windows has destroyed my computer

2 If anyone is not familiar with upgrading an OS they should let someone who knows how to do it,. IMO.

I spent over 40 years doing IT work, on 5 different generations of computers -- and totally agree with what you said!

That said, there's something about the combination of "Free!" and computers that just causes folks to do dumb things. People who wouldn't even think about doing a brake job on their cars (lest they break something and have to pay an auto shop to fix it) have no hesitancy about jumping into something as risky as upgrading an operating system.

Microsoft is INVITING hundreds of millions of folks to do something they are (1) totally unqualified to do, and (2) have no simple path to recovery if anything goes wrong. And, they're doing it for free!! Folks are presuming that a company as big, experienced, and powerful as Microsoft is not going to allow folks to risk their PCs due to something as simple as a poorly-written Upgrade tool.

You're all saying that if, as a car dealer, I offer you a free ride in a new car, and you do that -- and you crash due to faulty brakes -- that's its YOUR fault you didn't check the brakes ahead of time! Who does that in a test drive of a new car?? You presume because it's being offered to you that it's not going to fail. Same is true of this Free Win10 Upgrade -- folks are RIGHT to presume it's not going to fail. I already said the tool can not anticipate everything, but if chkdsk and sfc SHOULD be done before the upgrade, then the TOOL should know to do this, not the user.

And I do have two gripes with Microsoft about this upgrade:

They should have made it possible to activate a clean install by verifying the validity of a Windows 7/8/8.1 Product Key rather than forcing the upgrade from the installed and operating previous version

Vastly more significant - I absolutely hated the way they pushed the Windows upgrade via Windows Update and making it so difficult to get past it and just continue with updates to Windows 7/8/8.1. Just a little, click here to upgrade to Windows 10 would have been sufficient, but Microsoft made it so that the Windows 10 upgrade all but completely took over Windows 7/8/8.1 Windows Update as the only update available. (Yes, I figured out how to get around it).

Mark Phelps said:

Hey folks -- let's stop blaming the victims when Win10 upgrades go badly! It is UNREASONABLE to expect Windows users to make system backups before running an upgrade. While it is certainly a good thing to do, I'd wager that over 90% of Windows users don't even know HOW to make full system backups.

Years ago I lead a team of Developers producing an installation package for a new commercial software product. Our first order of business was "do no harm!" Every installation started with a diagnostic routine that looked for all problems that could compromise the installation and possibly damage or corrupt the target system. If none were found, a restore backup was made of the system before ANY changes were made! After install, a set of tests were run to confirm the install succeeded. If any tests failed, error messages were produced and the system was restored to its original state. I repeat -- NO HARM WAS DONE!

It's Microsoft's Win10 Compatibility Checker that is lying to people about the lack of problems. It is Microsoft's Upgrade tool that is leaving folks PCs in unusable states. It is Microsoft's Uprade tool that is NOT restoring folks PC to their original working conditions.

I know this because I've had it happen to me, and I've read literally hundreds of posts on other forums about folks who had it happen to them.

So, let's stop blaming the victims here. The culprit is Microsoft and their faulty Upgrade tool which corrupts working systems and leaves folks PCs in a mess.

You'd claim that MS has delieberately created the upgrader to proceed when it has detected problems that would prevent the upgrade from working?

That's pretty severe, if you meant it literally.

I've never seen any indication that MS monitors this forum. If this doesn't draw their notice, I suppose that nothing will.

You'd claim that MS has delieberately created the upgrader to proceed when it has detected problems that would prevent the upgrade from working?

NO -- I would have absolutely no what of knowing how MS wrote their Upgrade Tool. All I'm saying is two things:

First, when MY team wrote our install tool, we made sure that it DID NO HARM. We did that by having the tool confirm the install/upgrade worked correctly (using a series of tests), and if it did not, we restored their system to its original WORKING condition. We did that my saving off restore information from the original system.

Second, if us non-MS folks know enough to tell people to run CHKDSK and SFC /scannow BEFORE doing the upgrade, surely there are enough smart folks at MS who should have built such checks into their Upgrade tool -- to run PRIOR to the upgrade.

By making the Upgrade FREE, MS is enticing folks to do something they simply should NOT be doing -- an in-place OS upgrade. And, by releasing a poorly written Upgrade tool that results in folks machines being corrupted, they are treating their customers badly -- and we are doing the same when we blame these same customers for failures that are clearly the fault of the tool.

