I am sure most of you have been on this OS platform for years suffering it’s upgrades and nonsense. That’s not my case I stuck with Vista because I liked it and so few people where like me it never got attacked by viruses and the such like. It was safe I was used to it and my old computer was stable with old drivers just no hassle. My Kids also had old computers but were on Windows 7 which I found too flashy.
The funny thing is Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 10 are based on the same platform (if that’s the right term) contrary to XP and Windows 8.
Anyway eventually due to no updates of Google Chrome etc internet started to become hard to bear, videos wouldn’t play and bookmarks didn’t work just a whole heap of surfing problems. So I took the dive.
So as to keep the integrity of my setting I went through Windows 7 which at 1st didn’t update because that has no support either. Yet there was a way so I got Windows 7 upto date and to my knowledge breaking no licence as it just took 2 updates openly available from microsoft. (If anyone is interested in keeping Windows 7 upto date until theoretically summer 2023 PM me and we’ll see if it works (there is an ‘illegal’ way but I didn’t need to go down that path.
So you have a computer that’s over 12 years old and perfectly healthy. What can go wrong?
Obviously nothing upgrading to Windows 7 but Windows 10 is alltogether another kettle of fish. The damn thing just doesn’t install, so why? Went through all sorts of stuff until i realised that Intel had stopped supporting my chipset ages ago and even though the drivers support my hardware the information files don’t list it so Windows 10 will not recognise my raid array (this really is cheap and lazy it would take nothing to include my chipset on their inf files. So clone boot array onto a non raid hard drive. Uninstall RAID recuperate 2 small hard drives that made 1 bigger one (that took hours of file transfers and a couple of borrowed hard drives switch over from RAID to ACHI SATA (Even Windows 10 can handle that surely?. So what can go wrong now the problem is solved? noway any hard disk connected to sata port 0 causes some olmd boot error that only happens to 12 year old computers as nowadays the things have UEFI but not me I get NTLDR boot error. Ok how do we repair the boot files bootrec (am I learning a lot what a palava) down load a Windows 10 iso and repair the damn thing (got windows 10 up and running by having no drives connected to port 0).
Yippee what can go wrong now?
I’m sure your all bored so I’ll post my biggest gripes latter. This was just an experience a dissappointment as Intel should do better. Btw I upgraded my daughters 8 year old Laptop from Windows 7 to Windows 10 without a hitch.
Does not help you now, but for these kind of issues Driver Genius works really well.
I had an old Acer laptop which was no longer supported, but driver Genius found a compatible driver from Dell. I was pretty impressed.
Yep driver issues can suck in Windows 10. Had my video card fail on me last year and needed an interim until I could afford a new one. Only had a Radeon X1900XT in my box of old goodies. Managed to get one screen working but couldn’t use it for much else.
Also have had problems with a Turtle Beach USB sounds card where all media players crash after changing to the next song. This one is the most annoying because I’ve had to force some old drivers that randomly work one day and not the next. I’ve had to stop Windows automatically updating the drivers and hope Windows doesn’t lose the plot again.
For anybody upgrading for a system >5 years old my advise is to get another hard drive and do a fresh install, then swap back in the old one if its a nightmare.
Sounds like my daily job. With Windows 10, do a fresh install on an SSD drive and keep your existing drives for storage only. Then it flies. And don’t ever ever ever enable bit locker…
Or just buy an Apple. 
Thanks still interesting I only upgraded a few days ago so am still changing drivers back as things just are not good with windows drivers. I use TousLesDrivers which is also excellent and of course manufacturers sites Asus in my case. Just reverted to old sound card Drivers as the Microsoft drivers were horrible and even worst worrying, that will surely be in my next essay as it was a real concern.
Btw modern sound engineers are complete wankers!
My original graphics card, lovely thing, blew up years ago. As I wasn’t gaming any more I just got a GT 610 from the local supermarket (I can not go a day without surfing the net (coming on here)). Good thing is NVidia include all the information for all their drivers in the same update. I haven’t a clue what AMD do.
