More tears--Windows 11 coming soon. Are you ready?

[ChiFlyer]

Good thread Garzon.

Similar to yourself, I worked in IT for in my case 50+ years. I remember wiring 407 panels and 519 reproducers. To this day I refuse to wear a ring due to the shocks I got way back in the very early on days. I began working in this manner at night while I was still in high school.

I went on to work with IBM big iron, distributed databases, Unix, Linux etc. I eventually became a somewhat sought after Tech Arc. My last 10 years focused more on Tech Team management for delivery projects that I had helped design. Now that I am retired, I run one Windows laptop and I am not looking for any new time consuming hobbies.

I am in the US right now taking care of a few things that needed to be addressed. I had decided to replace my laptop while I am here. I hear that it is a little bit cheaper that way and the old laptop was coming up on 6 years old. The old laptop had a few keys that had suffered defeat via the 5000 donut crumb slow death that I subjected them to. 

While in the US, I bought a high end Win 10 Lenovo X1 Carbon Extreme. My Canadian very high tech friend calls it an X1 Carbon on steroids. I am very pleased with it so far.

Ran the Windows 11 Health Check that you supplied and obviously with higher end brand new hardware I am ready to go for Win 11. I will likely hold off on that for a while. MSFT (as many other software companies) in the past has been more than willing to subject it's customers to Alpha level testing.

Basically, after working in IT for as long as I did, keeping things simple with a little hardware overkill and also avoidng any chance of bleeding edge software problems appeals to me.

[Garzan]

1 hour ago, ChiFlyer said:

I had decided to replace my laptop while I am here. I hear that it is a little bit cheaper that way and the old laptop was coming up on 6 years old.

I did much the same on my last trip back--bought a new Surface Tablet for myself, and another one for my daughter. Pricing generally is much better for computers and parts outside of Thailand. Many times I can order computer parts off Amazon, with shipping and duty, and they will be less than buying the same part here locally. And sometimes the stuff you want just plain is not available in Thailand. 

1 hour ago, ChiFlyer said:

MSFT (as many other software companies) in the past has been more than willing to subject it's customers to Alpha level testing.

Yes, that can be an issue. I'm in the Insider channel for Windows, so have been using it for a while. I'm fairly confident W11 will be ready for you when you're ready for it. 

[ZRHuser]

I could update my notebook some days ago. I liked it very much, easy to use and imho from the user side a smaller step then the one from W7 to W10. So today I updated my Desktop, witch is not ready for W11, with a workaround. Tock me around an hour and now W11 is running without any problem on my Desktop too. Happy happy.

[Leo_Bia]

Sorted

[Fenster]

Thanks for the interesting thread @Garzan I watched your initial video and seemed go to go on my HP Pavilion but I ran the check and it seems W11 is not compatible. I was surprised having shelled out quite a lot for this laptop which still works like the day I bought it, but on reflection I was even more surprised to realise it must already be at least 5 years old. Oh well, W10 for me until time or break down forces my hand I guess.

[ChiFlyer]

So @Garzan or others, I am starting to think that it is about time to do the Windows-11 upgrade. Anyone have any tales of terror to tell?

[Abracadabra]

I'm running Windows 11 on my personal laptop and Windows 10 on my business laptop. Design on 11 is a bit different than 10 but with regards to functionality I don't see much reason to upgrade my biz laptop.  

[curveball21]

24 minutes ago, ChiFlyer said:

So @Garzan or others, I am starting to think that it is about time to do the Windows-11 upgrade. Anyone have any tales of terror to tell?

I just got done moving up from 10.  My motherboard did not have TPM 2.0 enabled even though it was capable so I had to go into bios and do that.  I did and the machine tells me ready to upgrade! Unfortunately, I had either a bad ssd or bad memory and the upgrade failed even though I tried a few times.  I ended up saving all my important files to a portable drive, replacing my memory and getting a new ssd.  Then I did a clean install of windows 11 from a usb drive I made off the Microsoft website.  Works great and I love it, but what a pita!  It seems very easy to use and I love the cleaned up interface.  Everything I ever used within windows still seems to be there and easy to find.  I can recommend it, and my problems seem to be very much in the minority.

[Garzan]

I'm still on the Insider program for Windows 11. I've got it installed on my desktop, my HTPC, and my tablet. For myself, I like it, although W10 certainly isn't bad. 

I did get caught by an update flaw in one of Microsoft's update patches, but they fixed that within a day. I did my workaround for it on my desktop which was a clean install from Windows Media Creator. (I keep an update USB in a drawer, just in case.) To date, Microsoft hasn't repeated that flaw on any updates since, and I can't recall a similar BSoD flaw on prior updates. 

The only thing I really miss from W10 is that W11 will not let you drag and drop icon onto the taskbar, and that is rumored to be being restored in a future update. All in all, I'm very happy with W11 and don't have any tales of horror, even being on an early updates track. 

