The first day Windows 10 was available for download, I upgraded my laptop from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. On day two, I upgraded the laptop I use for recording podcasts. I didn’t realize it at the time, but these laptops spend most of their time accessing online content — social media sites, music streaming, Google Docs and casual web surfing. Although both of these upgrades proved that Windows 10 was able to pluck drivers out of the cloud and apply them as needed (I didn’t need to manually find or install a single driver for either machine), they weren’t a good overall test for two reasons: I had re-installed Windows 10 from scratch on both machines (instead of performing an upgrade), and neither machine has a lot of installed software to test.
And so, Saturday evening, I upgraded my primary workstation to Windows 10.
[UPGRADE VS. FRESH INSTALL]
Installing a fresh copy of Windows — that is, formatting your computer’s hard drive and starting over from scratch — will always give you the best performance. That also means you’ll have to back up all of your data, and reinstall all of your programs (including tracking down all those pesky installation CDs and drivers that came with your computer). When you upgrade Windows, all your programs and data stay in place and come along for the ride. Unfortunately, so do any problems you may have had in the past. If your computer is running slow because you have 100 things running in the taskbar at all times, you’ll have 100 things running in the taskbar in Windows 10 as well. While upgrading may not offer the best performance in the end, it is definitely the most convenient way to upgrade your computer.
[PERFORMING THE UPGRADE]
If you opted in, Microsoft is slowly rolling Windows 10 out to every internet-connected machine running Windows 7 or newer. If you want to cut to the front of the line, you can download it directly from Microsoft here.
If you’re downloading Windows 10 and want the free upgrade, you’ll need to download the same version of Windows you currently have installed on your machine. By right-clicking on “My Computer” or “Computer,” you can see if you are running Windows Home or Pro, and if your operating system is 32 or 64 bit. Download the corresponding version to a USB stick or burn it to DVD and you’re ready to begin. Using your computer, go to the USB or DVD, double-click setup, and watch it go.
You’ll only have a few sets of questions to answer along the way, one of which is the security-related questions I mentioned in my previous Windows 10 post. There were nine features in all — I turned seven of them off because they sounded like horrible ideas, and the other two out of spite. One new feature of Windows 10 is the ability to share your wireless router’s password with your social media friends. No thanks.
My desktop, an Acer Aspire Desktop with a 2.6GHz quad-core processor, 6 gigs of RAM, and a terabyte hard drive took just over an hour to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Your mileage may vary.
[WHAT WENT WRONG]
My Matrox video card is apparently not supported by Windows 10. This isn’t really a Windows 10 issue, as apparently the card is also not supported by Windows 8. Had I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 8 three years ago, I would have run into the same problem. The manufacturer does not offer upgraded drivers for Windows 8 (or 10) — their solution is to “buy a newer card,” which I ultimately did.
[WHAT WENT RIGHT]
Pretty much everything else. All my programs came back. All my icons showed up where they previously were.
I run some old software — some sort of old and some really old. I run Photoshop CS2 (released in 2005) and it worked fine. I also still use LView Pro, an ancient graphic program released in 1996. It works fine, too. I have goofy batch files that launch goofy processes; those all worked. DOSBox and my Commodore 64 emulators work. Every single program I had running on Windows 7 Pro runs on Windows 10 Pro.
[WHAT WAS CONFUSING]
After I thought the installation was complete, my computer was running so slowly that I thought it had locked up. Turns out, updates still need to be downloaded and search indices still need to be built. That stuff takes time (and processing cycles). I would have been a lot less frustrated had I simply let the machine “cook” for 30 minutes or so before hopping in and trying to start working on things.
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Not much more to say than that! For the techies in the bunch, below are the specs of the machines I upgraded to Windows 10:
Acer Aspire AS5732Z-4855 LX.PGU02.064 Laptop Computer – Intel Pentium Dual-Core T4300 2.1GHz, 4GB DDR2, 250GB HDD, DVDRW, 15.6″ Display, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Acer M3300-U1332 PT.SBT02.002 Aspire Desktop PC – AMD Phenom II X4 810 2.6GHz, 6GB DDR3, 1TB HDD, ATI Radeon HD 3200, DVDRW, 300 Watt PSU, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
ASUS Q400A Laptop Computer – 3rd generation Intel Core i7-3632QM 2.2GHz, 8GB DDR3, 750GB HDD, DVDRW, 14 in. Display, Windows 8 64-bit