Windows 10
Subject	Detail
Upgrading to Win 10	With Windows 10 being so new, and not having many tips, we felt that our findings were the best information to share. With Microsoft offering free upgrades for a year, it seems a good idea. Our findings might help you.
Performance	Windows 7 was used to compare some basic speed tests, such as start up, run a couple of applications and shutdown. HP i5 Laptop 64bit OS gave the following: Win7: Power up to login prompt: 27 sec, Login ready to run:16 sec, Video App: 5 sec, Wordpad: 1 sec, Shutdown: 14 sec Win10: Power up to login prompt: 35 sec, Login ready to run:32 sec, Video App: 9 sec, Wordpad: 2 sec, Shutdown: 18 sec So, a definite slowdown was recorded in our tests. We also did the same tests on a 32bit OS Win7 and Win10. The performance was similar between 7 and 10, except powerup on Win10 was 2 minutes. This was due to compatibility problems with Win10 and the Video Adaptor.
Look and Feel	On first glance, I liked Windows 10. It was clean and crisp, with sharp lines, square corners and had a professional feel. But after a bit of use, I found the plain white Title bars were a bit boring, so decided to change some colours. Surprise ! you can't change the colours. To make matters worse, the white is the same on active and background windows, and the same on the title bar as the menu bars, so when you click to grab a window and drag it, you often miss the window because your mouse is a pixel or two, to low, and you hit the menu bar instead. So the window does not move and you have to go back and grab it again. The only way to tell between the active and a standby window is that the text (also can't be a different colour) changes from black to grey. But this is small and often way off to the left.
Touch Pad	On one laptop, after the upgrade the touch pad up/down drag wasn't working. On the other it was. Both are HP Probook i5. I found on the one that it wasn't working, the mouse properties were not set by default. I was able to set them in Control Panel,Mouse ,Touchpad,Settings,Scroll and under "One Finger Edge Scrolling" clicked Vertical and OK. Bewildering why one laptop did not need this to be done after the upgrade and the other did.
Unable to Shut down	On both laptops, after upgrade they would not shutdown to power off state. I could select it, and the screen would go off, but the lights were still on. (power, wifi etc). After some searching on Google, I found a recommendation to disable fast startup. It seems to be a compatibility issue. After doing this, I was able to shutdown.
Explorer location on launch	I noticed that every time you start Explorer or Computer, the folder window opens in a different place on the screen. I couldn't find any reason, so used the support contact at Microsoft, and they tested it, and confirmed it to be an issue, which will be resolved in a future build.
Login failed after a while	After doing some stuff online, the next time I went to login it failed. I found that as I had logged in to the microsoft site with my online login, this had created a login with that email and password on this laptop, without my knowledge, and made it the default. I changed the login back to my local PC one (Start, Settings, Accounts), and it still worked. I felt disappointed that significant authorisation on my laptop was changed without my knowledge.
Power options after upgrade	I found that settings I had for personal use, eg when to sleep etc, were all different after the upgrade. So if you do this, you will need to reconfigure all of these. Control Panel, Power Options.
Microsoft Edge - the new browser	Some quick testing with this, and it seemed ok to use. But there is no Home button. I had some weird experiences such as dragging the screen to a certain size and place, then maximise, then restore and it went back to some default place and size, and not where I had it before the maximise. Also, tricky to change the default search sites. You have to navigate to them first. When I logged a fault with Microsoft and they wanted to remote across my computer, they could only use IE or Chrome. (Not Edge). Fortunately, they have still included IE on the Windows 10 build.
HP Protect Tools Software	Both upgrades I did were on HP Probooks. One did not suffer this, but with the other, I had to remove HP Protect Tools Software. To do this meant removing several other HP Protect, Security and Encryption tools first, then removing HP Protect Tools.
Safe Mode no more	Safe Mode has been replaced with the msconfig start options.
Team Viewer Version 8 Compatibility	I was able to connect across a Windows 10 computer, but couldn't really do anything as the video scale and size was all wrong, and could not be adjusted. The task bar and start buttons were off the screen, and not available. Screen settings show as available, but attempts to select them were ignored.
Windows Updates	These are on permanently, and can't be turned off. These include security updates and any application updates that Microsoft may want to send out. Some people have worked out a registry hack to stop the updates. I have read that if that is done then it stops application and security updates. This is a significant problem for pepole like me, where you work out on site with expensive mobile data or places with limited bandwidth. The last thing you need is for 4 or 5 computers to start doing updates just before an event is set to go.
Personal Information and Updates	I read about this on a news site. So no credit to me, but can confirm that these settings were all on by default. There are several settings that being ON, provide information such as stuff you type to microsoft. Also that windows updates can go to and from you to other computers on the internet. Do the custom upgrade rather than the express, and you can turn these off during the upgrade.
Microsoft possibly charging in the future.	Again, I read this on a site, so can't take credit for it. Apparently some softeware has been found missing from Win 10, and to get it back, like it was in Windows 7 and 8, may cost you money.
Conflict with Norton	This happened to a friend. He had Norton and tried to upgrade to Windows 10. It killed his computer and lost a day sorting it out.
Event Errors	Browsed through Event Viewer, and I was shocked at the large number of errors. Very slow to load as well. One I noticed was the Security Audits. There was the odd failure, followed by about 20 Success in the following second. Also various other DNS errors, System writer access denied.
Roll Back ?	After most of the above, I have rolled one computer back. Not sure about most brands, but with the HP Probook, fortunately the factory build was still available from BIOS. It is Windows 7 for me, the best Microsoft OS so far.