I had a wonderful trip through hell on my first encounter with Windows 10, but the bad thing is that the problems just kept on coming. And they still are. I’m currently writing this article on a Windows 10 PC and who knows what could happen as I’m doing so.
Ethernet Driver Issues
Let’s start with something I thought wasn’t Windows’ fault, but turned out to be one — Ethernet. Although I initially thought my ISP was to blame for my poor connection and frequent cut offs, but that’s not the case at all. Apparently, my Ethernet driver randomly fails for no reasons at all. It’s absolutely unpredictable – sometimes I can play a three hour intense game of Grand Theft Auto Online without any hiccups, but other times my driver would fail even when just casually browsing the web. And please, please don’t tell me I should be fine using just Wi-Fi on my laptop. Wireless is unreliable and completely unsuitable for gaming or high-speed data transfers of any kind.
GPU Driver Issues
Even though I thought I’ve fully dealt with my share of Adobe-related issues, but I was beyond wrong. It wasn’t long before each and every time I opened Photoshop I was greeted with this message:
And this completely baffles me. All my games run just as good as they did on Windows 8.1 (if not better), but something as simple as Photoshop fails to befriend the new GPU drivers. And trust me, I keep checking the NVIDIA app for updates every single day. To be fair, I feel like some of these updates only made matters worse, as I encountered this issue right after updating to the latest version of my driver. On a side note, a friend of mine with a 17″ Alienware laptop experienced problems even worse than mine. His laptop has a 980M GPU which is an absolute beast, but his latest driver update prevents him from even starting his games, and his laptop crashes as soon as he launches any game. Although he easily solved this issue by installing an older driver, the whole experience of installing a driver that downgrades the performance of your system is something I’ve never really seen before. But we’re not done with the issues I experienced just yet. I constantly use my laptop kind of like a desktop. I have an external monitor plugged in whenever I’m at home. But Windows 10 doesn’t seem to like my multi-monitor habit, as it often flickers at random times as you can see in the video below. And it happens more often than you might think. If I had a dollar every time that I saw the message shown below, I would have a stable enough money to hire my own software development team and make my own OS.
At first I was mad at the driver developers over at NVIDIA for not fully testing their drivers before releasing them to the public, but later on, I found out that this issue isn’t exclusive to NVIDIA graphics cards. My cousin’s Lenovo laptop with an AMD R5 M230 also bumps into the same problems, even when he’s not using a multi-monitor setup. Talk about issues.
Audio Problems
Even though it’s been quite a long time since I shared my audio driver issues with Windows 10, there is still no official fix for this problem. Forums, discussions, driver updates, and supposed fixes have brought me nowhere. And the problem is insanely annoying. Even at just level 20 on the system volume, the audio comes out over-amplified and distorted. It doesn’t matter if I’m listening through the laptop speakers, headphones, or external speakers. It’s all the same. To be fair, this hasn’t bugged me too much since I own an external audio card. Luckily, that works just fine and I didn’t have to do anything. Of course, this solution only works if you primarily use your laptop at home, where you’ve got plenty of desk space to work with. But what if you’re on an airplane and want to watch a movie with proper sound? Should you lug around an external audio card? Obviously not. So, please, Microsoft and Realtek, get it together and fix this once and for all.
Freezing Up
“What is this freezing you speak of?”, you might ask. Well, let me introduce you to these two articles: Why I’ll Never Try Changing the Windows 10 Login Background Again Windows 10 Day One Impressions – Freezing
Every Cloud has a Silver Lining (It’s not all bad)
Windows 10 isn’t all bad, however. Although I’ve had a terrible experience running it on my primary laptop, I had little to no issues using it on desktop computers. There are also a number of features which really do help the OS stand out and clearly indicate that this is the next big step for Microsoft. Here are a few of the Windows 10 features I really enjoyed (in no particular order):
The Improved Gaming Features
From DirectX 12, to the new Xbox-related features, everything new that Windows 10 brings to the table in terms of gaming is sure to please.
The Dropbox Integration
Giving Dropbox it’s own spot next to OneDrive in the file explorer is a rather big step, since I’m not sure how much people use OneDrive that actively anyway…but I know that Dropbox is definitely popular.