I whole heartedly agree with Mark Phelps MS has been shoving this upgrade down ordinary Joe's face so they have been and were allured into upgrading it, however they failed to inform people that if it didn't work they could potentially have a system that would be completely unusable.

Bazz said:

I whole heartedly agree with Mark Phelps MS has been shoving this upgrade down ordinary Joe's face so were allured into upgrading it, however they failed to inform people that if it didn't work they could potentially have a system that would be completely unusable.

So what's the computer version of the Surgeon General? WARNING: The Regulatory Department of Federal Government Regulation has determined that use of this product may have unpredictable results including unrecoverable fatal errors resulting in the complete loss of all user data and requiring the user to restore their computer by cleanly installing their previous operating system. Only certified professionals with the resources and ability to restore the previous operating system from scratch should even think about performing this upgrade.

NavyLCDR said:

So what's the computer version of the Surgeon General? WARNING: The Regulatory Department of Federal Government Regulation has determined that use of this product may have unpredictable results including unrecoverable fatal errors resulting in the complete loss of all user data and requiring the user to restore their computer by cleanly installing their previous operating system. Only certified professionals with the resources and ability to restore the previous operating system from scratch should even think about performing this upgrade.

Yes mate you know these things however ordinary Joe does not, he just gets the ''upgrade me'' and thinks he is getting a upgrade, please put your ''if this happen to your Nan head on'' instead of your MS service engineer head and think of all those Nan's that don't even know this forum exists and are stuck.

I have no problem that the upgrade will not work correctly however the button to ''Take me back to where I came from'' seems to be lacking and MS should of made sure this was never going to happen.

Slartybart said:

Jake,

If you haven't already, try a hard stop - press and hold the power button for more than 20 seconds (until the machine shuts down). The upgrade might have hung on a particular device and the upgrade might finish after a cold start.

There are a few other reasons this might have occurred ...

Hard stop again if that did not help
The easiest thing is to strip down your hardware to bare bones (memory, mouse, keyboard, and Monitor)
Disconnect all disks other than your Windows disk (one disk only please)
Disconnect Printers, dongles, and other external devices form the USB or other ports.
Start the machine.

Hard stop again if that did not help
This might trigger Win10 recovery - I don't know how far the upgrade went, but it might have gotten far enough.

Otherwise ...

Use another PC if you have one or go to a friend's house or the library and create Win10 install media.
See: Use Media Creation Tool to create Bootable Windows 10 USB

Make sure that you select the correct bit depth of the Media Creation Tool
Make sure that you select the Windows edition that matches your previous OS (most likely Home or Pro).

Once you have the Win10 install media, you can use that to attempt to repair your machine.
See: Boot to Advanced Startup Options from Windows 10 Installation USB or DVD

I you actually read the thread he has already taken it in for repair.

NavyLCDR said:

So what's the computer version of the Surgeon General? WARNING: The Regulatory Department of Federal Government Regulation has determined that use of this product may have unpredictable results including unrecoverable fatal errors resulting in the complete loss of all user data and requiring the user to restore their computer by cleanly installing their previous operating system. Only certified professionals with the resources and ability to restore the previous operating system from scratch should even think about performing this upgrade.

You write that sarcastically, but in many ways I believe that's closer to what Microsoft should have done than what they did. They haven't exactly been putting firearms in the hands of small children, and I don't think there'll be a lot of deaths from botched upgrades. However, I think that MS gives the impression that the upgrade is completely safe, under all circumstances, and it obviously isn't. Some of the problems could be avoided by some simple steps prior to running the upgrade, but what fraction of Windows users have heard of chkdsk or sfc?

MS obviously built checks into the upgrader that causes it to roll back to the old OS when the upgrade fails, but it also obviously doesn't work 100% of the time. (Apparently rolling back from a completed Win 10 installation isn't a 100% sure thing, either.)

What level of imperfection is acceptable? I haven't seen statistics on what fraction of upgrades have gone irretrievably bad. (Irretrievable means that the OS is toast, and would need to be replaced from scratch. Or from the drive image that was never made.)

I'm all for personal responsibility, but the idea that we're all equal in knowledge or capability borders on the delusional.