Jump to content

Follow-Up to My Windows 10 Comments - I Spoke Too Soon!


Recommended Posts

Craig, I had a similar experience with W7. I ended up having to reinstall. The same thing, Windows was searching for something that was no longer connected. In my case, I'm pretty sure it was an external drive. Why windows goes insane over something like this is beyond me. You can connect/disconnect things all day with Linux, force it to shutdown; throw it on the floor (well maybe not that), and it just starts up again. Windows...

anyway, I now always make sure I disconnect safely. Maybe this is what happened to you, or some other ridiculous thing. It's enough to make one consider switching to Apple. Linux is years away from being usable for music creation for most of us.

Edited by mdiemer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know there's something unusual I think starting with Win 10, that you better remove all HD's from your system when first installing Win 10, because it add some code to the boot sector of all the HD's in the system and if you make changes it can cause boot problems, requiring you to run the recovery CD to fix it. This is especially important if you ever want to use dual boot or adding a different boot HD to your system. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Kevin Perry said:

This is why I have Win updates disabled and always make an image of my C drive before an update that I choose to get. If I have problems I'll revert back to my saved image. This issue may also be bypassed by making sure all HD's, etc are disconnected during the Win 10 install, so it's not expecting to see other drive letters.

Edited by gmp
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On ‎4‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 4:05 AM, Kevin Perry said:

Hmmm...you may be on to something! I use a LOT of external drives, and also, have three drives inside the computer (in addition to the C : drive) with drive letters assigned. I remember reading something on the web where someone had a problem similar to mine, and unplugging all their internal drives fixed the problems. 

Edited by Craig Anderton
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, gmp said:

This is why I have Win updates disabled and always make an image of my C drive before an update that I choose to get. If I have problems I'll revert back to my saved image. This issue may also be bypassed by making sure all HD's, etc are disconnected during the Win 10 install, so it's not expecting to see other drive letters.

True, but as I learned...one image is not enough, if it's an image of an operating system that showed no apparent signs of problems, but hosed the system upon being updated.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

True, but as I learned...one image is not enough, if it's an image of an operating system that showed no apparent signs of problems, but hosed the system upon being updated.

I definitely agree one image is not enough. I make an image anytime I change something on my C drive. I have so many image files, that at times I need to weed out the old ones. I average about 1 or 2 a month. Many times I've backtracked a few months and then built the C drive back up with the changes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Gswitz said:

I never ever make images.

I keep what i care about on non system hard drives and rebuild the system drive from scratch when i must.

I used to do that, but 3 days of re-installing, finding licenses etc, versus 3 hours of a relatively unattended restore of everything (i.e. I only need to be there to switch disks)... backup images became a no-brainer for me. 

A full restore takes 1hr 40 mins for my WIN10OS/DATA drive, 30 mins for my WIN7 drive and 30 mins for my project drive.

Plus, it gives me the confidence to mess about with my configuration and try new things. Only backing up the Win10 partition takes 30 mins. I can change hardware, install new software (or Windows updates), do what I want... and if I don't like it, I can go back to what I had in 30 mins.

This was invaluable when I was getting my mLAN system up and running on Windows 10. I had to restore the OS a number of times to get the install right. Now I've an easy way of switching between my Scarlett setup & my mLAN setup, and it takes less than 2 mins to switch... click a batch file, reboot, copy my AUD.INI & TTSSEQ.INI over.... done.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, msmcleod said:

I used to do that, but 3 days of re-installing, finding licenses etc, versus 3 hours of a relatively unattended restore of everything (i.e. I only need to be there to switch disks)... backup images became a no-brainer for me. 

A full restore takes 1hr 40 mins for my WIN10OS/DATA drive, 30 mins for my WIN7 drive and 30 mins for my project drive.

Plus, it gives me the confidence to mess about with my configuration and try new things. Only backing up the Win10 partition takes 30 mins. I can change hardware, install new software (or Windows updates), do what I want... and if I don't like it, I can go back to what I had in 30 mins.

This was invaluable when I was getting my mLAN system up and running on Windows 10. I had to restore the OS a number of times to get the install right. Now I've an easy way of switching between my Scarlett setup & my mLAN setup, and it takes less than 2 mins to switch... click a batch file, reboot, copy my AUD.INI & TTSSEQ.INI over.... done.

I agree. I usually reserve clean installs for major system rebuilds. The last time I clean installed was when I upgraded to Windows 10 about 3 years ago.

Even if I can install a fresh copy of Windows in an hour or so, I am still looking to spend at least a week re-installing, authorizing,  and configuring all of my application software. Then there are all of the numerous tweaks I have made to the system to optimize it for audio. Have to figure out what I did and set that up again.

No thanks!

I like that I can re-image my system drive from a recent image file in about 35 minutes. I take daily, weekly, and monthly images, so it's no biggie to roll back to the last clean one. :D

Even in the worst case of  system corruption that I did not detect right away, then having to skip back several image versions to get back to a "clean" one, I could still mount the latest image as a drive after the restore and pull current data from it if needed.

 

Edited by abacab
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I keep my C drive as lean as possible. It's 64 gigs and my compressed Acronis image is only 30 gigs. I have an SSD drive and it takes me 7 min to revert to an old image - total time and 7 min to save an image. I have an SSD samples HD, data HD, audio wav files HD, and a very large backup HD which I run every night to backup my DAW, plus 2 more computers. 

After that an online backup backs up my backup HD in case my house burns down or something. I also have a 2nd SATA HD that I swap the SATA cable to in order to boot to a different HD, in case something goes haywire.

My docs and desktop are moved to my big data HD. I delete the "old windows" folder using "clean up system files by right clicking my C drive, that saves 15 gigs, I never need to roll back, since I always have image files instead.

My setup would take a week to build back from scratch. Any of us can have a computer disaster no matter how careful we are, so it's good to have a good plan to get back up and running in short time.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

7 to 10 was the easiest most problem free upgrade I've ever done. I didn't have to upgrade from scratch. The upgrade upgraded my Win 7 computer and also my Win 8 computer. I didn't have to reinstall any programs. It was a free upgrade, not sure if you can still get it free. 

You can also download an ISO file so you can have a Win 10 install CD that also has a recovery console to fix install problems and you can use to to install Win 10 from scratch.

I'd suggest saving your Win 7 HD and boot to it if you need to. And clone that HD and upgrade Win 10 with that HD

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you are feeling cheap, you can install Win 10 and run it indefinitely without activating it with a product key. There will be a nag on the desktop, and a few cosmetic restrictions, but otherwise fully functional. To do this, you basically you just skip past the prompt to enter a key. You can install Home or Pro.

You Don’t Need a Product Key to Install and Use Windows 10

https://www.howtogeek.com/244678/you-dont-need-a-product-key-to-install-and-use-windows-10/

You can also upgrade to the paid version of either Home or Pro later, depending on which edition you have already installed for free.

Note: The original MS offer for a free upgrade  to an activated copy of Win10 has been expired for a while.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...