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224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
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© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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And on my Windows 8.1 machine, my Update History now shows the Updater had 4 failed attempts today to upgrade to Windows 10.
I sure wish Stezza would send some of his mojo my way...
Wow, all those people trying to figiure out how to REMOVE "Get Windows 10" from their system tray, and you're like the only one in the world who doesn't have it. Color me impressed.
Notice a common theme?
Microsoft making life miserable for its customers....
lol..
no probs here.. just finished downloading the Pro ISO from M$ for a backup which I have burned to DVD..
all family PCs updated now for the laptops... 100% success so far Joe.. but I did expect that
sending mojo to ya
Thanks for the mojo...
It's not working yet, but I'll keep hoping. I'm up to 6 upgrade failures now...
I'm wondering if maybe we just have different definitions of "success".
For those who might be curious about others' experiences with Windows 10, I finally got so frustrated with my Win 7 machine not showing a Windows 10 update option that I finally found a direct download link and decided to do a manual install.
Well, after about 3-4 hours of downloading, checking for and downloading updates and making sure my machine was ready, it is finally installing...
And it says it "...will restart several times. This might take a while"
Well, I finished the manual install of Windows 10 on my Win 7 laptop. And after the hours of frustration (described above) trying to figure why it wouldn't do an auto-install, I did it manually.
I'm guessing the entire process from when I downloaded the manual install app until I started the new Windows 10 was something like 5 hours total. Maybe a bit more.
My impressions of Windows 10 right off the bat is that, as far as I can tell, it didn't mess too much with my workspace or whatever it's called. Icons in the same place, same scrolling photo album, and aside from a new search window on the bottom left toolbar it's pretty much the same.
The big annoyance, aside from the auto-installation failure and subsequent frustrating time waste, is that, just like Windows 8, MS decided that you need a lot of new apps as default on your start menu, and these stupid tile things, and some apps that you don't want that MS uses as a sales promotion. Like an XBox app which I have no use for, and the Store app, OneDrive, and Games and such. And these default photo and movie and mail, etc., apps. Personally, I already have apps for those things, so I had to delete those I could and re-arrange my start menu. Ultimately I'll download the Classic Shell app to make it look like Windows XP again. And I stumbled on the "Privacy" settings and realized that all of the "share" settings are turned on by default, so I went and turned them all off (location, etc.)
So far it seems to be innocuous enough, like a good OS should. I tried a simple file search, but it looks like you need to engage this Cortana personal assistant, which seems like a big deal, so I gave up for now. And it appears the biggest Windows disaster, IMO, which is the impossible-to-understand networking functionality, is virtually identical to previous versions.
On the other hand, it seems to be fairly intuitive when personalizing your stuff, like default apps and start menus and other stuff.
I guess I'll have to monkey with it in coming weeks to find out why others are saying it's awesome and fantastic.
My Mac has a Windows 7 Bootcamp partition, which is only ever used for Flight Sim (and then only once or twice a month). But GAK when it was last updated - last year, probably. if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Maybe one day, if I percieve there's enough benefit over W7, and it remains free (that's all I'm prepared to pay for a Windows update), I might go through the upgrade torture. Otherwise, I'm perfectly happy with it as it is.
And one more thing that really impressed me about Windows 10...
No longer do you shut down or restart the computer from the Start menu.
I've always wondered about the meeting where Windows designers decided, "Yeah, definitely. To turn the computer OFF you should go to the START menu". And everyone nods.
Now it's under the "Power" menu. Weird.
I found an interesting quote on zdnet about the availability of the Windows 10 upgrade for those who reserved...
" It may still take weeks for everyone who has "reserved a copy" of Windows 10 to get it, Microsoft officials have warned."
I think the biggest problem will be custom drivers, if you buy say a Lenovo it has some wacky stuff installed that may not be supported by Windows 10 yet, but if you want to be safe, go to the manufacturers website and check, they usually have a page listing what computers support windows 10 and what not.
Safest way is always to wait for a while and let other people bite the dust first.... ;) (hmm, just did that....)
But so far I think it look positive, most older applications work fine, I would guess biggest probolem could be older video cards.
Okay, well, since I’m a man of action, once I learned it might be days or weeks before my “reserved” Win 10 upgrade would show up on my 8.1 desktop, I decided to bite the bullet and do another manual download. I already had 6 “failed to install” errors as it tried to upgrade automatically, and I wasn’t gonna sit around and see what happened.
So I did the manual upgrade, and the whole process took about 3 hours. And for my other machine that wasn’t “reserved” it was closer to 5 or 6 hours total.
