Ventura County Computers has been hard at work taking a look at Windows 10 to see if there are any patterns in the problems of upgrading.
We have some fairly simple guidelines for potential upgrade problems:
To give you an idea of what can go wrong, here is one self-inflicted problem install we have had.
Our network tech, Toby Scott, upgraded from Windows 8.1 to 10 on July 29 (the official launch day) on both his home and work computers. Home went great. No problems of any kind. Work was a different story. There wasn't an Nvidia graphics driver for his work computer, which was running dual monitors. The default Microsoft graphics driver would only display the same content on both monitors. In trying to download a working graphics driver, Toby blew up the install and had to start over with a clean install. This meant installing every piece of software, his email (all 5 accounts), printers, scanner, OneDrive, Dropbox and several other online programs. It took him 2 days to get everything up and running. He ignored #1 above.
If you are running Windows 8.1 and would like to upgrade, go ahead. For the most part, the upgrade works with minimal issues. For Windows 7 users, the issues are murkier. Do you use a lot of old hardware, like printers and scanners? Some of them won't work well with Windows 10. Ditto for old software, particularly anything DOS based.
If you try an upgrade and have any issues, remember, we are here for you. Just bring it in and we'll have it up and running quickly. If you'd rather shortcut any problems, just bring it in and tell us to do the dirty work. It shouldn't take more than an hour. Either way, we're here for you.
Visit the CIPCUG user group website for the best self-help resource in the county.