I’ll get onto sound later as previously said it was a big worry and Microsoft should be shot for that.
What and have nothing to gripe about?
Also I like doing the rounds on the internet reading about other peoples problems and finding solutions. Once I have Windows 10 stable I’m going to play around with some modded chipset/SATA drivers I found during my travels.
SATA will be another essay, microsoft really fucked up there. Are they competent at anything?
Wow, really thankyou, I’ve got my sound back. WTF is Microsoft doing? Just not possible to have such poor sound. Whoever is responsible for this shit should be drawn quartered then hung on a bungy cord so his feet touch the ground enough to keep him alive for a very long time.
Before I go on i’d like to know why all Microsoft drivers are dated 2006?
Why drivers from 2006 don’t cover my gear which was bought in 2008?
Microsoft champions of ‘n’emporte quoi!’
Biggest dissappointment was the corruption to my sound systems after I upgraded that in itself is criminal and incomprehensible (isn’t it the 21st century). Not only that the default presets risk damaging your equipement, is it possible to be so incompetent?
Yes sound and music is my biggest love, you know putting on any type of music and hearing what was intended. Voices sounding like well someone talking or singing for you. So my blood really boiled when Windows 10 made everything sound crap.
Not only that when I switched to optical out I got a 50Hz screeching (wft again) how can an optical out screech at 50Hz I’ve onle ever had that from Coaxial before and it doesn’t screech it buzzes. I went into settings and noticed the default settings had Dolby and DTS enabled, are they trying to blow my system up?
This is inadmissable you justt can not put default settings like that they should be options that you enable at your own guise. So I disabled this dangerous system theatening nonsense stuff. Did this stop the screeching, you’ve guessed it, no. (It did stop when the volume was changed from the tool bar, what the fuck is going on there?).
Yet even after setting everything ‘correctly’ the sound is muffled, about as dynamic as Gini on a very bad day. Stinks to high heaven and there’s no joy, howay can you dance to this shit and after an LFC defeat and your all frustrated all it does is depress you!.
Anyway to cut a long story short I have uninstalled Microsoft crap sound and gone back to Windows 7 card manufacturers 2012 drivers. Yippee got that beautiful, dynamic and joyful sound back with some volume.
… all that and these fuckers want you to pay for this shit. Fuck off I’ve spent days looking up solutions downloading reliable drivers and installing them. I thought these new fangled systems were meant to simplify your live not destroy it.
At least there’s other people out there who have these problems and post their solutions even if many don’t fall into your actual dilema eventually you find solutions and even better people who do Microsofts work for them.
Not me, I switched to Apple about 20 years ago and never looked back.
Or you could save yourself a fortune and install Linux. Even ancient hardware just flies; install it on an SSD and its blistering!
I have outlined my problems with sound cards and their drivers. Now it’s the turn of the software. I rejected windows media player back, well even before i bought and constructed this computer (before 2008). Just sloppy sound well at the moment I’m back using it, why?
Well before the upgrade my prefered default software, which gave clear crystal renditions of my music sources, was iTunes (apple). I actually hesitated upgrading to Windows 10 when I was told this ‘had’ to be uninstalled as it was no longer supported under Windows. WTF. I mean now I’m going to have to do the rounds of compatable media players to find one that does boost bass, flatten treble and cause other disagreeable phenomena.
As I said I’m back on windows media player (I had uninstalled all others due to my attachment to iTunes player).
So if anyone has any suggestions, ideas or opinions on good media players please do pipe up and I’ll give them a try out.
Edit: Just used groove music (preinstalled on Windows 10) it’s fucking awful worst than windows media player by an immeserable long way. Once again what are these shit heads doing?
I tried Linux gave up as the things I wanted seemed to need programmers knowledge to get them installed. I have friends who use it but they are all much more tech orientated than me. Also back in the day I was a bit of a gamer Apple and Linux didn’t cover that very well.
