start up I got messages about "start pxe over Ipv4" and "start pxe over Ipv6" before it eventually goes to the SSD Windows is on.

Some have suggested restoring system to before it was installed and doing it again just in case, as, last night, there was also a point where the windows icon on the task bar wasn't working. Haven't seen that happen today. Not sure whether I should or just make the ssd boot priority 1 again.

Are you sure it actually set the priorities differently? Or could it be because the bus timed out when Windows expected to see the system image, and it went looking for other boot sources, sequentially?

It could be that the older Windows was masking problems on your PCI bus, which Windows 10 has exposed. How old is your system? Is it possible it's developing hardware issues?

Edit - Hmmm. It could also be that you need to update your SSD or motherboard I/O drivers. Or possibly the firmware? Worth checking the mobo and ssd manufacturer websites.

It's about 3 and half years old, when I originally got it, it was with Windows 8.

The boot priority definitely changed, but, even weirder, I changed it back so my SSD is boot priority one and that seemed to cause even more issues, as that appeared to be the culprit with windows icon in the task bar not working was when I booted with that (without the ipv4/6).

Should mention on one thing, after the update my wireless adapter stopped working, it's listed in device manager under network adapters but says "device cannot start". Every time I loaded up with the updates installed, I'd hear the device plug in sound on log in.

UPDATE: I did a system restore to the 13th December, before windows updates, keeping SSD as boot #1, and the computer doesn't have as many problems anymore! Still, the wireless adapter says it cannot start, so I've disabled it in the device manager for now.

So, I had a bit of a fear adware somehow got onto my PC and caused all this, as I got one of those red screens saying "you need to call X number" with the computer beeping. No idea how that happened, probably just hit a dodgy link on Twitter or something (remember clicking one at some point by mistake with a slip, so maybe that).

At that point I thought I'd found the issue, and I just decided I'd do a reset of Windows 10 install via the built in system settings, I thought a fresh start for it would be best anyway in case it was something else and rather than trying to go about finding how to fix whatever was in there (there was nothing obvious).

So I did a fresh install, and everything seemed fine. I was getting some slower performance, so I installed Chrome and when I loaded it first up and went onto, say, Twitter, the video would start loading but then all of a sudden the computer would halt up, just for about 10 seconds or so. I noticed it on Steam too, I clicked on the store pages and it wouldn't load, although I put this down to it being the sale and maybe the causing issues. I noticed that when I was downloading PUBG again (pre-sale) at some points one Chrome, web pages would hang and wouldn't load, at this point the download rate on pubg would drop to 0. I don't believe I was having any network issues.

However, on the day of the total reinstall (yesterday) I installed my video card driver update and also did an update to Avast anti-virus for definitions, this required a restart. I did this and I was dumbfounded - the windows icon button wasn't working again! The weird thing is, I've tried this since, and it only happens on some boot ups, not all of them. Also, when this occurs, on shutdown/restart, the PC won't actually shut down as I see a message like this (taken from someone else with a problem similar, but same thing I see):

IMAGE(http://fud.community.services.support.microsoft.com/Fud/FileDownloadHandler.ashx?fid=bf8b45e9-08fe-4666-9745-b8b07f5cf7aa)

This is pretty much the issue I am having, although I'm a bit hesitant trying the top solutions here, they don't seem like fill fixes?

I've also noticed that my boot priority has changed AGAIN. UEFI SSD is no longer visible as a boot option, instead only SATA SSD is, whereas before they were both listed. Windows boot manager is now priority 1.

If anyone has any solutions or ideas as to what could be the problem I'm desperate to try fix this!

Clusks, sorry, didn't check back on this like I should have. The pattern of multiple different device failures suggests to me that the motherboard, at least, is failing. That can cause not just device failures but slowdowns due to problems with data transfers, as well as weird issues with disks (which can themselves cause seemingly random problems with Windows). It's possible that the power supply plays into this, but if this were my system, I'd order another motherboard and PS at a minimum (and I'd be watching for signs of problems with the graphics and RAM).

Also, go to a combo of something like UnHackMe along with the MS firewall and other security tools in Win 10, and add a good third-party anti-virus on top of it (I use Avira but there are other good ones out there - avoid Kaspersky, though). I added in GlassWire for visibility. And make sure your router has at least a different username and strong password.

I know it's not what you wanted to hear, but good luck!

Robear wrote:

Clusks, sorry, didn't check back on this like I should have. The pattern of multiple different device failures suggests to me that the motherboard, at least, is failing. That can cause not just device failures but slowdowns due to problems with data transfers, as well as weird issues with disks (which can themselves cause seemingly random problems with Windows). It's possible that the power supply plays into this, but if this were my system, I'd order another motherboard and PS at a minimum (and I'd be watching for signs of problems with the graphics and RAM).

Also, go to a combo of something like UnHackMe along with the MS firewall and other security tools in Win 10, and add a good third-party anti-virus on top of it (I use Avira but there are other good ones out there - avoid Kaspersky, though). I added in GlassWire for visibility. And make sure your router has at least a different username and strong password.

I know it's not what you wanted to hear, but good luck!

Thanks man, and for for your message, I was worried there’s a serious hardware failure. To be honest, I wanted to upgrade my graphics card anyway (running a 770!), so I’ve been debating whether to just get an entirely new system, if it means such a change in components.

It would make sense with the motherboard having problems due to so many differenet issues. I am wondering though, my pc is upgraded from windows 7 to 10, so I’m wondering whether, as a last ditch attempt, a clean install of windows 10 from cd would be worthwhile? Another hunch I have is that when I reinstalled it used the same download image for windows 10, which may well be corrupt. This would probably mean buying a copy of Windows 10? I did look at just reinstalling windows 7, but there’s quite a few warnings about downgrading, I was particularly worried because the ssd with windows on is partitioned into 5 parts, I’m presuming this is standard with windows 10 (one of them is back up and restore point).

You can always try a clean update. But ask yourself, which issues would that potentially fix? I don't think it'll fix the UEFI boot order stuff; it won't do anything for your wireless device; and the pxe boot stuff is likely happening because it could not on occasion read the boot device correctly before timing out and looking for it on the network. So I'm not optimistic.

Good news is, if you go with one of the builds in the "Help me build my pc" thread, it'll go at least another 3.5 years. I've noticed the builds I've done with the recommended gear sets have plenty of airflow and just keep going and going...

Is anyone getting weird time issues with Windows 10 the last couple days? I've had the time be off twice today by a couple hours. It's so weird. I go in and reset adjust automatically and it fixes it. I just find the whole thing really strange. Never happened before.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Is anyone getting weird time issues with Windows 10 the last couple days? I've had the time be off twice today by a couple hours. It's so weird. I go in and reset adjust automatically and it fixes it. I just find the whole thing really strange. Never happened before.

Stop breaking the space-time continuum.

No such issues here...

I think it might be a battery issue on my motherboard. It's still plaguing me.