Windows 10 Question(s)

[whodoyoulike]

I think this is what happened to me.

[Hoofless_Wonder]

Originally Posted by Augenj

And to add insult to injury, this just out:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/29933...ome-users.html

Microsoft is testing the waters with a few users by making the upgrade to Windows 10 MANDATORY. I suspect that if nobody hollers, they'll do that to all of us.

It appears that M$ is assuming you want Windows 10 if you ever indicated so earlier.....

About went blind today when my company mandated updating to Office 2013 from Office 2010 on my worklaptop. No new functionality, screwed up defaults, did not save my earlier settings - and about went blind trying to read the Outlook menus. Had just about figured out where all the Office 2010 buttons were compared to 2007, and now.....ugh.

Also discovered today that a new install of Windows 10 doesn't work on a disk partitioned by Gparted on my new desktop. Nice. M$ doesn't like Linux.

A new install of Suse Linux took about 5 mins. A new install of Windows 10 took about 25 mins on the same hardware. Turned off the options that Express Settings wants, and Windows rebooted, and then ignored my earlier selections. Turned off all the sharing options again, and then it stuck after the next reboot.

Tired of fighting it for now. Will reinstall Linux and see if I can get a dual bootable config tomorrow. Then I'll check out how to turn off more of the Windows snooping things. Then maybe I'll be brave enough to connect it to the internet.

[Augenj]

Originally Posted by Hoofless_Wonder

It appears that M$ is assuming you want Windows 10 if you ever indicated so earlier.....

About went blind today when my company mandated updating to Office 2013 from Office 2010 on my worklaptop. No new functionality, screwed up defaults, did not save my earlier settings - and about went blind trying to read the Outlook menus. Had just about figured out where all the Office 2010 buttons were compared to 2007, and now.....ugh.

Also discovered today that a new install of Windows 10 doesn't work on a disk partitioned by Gparted on my new desktop. Nice. M$ doesn't like Linux.

A new install of Suse Linux took about 5 mins. A new install of Windows 10 took about 25 mins on the same hardware. Turned off the options that Express Settings wants, and Windows rebooted, and then ignored my earlier selections. Turned off all the sharing options again, and then it stuck after the next reboot.

Tired of fighting it for now. Will reinstall Linux and see if I can get a dual bootable config tomorrow. Then I'll check out how to turn off more of the Windows snooping things. Then maybe I'll be brave enough to connect it to the internet.

I read somewhere that Microsoft laid off a large group of testers to save money. Consumers are expected to test Windows from now on to benefit their business customers. Maybe we should get paid?

[headhawg]

Originally Posted by Augenj

I read somewhere that Microsoft laid off a large group of testers to save money. Consumers are expected to test Windows from now on to benefit their business customers. Maybe we should get paid?

You got Windows 10 for "free". Isn't that compensation? I commented on how I thought upgrading was a bad idea, but this is why companies make money on shi**y products -- marketing and gullible consumers.

[Hoofless_Wonder]

Yeah, it's always fun to be part of the "beta" test group. I'm seeing the same approach with business applications too - obvious bugs in the early releases of code, code getting pulled after being GA for a few days or hours, etc.

Fought some more last night with the new system. Discovered Windows 10 and Linux now have two different partition types, so if you want a dual bootable system, you'll need at least two drives. Windows saw fit to put the boot partition on a different drive than the one chosen for the install, so I had to disconnect two of the three drives, and reinstall. Rat bastards.

It's amazing how Windows is starting to look like Linux, and Linux is starting to look like the tiles of Windows. Still plenty of bugs in Windows, and with the newer i7 6th generation chip, not all drivers are available, and the system is only semi-stable.

It's mucho fast though....

[MJC922]

Yeah I can see where dual boot would complicate matters with a Win10 install. Typically when working with one hard drive I find the ideal workaround is to always create a partition using diskpart before installing Windows. If you just start with unallocated space instead of a pre-existing partition then you're guaranteed to get the bootable files on a second partition, and this is I believe due to the 'potential' that you might want to use bitlocker someday, which I personally never use. But then again I don't dual boot anything so YMMV. When I've run Linux in the past it was in a VM using VMware player.

[MJC922]

MS stuff definitely is more buggy than ever IMO, and it's all cosmetic crap that's the worst of it, I see no real changes under the hood, it's still Vista. Meh, I suspect where I work the stuff is more buggy than ever too. Everyone has moved to agile dev over the past few years and more frequent staggered releases. I'm not a big fan of achieving good quality assurance when rushing to get a release out the door every four months. What we have is too many companies dependent upon one another to 'release' and you end up getting people at the top driving this with no real understanding of what it takes to turn out quality software.

