Upgrading to Win 10 [from 7]: Results - IT'S A WINNER

With time running out on the free upgrade offer (ends July 29th-ish) I am going to try it.
 
My APro Controllers have Win 10 Drivers
My UM-3G has Win 10 Drivers
My Behringer XENYX UFX 1604 Firewire/USB mixer has Win 10 Drivers.
 
I am cloning my SSD C Drive to my old Hitachi C Drive in case things aren't better after the upgrade.
 
I am hoping my computer likes Win 10 better than Win 7, and that Sonar Plat will be more stable.
 
Results will be posted soon...
 
[Added] If like me you uninstalled the win 10 notification in the task bar (uninstalled KBxxxxxxxx), you can go here to find the path to the Official Windows 10 Upgrade Download:
 
https://www.microsoft.com...ows/windows-10-upgrade

OK John.  The download is 3gb.  Will take a while.  I was going to just leave all my USB and Firewire devices plugged in...unless someone thinks that is a bad idea...

I may go back to windows 7 look at what windows took out Aero Glass, I do a lot of scrolling I use to right click in the scroll bar and be able to go to an area in one or two clicks can't do that in windows 10. I've read that windows 10 is more for mobile, notebooks, laptops, and the like. And forget asking MS anything they are not answering anything. Or they send you to the social media where you only find out dated info. Yes you do see a little speed improvement those who claim faster start up I bet switch to SSD you would see that improvement on any OS you use. So, I have 20 plus day to go back to windows 7 still looking for other things I lost since the windows 10 move.

as always John, I highly respect your opinion.
In my case..im just not ready to take the jump yet. I probably should. I know I could because all my drivers+devices
are modern and up to date. but I just don't like the way windows is headed.
 
I have to agree with you though about performance. I even noticed a huge improvement from windows 7 to windows 8 with boot up times. its like night and day.
I had a laptop with a disk drive HD running win 7. took almost 2 minutes before it was booted to desktop.
that same laptop I upgraded to 8 on....boot time is now at 30 seconds.
I've also noticed copy/paste - transfer data is faster as well.
 
but ever since Windows came out with that stupid Metro style crap, they lost me.
IMO they were trying to capitalize on what Apple was doing with mobile smart phone.
(their own little WinPad, WinPhone, what ever it is.)
 
I would still be on windows 7 right now if it were not for Windows 8 having better performance.
And im always the guy who will say...
"If you don't keep up with technology, Technology will leave you behind"
 
I've always lived by those words. those words were the main reason I picked up Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 in the late 90's / early 2000. I was running out of tape john.
(I say that of course in a metaphorical type of way but you get what I mean.)
However in reality my distributor MAXELL was literally running out of tape around 2006.
 
I have windows 8.1 on my main DAW
I have windows 8 on my back up DAW (laptop)
and I have windows 10 on my play around device (laptop)
I also have a 8 inch windows Tablet..but who's counting... (mumbling under my breath: Four !!)
 
Its not as much 10 as it is just the way MS is headed. I also agree with you about it being a good desktop. it is built for desktops but its also built to share with other devices, mobile, tablets.
just wish they focused more on the desktop user on this last version 10. it reminds me of 8.1 with gift wrap on it.
 
any who, I hardly if ever complain. so my apologies if I sound negative about windows 10.
I will upgrade in the future, I might not be happy about it, but I can never turn down a better OS, a faster OS just because im ignorant. I could never do that.
 
My machines are built for one thing. Sonar. and if there's a way to get that competitive edge, like deflating footballs
(Brady is innocent by the way) I would do it in a second to make Sonar run better.
that's why I will accept Windows 10.
 

I installed Windows 10 last summer and rolled back immediately.  No Roland drivers were out yet...and I hated the new desktop or whatever the hell that confusing palate of misshapen windows on the desktop were.  Honestly...it terrified me.  But I am hoping Win 10 will give me Win8 reliability...so another go at it:
 
98% installed...back later

What features are stripped?

I went to W10 last summer and haven't looked back for a moment. It's generally far more stable and smooth than any OS I've run on this old machine so far, which is quite a few iterations, pretty much everything since XP. I personally never had a problem with W8 - I couldn't for the life of me understand what the fuss was about over Metro and why people got so worked up about it. I just ignored it, for the most part, and it was really very easy to ignore so I never understood why everyone seemed to take it like a personal attack. Yes, I somewhat prefer the W10 start menu setup to the W8 start page, but it's kind of academic. 
 
Anyway I'm glad early indications are that it's working for you. It's really a pretty solid foundation and I'm hopeful that rumours that they will stick with it for a while with CW-style 'rolling updates' turn out to be true. I'm planning to upgrade to an SSD and see if I can squeak another couple of years out of this machine. It's been good to me so far!

Thedoccal
OK it's installed and I like what I hear and see so far in Sonar.  I said no to most of the stuff Windows wanted me to say yes to during the install, and the Behringer driver needed to be "installed" in device manager (Windows gave me the Realtek driver which I "disabled" after enabling the Behringer).  Running the Behringer ASIO driver (whereas in Win 7 the WDM driver was more stable),  and I have a good overall feeling about this.  My processor is running at half what it was before.  Will put it through heavy recording tests tomorrow.  Want this to work and I do not want to go back to Win 7...and I can feel the love so far...
 
