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View Full Version : Win10 or Win8 - should I upgrade?


rans6andrew
4th Sep 2020, 20:36
I keep seeing stuff about problems being caused by Win10 upgrading, something you can't stop occurring unless you pay for the professional version of Win10. I am also getting it in the neck from my Father-in-law whose Win10 laptop upgrades and screws things every few months. The latest round of stuff last week has messed with his Fitbit App and we have yet to find out if his printer driver is screwed up - again. His Firefox also upgraded at the same time, which he was not aware of except that it "wasn't working at all well". He gave up and dumped his PC and his Fitbit on me to sort out.

Due to a "job lot purchase" in the sales a couple of years ago I have the same model of laptop PC as FIL. Mine is still running Win8, as they both were when bought. I missed the option to take the free Win10 upgrade due to my machine being away for repair for some weeks while the offer was running and I didn't find out about it until too late. Anyway, my machine is getting to be a bit troublesome. It often has unresponsive windows even when it is only being called upon to run Mailwasher and Thunderbird. If I click a link in an email which needs a browser (Firefox is the default) or Adobe Acrobat reader to open I might as well walk around the block as nothing seems to be happening for a long time. It usually gets there in the end but it is not right. After checking the obvious (to me) stuff like CPU percentage use, memory or network activity and finding nothing I put my problem to a few folk on a Zoom meeting last evening. They have suggested either fetching a fresh install of Win8, upgrading to Win10 or looking for disk access performance.

I have also looked at hard disk performance and there are some issues. The average access time while the machine is booting up goes up to big numbers of milliseconds, sometimes over 10 seconds, which can't be good. I have run defrag, scanned with Malwarebytes and Ccleaner then someone suggested Adwcleaner and Glarysoft. Many issues were found, mostly with the registry, and removed by the latter two apps but the machine still struggles. The disk capacity used is only 200GB out of 900GB total.

The final suggestion was to swap out the drive for a SSD type. I did this on a Win7 netbook and it didn't make a vast difference, only prolonging the inevitable for a few months.

The machine is i7 based with 8Gb RAM. It is a later generation i7 than my workshop/office desktop machine which positively flies in comparison but it is running Linux Mint 18.x although it is much busier most of the time.

So, should I do Win10 or Win8? Anyone?

In the good old days, when you formatted a hard disk it used to do a test of every byte of every sector on the disk surface and it saved a bad sector list to the disk. The disk operating system used to refer to this list and avoid trying to save data to the bad sectors. Do any of the disk utilities still allow a full test of the disk surface and bad sector avoidance? I have not lost any data but I am getting suspicious of the hard drive.................... Anyone?

Thanks,

Rans6...........

IBMJunkman
4th Sep 2020, 21:01
For HD testing none better. SpinRite

https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

As for Windows I have upgraded in place 2 Win 7 Pro machines with no problems. I have a friend that did 4 machines in place that had win 7 Pro and Home on them No problems.

On my 2 machines I let Win 10 do its updates all the time and have not had a problem.

Saab Dastard
4th Sep 2020, 22:16
swap out the drive for a SSD type. I did this on a Win7 netbook and it didn't make a vast difference
I suspect that the SSD in that situation was held back by the processor and RAM - netbooks are not noted for their computer performance. In my experience, with a decent processor and adequate RAM, replacing a spinning disk (particularly a 5400 RPM) with an SSD makes a vast difference to performance.

What's the spin speed of the disk in question? 7200 or 5400? What version of SATA - I assume that the system is SATA, not PATA? The performance problems you describe sound too extreme to be just down to RPM and older SATA - it sounds as if there's a physical problem - e.g. lots of bad sectors - or a logical problem, e.g. cross-linkages. Another problem could be excessive paging, but with 8GB RAM there would need to be a massive memory leak or a memory hog.You should be able to see the SMART diagnostics for the disk, either through the disk manufacturer's application or a 3rd party diagnostics tool - but you need to understand what the figures mean and what they are telling you.