The New Start Menu
I would have been absolutely mad if Microsoft got rid of the live tiles it introduced in Windows 8. But they didn’t. Instead, they combined both form and function in the new Start Menu, which is already considered one of Windows 10’s main highlights.
The New Minimal Settings UI
It’s fresh, it’s tidy, it’s functional. The new UI of Settings shows exactly what a modern OS has to look like.
The Action Center
A separate notification tray-ish feature is exactly what Windows 8 was missing. Luckily, Microsoft got that figured out and brought us something even better.
The Improved Battery Life
Battery life in Windows 10 is as good as it gets. No further comment needed.
What now?
In my earlier unplugged article I mentioned that I’ll give Windows 10 a spin and will decide if I want to downgrade to 8.1 Pro. Well, I believe I’ve given Windows 10 all the chances I could and it’s failed plenty of times already. Sadly enough I can’t make a simple downgrade to my old version of Windows because I rushed and deleted my windows.old folder. You know…I was running low on space on my SSD (thanks, GTA V!). I’ve already purchased my Windows 8.1 key and Windows 10 is pretty much living its final days on my laptop. I’m sure many of you will disagree with my downgrade decision, but as a university student who is going to work on a lot of media projects, I need maximum reliability and functionality. Windows 10 has failed to give me that so far, and thus I have no other choice but to downgrade. This is by no means a final goodbye. After seeing Windows 8.1 a few years ago I swore I would never use it again. But here I am, several years later, rather happy with what it has to offer in comparison to Windows 7. I’m sure this will also be the case with Windows 10. As more and more updates are being rolled out Windows 10 will eventually become just as stable as its predecessors (or maybe even more stable). But until then, I’m afraid this relationship is over. Goodbye Windows 10. I’m sorry it didn’t work out between us, but you just didn’t live up to my expectations. I’ll see you in a few years. I hope you’ll have improved for my needs by then. ASUS ROG G551JM 15.6″ 1920×1080 Screen Core i7-4710HQ 2.5-3.5 GHz NVIDIA 860M 4GB 256GB Samsung EVO 850 SSD 1TB WD HDD 7200 RPM 16GB DDR3 RAM I have also had the same problem with crappy internet connections. I have searched fixes on you tube and internet and by the number of visits to these pages there is a whole heap of people looking for fixes to issues. Pretty disappointed in mircrosoft. I am also experienced exact error which you mentioned above. On top i have facing drag and drop issue also. Every day facing different kind of errors. Some times search button not working. Note able to go to the computer management. You were right, better to downgrade. As Microsoft provide continued updates (in my case at least) both machines are running considerably better. And in relation to my laptop, which ran Win 7, my experience with Win 10 has been far more positive. 8GB RAM, 1 TB HDD Quad core processor 2.16 (up to 2.66) upgrading to windows 10, so I went to the acer support site, & they have the latest drivers for my model for windows 10 x64 bit, running like a dream & faster, would never go back to windows 8.1. Glad to hear I’m not the only person experiencing this! But all these worked perfectly on windows 7 as well as 8.1.. But i still wont blame Windows 10, Even when windows 8 was launched i had problems with my drivers,however in few months all these were fixed,all released new drivers and all.. So I wouldn’t actually worry about that. For now I’m enjoying the free lifetime upgrade to Windows 10 Pro.. Only key issue I had was that MSFT Money ceased to function – MSFT corrected that with a fix over the weekend thankfully. Education is a wonderful thing. I have also mentioned multiple times in my article that most of the issues are driver related and whether that’s the driver vendors’ fault or Microsoft’s – you can decide. I’m currently writing this from my fresh install of Windows 8.1 and I haven’t had a single problem. :) Anyway, I said it a few scrolls back and I’ll say it again – I’m glad I’m not the only person with these issues! I tried replacing the driver files (signed by Microsoft) with ones published on Broadcom’s web site. The file names inside appear to match exactly with the file names that Microsoft is claiming to have installed. So, I’m not terribly hopeful that they will work, but I have to try something. Downgrading to Windows 7 is certainly an option, but I’d much prefer Microsoft fix its issues. I installed the network drivers from Broadcom and that addressed my network problem. I’ve now been using Windows 10 for a few months without having any serious issues. Sometime during these last 4 months, I bought a new SSD drive. I installed that in my machine and re-installed Windows 10 from scratch. I, again, had to install the Broadcom network drivers, but otherwise the installation was just fine. I absolutely hated Windows 8 when it came out. I’m not a big fan of the tiles on the start menu in Windows 10, but it’s tolerable. At