How's everyone's experience? I'm gonna build my new PC in the next day or so and I'm wondering how Win10 has gone since the release? I updated to it with my current machine but didn't really notice any benefit so I rolled back. I figure with a new PC I might give it another go. Is the privacy stuff still fucked up? Share general thoughts too since the release day thread hasn't had a hit in a month.

It's been rock solid. Literally my only issue is that the search bar next to the start button sometimes doesn't work. It requires restarting Cortana to fix. Other than that, not a single issue. I guess the weird privacy stuff is still there, but I was able to disable much of it. Nothing uses DX12 yet, which is the main reason to upgrade in my opinion. 7 is fine, but I find 10 just runs quicker for my setup. I hear some people have more issues though.

Only problem I've had with it is that the search bar doesn't work half the time. Also Cortana isn't available in Canada for some reason but I don't really care/know what Cortana even is anyway.

It was a little weird about importing the start menu items from Windows 7 during the upgrade, only a fraction of my installed software is listed in Windows 10's "all apps" menu (but the programs remain installed as I can go to their install locations on the hard drives and launch them from there). But since you're doing a fresh install that part shouldn't be an issue.

It's also a little inconsistent about what you can pin on the Start Menu/Metro hybrid thing and what you can't, and sometimes pressing the "Pin to Start" option actually doesn't do anything. All my issues with it so far have been linked to the new UI stuff, the OS itself hasn't crashed once, and I haven't encountered any compatibility issues - not even with my USB floppy drives which I remember was something people said wouldn't be supported before launch.

My video card used to crash but my system's been really stable since I upgraded.

@rollingzeppelin: what make of GPU did you have?

I had a problem with the 360 controller not being recognized when I first installed, but all I had to do was uninstall / reinstall the drivers manually, so no biggie. Other than that, I've had exactly 0 problems that were Win10 specific.

It's fine. I'd personally still wait a few more months before putting it on my main machine, but it's been pretty good. There were serious concerns with the privacy and spyware stuff, but at this point all of that has been back-updated to Windows 7 and Windows 8, so there is really no reason to not move over to Windows 10. If you want to lock down that security stuff down, Linux is really the only solution.

Doesn't seem so different, if I'm to be honest.

Putting a search box on the taskbar seems nice, but also because I'm clueless I only just realized that even Win7 allowed you to type Win + (command here) to launch things, so I don't think it's all that significant. At least it also hits up your preferred search engine Google on your preferred web browser with any keywords it doesn't have an app for...which maybe also Win7 did, I don't know. Similarly, Task View also seems handy in a world where people aren't used to Alt+Tab, I guess. They surface Action Center notifications on the system tray which I think is new, but nearly nothing tends to show up there, and when it does it can be surprisingly uninteractive: iirc, I've had generic-looking update notifications that I didn't understand just disappear upon clicking them, prompting me to wonder what the point of them was. Also, there's an entire "Settings" app that seems to just duplicate Control Panel functionality whilst being more limited, so nfi what the point of it is.

Windows Explorer seems glitchy for me, in that occasionally the start menu will become a little laggy and title bar graphics will glitch out after a day or so of use, and then come good after a restart. I don't know if that's been addressed yet or if it's just my system or whatever. (EDIT: basically the same problem a few people at the top of this thread already mentioned. I guess it's pretty common.) It's only slightly annoying, so whatever. Touchpad drivers were a little annoying to set up, I had to get a good driver from the manufacturer's website and manually install it to get my touchpad to behave -- but then it's been pretty much perfect. Everything else pretty much worked immediately.

Otherwise it seems pleasant enough, I guess -- certainly none of the above issues are deal breakers. I don't think I've gotten much value out of any new features, I haven't touched Edge because I'm emotionally tethered to Firefox (which, by-the-by, seems to be getting better for once), I have an XBone so I should test the Xbox app but I haven't bothered to yet, etc. But it's nice to have that stuff at hand should I want to use it, and DX12 should prove fruitful eventually.

