https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt125365.aspx
It is all about the ads, everyone doing their best to monetise 100% of ads.

A sensible route for them would be to have the number of ads related to time of Windows 10 ownership. It certainly must be in their forward plans, and with support subscriptions blocking these ads.

You can't do that with desktop apps, nor the web.

Your problems with IE11 were probably due to some suspicious Add-ons. One of the reason that Edge runs quite well is the fact it doesn't support any Add-ons so it can't be highjacked.

Is that entirely true. Malware could still change default home page couldn't it?

Surely you jest? Getting IE11 started and the Google home page opened takes my laptop about 2 seconds. Booting my laptop from scratch takes a little over 60 seconds, plus 20-30 seconds of dawdling, regardless of which browser I then use (what with backward causation being infinitely improbable and all that). So what's taking so long?

I wonder how much RAM OP has. I had an old laptop with only 2GB (I forgot I had nicked 2GB from it). It was painfully slow
Reinstated the 2GB and now fine (for an old laptop).

I know what you're all going to say........back up anyway!!!


One thing I wanted to know was, if i made the upgrade from Windows 7 64bit, would Windows wipe my C Drive or keep the stuff on it and put it in a Windows.old folder or would things still be operational? I've never upgraded before, only clean installs of Windows and I have a lot of music editing software with a lot of plugins, plugins that i don't even remember where I got them but I didn't know whether to back all my programs and plugins up or if Windows would keep them in a folder or is it possible that your software will still work as before? I'm guessing I'd need to go through each bit of software and reinstall everything?

The upgrade will preserve your files and your programs. However, there is an outside risk of the upgrade going wrong, so the advice is to back up your files.

I upgraded my four year old Dell 8300 running W7 64 bit, the day after the release of W10. While the upgrade went ok, I had a crash nearly every day, probably caused by something being non-compliant with W10.

A week ago I bought a new hard disk and went back to W7, reinstalling everything. I was too late to revert, something you can do within 30 days, and reinstalling W7 was the only way.

I suggest that if your computer is running ok there is little advantage in upgrading to W10.

Before you upgrade recommend you follow this guide.


http://www.howtogeek.com/223139/how-...to-windows-10/

I will check that link out.

I'm unsure Mike. The issue I have right now is for about a year now i have been unable to install many Windows Updates. They just will not install and even uninstalling a few programs via Control Panel has caused problems and they are well known problems and I've been on Google and read what others have done and it's just not worked. Part of me would like to upgrade my computer. I know what I have right now with my motherboard, it wont accept a lot of new processors or graphics cards, not that big into graphics cards but obviously the processor is a big part of an upgrade and they don't come cheap either. It's a mixutre of me being fed up of Windows Updates not working right and wanting to freshen up my computer and being fed up of reinstalling Windows 7 the amount of times I have and even here on 64 bit there is a few plugins that don't work with my music software, they only work on the 32 bit version and the time it takes me to sit an reinstall every plugin and a lot of them are from 5-10 years ago and thinking are they gonna work with Windows 10? And this Windows 10 upgrade maybe giving my PC that fresher feel without spending a lot of money that I probably don't have lol.

Other than that it's fine.

About activating and reactivating W10.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...-in-windows-10

How you activate Windows 10 after reinstalling it depends on how Windows 10 was originally installed on your device.

If you activated your free upgrade to Windows 10 or bought and activated Windows 10 from the Windows Store, you have a digital entitlement for your device. This means you can reinstall the same edition of Windows 10 that your device has a digital entitlement for without entering a product key. During reinstallation, if you’re asked to enter a product key, select Skip. Your device will automatically activate online after the installation is complete.

If you previously installed and activated Windows 10 using a product key, you’ll need to enter the product during the reinstallation.

You’ll need to use a Windows 10 product key to activate a new installation of Windows 10 on a device that has never had an activated copy of Windows 10 on it.

So this means that you can indeed rollback from W10 once you get your digital entitlement and install it back any time you want and it will activate.

If you make an image backup as per link I gave you, you can upgrade, and if you have issues, easily go back to old os.

Note: a lot of people have issues on first ugrade, but a lot of issues go away after a clean install. YOU MUST upgrade first though.

MS have at last clarified Windows 10 activation

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...-in-windows-10

The main thing clarified is the activation of Insider previews. Basically, you cannot join Insider Program now without valid licence,

Installing Windows 10 Insider Preview on a device that never had an activated copy of Windows 10 on it will require using a Windows 10 product key or buying genuine Windows from the Windows Store. This also applies if the new installation is for an edition of Windows 10 that wasn’t previously activated on the device. For more info, see the section Activating a new installation of Windows 10 in this topic.

