by Woodsbum
My current profession requires me to be on top of all new operating systems and business software. This means that I made the HUGE mistake of moving my Alienware laptop from Windows 7 to Windows 10. From that last sentence it is painfully obvious that things did not go well.
Let me preface this whole saga by letting you know that I have already upgraded 4 other laptops to Windows 10. Those all worked very well and had no issues whatsoever. Since it was tested and seemed to work flawlessly, I proceeded to run the upgrade on my main system.
From the onset, I was getting the feeling that something might be wrong. The upgrade process was taking way too long, but I do have a 1 TB drive for my system and another 1 TB drive for movies, music, pictures, etc. There was always the possibility that the issue was associated with indexing all the files on both drives, so I just waited. I keep waiting. Then I waited some more. About the time I was ready to just freak out the system rebooted and told me that the upgrade was over, all was good and life was peachy. Of course it was in more technically appropriate terms, but you get the gist.
The system did its thing and I suddenly saw the new Windows 10 desktop. At this point I actually became a bit excited because the interface on 10 is SO much better than 8 or 8.1. All seemed wonderful UNTIL……..
Dun, don, done……
My screen went completely black and all I had was a mouse arrow. No Windows shortcuts worked so I had to Ctl+Alt+Del to get into Task Manager and open a run prompt from there. Interestingly enough ms-settings: didn’t work to open the “Settings” screen, nor did many other normal Windows command functions. About all I could do was open Control Panel, Windows Explorer, reboot and curse.
After messing around with things I discovered that the error log contained errors causing explorer.exe to crash and thus I lost my desktop. After reverting back to Windows 7 numerous times, uninstalling countless programs and getting Microsoft on the line to tell me that life was crappy so do a clean install I almost lost it.
Here is what I have found thus far:
Windows 10 doesn’t like Vipre Antivirus, Stardock, WindowsBlinds, any DVD software, IDT Audio drivers, graphics accelerators, or me.
I am now working on the 9th attempt to get Windows 10 on my laptop after uninstalling even more programs that are allegedly causing explorer.exe to crash and with the help of Microsoft I assume that I will have a completely useless laptop by Friday morning.
My advice for anyone thinking about upgrading to Windows 10 is as such:
Buy a new hard drive and clone your current system onto that second drive. Then attempt the upgrade from there. If it doesn’t work you can reclone it, uninstall anything causing a crash and then attempt the upgrade again. This way you don’t end up with a broken OS after you have to revert back from Windows 10.
Good luck and keep your fingers crossed for me. At this point I need all the help I can get.
