Probably not software stuff, but have to blubber to somebody.
 
"Upgraded" my music laptop from win 7 to win 10. Took a few days insanity and 12 hours finally after being stalled at 99% forever.
 
First thing it did was take out my wifi hardware. Probably some voltage spike or whatever related to the installation. Increased startup time by a minute and doing an annoying graphics refresh every couple minutes. Everything frozen until a new refresh. Still recognizes DAW and soundcard, but nothing of any progress.
 
Undid the update back to win 7 and the wifi card still fried. Recloned and no wifi.
 
Wireless worked well before the "upgrade" and downloaded everything thru wifi.
 
When trying to uninstall the thing, got a message that if everything is forked up, try doing a win 10 update to solve the problem. Would have been a good option if the update had not fried the internet connection.
 
Saw a blurb that there will be no more windows versions. No win 11 on the horizon. Win 10 is the last and that anything subsequent will be refinements. About time. Doesn't however solve my predicament. Wish I had resisted the temptation. Everything was working fine before the upgrade.
 
John

So...its Windows 10 and then the zombie apocalypse?

It's always the laptops... they really need to be within a few years old or forget it. Manufacturers change custom laptop chipsets often, and the special drivers for these are often passed over and never upgraded to newer OS's.

Yeah laptops... Cheap hardware.
 
Might have been just a coincidence, but even recloning to a previous stable win 7 state has knocked out the wifi.
Did all the driver and troubleshooting things.
Can only think that voltage spikes in the upgrade fried the card.
Win 10 upgrade is complete mess above and beyond the wifi failure. Should have let it pass while everything was working well.
 
John

I bet the wifi would have fried even if you didn't do the upgrade. There are millions of people who successfully upgraded old laptops to Win10 with minimal problems.

Followup on this just to add to the knowledge base. Got wifi fixed.
 
I have two PC's running win 10 with no problems, one upgraded from win 8.1. My laptop is a bloody mess however, but the wifi is back..
 
Knocking out wifi is a common curse with the win 10 upgrade, and a bunch of trial and error solutions offered on various forums. Mine was simple.
 
Seems the upgrade can turn off the wifi card connection to save power. Fix is to go into the hardware manager, enter the profile of the wifi adapter and disable the turn off option to save power. Hardware was not fried as I feared.
 
Just can't figure out why the reclone to workable win 7 also had the connection cut.
 
Win 7 to win 10, outside the wifi thing...
 
Startup takes 3 times as long. Monitor is continually freezing and refreshing. Can't even get to the control panel to reverse the upgrade because it refreshes and shuts down the control panel. Older USB wifi not supported, but that part is just life. Still got a solid win 7 clone to go back to if this mess stays as forked up after whatever further updates. Should have taken Rain's advice and kept a good thing that was working well.
 
At least I can now stream Home and Garden reruns again, if I move the mouse real slow.
 
John
 
 

Sending this from the destroyed laptop if it gets through. (Thanks Microsoft for a fine job. Wish I could bill them by the hour.)
 
Got wifi connected. Slower than crap otherwise. Internal soundcard connection toasted, but never used it anyway. Some progress with updates and sage advice from various forum members suffering with the same issues. ****, there goes the video refresh again... Earth to forum...
 
Has to be with the update trying to preserve a previous configuration versus a clean win 10 install and conflicting obsolete drivers. Clean install probably works okay. ****, there goes the video and fefresh freeze again...and again.
 
Got a good win 7 clone to fall back on minus the wifi problem. Beginning to enjoy the torture and finding how absurd complicated the fixes are. There goes the refresh again.
 
Hitting the send button if it works,
 
John
 

Windows 10 is a tough one ...I thought I liked it and I did for a while ..
My home WiFi runs like $hit on it no matter what I do .
 2 Win...computers , one was Win 10 64 as the main OS , the other was an in place upgrade from Win 8
Now I'm  sitting here merrily typing away on my MackBook ...
Thank you Windows 10 , because of you I'm focusing on learning Logic and Reaper in OSX Life's to short babe .
 
all the best,
 
Kenny
 
PS sorry about the Rant John

Kenny,
 
Hey brother, rant is entirely justified. Got most of everything here working after the zombie apocalypse upgrade. Got wifi connected, control panel back, internal sound card now making noise.
 
Takes about 5 minutes to get past the black screen to a flickering startup. Takes at least another 5 minutes or more to stabilize before trying to open anything without a freeze, but it does work about a third of what XP did. Noticed no benefit for audio processing.
 
Problem has to be something specific to old win 7 drivers.
 
Wish I had just left this alone.
 
Your wifi settings are hijacked and set to a low priority, both as win 10 delegates energy expenditure (in which case wifi is turned off entirely), or as reducing the power to take on "distant" connections. Sends wifi to the back of the bus so whatever new useless crap can get first shot at the CPU.
 
Can't remember the tweaks needed to get internet up to full speed, but the default win 10 throttle on internet can be defeated.
 
Let me know if you need more info and I can find what the geeks advise.
 
John

Not wanting to beat this to death, and probably on the wrong forum, but wanted to share something that could be useful if you run into this frustration.
 
Got win 10 working outside of a 10 minute startup to stabilize, and the irritation of having to give permission to normal startup routines. Decided to keep it for now, praying for updates that will speed things up and resolve the freezes. DAW, soundcard, control panel working if I don't try to access anything too soon.
 
Soundcard was implicated in the screen hangups, so uninstalled it and the dreaded security halt blocked the program when I tried to reinstall.
 
Found a bunch of arcane fixes to circumvent the blocks. Only one approach is simple and seems to work okay.
 
So scenario is that you try to install something and windows has blocked the installation for your "protection".
 
Fixes advised are creation of a temp administer login to circumvent. Other fixes involve copying sequential DOS codes since access to security levels not as friendly in win 10.
 
Appreciate the attempt with win 10 to "upgrade" on top of the existing OS, unlike the major destructive win 7 upgrades where you got maybe 5 percent of your programs that still work. Problem in trying to preserve the past is that drivers and whatever may not be compatible. Total crap shoot. Success of what restarts depends on what you have on your computer before the "upgrade".
 
If you are blocked from installing anything trying to salvage your way out of the mess, do this:
 
Have your software executible in an easy to access place. I did the soundcard exe directly on the C drive for convenience.
 
Right clck on the start button and then select Command Prompt (Admin).
Type in the pathway to the program exe, cab, msi whatever. Include the name of the executible.
 
Hit the button, then Plug & Pray.
 
Life should be conditional bliss from that point onward.
 
John