Upgraded from 7 to 10 and encoutered an avalanche of nightmares

That is still going on. Every single day for the last four or five days has been a nightmare. A (not comprehensive) sample of my problems so far:

- Show windows side by side no longer works
- Creating an image copy after "remove properties and personal information" is no longer possible.
- The the taskbar's "show windows side by side" function is FUBAR: the number of windows open and active no longer match the number that Windows 10 is pretending to be open.
- And now (this one triggered my post here) I got expelled from operating the "mouse" settings. A pop up shows up with the message "windows cannot access the specified file. You may not have the apt permissions..."
- can't find my admin privilege. It has disappeared into a black hole. "User" settings in control panel has nothing in it other than my ability to create other accounts. It can no longer assigns privileges to itself or others - there used to be "privilege boxes" I could tick in windows 7 - where are those?

I can live w/ most of those listed but those last two things are simply not acceptable. I use a mouse and I need the settings and I do not accept being reduced to a de facto "guest" on my own device without asking for it.

But I also came to this forum not only to reclaim my PC but to get advice whether I got duped into upgrading to a rubbish OS and will be far better off reverting this and going back to 7 and letting the PC run its course cuz this is getting ridiculous by the day.

Since you already upgraded your computer, you will be able to clean install for free using your existing key. Just skip where it asks for the key and you should find it already activated by the time you get to the desktop. A clean install is the best way to resolve this amount of problems.

Its quite common for users who have upgraded from Windows 7 to have encountered lots of errors.

Windows not being able to access various user files is one side effect of upgrading for some people and with the above, you shouldn't have this issue.

Also for drivers, it'l be a lot cleaner as there may be some residual Windows 7 drivers that may cause problems.

I would really give Windows 10 a good chance as it does perform better than 7.

manish9009 said:

U dont have to but windows 10 as it was already installed on computer once your Hard ware ID is registerd and MS wont ask for Product key.
AS per paid application in your Computer Try using Belark which will give you most of the product keys.

Belrac Advisor

jerriy said:

clean OS installation is not an option. I'm not going to spend one cent on Windows 10 nor other software that I already have in my PC and would have to be installed anew (retrieving original installation of some of these programs is not feasible as it esquires me to buy a plane ticket and fly across oceans).

For now I've reverted the last update (so called anniversary update) and was able to get back my mouse and admin privileges.

Now what I want is a blockade of that anniversary update.

Try these things:

• Create a new test user profile
  - many times a profile becomes fubar. If the new user works fine, you can use that or correct the old one.
  
  
• Create a 40 GB partition and clean install Win 10 1607 on that partition.
  It will create a dual boot (the top one is the new one - both will say Windows 10 ... you can change that to Win10-clean and make the other boot the default)
  
  
• To stop the 1607 update
  
  
  1. Set your connection to Metered
     
     
  2. Uninstall the 1607 update
     
     
  3. Run Windows update - do not download or install
     
     
  4. Use the Show Hide diag cab to hide the 1607 update.
     This is temporary as the next cumulative update will get through.
     Better to fix it now or have to revisit in a few months.

The clean install is the preferred solution, you have a digital license for Windows 10 since you already updated (it's been reported that you can still upgrade after the 29 July 2016 deadline with valid Win7 or Win8 license keys - but that extension won't last forever) and most application software can be downloaded and installed with a key (Belarc report)
- but see how a new user profile behaves.

I might not be on-line to help with the suggestions, but there are many knowledgeable members who can help you through the process(es). Almost everything I suggested has a thread in the Tutorials section.