least Windows 10 does not get in the way of me trying to get work done. I’ve now upgraded two desktops and three laptops to Windows 10, all without significant incident. (One ThinkPad had an issue with a wireless network driver, but Lenovo had an updated driver that I installed.) Windows 10 is OK, but it’s not like prior upgrades where I could say “wow, that’s cool!” The only new feature I think is cool in Windows 10 is the ability to have multiple desktops. That was something I could do on Linux for years, and it’s nice to now have in Windows 10. Other than that, I’m left wondering “why even upgrade?” I know my reason: because Microsoft is moving along and there’s no reason to cling to a product that is now “old”, even if it worked fine. New development is going into Windows 10, so I figured I might as well jump on board. I really do miss the Aero interface in Windows 7. I think the UI looked so much better than Windows 10. Windows 10 is very plain. But, it gets the job done. That’s what’s important. Backup data, get latest drivers, Get current Application setups, upgrade, Activate and do a clean install, nd you are home free. So I went to the GO BACK TO WINDOWS 7 and it appeared to go through the process although it wasn’t time consuming at all. Problem: When I booted the laptop up again it still presents the Windows 10 – NOTHING HAS CHANGED!! I’ve done this several times because my install was a mess and I had to try it several times before upgrading so why not try downgrading a few time. No go. I’m running out of time on my 30-day trial so any suggestions would be appreciated. I’ve done my homework and googled my problem but no one seems to have had this experience. Unfortunately for me the stat menu refused to launch, non of the icons on the start menu were clickable and I had to ctrl+L to lock and restart from the lock screen. After all that, I was to lean that I would have to trouble shoot every time just to get a wifi connection. Ram usage was excessively high for a laptop just sitting on a desk on standby. I searched for ways to remove some of the fantastic bloatware that Microsoft felt the need to force down my throat, things like Bing News and Finance – all life changing apps. I found one method of uninstalling the whole app pack in one go. This was all sunshine and roses until I discovered that not only did it remove the Bing apps, but the store and basic apps like the calculator went too. I didn’t mind losing the app store because it force closed every time I clicked on something in it so it was initially as useful as a box of hair. Then some time last week I went through a storage container and found a box of old family photos and thought, ‘Gosh, darnit! Lets scan these!’ Only to discover that there were no supporting drivers available for my lexmark scanner – so that was a dud. My laptop was hot, so hot and I was about ready to resort to wearing fire retarded clothing, a helmet and goggles before sitting down in from of it. It sounded angry with me and like it was going to burst into flames or take flight! Eventually, the good Lord spoke to me and said that I could revert back to my previous version of Windows 7 Ultimate which I so dearly loved. A few clicks and a cup of coffee later and windows was rebooting into 7. I got my scanner drivers, lit a cigarette and thought what a fun time I was going to have scanning all 4800 of my baby photos when something caught my eye. Alas, it was not the good Lord but instead some rubbish saying that my version of windows was not genuine! I’m sure that you can appreciate my complete and utter shock! I starred at this nonsense at the bottom right hand side of my screen and thought ‘screw you, Ill be on chrome anyways so I wont see you!’ THEN, the bastard thing decides to go behind my back and change my wallpaper and transparency settings! Like, HELLO! YOU DONT MESS WITH A MANS SETTINGS! So after two nights of this rubbish, blisters on my wrists from typing and trying to find a fix and or validate my version of 7 (which for your information has been running of this machine for 4 years) Good luck to you guys out there. Seriously though, there are major driver issues, multiple blue screen crashes – with a rude smiley face thing going on and the whole thing just feels completely rushed to me. Quite possibly a premature release. Yes, I did do all updates before rolling back to 7… not much good that did. Looks to me like they are giving people the option to roll back to 7/8/8.1 within a 30 day period and then forcing you to install 10 again. All part of some scheme for world domination, a world with one OS that runs on everything (except 7inch tablets or smaller, and yours and my pc) Merry Christmas Folks! Beside some of the design choices I hate, shitty privacy settings and the bloatware that I get by default and that I cannot completely remove, I had multiple problems on both the desktop and notebook. On my desktop I have some weird wake-up from standby issues that I never had on 7. On my notebook I have some really annoying issues with the new immersive UI or whatever is called. Even after the latest build