Windows 9 is now Windows 10

[Nick Harvey]

I had a number of black screen scares during the successful process. More on W7 to W10 than on W8.1 to W10.

The screen came back, eventually, in every case, though. There appear to be long black screen periods just before the reboots.

[cwathen]

I don't see why people have such a downer on IE, I used it, IE11 and had no issues with it (or previous versions). I also downloaded Google Chrome which I hated, we use FireFox at work which is total pants but I downloaded IE11 on my work station and use that at work! I am now in the process of changing over to Windows 10 so it will be interesting to see what Edge is like.

I'm the same - I have been a happy IE user for the past 15 years and have never seen anything particularly wrong with it - however IE11 is now 2 years old and is starting to feel a little sluggish compared to newer versions of Chrome, a newer version that addressed this is now needed, but of course it will never come so it does like I'll be moving soon, not yet decided whether to go Chrome (which I've already started using as a secondary browser on Windows 7) or Edge (which seems pretty solid based on testing Windows 10). But to paraphrase Mhairi Black - I didn't leave IE, it left me. I still think ditching the brand name when it's the dominant desktop browser was a ridiculous thing to do and they're now going to have to convince people to adopt Edge who would have just followed it like sheep if it was called IE12.

Windows Media Player is still there but I suspect on a new clean copy of Windows 10 it wouldn't be.

It's been on all the clean installs of Windows Technical Preview I've done. However, it is still on version 12 and hasn't been updated since 2009 (as well as it not being a default media player for anything on Windows 8/10) so I would imagine that like IE it's been left in for compatibility reasons but is essentially deprecated. If you prefer it though it's still a perfectly competent media player and you can easily set it to be the default for everything.

I'm still not a fan of the look of Windows 10. I feel like I'm the only one who thinks it looks very basic and ugly compared to Vista/7.

I agree, I think aero is nice, Windows 10 with it's drab colour scheme and monochrome icons looks like Windows 2, not the future. The white title bars which can't be changed unless the app developer has set a colour I think look particularly bad. However, as I said that's just what everyone is doing now - when I first got my current phone all the icons on the status bar were in colour, but after an update last year they all turned to white which was apparently 'modern', it's just what's in at present. Ultimately though, it's still a functional UI and there are extra features in 10 which I can see myself using. And whilst I've never been a fan of using third party software to recreate something that used to be built into the operating system, you can always download Glass 8 (it is being updated for Windows 10) if you want aero that much.

If you have Media Center on 7 or 8.1, you'll have Windows DVD Player in Windows 10.

Microsoft have ridiculously over-complicated this. After pulling the built in DVD player support that was in Windows 7 and instead requiring the media center add on to play DVDs in Windows 8, for Windows 10 they're providing a standalone DVD player app - but only if you upgrade from a system with media center (which means Windows 7 or a media centered-Windows 8). So basically it will only go to upgraders - which ironically means those who actually pay for Windows 10 won't get DVD playback but those who upgrade for free will.

And if you upgrade and get the DVD player but then have to reinstall later, you won't be able to reinstall the DVD player onto your clean Windows 10 installation. The official workaround, published by Microsoft themselves, is for users who require the DVD player to always re-install Windows 10 by installing Windows 7/8 first and then upgrading! I'm not even making that up. Why on earth they couldn't just make a DVD player app available without caveats I do not know.

[cwathen]

I've been trying to work out if there's a way of getting the ISOs for a clean install without having to do the upgrade. If you Google such a thing, the top hit is to download a 'media creation tool' from Microsoft. It does imply hopefully that my Windows 7 key will work to install this version.

This tool downloaded Windows 10 but then didn't go any further (I got the already infamous 'Something Happened (Something Happened)' error). After randomly googling the same thing on my phone at work today I realised that if you browse the same page from a device which doesn't support the tool, you get direct links to the ISOs in 32 bit and 64 bit versions (albeit throttled at 500K / sec). So, fired up an old Windows 2000 virtual machine and am currently downloading them inside it using Firefox 3.6. When they eventually come down I'll see if I can get my key from 32 Bit 7 Home Premium to active a 64 bit build of Windows 10.

