The Sinclair QL Forum

I suppose I should have known better. I've trashed my main PC with all the QL stuff on it by attempting to upgrade to Windows 10 and typically Microsoft it's failed with a problemn I didn't know of but it seems many thousands have - Start menu, Cortana, searching etc all fail and none of the fixes work. Worse, it stops me rolling back to Windows 7.

#I'm writing this from another computer to let everyone know I can't be bothered fighting any further with it so I'm not going to bother restoring the QL stuff until Microsoft get off their arses to admit to and fix this problem so many are having, which means to all intents and purposes my involvement with the QL scene stops until this is sorted. 2015 has been a disastrous year for me, this just takes things one step too far.

Forgot to mention as well that it managed to wipe all my emails from Windows Dead Mail, so I have no email now either.

Somewhat considerably less than impressed.

If someone will let Quanta know I won't be around for a while.

That's terrible news, you have been very much missed! And that's an understatement

dilwyn wrote:I suppose I should have known better. I've trashed my main PC with all the QL stuff on it by attempting to upgrade to Windows 10 and typically Microsoft it's failed with a problemn I didn't know of but it seems many thousands have - Start menu, Cortana, searching etc all fail and none of the fixes work. Worse, it stops me rolling back to Windows 7.

#I'm writing this from another computer to let everyone know I can't be bothered fighting any further with it so I'm not going to bother restoring the QL stuff until Microsoft get off their arses to admit to and fix this problem so many are having, which means to all intents and purposes my involvement with the QL scene stops until this is sorted. 2015 has been a disastrous year for me, this just takes things one step too far.

Hi Dilwyn,

I can recover most corrupted PCs, if you are having problems, drop the PC off and I will try and sort it.

Are you going to the Manchester Workshop?

The published 4 fixes for the Start menu and Cortana failure don't work. Since Windows 7 rollback depends on being able to access the Start menu, bit of a problem.

Managed to roll back to Windows 7 in the end. Except the rollback ain't what it seems, most things don't work any more, or only sort-of-work whichis worse in many ways.

I lost all my emails, graphics drivers are buggered, USB add-ons (i.e. where my backups are located) are disabled, all restore points have been removed - the list of things the Windows 10 update destroys is long and hard to believe.

Anyone thinking of updating to Windows 10 soon - DON'T. You'll find the internet is littered with people complaining about the update not working and all wanting to go back to Windows 7, will be interesting to see how many updaters end up going back in disappointment. I guess Microsh*t won't exactly Computeractive put it) be keen to publicise that figure.

I was going to go to the Quanta workshop but I can't be bothered right now. I can't even be bothered to try to restore anything. My life has been so unbearable this year I've just lost interest in life in general.

Very sad to read that, don't forget you have friends here on the forum for support or if you fancy a chat

I'll second what "vanpeebles" just said. Hopefully you'll be back up and running soon. All the best.

A suggestion. If you can find someone how can help, get hold of something like Linux Mint (stay with me Dilwyn, it's definitely not what you think!) Which is a "live cd" you can boot from the cd (or USB stick) and access your Windows files from there, USB drives should work fine, so copy the valuable stuff/everything onto USB as required, from Windows using Linux. Most Windows recovery systems do exactly this. Or similar. You might be able to save your stuff this way. Hopefully, you'll be able to reinstall windows 7 (in my opinion, the best Windows ever) and the restore your stuff from USB.

My wife was thinking of upgrading, but she's not been nominated or allocated one of the "free" upgrades, so she won't be bothering. Plus, she's not happy about the adverts on things like notepad, or sharing her WiFi with complete strangers, or the inbuilt spyware. In fact, she's so unhappy about it, and her current 8.1 that she's asked me about putting Linux on it. Not that I'm suggesting Dilwyn does this.

I'd pop round with a suitable USB stick and assist, but I'm not really within popping distance, sorry. I've just done this or my boss at my old job. That's how I spent my last day there!

Take care. Chin up. Thinking of you.

Cheers,
Norm.

Hi,

I think I would second the removal of Windows, I use Ubuntu, but have used Mint, both worked out of the box for me.

Most of the Microsoft Office files can be read with Libre Office.

Linux looks better than Windows 7,8,10... but Linux can be made to look like a Apple Mac and can out perform it. There are more Open Source software for Linux

No spyware or virus, due the secure design.

All QL emulators run under WINE, I mainly use SMSQemulator, though QPC2 is a close second.

I just have to move my server from Microsoft to Linux.

NormanDunbar wrote:I'll second what "vanpeebles" just said. Hopefully you'll be back up and running soon. All the best.

A suggestion. If you can find someone how can help, get hold of something like Linux Mint (stay with me Dilwyn, it's definitely not what you think!) Which is a "live cd" you can boot from the cd (or USB stick) and access your Windows files from there, USB drives should work fine, so copy the valuable stuff/everything onto USB as required, from Windows using Linux. Most Windows recovery systems do exactly this. Or similar. You might be able to save your stuff this way. Hopefully, you'll be able to reinstall windows 7 (in my opinion, the best Windows ever) and the restore your stuff from USB.

My wife was thinking of upgrading, but she's not been nominated or allocated one of the "free" upgrades, so she won't be bothering. Plus, she's not happy about the adverts on things like notepad, or sharing her WiFi with complete strangers, or the inbuilt spyware. In fact, she's so unhappy about it, and her current 8.1 that she's asked me about putting Linux on it. Not that I'm suggesting Dilwyn does this.

I'd pop round with a suitable USB stick and assist, but I'm not really within popping distance, sorry. I've just done this or my boss at my old job. That's how I spent my last day there!

Take care. Chin up. Thinking of you.

Cheers,
Norm.

Thanks Norman. The plan is to take a break rather than disappear. Accessing files isn't a problem now I've regained USB access, but thinking about it restoring from the backup drive would probably just restore the PC to its pre-upgrade buggy status, so once I've gathered the master disks together I'll factory reset the PC and rebuild from scratch. Email up to early September are backup up so that should be fairly straightforward to reimport them. Although it'll take more time than restoring a backup I think I will take the factory reset route and rebuild slowly to the state I want it. Perhaps, after a factory reset to a fairly clean and stable status, the upgrade to Win10 might stand a better chance. I don't yet want to go the Linux route but in time I might buy a cheap PC and put Linux on it to start learning that.

I won't have regular email for a while until I fully restore the PC, so anyone needing to contact me had better send me a PM via this Forum and I can send the temporary email address if anyone needs to send me anything by email, for example.

With a cruel irony of timing (everything about my life seems to be like this at the moment), my website seems to have gone offline sometime in the last few days. The pages are all there and can be accessed directly, it's just that root files like index.html seem to have disappeared. I'll see if I can install an FTP program on my netbook to reupload so that the website stays live while I take a break for a little while.

Thanks to everyone for their kind words in the last few days. I've been going through a period (as many bereaved people have told me, but WHY do people do this???) where after a while everyone seems to shun you like a leper for reasons best known to themselves (I certainly found out who my friends are), so it's comforting to know the QL community are no less friends with me than ever before.