For the past few days I’ve been busy recovering from an upgrade to Windows 10.
Out of the box, my desktop computer came with Windows 7 installed. I hated it, and upgraded to Windows 8.1 as soon as it was available. That was stable, familiar, and very fast; if Microsoft had never touched Windows again, I would have been happy.
But, no. Along came Windows 10 (for some reason, Microsoft skipped Windows 9). Windows 10 looks a lot like Windows 8.1, but has a different memory architecture. Naturally, all my applications started upgrading to be compatible with Windows 10, and started running poorly.
So, I upgraded, laying Windows 10 on top of Windows 8.1 on top of Windows 7. BIG mistake. The computer became wildly unstable, gobbling memory and prone to hanging. I fixed things by backing-up all my data and resetting the computer to OEM out-of-the-box status (a clean machine with Windows 7), and then upgrading to Windows 10. The computer runs very smoothly now, is fast and, so far, quite stable.
There is one weird thing going on, and I haven’t been able to correct it: The computer won’t connect to the router wi-fi. All our phones and tablets continue connecting to the wi-fi just fine, but my desktop computer won’t connect to the wi-fi. Here is where self-indulgence pays off: We have a large-ish house on a large lot, and the router is at one end. I installed a wi-fi repeater at the other end of the house a while ago, because I like to sit on the back deck sometimes with my laptop and work while the dogs play in the back yard — and my desktop will connect to the repeater.
Go figure. My advice is to put off the upgrade as long as your can, and then upgrade a clean system.