My opinion on a format and reinstall or just keep the existing OS is that there's no harm in trying it, if it works, great, but as soon as you encounter a problem just blow it up and start over since you know that's probably the issue.
I've had one time where keeping an OS during an upgrade worked just fine, and that was even on windows 8.1, and one time where it didn't.
My recommendation would be at least to uninstall the chipset driver for the motherboard from the PC before you power it down to actually swap the parts. That would probably help.
My opinion on a format and reinstall or just keep the existing OS is that there's no harm in trying it, if it works, great, but as soon as you encounter a problem just blow it up and start over since you know that's probably the issue.
I've had one time where keeping an OS during an upgrade worked just fine, and that was even on windows 8.1, and one time where it didn't.
My recommendation would be at least to uninstall the chipset driver for the motherboard from the PC before you power it down to actually swap the parts. That would probably help.
This ^ uninstall all of the old chipset/motherboard stuff before you do it. I actually went from an Intel build to a new AMD Ryzen build and everything worked perfectly fine (much to my surprise) except I forgot to uninstall some things before I did it, and after the swap I couldn't uninstall them. I ended up having to reinstall (which was not a huge deal), but it was cool that it even almost worked.
If you're on windows 10, change the hardware and then run the windows reinstall utility. It will keep all your stuff and just refresh the OS components IIRC.
Also known as Windows In-Place Repair and a few other convoluted names.
It's actually a pretty great, and surprisingly painless troubleshooting method, though it takes time, requires external media of sufficient size (first time I've had to go to Wal-Mart at midnight looking for a flash drive), and most importantly, you need to be able to boot into Windows to initiate it (so it's not good for catastrophic situations). I've done it a few times, though I still take an image of my boot drive before hand, I've never been displeased with the result (just found it didn't fix the issue in question).
That being said, I'll probably aim for a fresh reinstall in my case when that time comes. I'm carrying a User Profile from Windows 8, 8.1, and now 10, and while I know a few people who've done it longer than that, I'll sometimes get bugs that I'd rather do without. Insert your stupid "nuke it from orbit" joke here.
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
hmm after this weeks cumulative update I did the 1909 install and it took maybe 5 minutes, probably less. They must have front loaded a bunch of stuff.
1909 is delivered as a cumulative update, and there are only a couple user facing features, it's mostly just like an old service pack of yore.
To give you an idea of how similar they are, the actual build number for 1903 is 19362, and then patches are .xxx after that, so my work computer is currently on build 18362.387.
Windows 10 1909's primary build number is 18363. And they're so similar they actually literally use the same patches that 1903 does, no modifications at all, so if my work machine was on 1909 it would be on 18362.387, same patch number.
going forward 1903 and 1909 will be on the same patch number for as long as 1903 is supported.
I have to write this all into the OP at some point, probably over the weekend.
I mean, while no official numbers had ever come out, it's been reported that Cortana on Android/iOS had around 100,000 active users. 100,000 sounds like a lot until you add up the combined number of handsets of both iOS and Android and you get to about 3.5 Billion.
Which, if I can math, is about 0.002% of all users of those platforms.
Yeah--she was already dropped from Xbox One in favor of the in-built Xbox One voice command software (available for Kinect and I think headsets now too).
I still use Cortana on my LG G6 as a hangover from my Windows Phone days, less out of nostalgia and more because all my appointments and reminders go to my Outlook calendar, not my Gmail, and I don't really know if Google assistance will save appointments to a different calendar. Maybe? I actually tried using both Cortana and Google Assistant for a time before I realized how much I hated doing anything besides appointment and reminders via voice command, and watching other people use Google Assistant for anything beyond the most simplistic tasks (like me) was consistently an amusing exercise in frustration (less amusing for them).
I may be doing it wrong. In any case, I'll be annoyed if/when it gets removed from Android phones in my region.
Anyone have any strange taskbar issues after updating to 1909, specifically with the address bar?
After updating this afternoon, the address bar in my taskbar is extra tall. Buttons have extra space beneath them that isn't there if I remove the address bar.
If I switch to small icons and turn on the address bar, I see that as well.
I was vaguely aware that the small icons existed before seeing your post, but I had completely forgotten that the address bar is a thing that exists, if I ever knew about it in the first place.
The height of the address bar used to be short enough that there was no space beneath the icons. That changed after the most recent update. It bothers me far more than it probably should.
XP occupies a strange position for that--it was, after all, an online operating system.
I could see someone keeping DOS or even Windows 3, very deliberately, on a purpose-designed PC that never went online and just needed to run an old game or store an unchanging gallery of images or something. But XP?
Windows ME was such an interesting beast. It actually had a few things that became staples of Windows for a very long time. It was the first version of Windows with System Restore, the first with Windows Movie Maker, the first with a software decoder for DVD watching, etc. It had the same networking stack as Windows 2000 which was a huge improvment over what was in Windows 98.
