Windows 10 installation problems fixed!
Luis Villazon solves common installation problems
Q A FRESH START
I’ve been using Windows 8.1 since it came out, and I’ve always suspected—but never been able to prove—that I had some viruses or other stuff installed. Nothing I’ve tried has got rid of it, including reinstalling. I’m wondering if installing Windows 10 might help. Will upgrading clear everything out, including viruses?
A You shouldn’t assume it’s a virus every time your PC runs slowly, crashes, or doesn’t do what you want. If you think you have a virus, boot into Safe Mode and run a free online scanner, such as the one at http://housecall.trendmicro.com. If that comes up clean, you don’t have a virus.
>> If you did have a virus under Win 8.1, upgrading to Win 10 won’t get rid of it. The upgrade process leaves your documents and applications alone, and nearly all Win 8 executables also run under Win 10, so any infected files on your old system would be free to run the virus code on the new system as well.
Q PLUNGED INTO DARKNESS I upgraded to Windows 10 from Win 7, and the screen went black after the first reboot. It came back during another reboot in the upgrade process, but then it went black again—and stayed that way. Stupidly, I didn’t back up before I began the update, so I can’t roll back. I’ve tried swapping the monitor and it makes no difference. I’ve tried hitting F8 to get Safe Mode, but that doesn’t work either. What are my options?
A This is partly Microsoft’s fault for not testing Windows 10 on the particular graphics card and driver combo you are using. But, it goes without saying, that it’s really important to back up. If you had a valid backup, you could then roll back to Windows 7, enable Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), run the Win 10 upgrade again, and then use RDP to connect to your blank-screen PC from another one, and fix your graphics driver problem. You can’t boot into Safe Mode from Windows, because you can’t see what you’re doing, and most modern PCs with UEFI BIOSes and SSDs boot much too quickly to detect the F8 keypress. This means you’ll have to temporarily install an alternative cheap graphics card just to give you some eyes on the ground. Then you can go to Nvidia or AMD, and download updated drivers that work with Windows 10.
Q ARE UPDATES BAD?
I upgraded to Windows 10 on release day and, so far, it runs like a dream. But I’m concerned about this automatic updates thing. People have been telling me it can’t be turned off, and some of my friends aren’t upgrading because they say this could be a security risk if one of the updates has a bug or something. If it is a risk, is there a way of disabling the updates?
A Automatic updates are compulsory in the Home edition of Windows 10 [ Image A]. If you have Windows 10 Pro, you can defer your updates for a few months, to give your IT department time to test it with your existing drivers.
>> While it is theoretically possible for a bug to get in, it’s a much lower risk than that of leaving automatic updates off. Security updates are released to patch known vulnerabilities. By definition, every day that you don’t patch this hole is a day that you are vulnerable. No Windows update has ever been released with malware in it, and the version of Windows with the least consistent update record (XP) is also the version most infected by malware. Forcing automatic updates will make Windows 10 the least infected version, and is the most important security advance since Microsoft started making updates available online at all.
Q MORE LIKE THE “STOP MENU”!
Is there a way to add any program to the Start menu in Windows 10? When I drag a file on to it, nothing happens. I heard that creating a shortcut in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\ Start Menu\Programs would do it, but this just gives an error message.
A It sounds as though you’re not logged in as administrator— C:\ProgramData is for the system Start menu [ Image B], which is global for all user accounts, and you need to be administrator to write there. Even if you are administrator, some apps don’t like launching from there. Try “%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\ Start Menu\Programs” instead. If you open a command prompt window, you can type “CD,” followed by this path name, and hit Enter to navigate there. Or else you can use Windows Explorer to open C:\Users\your username\ AppData\Roaming, which is what the “%appdata%” normally expands to.
>> But, really, this is just tinkering around the edges. What you need to do is give yourself administrator access on your account. If it’s your PC, you should normally be logged in as administrator if you ever want to get anything done.
>> Non-admin accounts are for young children and guests. If the PC isn’t yours, ask your parent/spouse/room-mate to give you a proper login. Or you could always get your own PC and lock them out of it, if you prefer to escalate things. Q WHEN IS SIX LESS THAN TWO? I would like to take advantage of my free upgrade to Windows 10. I registered for the upgrade, but on the release day, I was told I don’t have enough RAM on my PC. The trouble is, I do! I have 6GB currently installed, and Windows says it needs at least 2GB. What can I do? Would adding more RAM help?
A We’ve seen this situation a couple of times. The Get Windows 10 app isn’t perfect, and sometimes it misidentifies the amount of RAM that is installed on your PC. This might be because of an odd RAM configuration, or maybe you have some software running that is somehow masking how much the rest of Windows can see. It’s also possible, of course, that one of your RAM modules is faulty, and you do, in fact, only have 2GB of physical RAM. But assuming you can reboot with just the 4GB module, this might shake things up enough to let you upgrade.
>> Get Windows 10 isn’t a first-come-first-served queue, though. It also takes into account compatibility. So, if your PC is old or unusual, and you also hobble it by leaving it with only just enough RAM, you might find that you don’t get an invitation to upgrade for a few weeks more. If you can’t be bothered to wait, just run the installer directly from www.microsoft.com/en-us/softwaredownload/windows10ISO [ Image C].
Q WE ALL SCREAM FOR WIDESCREEN
I was wondering who chooses which resolutions make it to the standard list of screen sizes that Windows and monitors accept? Why is it 1280x1024, for instance, and not 1200x1000, or 1500x1100? And why is 1366x768 still common in Windows 10 laptops? It’s not a multiple of anything in either direction, and 683:384 is hardly a standard aspect ratio!
A 1366x768 is actually 16.008:9, which is actually only off from the standard 16:9 widescreen resolution by less than 0.05 percent. In other words, it’s the closest evennumbered horizontal resolution that converts a 1024x768 resolution into widescreen.
>> Why 768 vertical pixels, you ask? In the beginning, there was CGA resolution, which was 320x200. This was horrible, and didn’t fit properly on 4:3 aspect ratio TVs, so they doubled it horizontally, and slightly-more-than-doubled it vertically to produce VGA, which was less horrible. If you double that in both directions again, you’d get 1280x960, but this requires more than 1Mb of screen buffer. By the time graphics cards became good enough to do that, we were watching TV on widescreen. It’s much easier to downscale 1080p HD to 1366x768, because they are both 16:9 aspect ratios. And if you need 4:3 resolution, you can stick some black bars on the side and call it 1024x768.
>> In fact, the odd one out here is really 1280x1024—not 1366x768—because 1280x1024 is the only 5:4 aspect ratio screen resolution, which means it doesn’t display well on just about any modern screen. The only reason it probably lasted so long is that 1,024 is a round number in binary, and is therefore easy for chip designers to address.
Q MIND CONTROL
I’m new to Windows 10, and was wondering where Control Panel went.
A It’s gone to the same place Control Panel always goes every time there is a new version of Windows: into the realms of confusion, hidden behind new and mysterious aliases and analogs. Control Panel has the least consistent interface design of any part of Windows, and that’s still true in Windows 10. In fairness, Win 10 has slightly improved the situation over Win 8, but it has achieved this with a new layer that stands between us and the Control Panel we actually need.
>> The new layer is Settings, which you can reach from the Start menu directly. It has a pared-down interface, with icons for the most common options, which are easy to tap on a touch screen. You can still open the old Control Panel by searching for it on the Start menu. But note that there’s no direct correspondence between Settings and Control Panel—neither is a direct subset of the other.