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But I didn’t think I should need the latest driver in order to install Win10. I thought it would install the correct drivers as part of the upgrade. And a Win10 driver obviously exists for it, so why would the Upgrade “Assistant” complain about it?

Is there any other possible explanation for that error message in my first posting?

Well I tried it anyway, but no joy.

I looked and my display driver is Intel HD Graphics 4600, v10.18.10.3412

Do I use a VGA driver if I am plugged into an HDMI port?

Z87-Deluxe/Dual

I thought about this after my initial posting, went to the ASUS site and got whatever drivers I could find. Ended up installing two Intel drivers. But still no-go on the Windows 10 upgrade. This is a less than 2 year old motherboard and I’ll be pretty unhappy with ASUS if they can’t even support it for that long. I have an email in to their support address asking about it.

I wonder if I can get drivers direct from Intel.

One Drive? Is that one of those “cloud” products that I’ve been avoiding since they came out? Of course this problem is totally expected.

I live in Oregon. We are very familiar with clouds. They change constantly. Who in his right mind would ever trust his valuable data to a cloud? No one.

If you are a teenager or maybe in your 20s a few years may seem like an eternity, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not. Don’t trust your data to any medium over which you have no control. You might lose it if you are poor at doing backups on your own, but you will lose it for sure if you trust it to someone else for safekeeping. You will. Not “you might”, but you will lose it.

Companies come and go, policies change with management changes, offers and deals change with the economy, and technologies change constantly. Clouds go poof! in the heat of the sun or of the competition or in the fires of corporate hell. I can still print my old B&W negatives. (And I’m not even near to retirement age, yet.) And I still have my own backups of my own data disk with way too much old crap stored there. Maybe losing all of your data once in a while is a small price to pay for a free cleanup. But if you want to keep it, keep it under your own control. Because you are the only one who really cares what happens to it.

I’m glad you, and many others, feel that Windows-10 is the best OS to date. It may and could be. Regrettably, it is still has major flaws that MS has chosen to ignore: buggy mandatory updates (continuing the Windows-7 update mechanism); a User Interface designed primary for mobile users; rendering any 16-bit programs that are often still very functional and critical to a business’ operation inoperable; general mimicking Apple’s philosophy (which is oriented to a different user base).

I strongly agree. They have lost their way. Consumer products may be more glamorous to make and more profitable in the short run, but Windows – real Windows, not some iPad mimic – is used in almost every business in the world. It may not be the best OS imaginable, but it is or was the best we’ve got. It is deeply stupid of Microsoft to ignore their most important customers just to enter the far more competitive world of consumer gizmos. A competition they are almost guaranteed to lose. Don’t they look around? Consumers are not need driven, they are style driven. (Trust me, I own a consumer-oriented business.) Microsoft is not doing well in the consumer market to start with and they are too big for the rapid changes they will need to make from time to time to stay in the game at all. Microsoft is the semi, Apple is the Ferrari. The semi will do thousands of times more work, but the Ferrari will do it with more style. What will we do when the only thing teamsters have to drive is Ferraris?

When you think about it, lots of the software we use upgrades itself automatically. But critical software (like our point of sale system) does not upgrade to the next full version without planning and user intervention and an OS certainly should never do so. If an “app” loses functionality after an upgrade, that’s just one thing not working and one thing to fix. It isn’t usually going to affect anything else on your system. But an OS upgrade can break all kinds of things other than itself and I think it is completely irresponsible to force such an upgrade on people without allowing them to time it for themselves.

Sure, most people will not experience any problems. But most people just use a few of the more common apps and Microsoft has probably tested with those. They can’t test with every available piece of software, so you know there will be problems for some systems and those probably have less common or even custom software with mission-critical application.

I did remotely upgrade the least critical of our systems just to see what would happen and to be prepared if a forced upgrade occurred – and it went OK. I’m putting off upgrading the rest of our businesses systems to Win10 until I can be on site to oversee it. That will be in late April. I expect few or no problems, but the price of failure while I am away is too high to risk it. Until then I have been relying on the GWX Control Panel and I hope it continues to be effective.

“That’s resulted in many unhappy Microsoft customers.”

If Microsoft cared about happy customers, Apple would probably have disappeared in the late ’80s and Linux would never have evolved.

A friend, who used to work for Qualcomm, and I were sitting at the patio table looking at my wife’s old Samsung Galaxy S2 and wondering about the best way to do this. We were also both curious what it would look like inside, so we dismantled it. Completely. When our curiosity was satisfied, we mashed the memory with 3# hammer and went our merry way. (Well, neither of us is particularly “merry” but it sounds good.)

But it was a tedious process and I appreciate your simpler, gentler method. Also, her phone had problems, but I think a donated working phone can be re-issued to someone needy or bedridden.

I use UltraEdit Studio from IDM software. It can be simple or vastly more capable than my little brain can handle. I purchased a lifetime subscription a very long time ago, so I cannot relate to cost. I also have its sister/brother program UltraCompare with the lifetime upgrades and support. It’s handy, but I would not recommend it unless you have a specific need to compare file contents.

I cannot honestly say that UEStudio is better or worse than the others mentioned because it is so good that I’ve never had to try any others in many years. In addition, their support has always been kind, personal, and excellent.

I have no affiliation with them other than being a happy customer.

I should also point out that, for all of their goofs in the design of this OS, Microsoft appears to have done a better job with the upgrade process than ever before. I had never even thought of upgrading the OS remotely prior to this, and I have been remotely administering our systems since 2003.

Well here’s some news. Some bad news I received yesterday afternoon prompted me to book a flight to Oregon on Saturday. I’ll be there for a few days, so I thought this would be an opportunity to try the upgrade on that receiving system. I know the consensus is that I should wait until May, but things will be really busy in May and I don’t want to start my learning curve then.

It sounded like NetOp was not substantially different from Remote Desktop for this purpose. So I started the upgrade this morning. If problems do arise I will be able to spend a day at the store working on it, probably Monday.

A point came where I could not connect so I had someone at the store take a look at it. She said there was a login prompt, so I had her login. Soon thereafter I was able to login with Remote Desktop. Maybe it would have happened, anyway, if I’d waited.

Now it looks like I’ll have a couple of hours’ working converting it from a goofy consumer/phone OS to a professional businesslike OS, but it does appear that my critical applications work fine and I’m confident to have them start using this system for their work. I will also start using it off-hours and familiarizing myself with the ins and outs before I try upgrading a more critical system.

Thanks to everyone for the helpful advice. It was all considered carefully and is greatly appreciated whether I actually followed it or not.

–Brian

I do use the GWX Control Panel. I try to keep an eye on them, but I’m not sure how that will prevent a surprise upgrade. But I guess you’re right. I’ll just wait and cross my fingers.

Thanks for the help, everyone!

I see your point.

I just looked up NetOp. Their pricing structure is not at all viable for small retail. Not even for a permanent installation, but especially not for a single upgrade on each of five computers. I really don’t need it for anything else. You are right that PCI compliant would be necessary for a permanently installed solution, but probably not to just use for the upgrade and then uninstall. I see that they offer a free trial. That would get me through one upgrade, but I suspect only one which isn’t useful. Does anyone know of a more affordable remote access product? I’d pay $150 or so to have remote access to all five computers, but not $989. Or maybe I should just wait until May and cross my fingers that Microsoft doesn’t somehow backstab me with a forced upgrade.