So I’ll say that the average user might expect the process to take 3-6 hours. Especially after you do all the necessary tweaks to remove all the unwanted apps it installs and change the default apps and fix the privacy settings.
For those who did the upgrade in only an hour or so, I’m shocked. Maybe they already had all the necessary files installed from a previous download, but between the main download and all the update downloads and installs, and then the install itself, and then tweaking your settings/preferences back to where they were before the install, I can’t imagine doing it in less than 2-3 hours.
Now, aside from the failed installs and errors on both machines, which I find unforgivable, what I really don’t like about the Windows model is it’s based on selling you stuff and making their apps the default ones (like OneDrive, their new photo and music and store apps, etc.) and deciding what you need and getting as much info about you as possible.
And this new Cortana “personal assistant” is a great example. It gathers as much info from you as possible, and the stated purpose is to help you. But I am VERY wary of that, plus I really don’t need or want a personal assistant, so I shut off as much of that as possible. Now all it does is search my computer, not the web.
But on the positive side, the search functionality is FAR superior to the horrendously slow search in Win 8.1. So I suppose the best you can expect in Windows is “better than horrendous”.
Also I noticed a new app called “Media Preview” on my desktop. And I finally poked around and found that it generates thumbnails for all of those media files on your computer, even FLV and TGA, etc.
FINALLY !!!
Again, something they should have had decades ago, but now it comes with Windows 10. Or maybe they had it before and I just was clueless. I’ve been downloading freeware apps for thumbnail generation for a long time now.
Anyway, the entire process for two machines was a huge pain and wasted the better part of two days. But I think I’m finally ready to move on, pretty much where I was two days ago, the only real difference is a minor difference in how my desktop looks and how I access some features.
Otherwise, I really don’t see anything really awesome or great about Windows 10. It’s just better than “horrendous”.
I'm just waiting for the cat fight between Cortana and Siri . . .
My Carrara doesn't work after updating to Windows 10. It gives me a grey box where the splash screen would normally go, that disappears after less than a second and nothing else happens at all.
It's a shame because I quite like Windows 10 in a lot of ways.
I'm wondering if maybe it's a problem with an older Carrara version? I have C8.5, 64 bit working fine on the 64 bit Windows 10.
I'm using the current version downloaded by DIM, 64 bit, on 64 bit Windows 10.
I don't suppose it does thumbnails for .hdr or .exr files now, does it? I had a program for Windows XP that added this ability to Windows Explorer but it never worked in Windows 7 or 8.1 and I really miss it. I can browse them in the mini-bridge in Photoshop, but I miss being able to see them in Explorer..
Wow, that's not good. I hope it's not a Carrara problem.
Nope, those aren't listed in the supported image file types.
And this is Microsoft. All you can hope for, IMO, is "better than horrendous", not "wow, I'm impressed"
That's no good...
Maybe try to update your display drivers from the manufacturer..
Just for Joe I did another clean install..
took around ten or so minutes to download the ISO file
about 2 minutes to burn the ISO to a DVD
then it took approx 20 minutes to do a clean install..
On the laptop it took longer to upgrade over the wireless network.. about an hour to download and about two hours to upgrade which is typical for upgrading..
but all done in one go with no hiccups at all.
Cortana is not available in Australia at the moment so we don't get that so maybe she is holding everything up for you, you know how slow the fairer sex is in getting ready ;-)
Oh, and TIFF is listed in the supported file types, but it's greyed out so you can't select and enable it. Not sure what that's all about.
Stezza, no need to go to all that trouble with photos and such on my behalf.
I'm guessing the difference in upgrade time is probably due to how well prepared your machine was prior to install. If you already have many of the files pre-installed, then the long process of downloading the main program plus updates will probably be much less.
Personally, my internet is limited to 5 Mbps, so the main software download was around 1.5 hours. And then it downloaded updates for another 1/2 hour or so. And that's even before the main install process.
And my laptop, which didn't even know about Windows 10 and had none of the files pre-installed, took forever. Around 5 hours total.
And I also, like I say, consider the monkeying with settings and defaults after install part of the overall process. Basically the time it takes to get your machine back to where it was prior to install. And get rid of all the unwanted stuff the install process did to your machine.
I just don't think the average user should expect it to be complete in the 1 hour you mentioned unless they're an "insider" or whatever. Me personally, I'm a complete "outsider" when it comes to this stuff.
And another interesting tidbit I discovered about Windows 10. Apparently it will be the "last" version of Windows. From now on they'll just keep updating/upgrading Windows 10, and we won't see a Windows 11.
