# Windows 10 after 6+ Months



## Mt Spokane Photography (Feb 20, 2016)

After installing / removing Windows 10 last July, I decided to give installing it another try this morning. I went thru all the options to turn off reporting back to Microsoft, at least for most things, disabled edge, and am pretty happy with the results now.

I plan to try out Start 10 in order to get my start menu the same as it was on windows 7. It was time to either re-install Windows 7 to deal with 2 years of accumulated clutter and issues, or give Windows 10 a try. So far all my software seems to work, its been kept up to date, and now works fine.

Are their any continuing issues?


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## kirispupis (Feb 20, 2016)

I have Windows 10 on four of my machines at home. Photography-wise I haven't had any issues. Lightroom and Photoshop CC work fine. I have a 32" display that I run in 4k and that's worked fine. I have run into numerous other issues. 
- My Netgear network adapter kept shutting off my connection until I reinstalled it. 
- My laptop occasionally freezes when it comes out of sleep mode. I can only get out of it by shutting it down.
- A few times my desktop has frozen when running Android Studio
- My desktop has blue screened twice. First time in a number of years I've seen that.
- OneDrive is often non-functional. I've always had problems with it, but it seems a bit worse now.
- Had to disable Hyper-V for Intel HAXM to work


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## zim (Feb 20, 2016)

What a coincidence!

I got fed up with the constant windows reminders to upgrade and took the plunge today....... just about finished, well that's 6 HOURS of my life I'm not going to get back!!

In fairness the update (from 8.1) was flawless, took a few hours unattended though.

Configuration and getting the menus to how I wanted them (still not perfect there are a couple of items I can't delete but want to) has taken ages.

I'm still not sure about my AV (Kaspersky) compatibility, got a warning message, will need to investigate that further.

After upgrade computer has been very unresponsive, seems to be freeing off now though and back to original performance. I think half the issue was that although the update said finished I don't think it really had, doing a lot of background syncing.

I originally had pukki menu which was ok but glad it's gone overall now the frustrations are abating I think me and 10 are going to get along ok!


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## old-pr-pix (Feb 20, 2016)

Finally decided to take advantage of the free Windows 10 upgrade about two weeks ago. At first it seemed quite peppy, but now it already seems to have choked itself and really slowed down. Edge is a pain. It has some nice features but has dropped or buried stuff I often use. Maybe once I figure out how to get around it better I'll change my mind. Fortunately it allows one to drop back to IE if necessary. I never had Windows 8 but stayed with Windows 7 Pro. I've had to clear cookies, delete history, and restart more times in the last two weeks than in the whole year prior. Part of the problem is various support apps. don't seem to be fully debugged under Windows 10. Connection to my ISP provided router seems to drop periodically but I can't say if that is fault of the router or the op sys. My ISP provided email client also seems to have obscure issues as well. Again, no way for me to focus blame. 

I'm not one who does things that take advantage of all the 'cool' new features of any browser or op. sys. I just want one that works and stays working. I thought I had waited long enough for the Windows 10 bugs to be sorted out; but, now I'm not so sure. 

I'm just glad I have a Mac and Firefox as an alternate.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Feb 20, 2016)

I downloaded and installed start 10, which got my start menu back to the windows 7 look, its cheap to purchase. I had already bought the start 8 for $5, its $4 to upgrade to windows 10.

I left my computer downloading the full file version last night, I do not know or care how long it took, it was finished this morning. When I started the installation, it took almost a hour to download updates, and then the actual installation took maybe 5 minutes. I spent another 30 minutes configuring everything.

Right now, its a bit better than windows 7, but that could change.

I cloned windows 7 to a spare 500gb SSD, so I can just hook it up if I want to go back. My primary Drive is a MSATA SSD plugged into the motherboard, so its a pain to remove it if I wanted to use the 2.5 in SSD. I can roll back, but I've upgraded some software already, and don't want to lose that.


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## ChienLunatique (Feb 20, 2016)

Downloaded 10 a few weeks after its official release - onto an i7 faster than fast, more memory than brain cells etc etc type rig - and hated it. Went back to 8.1 after 4 days and have lived happily with 8.1 since then, I was starting to wonder if maybe the bugs had been sorted out by now? seems I might wait a few more months or until 24hrs before the free upgrade expires. 
From my experience with 10 its just slowed everything down and crashed the system for no real reason that I could find, everything I was running was supposedly 10 compatible.
Good luck to everyone


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## Ladislav (Feb 21, 2016)

I installed Win10 about month after release and I didn't have any problems with SW I use regularly. On the other hand all software got updates or released new version because of Win10 ...

