Microsoft's worst ever OS has done a number on my laptop.
After booting I ran some software to program a security system as I have done several times before.
I plugged in my serial to USB adapter, detection as as expected. The software however couldn't see the device despite having the correct port set and the Coms adapter being visible in the device manager.
Simple enough, I closed the software and elected to reboot.
At this stage nothing had crashed and there were no abnormal messages. On shutdown win 10 decided that there must be a problem and that it would fix the problem, no choice, the OS simply blundered ahead, apparently scanning and correcting non existent problems.
End result was that the "fix" resulted in scrambling all the user data on the HDD as well as stuffing the master boot record. As the install was an upgrade it was impossible to recover using any of the usual techniques. I finally checked the HDD in a dock with the intention of retrieving what little data there was only to find that there were thousands of cross linked check files.
Moral of the story, don't trust win 10, back up everything of importance and don't rely on windows recovery, luckily I have backups of everything of importance as well as a cloned HDD of the pre upgrade HDD.
FWIW system restore is turned off by default in win 10.
Nice one Microsoft......
Last edited by acropolite; 22-03-2017 at 10:45 PM.
Hey Phil, you need to come over to the dark side mate.
Get a Mac!
Ah, my little Paduan, you are merely edging into the shadow. When you are ready for true darkness, migrate to Linux.
My sympathies on the M$ b/s. I left that cr*p behind a decade ago. I still have limited instances of older Windows around, but nicely corralled inside virtual machines, where the damage it can do is strictly contained.
Know what you are saying Phil, I bought Alice a new Lap Top for Christmas, as her XP one was slow and getting on a bit.
She hates it.
I rebuilt her XP laptop with a fresh install and it is working great, I have Win 8.1 which is fine for what i do, But i will never install Win 10 on my Desk Top.
Nice to hear you and Liz are well, I still remember that game of pool we and John and Anna had at your place. it was a good night
We have a mix of Win, Mac and Linux flavour distros.
With Windows (probably not helpful after the fact) it's always a good idea to have two partitions at least - one for your OS the other for data. If possible, I split them via HDD (SDD).
That way, if it all goes pear shaped, my data is still ok.
I totally agree with John you can not resist the dark side of the force I booted out Windows 4 years ago and have not looked back Macs every where iMac 24" main desktop for home office ,Mac Book Pro which I am typing on now, iMac 20" in the Observatory running every thing ,G11 ,Gem2 , PHD Guiding ,ASI1600MC ,Sbig STI guide camera , Nebulosity 4 , Skysafari pro and all in harmony have not had a issue for well 4 years .
cheers Pete
My windows 7 (installed in 2011) is still running like a fresh install, but I did turn off auto updates on everything. Updates seemed to stuff up lots of things on my previous computer and slow it down each time as well.
We have a mix of Win, Mac and Linux flavour distros.
With Windows (probably not helpful after the fact) it's always a good idea to have two partitions at least - one for your OS the other for data. If possible, I split them via HDD (SDD).
That way, if it all goes pear shaped, my data is still ok.
I do the same under Linux. I have /home on a separate partition (plus a small partition for /boot/efi) so I can do clean installs without touching the data or (if necessary) the configuration files. I've never had Linux fall on its face and need a clean install but I do tend to lag behind the current version and sometimes a clean install is easier than doing three or four upgrades.
I'm running Mint with the Mate desktop but perhaps I ought to revisit Cinnamon - it appears to have improved since the last time I played with it. I run Win 7 in Virtual Box and I have to admit it has been very stable but having that .vdi file on my NAS is a comforting feeling.
Everything seems to be heading for subscription only availability. The next step will be that new computers will not be backward compatible with older operating systems so you will be forced into subscription services. I am thinking about getting a spare barebones desktop and storing that for a later rebuild so I can always use my existing non subscription software.
I have always used a Windows operating system and am currently persevering (if you can call it that) with Win 10.
I notice through this thread that some have changed over to Linux.
How successful is Linux in running Windows software? Lots of info on the net but also a lot of ifs and buts.
Rick that is the way to go, I love my desktop and i run Win 8.1.
That is where i will stay and if all fails i will just get my cloned copy of the HD and start afresh.
I have a windows8 laptop that I use for astro only (no internet surfing), I turned of auto updates when I got it 6 mths ago, now there are 350 odd updates waiting to be downloaded. Everything works as it should so I am not going to risk a bad update.