Thanks for the notification. I don't know about your mental capacity and filing system, but mine is 'variable'

I have saved the link but whether I will remember in 3 months time is another matter.
I have Umpteen Important Folders

Depends if you talk to my wife

In the Windows 10 blog, Microsoft confirms that Windows 10 does not violate your privacy
http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwin...nd-windows-10/

Microsoft have expanded their documentation around this,for consumers here;
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...nline-services

Another take on Win 10 privay. Some of tghe comments make interesting reading.
http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/m...9e16112253962b

My son has started Uni and is getting a laptop today coming with Win 8.1 and an external hard drive (I had to push hard to convince him of the merits).

I don't know whether to advise him to upgrade to Win 10 straight away and making an image of out of the box 8.1 with Macrium to put on his external HD ...... or just use 8.1 and upgrade before July next year.

Up to now he has only used XP and 7.

Is there an advantage to one choice over the other ?

If anyone is interested in how Microsoft plan to implement Win 10 upgrades, at home and business level they may find this article an interesting read.


http://www.ghacks.net/2015/09/28/mic...f0ao03ix2.1tc5

I would use the external HDD to clone his disk using Macrium.
Then upgrade to Windows 10 (it should be fine with modern hardware, and gets better every day as it receives updates fixing bugs).

It will be easier for him based on his use of Windows 7 and XP to use 8 with its start menu and it's the future anyway.

Anyone any idea what this is? Our PC is a two-year-old Lenovo IdeaCentre which came with Win 8 and now has Win 10 installed. Win 10 has been in for several weeks without problem.
This morning everything started up OK but then slowed to a crawl and the desktop icons did nothing (actually they did, but they were so slow they seemed dead).
Once an application does get going it is so sluggish it is unusable.
Task Manager eventually brings up a blue screen which says 'Preparing Security Options' and it seems to hang forever. Only way out is a hard switch-off. On re-start once again all is OK for a couple of minutes then it slows down again.
On the one occasion Task Manager worked it told me that HDD use was 100%.
It's impossible to do any of the normal investigations because it's all so slow.

On the web, there are reports of this message, but it's all Win7 stuff, mostly from years ago and the 'cures' are many and varied. Some reckon it's a virus, some say it's the usual Windows 'mystery cock up'. I'm reduced to using my ghastly laptop!

Thanks, he did say he wanted the 'most modern' one .

It could be anything. I don't think I'm happy with 'minor' issues with W10. But it's like Climate Change, you can't be sure if it something else.

Do a fresh boot and do a System Restore to a week ago or whatever.

Press Windows key+R and type rstrui.exe

Then scan with Malwarebytes free

=-=-=-=

Enabling Legacy Boot Mode is useful for easy access to F8 Safe Mode with Networking.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?pws=...enu&gws_rd=ssl

That should run at normal speed to prove it's not your HDD running at a crawl or other hardware issue

Check C: is not actually full up.

I'd suggest thoroughly testing Win 10 once it's been installed to see if there are any significant bugs/errors. If yes, then reversion to Win 8.1 plus the addition of Start8 etc. should provide a familiar and stable interface and if no then by all means hand over the laptop to your son (and I wish him well with his studies).

By the way, you're absolutely right to provide an external hard drive back up and your son ought to develop the habit of regular back ups in case something goes wrong. Indeed, students are penalised for late work assignment submissions so the use of a back up hard drive and the use of a calendar reminder system for deadlines could turn out to be quite useful.

PS This study guide might or might not be of interest: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_...+use+your+head

I'd start the Task manager to have it ready, the list sorted by I/O writes to see the culprit. I had a similar problem on W7 when I was copying a huge file (several tens of gigabytes) on an SSD drive. Everything else just stopped until this was done. Here's a long shot. Do you have a lot of data in OneDrive? The new improved OneDrive will download all mapped folders whether you like it or not.

http://m.theinquirer.net/inquirer/ne...res-more-to-do

Well, the 'One Microsoft Privacy Policy' marketing label tempted me.
With 'safety and reliability' their declared aim they are saying 'us being famous for blue screens we need to scoop up your data a lot to fix said blue screen'.

And they dont scan Microsft Mail for marketing because there is little mail (yet?) to scan.