I still have problems with my Intuos Pro tablet. I have two displays and I always used tablet mapped to just one display with one button set to do dispaly switch. That doesn't work in Win10! I'm unable to map my tablet to a single monitor. The option is still available but it does not work. Could be something with Wacom drivers or maybe something with AMD drivers for graphic card. I don't use Eyefinity but this is a behavior I would expect if I do. Wacom support even didn't care to reply to my support query.


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## Canon Rumors Guy (Feb 21, 2016)

I recently moved back to Windows from OSX on the laptop side of things. I never used Windows 8, so I have no comparison.

So far everything is pretty good. I forgot you had to fiddle and tweak Windows to get it to run as you want it to. I've had no issues getting used to the interface and where things are.

The only issue I have is the high resolution screen of my laptop and the scaling slider. I have an XPS 13 QHD+ which is 3200x1800 on a 13.3" screen. Dell recommends the scaling be set to 250% (Display Settings > First Slider). The problem is some software looks blurry... for example. Silver Efex Pro 2, which Google will never update again. I can't find a scaling setting in Windows where the preview windows in Silver Efex isn't a low resolution mess, it's the same for Viveza.

If anyone has insight into this issue, I'm all ears.

Thanks for the tip to disable Edge.


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## pwp (Feb 21, 2016)

Over Christmas / New Year which is a quiet time in my studio, I updated the two primary workstations which do the heavy lifting to Windows 10. One was running Windows 7 and the other Windows 8...Win 8 was a shocker which I wish I'd never installed. Good riddance.

I was entirely happy with Win 7 but don't like to get too far behind the current OS. Win 10 update was a 100% smooth process and after very little personal preferences tweaking it's running as a good OS should...practically invisible. In other words it just does it's job seamlessly and without annoyances. 

We're platform agnostic here also running three Macs. Historically OSX updates tend to be a little smoother than Windows, but Windows 10 was the smoothest yet, the only glitch being a simple matter of fresh drivers for a Canon printer. All other peripherals sailed through without any intervention, resetting or re-configuring. 

I always give an OS update a few months so bugs get ironed out and third party apps and hardware have generally been updated to accommodate the change. 

So no Win 10 regrets here. Yes, ditch MS Edge. All good. Just do it.

-pw


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## Zeidora (Feb 21, 2016)

I run a couple of Zeiss light microscopes off my Wintel box, and got notification from Zeiss, that W10 is not supported. Quite happy with W7 on a HP820. Most of the imaging is done on Macs, where I also still run 10.10. Our SEM runs on XP, which still gets updates (!). Works fine, and upgrade is on the order of $18K. Have no intention of upgrading any of the systems any time soon.


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## expatinasia (Feb 21, 2016)

I did an iso install almost as soon as Windows 10 came out on a Win 7 Pro machine which should not really have Windows 10, but on the whole I am very happy.

There is really very little to no need to make the start menu look like 7. You can arrange it as you like and I use the taskbar much more now for my most common programmes. I rarely go into the Start area at all.

There have been some issues, and some of those were due to the Windows updates which messed around with some settings, but I eventually fixed them.

I am very happy with Windows 10, my workflow has definitely improved and my machine seems faster - although like I said, officially it is not supposed to run Windows 10 at all.


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## DominoDude (Feb 21, 2016)

Win 10 Pro far better to handle than regular Win 10 Home. The ability to postpone updates and their restarts are nice and handy in the Pro version. People updating from Vista or 8.* are, in my experience, noticing more quirks and oddities with drivers and so forth. But getting away from such icky versions of Windows is still worth it.

I would say that it's only if you have some very special software that you should continue to stick with Win 7, or Win 8.*, until you know that a version compatible with Win 10 has been released.

On some *laptops* from HP I have noticed that they fail soon after updating to Win 10, and on at least one of those FW update didn't help. (Took HP well over 14 days to figure out a way to fix it, and they didn't state exactly what they did to the machine.)
ASUS, and Acer, have on some occasions just started to roll back to previous version of OS just before the install was complete. (Can't remember if those laptops were of a slightly older kind, but most likely they were.)

*SFF* (small form factor) - nothing substantial has gone wrong with any of those.
Regular *desktops* from Lenovo, HP, and DELL have, generally, been fine.