[Arnie85]

I’m running Win11 and love it.  That being said - it was time for me to upgrade my whole system so I did that and requested a Win11 build.  Changing OS on an old system just for the hell of it typically isn’t a good idea, especially since Win11 is pretty strict on system requirements.  Don’t upgrade just for the sake of it, it’s not different enough from Win10 to do that. 

Also still waiting for a few basic things to roll-out on updates, such as drag and drop to a programme via the taskbar (ie attaching a file to an email by dragging it to the program icon on the taskbar), which has been in Windows for as long as I can remember (XP maybe?) but for some crazy reason isn’t in 11.  It is coming, it’s in the dev builds, just not rolled out yet. 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Arnie85

[Arnie85]

Damn I really should have read the entirety of the last message, sounds like there’s an echo in here now. Sorry. Goes to show how important that feature was and how silly it is not to be included as yet. 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Arnie85

[ChiFlyer]

I did the WIN 11 upgrade on Monday.

I have a rather high end ThinkPad that was purchased last October. The upgrade takes about an hour with about 1/2 of that being the download.

Like it has been said the feel of the GUI is a little different, but I like it. 

Things went well for a few days. Then fate intervened in a strange way.

On Wednesday VT2A, where I live, had the electric Including the lifts knocked out by an error by a contractor who was working on replacing the fire protection water pipes. The guy somehow cut the pipe from the main water tank on the roof causing a flood that cascaded down the electric utility rooms and the lifts. The lifts are still being dried out.

Living on a higher floor, the GF and I opted to get a nearby hotel room for a few days.

What does this have to do with the Windows 11 upgrade?

The wireless connection at the hotel is a somewhat shaky 3BB router. This caused my bittorrent app to be wiped out. When I went to reinstall it, it would not install getting a "dangerous app" message or something like that. After I poked around a bit I noticed that the message was originating from One Drive. In turns out that One Drive is baked into Windows 11 and turned on without one knowing that and that new apps are propagated on One Drive.  I found a link explaining how to turn off One Drive.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-off-disable-or-uninstall-onedrive-f32a17ce-3336-40fe-9c38-6efb09f944b0

The need to do this in my case is due to my use of peer to peer networking software (torrents). If you use these, I would suggest that you unlink One Drive. I have done this and installed utorrent. No more problems of this nature

Also I use 7-Zip to process rar files from torrent downloads. The feel of this from File Manager has changed.

Edited March 18, 2022 by ChiFlyer

[Garzan]

Great info @ChiFlyer My tipple of choice for torrents is qBittorrent, primarily for the multiple site search function in qBittorrent. W11 always complains whenever I go to update qBittorrent. I think you'll find if you click the links in the lower section of the 'This isn't safe software' pop up you'll find the switch that tells W11 'I don't care if you think it's unsafe, install the darn software like I told you to.' 

Turning off OneDrive isn't an option for me since that's where all my Windows home folders (except Downloads) are synced to. If I put a file in My Documents, I want it to be in My Documents no matter which of my Windows computers I happen to be using at the time. 🙂

[ChiFlyer]

3 hours ago, Garzan said:

Great info @ChiFlyer My tipple of choice for torrents is qBittorrent, primarily for the multiple site search function in qBittorrent. W11 always complains whenever I go to update qBittorrent. I think you'll find if you click the links in the lower section of the 'This isn't safe software' pop up you'll find the switch that tells W11 'I don't care if you think it's unsafe, install the darn software like I told you to.' 

Turning off OneDrive isn't an option for me since that's where all my Windows home folders (except Downloads) are synced to. If I put a file in My Documents, I want it to be in My Documents no matter which of my Windows computers I happen to be using at the time. 🙂

@Garzan - thanks for the info.

I am thinking through my long term approach. I used to use an external hard drive via a File History option. Downloads was not backed up. The drive could not be transitioned to the new computer. I back up my important files about every two weeks to a very large flash drive. I should institute something better. I am a single machine user. Early IBM work may have permanently imbeded me with the mother ship mentality. 🙄

[The_Only_One]

IT guy here + 22 years 

I've personally have given up worrying about it. It's like fighting MS individually with zero weapon and ammunition.
 

They will shove the update down your throat one way or another.

The entire world runs on their platform. We stand no chance. 

every tine an update notification pops up I say please and thank you master

[fforest]

I upgraded from windows XP to windows 7 about 2.5 years ago.....I have been very happy with windows 7 and maybe look to upgrade windows 7 in 10 or 15 more years....

[discrete]

On 18/10/2021 at 06:24, ChiFlyer said:

Good thread Garzon.

Similar to yourself, I worked in IT for in my case 50+ years. I remember wiring 407 panels and 519 reproducers. To this day I refuse to wear a ring due to the shocks I got way back in the very early on days. I began working in this manner at night while I was still in high school.