Not sure what that means, or if it even matters. Maybe just a marketing thing so next time they can release a new OS named after a bovine or something, instead of "Windows".
Now, for those with some experience with Windows 10, I have a dumb (I think) question...
Forever with Windows one of the most glaring omissions (IMO) has been the lack of ability to EASILY back up the important stuff on your PC. I'm talking about Windows realizing that you want to save stuff like bookmarks and passwords for websites, email addresses, application downloads and updates and serial numbers and preferences so you can easily re-install, documents and personal files, Google Earth kmz's, Carrara scene files and preferences and stuff, and on and on. Even stuff that isn't in the "standard" windows locations and directories and libraries and such. I'm talking about the OS selectively and smartly assisting you to back up your important stuff, including an ongoing "incremental" backup in the background to make sure your backup files are up to date
And as far as I know, there really is nothing in Windows that does that. I *think* all that's available is based upon backing up just a Windows "system image", not really your personal files and stuff. So I've had to locate and download some 3rd party backup apps, or just live dangerously because it's too much trouble.
Anyone know if that has improved over the years?
Well, after doing a little research, it looks like there are like 7 options for backing stuff up. File History, Windows Backup, OneDrive, Reset this PC, System Image Backups, Recovery Drive Creator...
In other words you need to take a course in backups to figure it out. Even if, like me, you've been using Windows computers for decades.
Guess I'll live dangerously again....
Wouldn't it be nice if the OS asked you "So do you want to back up your computer? Well, you can back up this list of stuff that we detected on your computer. Wanna back it up? You'll need 5GB and it will take about 20 minutes"
Okay, well I really tried to say something positive about Windows 10, and I mentioned it has a cool thumbnail preview for all the cool image files.
Well, no...
Turns out it doesn't do TIFF or PSD or some other really basic image formats. After decades. Incredible.
So I re-downloaded the free thumbs app that I had just un-installed.
Nop. But I try to keep it simple, the OS goes on a hard disk and my personal files go to another. But it all depends on how valuable your information is, for example, my family photos area on an an external HD, and DVD.
As for backing up stuff I use Acronis TrueImage, it has a nice scheduler and a One Click shortcut.
So, it only took me minutes to perform a clean install, my stuff remains in the same location.
As for the passwords, keep it complex, I use at least 11 characters, letters, digits and symbols, I like to force my brain to keep it in shape despite the age. When I create a new password I try to memorize it in the very first minutes, then I tell my son do the same, just in case, and I use several passwords.
To be a bit clearer about what I'm looking for in an OS backup feature...
My browser is Firefox. And Firefox saves the usernames and passwords you use when you visit various websites. Online banking websites, forums, etc. And the typical user might build up 50-100 usernames and passwords in their files over a long period. And you can even go into the Firefox Options settings and see all of those saved usernames and passwords. Cool. Now, maybe it's easy for some to remember all of those, but not for me. I suppose I could use the same username and password for every website, but as we all know some websites have different security levels and require a certain format of password (eg, must include two CAPS and three numbers, etc.).
So that username/password file is an ideal candidate for backup.
Now, I have no clue where that file is or what it's name is. And in many cases I'm sure the file is stored inside the program folder, so it's not easily separated onto a personal documents folder or drive. Sure, I can search around and check the docs and find it. But a good backup utility should do that useless "grunt" work for me. And keep in mind that since I want the OS to keep recent updates to that file backed up on a regular basis, I can't move the file, nor do I want to mess up the program's ability to find the file.
I also travel quite a bit and love Google Earth. And when you bookmark a location it saves it in a ".kmz" file somewhere on your drive. Another ideal backup candidate. And again I have no clue of the filename or location.
And many of my VFX apps have long, detailed user preferences that are VERY important to me. Settings I've learned over the years that are VERY helpful, but if you asked me today what the settings are I can't remember most of them and why I have them. Another ideal candidate for backup.
And the list goes on and on and on. Carrara runtimes. Nuke compositing files. Render pass files. And so on.
Now I suppose if I was Joe Super User I'd have all of those saved into libraries, and I'd do all the preparatory legwork beforehand so I can just backup all of those Windows Libraries. Yeah, I suppose I could. But it's a lot of useless work that a computer should do for me. And I'd rather spend my time doing more important stuff.
And BTW, wouldn't it be cool if a backup app would realize that "hey, it's a pretty good chance that any Windows .doc files, or .kmz files, or .car files are files you generated so those file types should be backed up"
Anyway, I keep on hoping stuff like that will happen someday.
It would be nice. For Firefox, BTW, I recommend Mozbackup.