Getting an SSD would give you a number of options - clone the existing disk to see if the SSD solves any physical problems, or alternatively build a fresh Windows 8 installation and see what the performance is like. Installing Win8 would give a like-for-like comparison, but you might prefer to install Win 10 sooner rather than later - Win 8 goes EoL on January 10, 2023, so an upgrade / replacement is only a bit over 2 years away.

I have to use Win 10 for work - my home PCs run Linux Mint, like you - and I find it reasonable, although the look and feel of Win 7 is still better (IMHO). There's a lot of niggling annoyances with Win 10, such as missing accessories, inability to configure various UX preferences etc. (and Office 2016 is NOT an improvement over 2010!) I never used used Win 8, but I loathed the Server equivalent (Server 2012). Charms bar on a server, my @rse!

SD

CaptOveur
4th Sep 2020, 23:40
FWIW, I'm writing this on a 8 y.o. i5/8GB ThinkPad (T530) that I've upgraded with a SSD, and it runs Win10 just fine. Mind you, this is a generic install w/ no OEM bloatware or 3rd party anti-malware. This page may be helpful:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet

TL;DR Win8.1 will not have security patches after 10-Jan-2023, while Win10 must take a feature update at least every 18 mos. to continue receiving security patches.

Procrastinus
5th Sep 2020, 09:18
SSDs make an enormous difference to a computers speed. But you will need a SATA III SSD to see greatest improvements. SATA II is definitely second class.

ORAC
5th Sep 2020, 09:51
I missed the option to take the free Win10 upgradehttps://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-download-windows-10-for-free-now-that-windows-7-is-dead/

Windows 10 is still free to download. Here's how to get the upgrade now



Here's how to get Windows 10 for free, if you're currently running a licensed and activated copy of Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 Home or Pro:

1. Go to the Download Windows 10 website (https://click.linksynergy.com/deeplink?id=0JlRymcP1YU&mid=24542&murl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fen-us%2Fsoftware-download%2Fwindows10&u1=cnet%7C0f8ac956-f619-471d-a352-4b0ad54c482f|xid:fr1599299394151fdh).

2. Under Create Windows 10 installation media, click Download tool now and Run.

3. Choose Upgrade this PC now, assuming this is the only PC you're upgrading. (If you're upgrading a different machine, choose Create installation media for another PC, and save the installation files.)

4. Follow the prompts.

5. When the upgrade is complete, go to Settings Update & Security > Activation, and you should see a digital license for Windows 10....

flyingtincan
28th Sep 2020, 20:13
I would just add one thing and that is to let Windows do its thing when upgrading/installing W10.
Leave it alone and don't be impatient.
It may take a while although with my upgrade to SSD it the main install was done in 30 minutes
and then it needed another hour or so to do all the updates. (always let Windows do the updates)
Also, update to the latest Edge and use Microsoft security.
I used Bing for the search engine but Edge allows you to change this to Google etc should that be your preference.

Then if you have upgraded to a SSD from a Hard Drive, you have a laptop, and you have a very little use for a DVD drive (if there is one),
buy a HD caddy (£5 eBay) and swap out the DVD drive for the HD. (you will have get inside your laptop to do this)
Re-format the HD (having backed up all your files first) and use for all your files with the operating system (windows 10 ) and other apps on the SSD.
(Ensure that SSD has Windows 10 fully installed before installing the HD into the DVD slot)
At then end of all this a real high speed PC/Laptop.

waito
28th Sep 2020, 21:56
Computer slowing down: Windows 10 has different refresh functions to overcome that. One keeps apps and user data, another one keeps data but (re-install on its own?) apps. And of course the classic Windows reinstall, but few consumers have time for that.

Note that Windows 8.1 will go end of Support at January 2023, when even security updates end.
Windows 10 will continue without a support end announced. Just if you don't accept the function updates anymore, each one version of Windows 10 will go end of Support 18 months after release.

Aneas
2nd Oct 2020, 19:56
"Should I do Win10 or Win8?"
Win 10 without question.