I won’t game on this dinosaure but if ever I upgrade my hardware it will be a criteria that I will think about.
Linux can be tricky at times, but there is an amazing amount of support out there, and the enhanced performance more than compensates for the additional effort. And if you need to run something designed for Windows you can always run it in a virtual machine.
It was a long time ago I tried Linux and just found I didn’t understand how to get it functioning then they started charging for it and Windows promised no hassle OS (obviously complete nonsense hence this thread). I just find that it’s too techy and those that use it don’t speak to us non savvy guys (I have enough trouble toasting bread let alone learning a new language). The advantage of windows is that complete dorks use it and the answers to their problems take that into accout (meaning you find solutions).
I just haven’t the mental capacity to go though that shit again (I suffered Lyme desease for over 12 years and couldn’t even toast bread) that leaves traces on mental capacity.
I really did give Linux a good go back in the day part of a utopian dream but it’s past me now.
I understand the advantages and regret never being able to cope with it.
As for apple my brother regrets changing to windows, it just wasn’t an option for me there really is a lack of controll over that poop and lack of software back in the days…
Who started charging for Linux? It’s completely free. I can understand your frustration, it is different, and without an understanding of the command line it can be a bit tricky to master. However most
distributions do have a gui making Linux a little more comparable with Apple products and Windows. Each OS requires a little patience and tenacity to master, Linux perhaps a bit more than the others.
To be honest I like the Apple OS, which I find to be far superior to Windows, but then I do have to declare an interest; I dabbled with its predecessor at Xerox Parc. (Yes, I am that old - the first computer I worked on was an ICL 1916 which we programmed with punched cards - happy days )
Fedora just one i remember.
Just got iTunes windows 10 version installed on my computer. Just as good as the old version I had before, great balance, clear sharp and musical much better than windows media. Would really like to know if anyone thinks there’s a better software for playing music?
RAID, SATA and ACHI here Windows 10 is a real bummer when upgrading. I had no problems upgrading from Vista to Windows 7. So why put a tonne of massive spanners in the works to upgrade to Windows 10?
Ok Intel has ended support for their very good but older RST chipsts however the Windows 7 drivers work just fine why not complete the .inf files with those?
No instead Windows 10 makes it impossible to keep your RAID arrays, which leads to and extra expense and worst still a lot of time and effort converting to SATA ACHI mode. Once this is done you then have to find how to overcome boot problems because the lazy cunts rely on the fact that new BIOS chipset have a thing called UEFI. Yes I get it they want you to buy a new computer, not only that they push those silly little laptops, go hang yourselves, idiots.
Once tou manage to get past these hurdles you notice that you have lost 20% or more performance from your hard drives. Not only that your hard drives show up as removable divices and there is no way to change that in settings. When you look for help they tell you it’s a problem with BIOS, NO IT IS NOT! It’s a problem of windows .inf files not recognising what your BIOS is telling the OS. DO NOT up date you BIOS if you had a stable system before as the updated BIOS will change nothing and might mean you lose the possibility of a stable system in the future. Do a search and get the old chip set .inf and dll files for Windows 7 and over ride the stupid Windows 10 files. Intel chipset.exe and satacontroller.exe normally will do this for you if not use OVERALL command in cmd.
At last everything is recognised and normally you have a stable system.
As indicated this is a shared problem with Microsoft and Intel they have just been lazy and both are pushing for you to buy new computers. Some of us can not afford to do that at a wimp and certainly don’t want a laptop that they push and overheat massively when gaming. Just soo many reasons not to throw out what works. (EDIT: oh! and tiny screens that need binoculars at my age the comfort of having a 'proper screen in comfortable surroundings is a must, also I ask if a 500 euro laptop really is any faster than my 12 year old dinosaure?).
Anyway after a real marathon trying to fathom what the problems were I have a stable system that works very well thankyou.