the start and the system icons from the task-bar start/stop working randomly. There are all kind of “fixes” you can find online none of which will permanently fix this. I can only assume this is related to the new “integrated apps” (that I really hate btw). It boggles my mind how the geniuses from Microsoft were not even able to make the new interface work as it should (at least I can use classic shell and remove the hilariously bad new Start). It also boggles my mind how the interface is still so disjointed, how the heck they were still not able to make things look the same after the failed experiment they had with 8 ? Long story short, Windows 10 is still in beta, I will get back to 7, at least on my desktop. And also, I wish the best of luck to Vulkan, DirectX is probably the only thing that will force me come back to this joke eventually… BTW I want to downgrade for various reasons you posted as well. I tried all my old tech tricks to get it to work, and it would, until the next reboot, and it was case of rinse and repeat. Then, during one reboot, the login would flash/blink over and over, so I couldn’t login. After 3 hours of it doing this, I got into Windows 10 got the “unloaded graphics driver” message, and then rolled it back to WIn8.1. I have since removed all the Windows 10 update/upgrade notices. Windows 8 isn’t all that crash hot, but at least it is usable by comparison. And no, not going to put it on my WIndows 7 Pro desktop. I tried to uninstall and reinstall old drivers but win10 wont allow them to be installed or just le. ignores them. Had to go back to 7 to fix internet access.eing non compatab Why are normal common laptop drivers not included by defailt like the were in older operating systems. Why doesnt the test program detect this and stop the install Strangely enough I come across this a long time later… but now we are fast approaching the deadline for free upgrade, I wonder if you’ve by now dove in again and given it a try? Personally, I’ve upgraded over a hundred computers for my company in the past 6 months and will have completed about 200 (give or take) by the deadline for free upgrades. And ever since then there have been less and less fixes needed. When i first started upgrading them in February, I quickly found that even if I checked for “updates to drivers” I was always notified they were up to date, even though upon uninstall and re-install of those same drivers, suddenly previous issues were resolved. (the last 20 – 30 upgrades haven’t even needed that). Occasionally the Start menu wouldn’t work, so running the Powershell I was able to run a repair of the apps and “Viola!” problem resolved. And yes, there were (are?) a lot of other problems that have cropped up, and been resolved with just a few minutes search on google. This is my favorite Microsoft OS in years, even over Win 7, once you get oriented to the new locations on some things. And the start menu? Better than Win 7 and infinitely better than the tablet-purposed junk for Win 8, not to mention easily customizable. And to be clear, I’m not running PCs on anywhere NEAR the specs that you are… (these are work computers after all, how much power do we need?) but given that you obviously have put in some work to get it to it’s current (8 months ago) state, I think you should give it another go and share your thoughts, before many people get the wrong idea and run out of time to save a hundred or so bucks… not a lot of money, but too much to be wasting…. One Gamer to another…. I dare you. When I first posted on here back in 2016 I wanted to downgrade from 10 to 8 because I was having some MAJOR issues. From lag to freezing, to certain components not working, etc. Mind you this was installed (not by me) on a brand new laptop and I was having ALL these issues. After searching online in 2016 it turns out I was not the ONLY one these things were happening to. However, in late 2016 that same laptop crapped out. I went and got the laptop itself fixed for $150 and they reinstalled the SAME disc using Windows 10 and? I have been totally fine for over a year. Knock on some freaking wood. I have no errors. I have no lag. No freezing. All my components work. All my apps work, etc. The ONLY ONLY ONLY thing I still have issues with, is the start menu. When you put your mouse over it and click, nothing happens. However, I did find a work around that works for me. Simply right click on the “windows” start button, the menu with programs and features, mobility center, etc shows up. If I wave my mouse over the entire menu, up and then down, up and then down again and then I click the left mouse button the start menu FINALLY shows up. I know. Its stupid and it shouldn’t happen, but it does, and its not that big of a deal. Anyway. I retract my previous statement. I love Windows 10 now that its error free. So for others, I would simply say that if you are having major errors, lag or freezing perhaps you could try to uninstall windows and reinstall again. Just remember to back your stuff up. Thanks again for the feedback! -Steve groovyPost Comment
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