But tbh, the laptop I'm using came with Win8, which didn't seem substantially worse than Win7 in any way to me despite all the pissing and moaning to the contrary by the internet, and I upgraded to Win10 because it seems rational to upgrade to the latest, hottest mainline release of whatever piece of software you're using unless the thing turns out to be actually broken. That's what's going to see the crux of the support and technological progress going forward -- and really, if you don't think Microsoft can soundly steer the development of an operating system at this point, you probably should avoid using any version of Windows at all. Go figure out Arch Linux instead, or use Ubuntu for a while until you realize what a piece of garbage it is and decide to come back. You can't use Win7 forever.

How is it with games? Are there are games that worked on 7/8.1 that don't on 10?

Zero issues here since the official launch. Smooth and fast on boot up, no issues with any of the games I've played, video playback is fine.

Also, the xbox one streaming feature works pretty damn good. Slight latency, but nothing major. I wouldn't play a multiplayer game like that, but single player is absolutely A-OK.

Everything has been fine for me. I've got it on my home machine and my dev laptop for work. The only problem I have had is that I tried to install it on a Sony Vaio at work without reading the compatibility notice and discovered that the trackpad driver would die if the thing went to sleep, so I had to roll that one back to Win 8.1

@slag: Fallout 3 works for me on Windows 10 despite tons of people saying it doesn't work on Windows 7 so that's a thing.

I have had some issues with my Wi-Fi adapter, but I am chalking that up to Linksys being shitty with keeping their drivers updated than anything else. Seriously, fuck LInksys and their no support for a 1 year old product.

Also, that security stuff can be avoided by going into the Advanced settings when installing Windows, then spending five minutes inside a command prompt after installation.

Whoa, that's kinda crazy.

Seems fine to me, chased a couple of upgrade gremlins away but really that's just me being pedantic about my event logs.

@hayt: Seems absolutely ok to me. It's a nice lateral move with a simplified forward facing interface while all the more advanced stuff is still accessible from the back. Coming in from Win7 it was a bit of a change at first and some things are a little too sleek like their new picture viewer or the way folders structure works - but overall it's absolutely fine.

Can you upgrade from win7 to 10 without doing a fresh install? I really don't feel like reinstalling all my shit right now.

Sure, it just upgrades the OS, all the applications and personal data is untouched.

@holysideburns: Sorry, I meant, has the process been reported as being smooth or have there been a bunch of problems?

@overnow: I know there were some people who ended up in some sort of upgrade loop, but I believe they patched that issue. Other than that, I can really only speak for myself and my friends, and we've had no issues.

@holysideburns: Cool, thanks for the info!

I just had that icon pop up prompting me to upgrade for free and not sure if I should. Mostly cause my PC is kinda old at this point and I don't want to lose any of my files. I have 1000s of hours of podcasts I swear I'm gonna listen to at some point.

My only big issue with Windows 10 is the nerfing of DS4Win for games that require it to operate in exclusive mode: ie Dark Souls. There's currently a fix, but it's a bit of a pigmess with DS4Win having to actually quit explorer.exe to connect your DS4 exclusively and then restarting it after. It's a bit sketchy, but it works.

Also Bing integration. Fuck your shitty shit search engine Microsoft, get it out of my face.

Otherwise, yeah, Windows 10 running just about perfectly. Haven't had a crash since I started running it a month and a half ago or something. The UI is certainly an improvement over Windows 8.1, and my installations all came over without a hitch (minus the video card drivers which were a quick and easy reinstall.)

My only three issues with it is that I can't choose how and when I want to update the OS, my (old) sound card doesn't have proper win10 drivers and therefore doesn't work and that the AMD GPU drivers cause artifacts in Assetto Corsa (with multiple cars on the track, riding solo it's fine). Rest is alright and some older games like Outlaws seem to work again where they didn't in win8.1.

@hayt: it's an Asus r9 290

Has anyone experienced any issues with emulators at all?

I was going to upgrade to Win10 on the PC in the front room, but don't think i could handle not having MAME and a few others in there.

@sinusoidal: What Bing integration? I think I have everything that calls a search engine pointing to Google on my system.

I would have had no complaints until yesterday, in which I encountered a "Critical Error" opening the start menu. This happened in spite of all my trouble shooting and I was forced to do a repair install. Everything okay since.

It's fine. Personally, I thought Win 8.1 was also fine, so maybe I'm not the guy to ask. Having to learn slightly different ways to accomplish tasks doesn't bother me.

Re: the security issues, just go through all the settings (or look at a guide) and disable as much crap as possible.

