Is my laptop incompatible with Windows 10?
My Samsung NP900X3DA01UK laptop came with Windows 8, which I upgraded to Windows 10. It now won’t install Windows updates. Eventually, I reinstalled Windows 10, but then the Bluetooth function no longer worked. Samsung told me some of the hardware on my notebook is incompatible with the latest version of Windows 10 and that if I want to solve this I’d have to reinstall Windows 8, or an early version of Windows 10. This seems unsatisfactory. Is my laptop obsolete? Noel Moore
This isn’t great, but it isn’t unusual. For your model, Samsung offered driver support only up to Windows 10 Anniversary Edition, or 1607, released in 2016. Samsung can't be blamed for the fact that Microsoft has since done things to Windows 10 that cause problems for these final drivers, preventing Windows 10 itself from updating. It supplied the machine with
Windows 8, and that version of the operating system – which Microsoft will continue to support until 2023 – would continue to download available updates, were it still on your PC. The drivers also continue to work in Windows 8.
So, we’re afraid what Samsung says is correct: your machine isn’t supported beyond Windows 10 1607. As such, to keep it running safely (at least until 2023), you’d have to revert to Windows 8.
We know that’s far from ideal. Clearly, you’ve installed a newer version of Windows 10, keeping the operating system itself ‘safe’ until the next major update, but it won’t download drivers it considers to be broken or unsafe. That’s why your Bluetooth won’t work.
You could use the Samsung Update app (a free download from ww.snipca. com/38604) to force these old drivers to download and install, but there’s no guarantee they’ll work – or that they won’t cause unforeseen problems.