Take Care with Windows Upgrade
After last weeks’ article we have had huge enquiry on the free Windows 7 & Windows 8 upgrade to the latest Windows 10. Mostly people have heard plenty of nasty stories about failed upgrades as I mentioned last week. In fact some of these failed upgrades have seen a previously reliable PC which was running perfectly stop running altogether because someone tried to do the upgrade.
In response to these problems this article will address in more detail some of the problems and fixes to avoid this situation if you are trying to do this upgrade yourself. Again we highly recommend that the upgrade be done well before the fast approaching July 19 cut off as after this date Microsoft is going to start charging for this licence upgrade.
So if you are having a go at this upgrade yourself the following is a list of the important things to consider. Firstly do some research on your peripheral devices such as printers, scanners, cameras, NILS readers, cattle scales, engine & transmission diagnostic devices, card readers & GPS devices to see if your hardware will be compatible with Windows 10.
You will most likely have to go to the manufacturers websites (such as Cannon or HP) to check for Windows 10 support or drivers and if nothing shows up here then try some forums or general Google searches. If you are finding that a hardware device is not supported then you need to decide right then if you can replace this device or alternatively stay with your current version of Windows.
The same needs to be done for any software that you currently use. For example there are many tax packages like MYOB or Quicken that do work with Windows 10 unless you already have a version of this software that is no more than about 3 years old. You also need to consider any specialised software such as desktop publishing, photo editing or drafting packages such as AutoCAD which again needs to be reasonable modern to work with Windows 10.
As with your hardware devices for software compatibility information the manufacturer’s website or industry forums will prove the most informative. Once all of this research is done and if you are still confident then don’t forget to back up a copy of ALL of your important information to an external hard drive before embarking upon the actual upgrade.
Depending on the speed of your Internet connection and the power of your PC then several hours later you should be running Windows 10. If this is the case then you still need to look into the following areas. Many email programs such as Outlook end up broken from the sending point of view and need to some Google research to find a particular command which fixes the problem.
You may also find that even though your printer is supported by Windows 10 it may still need to be uninstalled and re-installed to get it working. Also there is a common error whereby the Start menu/Cortana fails which can be fixed with a PowerShell script. Also on the software side of things programs such as sewing software and backup software often need to be re-registered to get them working again.
The upgrade to Windows 10 is certainly worth having for at least 95% of PC users however, my overall recommendation is that if you are always running short on your own free time or if you find IT to be an over challenging field then still look at the expense of getting an expert to do this upgrade as being money well spent.
Future Byte Me topics can be emailed to [email protected] and Bruce is contactable at Kerr Solutions, 205 Musgrave Street or on 49 222 400.
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