A few free tools and handy programs I have used to lessen the amount of gnashing teeth:
* *Classic Shell* (http://www.classicshell.net/)
* To quickly get rid of Edge I follow a link like this *ninite.com/chrome*. It will automagically give me a small installer that sets up Chrome without any nagging. There are other good stuff to be found on Ninite also.
* *Secunia PSI* (http://www.flexerasoftware.com/enterprise/products/software-vulnerability-management/personal-software-inspector/tab/features) - A program that can help with detecting old programs and suggest an update. PSI in version 2.0* is, in my opinion, far better than the version on the site now, but you might have trouble finding it.


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## DominoDude (Feb 21, 2016)

Oh, I forgot:
Turn on *file history* soon after an update to Win 10. It's not on by default.
And avoid "super hibernation" (I think it goes under the name Fast startup) mode on your laptops if you find that the machine bounces back up after you shut it down. It's annoying to say the least...
I've got no Win 10 machine available right now to check the right naming on things, but you guys are smart and will figure it out.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Feb 25, 2016)

After 5 Days, I've used much of my common software, and three web browsers. I really can't tell any difference in performance, except that I've eliminate a few glitches that occasionally popped up in Windows 7. There is a bug in QuickBooks 2016 Pro that requires me to restart it occasionally.

I'm still getting used to some of the different looks in the windows. I like the calculator better. I wish it would also calculate using fractions.

I'll probably start updating my 5 additional pc's.


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## tcmatthews (Feb 26, 2016)

My desktop was a Windows 8 computer. So just about everything was an improvement. There have been a few glitches that require restart. Once or twice the start bar disappeared and I had to restart the computer from task manager. The only real issues came with the secret Windows upgrade disk partition. When Windows 10.1 (or whatever that upgrade instead of update) came out I had to resize it using a 3rd party utility or else all upgrades would fail. That was a super fail as far as I am concerned. There is no way a normal user could figure out how to get all that working. How safe is it resizing disk partitions anyway.

I still have some software on my old Windows laptop that I have not tried in Windows 10. It did not run correctly on Windows 8 and I do not use it often. Unfortunately there is no OSX alternative so I have to keep a working Windows 7 computer anyway. (Note it has attached hardware so a VM will not work properly either.)


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Feb 26, 2016)

tcmatthews said:


> My desktop was a Windows 8 computer. So just about everything was an improvement. There have been a few glitches that require restart. Once or twice the start bar disappeared and I had to restart the computer from task manager. The only real issues came with the secret Windows upgrade disk partition. When Windows 10.1 (or whatever that upgrade instead of update) came out I had to resize it using a 3rd party utility or else all upgrades would fail. That was a super fail as far as I am concerned. There is no way a normal user could figure out how to get all that working. How safe is it resizing disk partitions anyway.
> 
> I still have some software on my old Windows laptop that I have not tried in Windows 10. It did not run correctly on Windows 8 and I do not use it often. Unfortunately there is no OSX alternative so I have to keep a working Windows 7 computer anyway. (Note it has attached hardware so a VM will not work properly either.)



Some computers have a hidden partition that lets you roll back the OS to its initial state. When I installed my SSD, I eliminated that partition, Acronis also creates a hidden partition. When you install a SSD, and go from a large disk to a smaller one, and let the software proportionally resize partitions, they can end up too small.

If I decide to do a clean install of windows 10, I'll do away with that useless partition that Acronis created on my SSD.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Feb 26, 2016)

My last two computers came with Windows 8. The first time, I tried it and then put the disk drive away and Installed windows 7 on a MSATA SSD with a 2TB Drive for Data. The next one had 8.1 installed. I did not even start up that computer with Windows 8, I just took out the 1TB drive with 8.1 and put it away, then I put in a 500GB MSATA SSD and a 3TB Drive for data. I suppose I could use the serial numbers for those win 8 installations to do a clean install of windows 10 and sell my windows 7 ultimate disks. I had 7 sets of the win 7 ultimate originally, bought from a relative who works for Microsoft.


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## TeT (Feb 26, 2016)

updated a windows 8 touch laptop and windows 8 non touch laptop; still running 7 64 on my desktops just because outside of 8.1 its all the same to me.

Anyways... I have had zero issues


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## LookingThroughMyLens81 (Sep 16, 2017)

The latest Windows 10 cumulative update has system print server changes that are faulty and can make your printer "invisible" to the Windows print server. Your printer software from the printer vendor can still access the printer and print off test pages and whatnot, but the Windows OS and it's connected software cannot communicate with the printer, making it impossible to actually use it. The only fix is to roll back your system and remove the update. Microsoft has not acknowledged this as a known issue with the update, though they are getting a lot of complaints since the update rolled out over the past several days.


