Windows 10 Upgrade

Microsoft rolled out Windows 10 today. It’s a free upgrade to computers running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 if it is installed within one year of rollout. So I went to Windows Update and told it to install Windows 10. It did. It took 45 minutes to upgrade my Windows 8.1 machine to Windows 10. It took me less time than that to figure out upgrading was a mistake.

First problem: music and videos had no sound. The only sound the computer could produce was Windows system sounds. And those sounds went to my TV instead of to the computer speakers, even though the computer speakers were selected in the Sound applet. Searching on the Internet I found others having the same problem. It seems to be occurring with 64-bit machines.

Second problem: applications incompatible with Windows 10 had been removed. Calculator, a Microsoft app I use often, had been removed. I downloaded another Calculator from Windows Store. It worked with Windows 10 but it appeared radically different from the old Calculator; its new appearance was not an improvement, in my opinion. I’m guessing that Microsoft’s objective is to make apps on the Desktop look the same as, or similar to, the same apps running on a tablet or phone.

Third problem: every time I opened Firefox a message window announced Firefox wasn't the default browser and asked if I would like to make it the default. Each time, I responded in the affirmative. But it would ask the same question the next time I opened it. A checkbox in the message window was labeled, "Run this check every time Firefox starts." Un-checking the box had no effect; Firefox would always run the check. It’s possible that the default browser must be set some other way.

I’m sure these and other glitches will be resolved, but in the meantime I want a computer that simply works and not a project to debug. After upgrading to Windows 10, a user has 30 days in which to downgrade back to the original OS; I decided to downgrade. Restoring Windows 8.1 was easy. Click the Windows 10 start button, click Settings, then Update and Security, then Recovery. At that point there will be a “Go back to Windows 7″ or a “Go back to Windows 8.1″ option, depending on which OS was upgraded.

The downgrade took 15 minutes. After Windows 8.1 was restored, I noticed Calculator was still missing (the upgrade had removed it) and the charms bar had also been removed. Doing a system restore back to the previous day recovered both of those items.

I have a year to get the free upgrade, so I may try installing Windows 10 again in six months to see if the kinks have been ironed out. If they have not, I’ll obtain Windows 10 the old-fashioned way: by buying my next computer with Windows 10 pre-installed. Let the factory engineers figure out how to make the hardware and software play together. They get paid to do that.