@fnrslvr: You can have the search bar on the task bar redirect to Google, but it still uses Bing for any results that appear not in-browser.

The search bar on my task bar takes a bit of time to actually react to when I try and search for something in my pc, but that is the only issue I've had and it doesn't bother me much. I do know someone who had to uninstall it and went back to 7 after it kept making there pc freeze at random.

Yeah Fallout 3 was a Vista-only Game For Windows Live game. It works in modern Windows, you just need to find and install the GFWL client.

Anyone with the search bar problem (nothing happening when clicking, or slow searches), ctrl-alt-del and close the Cortana process. It'll fix it (and Cortana will reload itself).

I feel like too many people just wanted to hate for the sake of it. I use Windows 10 the same way I used 8/8.1 which is the same way I used 7. I press the Windows key and search for what I'm looking for.

Great so far, but Windows Speech Synthesizer suddenly stopped working with my screen reader. Windows Narrator is totally silent. Not sure what to do.

Legally blind, so I have to use it.

So i've had my fair share of trouble with Windows 10 so far.

There have been days where i turn my PC on and suddenly my start menu doesn't open anymore. There are days when all the icons in my taskbar are sluggish. There are windows updates that fail to install on their own (had to download a standalone installer to get the newest update installed.) At one point, windows told me to change my password within 5 days, not exactly sure why. So far, I've made 3 seperate accounts, because it was the only way to fix my start button working again.

Metro apps also tend to just dissapear over time from my start menu (probably because i didn't attach a microsoft account to my account.)

Luckily, after my start menu and taskbar borked again today, i eventually found the solution for my problems. Users/username/appdata/local/tiledatalayer/database > remove all files except vedatamodel.edb I'm sort of curious if i can fix all my other borked accounts with my new knowledge.

When Windows 10 works though, it's solid. UI and interface are very reminiscent of windows 7. I don't have an SSD so i do feel the boottime has decreased a bit compared to windows 7. Just make sure that you opt out all the telemetry stuff if you don't want to share all your information with Microsoft and parties.

@captainthunderpants: Pretty sure GFWL was removed from Fallout 3, at least in the GOTY edition on Steam.

No issues with Windows 10, runs fast, supports DX12.

Huh I just read that the whole "pirated windows can upgrade for free" thing doesn't upgrade to a legitimate code for window 10. I wonder what that means.

Basically, that you'll have to pay for Windows 10 or crack it when there's one available. I bought a cheap extra Windows 8 code from G2A.com for like $35 for any future PC builds I do, but those prices skyrocketed after Windows 10 was available (I bought it because I figured that would happen). I think they're around $60 now, which is still a decent price to make a system legit and avoid possible annoyances down the line.

no complaints. Beyond a few aesthetics, i hardly notice a difference..

Plenty of annoying issues, but nothing majorly broken.

Any time I click on the start button it brings up a fatal error and I have to sign out. It also tends to get stuck in downloading updates now and again. Could be worse but definitely could be better.

Has anyone had issues like the cursor moving on it's own even tho all you have is a trackpad on and the cmd prompt popping up on its own? Its happened a couple times to me and only when I upgraded to Win10.

I've also had unknown devices trying to install or connect. That was the most recent one.

Those have been my 'only' issues with WIN10.

I don't know when would be a good time to try it again since my network card seemed to randomly not work and I doubt that's going to change because it's almost certainly a driver issue. Maybe when I build a new computer in 5 years can give it a go.

I registered to upgrade from Windows 7, but I am still waiting for my invitation. The windows 10 upgrade up is sitting in the bottom right corner and I check it every now and then, but it never prompts me to start the process.

@irishmarkerhead: I had this same issue and a repair install fixed it, if you want to give that a try.

So all installed games and other programs work fine if you upgrade from 7 to 10? No need to reinstall anything?

There are a few oddities here and there but honestly it is the first time I can ever recommend a home user actually run a Windows Upgrade themselves, upgrades in the past in my experience were a nightmare that quite often broke and had major issues once completed. This is a smoothest thing MS has ever done and the OS itself is fast, reliable and most of all fixed all the issues with Windows 8 while still keeping the functionality intact.

They kinda nailed it and with the Surface line of products getting insanely good I hope MS kills it next year.

Great.