Curiously, the media tool asks you to pick between downloading 10 Home and 10 Pro, the direct ISOs do not - it's just 'Windows 10'. Unless the key is used to determine the version, this may be a backdoor way of getting 10 Pro.

[Critique]

After two days Windows 8.1 has finally installed, and Windows 10 is downloading. I had to reset my PC because some updates only wanted to install individually and got upset if they had to install as part of a group, so it's been quite a hassle, and the Get Windows 10 thing wasn't showing up when I was ready for the update. However there's a command prompt thing that forces Windows 10 to download so I've done that, and it seems to be working.

[Critique]

I don't like double posting but after three days Windows 10 has finally installed on my machine. Getting up to Windows 8.1 seems to have been the biggest problem as updates went through pretty painlessly after reaching 8.1, and even the progress bar in Windows Update started to work. Windows 10 installed quite happily when the time came, and it might just be the lack of files on my PC at the moment but it seems to be running very quickly.

And with regard to Windows 10, it's definitely a great improvement on Windows 8. The UI on all the modern apps has shrunk considerably so they are now okay to use with a mouse (the PC settings app actually looks quite nice), and it generally seems tidier than the mess Windows 8 was (the Wifi login no longer takes up a huge amount of screen space!). I am a bit confused by the design of the UI itself though - bits of the UI use a blurry background of what is behind it like iOS 7 and the old Aero theme to give that whole impression of layers, but this isn't used across the board, with the taskbar being the most notable example, as whilst it's transparent the layer behind it is clear.

Edge seems fairly competent from what I've seen of it so far, and besides having slightly bigger buttons than a traditional PC app you can't really tell that it's a Modern UI app. Otherwise, I shall have a further play and may report back later.

[Pete]

Just going back slightly to the mandatory update thing. I agree far too many people have had the updates disabled due to adware, or alternatively never actually install them because they just close the lid on their laptop.

The number of laptops I've fixed that needed a good 14 or so update runs before they were up to date...

[Philip]

Windows Update is Windows 10 is already much, much nicer than in 8 and before.

I thought they may have finally gotten rid of the Control Panel, but no it's still there (right click on the Start button). Although the fact that it's now so hidden suggest it's on its way out very soon.

What is jarring, design wise, is the fact that the desktop is very dark - dark wallpaper (mine defaulted to the one with the tent), dark taskbar, dark Start menu - but then you open the File Exporer and everything is bright white, especially if it opens maximised. It's not consistent enough for me, but then again, neither is the dark mode in OS X.

[Martin Phillp]

I finally installed Windows 10 after disabling Microsoft programs and my anti virus software.

First impressions are that it's very fast in comparison to 7, it seemed a lot more easier to find features by using the very useful search bar on the taskbar and just how simple it is to install rival mail services on the new mail client.

However, it felt as if the OS is far from ready for general release. Some of the store apps didn't work, such as Netflix, which the Facebook one was a mess without the option to reply or post a status! There was also an issue with my sound card where the front headphone port wouldn't work in the headphones setting, so had to change to speaker, put a headphone jack in the back, then put in another pair of headphones round the front. Too much hassle!

In the end, it came down to existing software that wasn't compatible, even in compatibility mode. Next PVR is my main way of watching tv on my PC and while there are reports of seamless moves to 10 on the Next PVR forums, that wasn't the case for me. I tried installing others, such as Kodi and Media Center, which are a hassle to install the tv plug-in's and servers.

So it was back to Windows 7, a System Restore and reinstalling anti-virus and codecs later, my system is back to normal.

I'm sure when I finally upgrade my PC in a few years time, Win 10 will work fine for me and the software I use.

[cwathen]

So, my journey with the ISOs.

