Microsoft - The Dragon Wins......Again......

So quite a while back, I took advantage of Microsoft offering Windows 10 for free for those of us using other Windows operating system. Me, my wife and my youngest son were all using Windows 7 on our desktops at the time.

After getting our upgrades, and turning off things that we found evasive, I, and my wife and son, found that our computers ran better, and that all of our games showed marked improvements on performance.

The only thing that really bugged me was: being unable to shut updates off. I can reschedule, but eventually it happens.

Turns out, you can only completely shut Windows Updates off with the Pro version of Windows 10. The free copy we all have is the same as Windows 10 Home version.

So not really that big of a deal, updates happen, but over all we've been pretty happy.

Until.........

A few months back, my wife decided she wanted Fallout 4 to play. Yay! Welcome to the fold my wife! (Evil laughter....goot! goot! Another addict!). Well, at 24 GB to download, it was going to take a couple of day. On day 2, our power blinked.

No biggy.....Steam just resumed the download after the computer rebooted. And it did, and everything seemed fine....or so I thought.

I noticed that her desktop icons were not the same as before, and her Windows got upset if I tried to open up just a picture or video, it didn't understand the file association.

Worse: Windows 10 went to update, and instead, hung. I sat there and sat there and sat there for hours and hours, but the update would not go through. I'd have to force a reboot and get it to roll back, which took a long time too.

I did a lot of research on this, but the only thing I could find was people talking about the update from Windows 7 to 10 hanging up. I tried contacting Microsoft about it.......they were about as helpful as a turtle helping a bird to fly. None of their suggestions worked, and finally it boiled down to: Reinstall Windows 10.

If I do that, I have to reactivate it, right?

Yep, but should not be a problem since this is considered a legal copy of Windows 10 Home Edition.

Or so they said......guess what?

Wrong.

Windows reinstalled without a hitch. All the little bugs that I had noticed went away. It even did an update just fine, didn't hang up this time.

Ah! But now you have that pesky message in the lower right hand corner of your screen constantly reminding you to activate your Windows.

Except, when I go to do it, it claims that the product key isn't valid.

Okay, so long on to her Microsoft account that I had to create when she got her free copy, right?

Wrong: according to Microsoft, she doesn't have an account, which I personally made for her.

So what's left? What's left is: I have to spend $99.00 for a product key.

Oh you evil bastards.........got our money anyways I see. So who's computer is next? Mine? My son's? I went and checked, we do have valid accounts and showing us we have valid product keys.....but so did my wife many months ago.

And no: before any of you start jumping up and down and going on and on about Linux, I do like Linux, but until Linux is at the point that it can run games...every single one of our games and third party software, it's not an option. You have to jump through so many hoops to make things work, it's not funny.

So yah, the evil dragon known as Microsoft wins again. Butt heads........

a reply to: eriktheawful

I held onto windows 2000 and finally got XP had that until a couple years ago and got 7..

I'm riding 7 straight into the rocks lol..

After that it appears I'm in no man's land.

Did you recontact MS when trying to re activate using the previous key?

I've done that in the past and they have been able to fix it and allow reactivation after a new install with replaced hardware. However I haven't done that with 10 yet, but I've done it for pretty much all the prior versions that required online verification for the product key.

As far as windows updates, you may try disabling it by pressing and holding the windows key on the keyboard, and press "R". That should pull up the run box. Type in services.msc Find Windows Update in the services and disable it.

You should always make an image of your hard drive before making drastic changes or upgrading the OS.

Check the "disk write-caching" setting.

While disk write caching may increase system performance, it can also increase the chances of data loss in case of power or system failures before the data from the write-cache buffer is flushed by writing the data to the disk.

Link

Make sure that "write-cache buffer flushing" isn't turned off.

a reply to: bobs_uruncle

Cough Cough

a reply to: eriktheawful

Sounds like her hdd kicked the bucket due to power failure
Check her hdd out, probably stuffed.

a reply to: eriktheawful

Also, if you use a cd key recovery tool like produkey you should be able to get the old windows' key from the windows.old directory.

Microsoft sucks, but not everything is their fault.

24GB takes a couple days to download? damn

a reply to: ware2010

Yes, when my DSL speed is limited due to being on the outer DSL shell (2.67 mbs download speed).

And, of course we use the internet during the day, so limit downloading big things like that at night when we're asleeep.

a reply to: eriktheawful

just felt surprised when I read that, not to savvy with computers really,

originally posted by: ware2010
24GB takes a couple days to download? damn

I remember back when "Broadband" came out and even 5 years later I was still on 56k.. Trying to download games on download managers for like 48 hours for about 1Gig.. Actual free games mind you haha. The excitement when it actual downloaded without being corrupted? Priceless. Now it's like walk downstairs grab some coffe come back up ha..

We've been spoiled.

I was young when I built my first computer and pretended to be 18 so AOL gave me service for free, I kept canceling and they were like "you are a valued customer try us for 2 more months on us.." worked for about a year and a half before my mom got long distance phone bills, cause I messed up.. ahh... I remember those "pictures" loading.. you'd get lines of pixels at a time..

Now you can just look at a computer wrong and it's like "The Internet has been installed." Wait what ? You have... everything!

LOL

a reply to: Reverbs

Well, I just pre-ordered Mass Effect: Andromeda......I'll be doing the same for both my son and wife.

Going to be a whole week of merry hell trying to get it downloaded to everyone. I think I heard it's a 29gb download.

Of course Fallout 4's high resolution texture pack they just released a few weeks ago is 56gb to download, heh.

originally posted by: ware2010
a reply to: eriktheawful

just felt surprised when I read that, not to savvy with computers really,

Youtube and google are your friend!

Honestly you can spend the time messing with it trying to get it backup and legal or you download kmspico, click the stupid red button and poof problem solved then youtube how to disable windows 10 automatic updates! And in 20 minutes once everything has been downloaded your done! Ps pick up a copy or download office 2013 or 2016 then click the red button again now you have office too. Total cost savings of 300 or more dollars

Just thought ya'll might like to know that you can still get Windows 10 for free. Just got it last week
Here's how to get Windows 10 for free -- still

originally posted by: Neysa
Just thought ya'll might like to know that you can still get Windows 10 for free. Just got it last week
Here's how to get Windows 10 for free -- still

does anyone have positive things to say about it before I get tempted?

originally posted by: Tekaran
As far as windows updates, you may try disabling it by pressing and holding the windows key on the keyboard, and press "R". That should pull up the run box. Type in services.msc Find Windows Update in the services and disable it.

Excellent suggestion, I've just tried and it appears to have stopped updates with a message saying it couldn't update as the computer was switched off.
I'm keeping an eye on it but if this works thank you very much!

If I'm using my laptop with my phone tethered for internet it has updated in the background before and rinsed all my data contract. I can always enable it again when using wifi.
Thanks again, I'm surprised nobody gave you a star, does that mean other people think it doesn't work???

a reply to: eriktheawful

I've gone from 7 to their 10 update in the very beginning... I've only experienced auto update soon upon starting every other month or 2-3...but fortunate not to ever have any glitches