I went on to work with IBM big iron, distributed databases, Unix, Linux etc. I eventually became a somewhat sought after Tech Arc. My last 10 years focused more on Tech Team management for delivery projects that I had helped design. Now that I am retired, I run one Windows laptop and I am not looking for any new time consuming hobbies.

I am in the US right now taking care of a few things that needed to be addressed. I had decided to replace my laptop while I am here. I hear that it is a little bit cheaper that way and the old laptop was coming up on 6 years old. The old laptop had a few keys that had suffered defeat via the 5000 donut crumb slow death that I subjected them to. 

While in the US, I bought a high end Win 10 Lenovo X1 Carbon Extreme. My Canadian very high tech friend calls it an X1 Carbon on steroids. I am very pleased with it so far.

Ran the Windows 11 Health Check that you supplied and obviously with higher end brand new hardware I am ready to go for Win 11. I will likely hold off on that for a while. MSFT (as many other software companies) in the past has been more than willing to subject it's customers to Alpha level testing.

Basically, after working in IT for as long as I did, keeping things simple with a little hardware overkill and also avoidng any chance of bleeding edge software problems appeals to me.

Similar history here - 40+ years in IT ... big iron at the start etc. Networking specialist as that got invented. Branched out into true IT business development.. and never dropped the low level tech involvement either.

But I don't use Windows.. too broken.   I have had a Linux desktop in one flavour or another since 1998.  Total control of updates - and not on the Microsoft schedule.  It was tricky to have a functional Linux desktop in 1998 ... it is trivial in 2022. ..  and since Android is Linux under the hood, lots of stuff is compatible now.

 

Edited March 18, 2022 by discrete
typos

[Garzan]

11 hours ago, ChiFlyer said:

Early IBM work may have permanently imbeded me with the mother ship mentality. 🙄

As is often said, cloud drives are just someone else's computer. 🙂 I think that fits perfectly with the mothership mentality. I'm fine with Microsoft or Google's data center to keep my data backed up and available. 

[CosmoKram3r]

On 26/06/2021 at 20:18, Garzan said:

you aren't one of those guys still on Windows XP

This one hit me right in the feels. I miss Windows XP so much lol.

I still remember the full serial number in my head.

In terms of Windows 11, I think I'm going to stay on Windows 10 as long as I can.

I'm sure there will be bugs in W11 they're still ironing out so I'd rather wait for them to iron out as many as possible, and my installed software compatibility is less of an issue.

I know there will eventually come a time where I'll be forced to update so I'll probably wait til that.

[Arnie85]

There’s no reason to change OS just the sake of changing it. Stick with 10 until you get a new build. 

[Garzan]

Just as an aside, I've gotten tired of W10 repeatedly asking me to download W11 even though my laptop is a gen4 CPU that does not meet the W11 installation requirements. Linux Mint is supposed to be the most Windows-like Linux currently available but I've always had a certain fondness for Fedora, so I'm in the process of downloading the Fedora installer/media creation tool now. 

Since my laptop is ancient hardware by Microsoft standards, even though Gen4 was not that long ago, I guess I'll move my old laptop to my old OS. 🙂 

[Garzan]

Windows 10 might not be dead, but it’s nearing the end of the road.

Microsoft said Thursday that the company doesn’t plan on releasing any additional feature updates to Windows 10. “The current version, 22H2, will be the final version of Windows 10, and all editions will remain in support with monthly security update releases though that date,” Microsoft’s Jason Leznek said in a blog post describing the latest Windows client roadmap update.

 

Microsoft has also updated the lifecycle page for Windows 10 Home and Pro to reflect the changes.

“Windows 10 will reach end of support on October 14, 2025,” the page reads. “The current version, 22H2, will be the final version of Windows 10, and all editions will remain in support with monthly security update releases through that date. Existing [business] releases will continue to receive updates beyond that date based on their specific lifecycles.”

https://www.pcworld.com/article/1801718/windows-10-wont-receive-any-more-feature-updates.html

[taylor1975]

I use W10 pro for the bitlocker encryption i need for work. Usually an upgrade to W11 is free ...would it maintain the pro version/encryption if i upgraded?

 

[Garzan]

51 minutes ago, taylor1975 said:

would it maintain the pro version/encryption if i upgraded?

It did for me--several times. (desktop, tablet, htpc)

It did not work for me with my laptop, since the hardware on my laptop does not meet the W11 specs.

https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2021/08/27/update-on-windows-11-minimum-system-requirements-and-the-pc-health-check-app/

 

Edited April 28, 2023 by Garzan

[Garzan]

This video recently came up in my feed. My solution for the above laptop was to remove W10 and install Fedora KDE Plasma but the video outlines the steps involved if you don't want to take that drastic a step. With "Rufus" it is simpler than I thought. 

I quite enjoy the presenter's dry English humor. 🙂 

Most of what I do on the laptop is done inside of Chrome, and Chrome is pretty much Chrome no matter what it is running on top of.