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## bhf3737 (Sep 16, 2017)

LookingThroughMyLens81 said:


> The latest Windows 10 cumulative update has system print server changes that are faulty and can make your printer "invisible" to the Windows print server. Your printer software from the printer vendor can still access the printer and print off test pages and whatnot, but the Windows OS and it's connected software cannot communicate with the printer, making it impossible to actually use it. The only fix is to roll back your system and remove the update. Microsoft has not acknowledged this as a known issue with the update, though they are getting a lot of complaints since the update rolled out over the past several days.



The update has caused installed printer(s) reporting as offline. Going to Printers and Devices from control panel, removing offline printers and adding them again resolves the problem.


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## LookingThroughMyLens81 (Sep 16, 2017)

bhf3737 said:


> LookingThroughMyLens81 said:
> 
> 
> > The latest Windows 10 cumulative update has system print server changes that are faulty and can make your printer "invisible" to the Windows print server. Your printer software from the printer vendor can still access the printer and print off test pages and whatnot, but the Windows OS and it's connected software cannot communicate with the printer, making it impossible to actually use it. The only fix is to roll back your system and remove the update. Microsoft has not acknowledged this as a known issue with the update, though they are getting a lot of complaints since the update rolled out over the past several days.
> ...



Trying to use it after installing it again only leads to the printer being reported as being offline, because the drivers are not being loaded. If you pull up the printer in the device manager, it tells you that no driver has been installed for the printer and Windows will not load the drivers manually, if you attempt to DIY through the "Update Driver" option. The only fix is to remove the update, which rolls back the print server to a functional version. The cumulative update was supposed to fix an unresponsive print server error and update the security of the print server to prevent hacks via drivers.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Sep 16, 2017)

My last was on 9/13, and it fixed my ability to see other devices on my network. All of my printers are network printers and show.

But ... Printing has suddenly been very slow, so slow, I thought something was wrong, and have ordered a new router (I've been putting that off).

I wonder if the slow printing is also a symptom. I hate to reverse the update, because I need to be able to view other pc's and my NAS drives in windows explorer.

I'm going to checkout the printer issue.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Sep 16, 2017)

From what I see online is that Microsoft pushed out some printer security changes that might affect older printers. I'm assuming they are ones without signed drivers which were brought over with the Windows 10 update, but cannot be installed or reinstalled unless you go into windows 10 and disable the signed driver requirement. I had already done that in order to get one older printer installed, I don't see the issue, but printing seems slower than it usually is.

I do have KB4038788 installed. We have three pc's running today, all of them print with my HP M425DN as far as I am aware. (It has signed drivers).


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## LookingThroughMyLens81 (Sep 17, 2017)

Some of my Win 10 machines have the update installed and print just fine. Others have it installed and do not. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme/reason for it. Most people don't have multiple machines, so they can't really get into things like I can. The drivers are for an older, but still sold, OfficeJet Pro business printer and are properly signed as far as I know and the update has error indicators that are supposed to warn you of potentially dangerous printer drivers being installed. There are no errors in the system log that correspond to that or messages that pop up.


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## Talys (Sep 17, 2017)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> My last was on 9/13, and it fixed my ability to see other devices on my network. All of my printers are network printers and show.
> 
> But ... Printing has suddenly been very slow, so slow, I thought something was wrong, and have ordered a new router (I've been putting that off).
> 
> ...



What printers do you have?

It is highly unlikely (of course, not impossible) to be your router. A few things to check:

1. Make sure that it didn't switch from PCL to PostScript or vice versa. Sometimes, for some printers, the file size balloons on one or the other. 

2. If your printer supports both, switch from PCL to PostScript or vice versa.

3. Go to your printer spooler monitor and see how fast it's transferring to the printer. Is the bottleneck at the printer, or at the computer? Also check the file size. If it says something ridiculously huge, it could something in the rasterization process.

4. Check to make sure under printer properties / advanced that it's set to spool print documents + Start printing immediately. Don't tell it to wait til the last page is spooled, and for the vast majority of printers, don't print directly to printer.

5. In the land of the unusual - I've had a printer print slowly because of a bad ICC profile that automatically installed. It went away when I deleted the ICC profile (under printer properties, color management, I think).


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## RGF (Sep 17, 2017)

Glad I have a MaC 8)


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## jprusa (Sep 17, 2017)

RGF said:


> Glad I have a MaC 8)


+100


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Sep 18, 2017)

Apparently, I just happened to do 3 large documents with lots of graphics and they took a while to spool. However, the fix for being able to see my NAS has actually made things worse. I can see it, but only after a long delay. 

Finally, I added the NAS folders I use frequently to "This PC" and I can see them now.


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