But removing support for Real Mode DOS just broke too many other things that were in the Windows 9x platform. It was done for good reasons, but man it just broke so many things. If ME had kept Real Mode DOS it would have been a really good product.
MS long had a hard-on for shifting to NT architecture but never expended much effort at making it accessible. W2K was supposed to be the the platform that did it and all it really had going for it was a more W98 appearance. ME was more a result of a lack of commitment.
Soon after, XP was ready rendering both a waste of time.
MS long had a hard-on for shifting to NT architecture but never expended much effort at making it accessible. W2K was supposed to be the the platform that did it and all it really had going for it was a more W98 appearance. ME was more a result of a lack of commitment.
Soon after, XP was ready rendering both a waste of time.
Nah Windows 2000 was never supposed to be a consumer operating system. It still had all the driver restrictions that held NT back. It was better as a consumer OS, but it was never meant to be the OS for regular people.
My theory, and this is just a theory, is that the stuff that Microsoft introduced in ME was done that way so if it ended up being a failure it didn't take down Windows 2000, the more stable business oriented operating system with it. ME was very much a testbed. It crashed and burned in several facets, but it did serve as a testbed. Microsoft couldn't afford that with windows 2000.
NT5 was intended to be the crossover. There were discussions as far back as at least the development of W95.
Somewhere along the way, MS either was unprepared for, or got scared by, the idea of shifting home/casual users to the more rigid platform and split development between 2000 and ME. Thus ME's half-assed attempt to bridge the gap rather than the purpose designed XP.
What they had intended and what they chose to do only delayed the plan. Deep diving into just XP after the 9x was still a radical shift. The truth is, not too much has changed. They've just buried or locked away parts of the OS to prevent plain home users from inadvertently fucking something up. W10 osn't more accessible from NT editions, we just got used to it.
So Windows 7 is out of support after January 14th. If you're still running it, it really is time to move on.
Never. You can take my Win7 install from my cold, dead hands. :P
I dual boot with Linux anyhow (and use it a lot more than Windows), it's a far superior OS and software ecosystem.
So Windows 7 is out of support after January 14th. If you're still running it, it really is time to move on.
Never. You can take my Win7 install from my cold, dead hands. :P
I dual boot with Linux anyhow (and use it a lot more than Windows), it's a far superior OS and software ecosystem.
It may be time to have a talk about how your Linux partition... should become your only partition.
So Windows 7 is out of support after January 14th. If you're still running it, it really is time to move on.
Never. You can take my Win7 install from my cold, dead hands. :P
I dual boot with Linux anyhow (and use it a lot more than Windows), it's a far superior OS and software ecosystem.
Go to Windows 8.1. You'll need to install a third-party start menu, but really there's no reason at this point you shouldn't have already installed one on 7 anyway.
NEO|PhyteThey follow the stars, bound together.Strands in a braid till the end.Registered Userregular
edited January 2020
Controller talk: My wired 360 controller appears to have finally died. Player indicators light up briefly when plugged in, but no recognition of usb device by computer. I've tried it in every open slot (1 in the back, 1 passthrough on the keyboard, 4 on the front of the case). A quick poke at amazon says that first-party wired controllers aren't being made anymore. Are third party controllers any decent in terms of quality or am I stuck paying three times as much for a wireless controller I will never use wirelessly?
:edit: wait this isn't the pc build thread.
NEO|Phyte on
It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing... And take away its pain.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Amazon still stocks what appear to be genuine Xbox 360 controllers from third-party sellers.
But if your concern is cost, we're getting to the point where Xbox one controllers, which were never expensive for the basic model, are cheaper than Xbox 360 controllers by virtue age and availability. If we haven't already. XB1 controllers are Windows 7 compatible (they weren't at launch? It was 2013, so I don't remember).
You might not own a sufficiently long Micro-USB cable though.
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MichaelLCIn what furnace was thy brain?ChicagoRegistered Userregular
XB One wired controller is $40 on Amazon right now, comes with a 9ft cable.
Posts
I've had one time where keeping an OS during an upgrade worked just fine, and that was even on windows 8.1, and one time where it didn't.
My recommendation would be at least to uninstall the chipset driver for the motherboard from the PC before you power it down to actually swap the parts. That would probably help.
This ^ uninstall all of the old chipset/motherboard stuff before you do it. I actually went from an Intel build to a new AMD Ryzen build and everything worked perfectly fine (much to my surprise) except I forgot to uninstall some things before I did it, and after the swap I couldn't uninstall them. I ended up having to reinstall (which was not a huge deal), but it was cool that it even almost worked.