Preliminary Result:  Windows 10 (Pre)Approved

I'm very happy to hear this. I expected it but one never knows. 

subtlearts

azslow3
I was stuck with Gnome2 under Linux for rather long time. But once I have managed to switch, it was a right move. The same with 7-10 interface changed. People was working and these people are smart.  The fact they have RECOGNIZED AND FIXED metro desktop experience during 8 - 8.1 - 10 route is a proof for that.

Agreed. People are very quick to judge microsoft, when something doesn't work perfectly, forgetting the unbelievable odds they are up against, making a product that runs on nearly anything, not the tightly controlled walled garden of devices that Apple has to support. I am not saying they're perfect, far from it, they still do some annoying stuff - but it's pretty mindblowing how well W10 does run on just about anything, including old warhorse desktops like mine, with old unsupported hardware that still works just fine thankyouverymuch.
 
And yes, they have some Very Smart People and they have shown that they can listen to and respond to their customer base and improve things when they get off track... while simultaneously offering support and security updates for old products for ages (Vista is still in extended support, for pete's sake!). But they have been everybody's favorite whipping post for so long, the archetypal evil empire big corporation... meanwhile I have known a few employees who have been very positive, saying they're just a great company to work for. I think they get the short end of the stick far too often while Apple gets a pass on a lot of BS. 

I completely agree. Nor could I say it better.
 

When Cakewalk upgraded their C++ to a version that allowed them to support multitouch back in the X2 - X2a days, XP was killed off as the new VCRedist that had multitouch would not load on XP. - - -Microsoft's decision.
 
We saw a sniff of that reoccurring recently when a new MS C++ upgrade at Cakewalk (They have upgrade-itis too!) caused those on Win7 not up to SP1 to not be able to install the new SONAR. I was one of them.
 
Seeing the writing on the wall and industry rumblings about MS desire to kill off Win7 and 8.1 along with the new C++ 17 a- comin', I got nervous.
 
And went against everything and upgraded my DAW with an old Terratec EWS88D and UAD-1 card to Win 10.
 
The Terratec EWS88D and the UAD-1 survived* still using their driver revisions from Windows 7 (These are both end of life as far as the manufactures are concerned).
 
The EWS88D may have to go as SONAR is sketchy about it. Sometimes doesn't close the driver properly, will post an error about the EWS88D in event viewer when trying to reopen it upon SONAR restart. While Wavelab 6 for example  seems to have no trouble with it even in this new environment and can be used to close the asio driver to SONAR will run again even.
 
Melodyne 4 activation did not survive and my PC had to be reactivated which I did.
 
Turned off Automatic Corrutpdates  by setting the Windows Update Service to disabled.
 
- Onward and upward.

I left the computer running all night and did everything I could think of to crash it so far this morning.  It won't crash.  Windows 10 appears to have made my computer problems disappear.  In Win 7, I could get Sonar to freeze by changing the Midi Input Ports and channel assignments, or dragging and renaming markers, or a host of other menial tasks, while the song was running, or not running.  Now I'm doing all that and everything else without so much as a hickup.  I am thrilled!
 
With all the things I tried over the last two months - New drives, new mixing board, new graphics card, tweeks, swapping USB ports, driver checks, Win 7 tweeks, you name it...it never once occurred to me that upgrading from 7 to 10 would solve everything.  I'm sure people mentioned it...certainly that they found things "more reliable" with Sonar with Windows 8.1, and 10, because I read them, especially one yesterday, somewhere.  I am so glad I did this...with time running out.  Many, many thanks to all of you.
 
I feel like a new man.
 
Result:  Windows 10 Approved

As of the latest Sonar Update my win7 would always crash after export on this one song that seems to tax Sonar with a StackHash crash I tried to fix but could not. Today I did that same with Windows 10 and it did not crash! So cool here too. :-)

I imagine the testing and stability checking at Cakewalk is focused on Win 10 and the rest of us stragglers can shoot their best shot. This is the way it should be anyway. Even though I'm on 10 now two days ago I was on 7 so I'm still a straggler.
 
I hope I can experience the same stability as it seems to have gotten worse the quicker they made Sonar in windows 7.

I switched my old Terratec EWS88D from ASIO which I have run forever to WDM and it seems super stable under 10. <ThumbsUp>

rspagnuolo
I'm not very tech savvy and just a little over-cautious. I am running an audio computer from Sweetwater that I bought last year and using Win 8.1.
Can anyone venture a guess on how long Sonar will play nicely with Win 8.1??
 
Thanks
Ray

Until Microsoft rolls out a C++ compiler (The thing they make SONAR with) that won't load on anything less than 10 and Cake uses it to make the next update  at that time. - make sense to ya?
 
That happened to xp users when X2a came out
That happened in May (If I recall) when sonar's install could not register it's updated library unless you we're running Win7 Service Pack 1. - An update and we were all good.
 
Microsoft would love it if we would all using 10 so they could focus on the present and the future.
To that end they may kill their children so to speak.