Upon installing I got asked if I wanted Home or Pro, I chose Home as I am legitimately entitled to it but it wouldn't take my Windows 7 key on either the 32 bit or 64 bit builds, so I installed without a key and was told Windows wasn't activated. I hoped that maybe it would take the key later once an internet connection was available to verify it. Nothing. So I'd pretty much resigned myself to being stuck on only able to do an in-place upgrade of 7 and then having it stuck on that machine forever unless I shell out for Windows 10.

But for 'testing' purposes, I installed a cracked version of 7 Pro. It will pull down the upgrade reservation update, but reports are that the automatic update to Windows 10 will fail as the updater will determine the OS isn't really genuine and is only activated due to the crack. However, I found that the Windows 10 DVD I'd downloaded will do the upgrade and Windows 10 will stay activated after. It gets better, since I've read that future re-installs won't need a key and it will just pull down the HWIDs of the machine to determine that it's a licenced machine, I decided to test this out - I reformatted and did a clean reinstall of Windows 10, again bypassing the option to enter a key, and to my surprise once it was connected to the internet it activated itself!

So, I currently have an activated Windows 10 Pro which has been installed with genuine media from Microsoft and no cracks in spite of the fact that there is no valid licence for it.

Obviously being able to do this little dance could be broken at any time with their enforced updates (and I would imagine it will only work on 'new' machines for as long as the free upgrade offer lasts) but at present this effectively makes their activation system as worthless as it was in the first few years of XP when you could bypass activation by simply googling a VL key. Quite surprised they dropped the ball this easily TBH, they had got activation pretty good in recent years, to the point when the only reliable way of getting around activation on Windows 8.1 relied on things like KMSpico which host KMS servers on the machine (and many such hacks are full of malware too).

Oh, and on the enforced updates, Microsoft has done another of their partial u-turns - although they've not yet backtracked on all updates being forcibly installed, they have released a tool which will uninstall any update you don't want and prevent it from installing again, so effectively achieving the same ends. I'll give it till the end of the month till someone comes up with a simple registry hack just to put the options to control updates back into Windows Update (as someone did with one of the earlier insider previews).

[JAS84]

Wouldn't Microsoft release a patch that blocks any such hacks? Though I certainly do want to be able to control updates, since I have a metered connection.

[cwathen]

Wouldn't Microsoft release a patch that blocks any such hacks? Though I certainly do want to be able to control updates, since I have a metered connection.

Well as it stands, it's not really a hack, it's just playing a long game of installing Windows 3 times in order to achieve an activated clean install for the first time on a given device. After that it will clean install fine and no hacks are being employed - the media is sourced directly from Microsoft and it is Microsoft that is activating the install. This must mean Microsoft is maintaining a database of every upgraded device to allow keyless reinstalls. The number of devices that could end up needing to be stored in that database is an insane number (which perhaps is why they are currently limiting it to a year). In order to block it they'd also need to maintain data on the status of the OS originally used to perform the upgrade in order to determine whether it is a device which was legitimately upgraded or not.

They may of course have this data which they could use to block it in future, and as I said earlier the standard process of upgrading via Windows Update they have pushed is apparently able to block pirated copies from upgrading. Perhaps the 'media creation tool' that tries to deliver the ISOs can do the same thing but it was laughable that it could be worked around simply by using Windows 2000 and an old version of Firefox to do the download - when the free upgrade is only available to Windows 7/8.1 users which can run the official tool why would you put in place anything else? That they have allowed this situation to occur at all seems a huge blunder.

I think by implementing keyless reinstalls for upgraded devices. Microsoft have chronically over-complicated the process in the pursuit of simplicity which may not deliver the results they want (or some belief that this process is more secure than using a key). It would have been far simpler to let Windows 10 directly use genuine Windows 7/8.1 keys, require their entry as a precursor to activation and follow the same activation process as before which was pretty much proven as a means of combating casual piracy.