It's actually a pretty great, and surprisingly painless troubleshooting method, though it takes time, requires external media of sufficient size (first time I've had to go to Wal-Mart at midnight looking for a flash drive), and most importantly, you need to be able to boot into Windows to initiate it (so it's not good for catastrophic situations). I've done it a few times, though I still take an image of my boot drive before hand, I've never been displeased with the result (just found it didn't fix the issue in question).
That being said, I'll probably aim for a fresh reinstall in my case when that time comes. I'm carrying a User Profile from Windows 8, 8.1, and now 10, and while I know a few people who've done it longer than that, I'll sometimes get bugs that I'd rather do without. Insert your stupid "nuke it from orbit" joke here.
To give you an idea of how similar they are, the actual build number for 1903 is 19362, and then patches are .xxx after that, so my work computer is currently on build 18362.387.
Windows 10 1909's primary build number is 18363. And they're so similar they actually literally use the same patches that 1903 does, no modifications at all, so if my work machine was on 1909 it would be on 18362.387, same patch number.
going forward 1903 and 1909 will be on the same patch number for as long as 1903 is supported.
I have to write this all into the OP at some point, probably over the weekend.
Also, version 1803 is now out of support.
Amazon, Google and Apple won this round.
Which, if I can math, is about 0.002% of all users of those platforms.
I still use Cortana on my LG G6 as a hangover from my Windows Phone days, less out of nostalgia and more because all my appointments and reminders go to my Outlook calendar, not my Gmail, and I don't really know if Google assistance will save appointments to a different calendar. Maybe? I actually tried using both Cortana and Google Assistant for a time before I realized how much I hated doing anything besides appointment and reminders via voice command, and watching other people use Google Assistant for anything beyond the most simplistic tasks (like me) was consistently an amusing exercise in frustration (less amusing for them).
I may be doing it wrong. In any case, I'll be annoyed if/when it gets removed from Android phones in my region.
After updating this afternoon, the address bar in my taskbar is extra tall. Buttons have extra space beneath them that isn't there if I remove the address bar.
With:
Without:
I was vaguely aware that the small icons existed before seeing your post, but I had completely forgotten that the address bar is a thing that exists, if I ever knew about it in the first place.
Doesn't make it anymore stable, but it's one thing I don't have to care about.
honestly, it should be fine. The vast majority of people have had zero issues. doesn't mean you won't, but generally it's fine.
If you use 3rd-party AV or firewall, go ahead and uninstall those before upgrading.
I could see someone keeping DOS or even Windows 3, very deliberately, on a purpose-designed PC that never went online and just needed to run an old game or store an unchanging gallery of images or something. But XP?
I'm guessing 99% of them are bored white-hats running it in a VM, but yeah. There's definitely a computer out there somewhere running Windows ME.
But removing support for Real Mode DOS just broke too many other things that were in the Windows 9x platform. It was done for good reasons, but man it just broke so many things. If ME had kept Real Mode DOS it would have been a really good product.
Soon after, XP was ready rendering both a waste of time.
Nah Windows 2000 was never supposed to be a consumer operating system. It still had all the driver restrictions that held NT back. It was better as a consumer OS, but it was never meant to be the OS for regular people.
My theory, and this is just a theory, is that the stuff that Microsoft introduced in ME was done that way so if it ended up being a failure it didn't take down Windows 2000, the more stable business oriented operating system with it. ME was very much a testbed. It crashed and burned in several facets, but it did serve as a testbed. Microsoft couldn't afford that with windows 2000.
Somewhere along the way, MS either was unprepared for, or got scared by, the idea of shifting home/casual users to the more rigid platform and split development between 2000 and ME. Thus ME's half-assed attempt to bridge the gap rather than the purpose designed XP.
What they had intended and what they chose to do only delayed the plan. Deep diving into just XP after the 9x was still a radical shift. The truth is, not too much has changed. They've just buried or locked away parts of the OS to prevent plain home users from inadvertently fucking something up. W10 osn't more accessible from NT editions, we just got used to it.
I just built out a network for someone and they looked very annoyed with me when I asked them not to hook up their ME machine. "I do my work on this!"
No, please don't.
I dual boot with Linux anyhow (and use it a lot more than Windows), it's a far superior OS and software ecosystem.
It may be time to have a talk about how your Linux partition... should become your only partition.
Go to Windows 8.1. You'll need to install a third-party start menu, but really there's no reason at this point you shouldn't have already installed one on 7 anyway.
Heck, if privacy is the concern, Windows 7 and 8 got updates backporting a bunch of the infamous Windows 10 telemetry years ago.
:edit: wait this isn't the pc build thread.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Also eBay is worth a look.
Steam | XBL
But if your concern is cost, we're getting to the point where Xbox one controllers, which were never expensive for the basic model, are cheaper than Xbox 360 controllers by virtue age and availability. If we haven't already. XB1 controllers are Windows 7 compatible (they weren't at launch? It was 2013, so I don't remember).
You might not own a sufficiently long Micro-USB cable though.