Worried by Fall Creators Update
Here are my first impressions of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. I have a PC and laptop, both of which originally ran Windows 7 and have been progressively updated. They are not ‘young’, but of a reasonable specification for their age.
My PC was ‘checking for updates’, so I left it overnight. But the installation failed and Windows told me there were no new updates. So, instead I downloaded the update manually using the update tool (see Microsoft’s site for details www. snipca.com/25995). It appeared to ‘get everything ready’ to install, but after waiting over two hours my PC wouldn’t restart (the timer was continually going round). Next morning the only option was to switch my PC off and on, but all I saw was a blinking cursor top left. Not good, I thought, so switched off/on again and got the message, ‘trying to recover installation’. It then completed.
My laptop wouldn’t restart during installation, so I switched it off, left it for many hours, then switched it back on and completed the installation. So, my initial impressions were worrying. However, Microsoft appears to have built in good recovery systems. Now I need to find what is new.
Adrian Saunders
Within days of its release I installed the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update on two laptops. Installation on my Lenovo machine (with an Intel i5 processor) went without a hitch, but took three hours. On my lower-spec HP laptop with an AMD quad-core A-series processor, it initially failed to install after apparently making progress for an hour. I then ran the Windows 10 Update Troubleshooter ( www.snipca.com/26001, see screenshot above right), which fixed a number of problems. Following this it installed in just under five hours. Both laptops have 8GB of RAM.
I have two observations. One, why do
Windows Updates take so long, and often cause problems, when Android updates on my Galaxy S7 phone are quick to install and do so without a hitch? And two, how do people with no computing ‘know-how’ manage when their PC fails to install an update? Would they even know there was a Troubleshooter to run?
John Lattimore
CA says As we predicted in Issue 512, the Fall Creators Update is causing problems on some PCS. If you’re having trouble with it, please email our Problems Solved team: noproblem@ computeractive.co.uk. They consider every email for future publication.