Win 10 - Killing Two Birds With One Stone

Since she got her smartphone my wife rarely uses her laptop but had previously asked me to upgrade it from Win 7 Pro to Win 10 so that she would have at least one computer with Win 10. So I had done that and just left it untested until today, when I discovered that although the upgrade appeared to have completed satisfactorily there were actually some very obvious problems with it which soon led to it becoming unbootable. First off I restored the image I had taken immediately after upgrade which got it booting again, but when I tried a Reset, which should reinstall Win 10, it failed part way through. With the free offer closed I couldn't just restore Win 7 from an image and upgrade it again so what to do?

It turned out that you can use the Media Creation Tool to reinstall Win 10 to a system on which it has already been installed and activated, either retaining your files and apps or retaining nothing. I elected to retain everything and it appears to have worked perfectly, although the whole process did take about six hours. In the process it also gave me the anniversary update which none of the other Win 10 systems here have yet been offered!

So if your upgrade has problems or you can't wait for the anniversary update, and providing it is still booting, this is how you can fix it but - as always - image the system first.

 

Good info, Earthling - thanks!

 

Earthling, here's an interesting read about the Anniversary Update.
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/windows-10-anniversary-update-what-you-need-know-now.htm

And for those who use assistive technologies, have a look over here.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/accessibility/windows10upgrade
Do checkout the FAQs.

 

RE. the assistive technologies 'loophole', MS are reported to be planning to block general access: http://news.thewindowsclub.com/microsoft-block-free-upgrade-assistive-tech-85266/

Although, I reckon MS will need to do a lot of backtracking on their own claims and terminology usage to back out of that with a clear conscience, see their blurb about assistive technologies incorporated in W10, for example: https://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/windows10/default.aspx

 

Just another reminder of the need to backup the system whenever there is significant change. I always do so feel quite safe adopting the update, but I think ppl who do so are a tiny minority.

 

I've given the laptop with the anniversary update a real hammering this afternoon. It's stable. There will always be systems which exhibit problematic behaviour with updates/upgrades, that's always been the case.

 

Neither of my Dell laptops had any problems with the Anniversary Update. The Inspiron got it via WU and I had to use the Media Creation tool to update the Latitude. On one of them, W10 uninstalled Classic Shell but, I simply re-installed using the latest version.

I'm running Insider — Fast track on the Inspiron as well. I'll be checking daily for bug fixes.