[senortout]

Honestly now, you do not need two separate hard drives to dual-boot Windows 10 and Linux. I am presently running Windows 10, (in its own PARTITION, of course and using its preferred file system, too) alongside Ubunut 14.04.3 (also in its own PARTITION, and using its preferred file system). There are more than one of these to choose from, stick with the default.

At boot-time, I get a boot menu (grub 2, provided by Ubuntu). It is from there I choose which system to boot up. I allow myself 5 seconds to choose, (this is 10 seconds by default) and either one or the other boots perfectly. A lot of stuff is adjustable.

Its important to get the facts straight, before deciding what is, and what is not possible.

Originally Posted by Hoofless_Wonder

Yeah, it's always fun to be part of the "beta" test group. I'm seeing the same approach with business applications too - obvious bugs in the early releases of code, code getting pulled after being GA for a few days or hours, etc.

Fought some more last night with the new system. Discovered Windows 10 and Linux now have two different partition types, so if you want a dual bootable system, you'll need at least two drives. Windows saw fit to put the boot partition on a different drive than the one chosen for the install, so I had to disconnect two of the three drives, and reinstall. Rat bastards.

It's amazing how Windows is starting to look like Linux, and Linux is starting to look like the tiles of Windows. Still plenty of bugs in Windows, and with the newer i7 6th generation chip, not all drivers are available, and the system is only semi-stable.

It's mucho fast though....

[Hoofless_Wonder]

diskpart or gparted (linux) used to be able to create and manage partitions that could be shared. No more. There's two types and the partitioning code on the Windows 10 DVD and the Linux distros can't handle "the other" type. I've never used bitlocker either, but it sure would be nice if Windows would let you know exactly what it was going to hose up during the install.

And I couldn't agree more that it's still Vista underneath, and that quality software comes at a price. What gets me is how captive these environments are becoming. If I wanted my icons to get huge and look like a tablet, well, I'd buy a tablet. M$ has stacked the Windows 10 o/s so users can shop, get news, and keep in touch with their contacts - via their tools. Like we didn't already know how to do that....

[Hoofless_Wonder]

Originally Posted by senortout

Honestly now, you do not need two separate hard drives to dual-boot Windows 10 and Linux. I am presently running Windows 10, (in its own PARTITION, of course and using its preferred file system, too) alongside Ubunut 14.04.3 (also in its own PARTITION, and using its preferred file system). There are more than one of these to choose from, stick with the default.

At boot-time, I get a boot menu (grub 2, provided by Ubuntu). It is from there I choose which system to boot up. I allow myself 5 seconds to choose, (this is 10 seconds by default) and either one or the other boots perfectly. A lot of stuff is adjustable.

Its important to get the facts straight, before deciding what is, and what is not possible.

Well Senor, the facts are that Windows 10 Pro would not install in the existing partitions I had created with gparted, using OpenSuse, Fedora or Snappy Linux. Windows (apparently) insisted on having its own partition type, which means it had to have its own drive. If you were able to install Linux into a Windows partition, that's just peachy, but I trust gparted more - especially as the OpenSuse version refers to changing it to a "more sane" type when deleting the Windows one.....

[senortout]

Say, I must be confused. Of course, I had Windows 7 when I bought my desktop 3-4 years ago. When I decided to dual-boot, I used a windows program to shrink the partition where Windows 7 was installed to approx. 1/2 of the hard drive. Then I ran the Ubuntu installation from the cd I'd installed the .iso on, and followed the instructions from there. I did have some difficulties along the way, but there it was, two systems operating on the same hard drive, ntfs for Windows 7 and ext3??.... I believe it was for Ubuntu. (Those must be the two disparate file types you indicate cannot share the same hard drive, am I correct in stating that?) When the opportunity came along to take a free upgrade to Windows 10, I did that; again there were rough spots along the way, but now I am running both.


QUOTE=Hoofless_Wonder]Well Senor, the facts are that Windows 10 Pro would not install in the existing partitions I had created with gparted, using OpenSuse, Fedora or Snappy Linux. Windows (apparently) insisted on having its own partition type, which means it had to have its own drive. If you were able to install Linux into a Windows partition, that's just peachy, but I trust gparted more - especially as the OpenSuse version refers to changing it to a "more sane" type when deleting the Windows one.....[/QUOTE]

[senortout]

below, a screen capture taken of gparted app and indicates file types, partition sizes, etc.

[Hoofless_Wonder]

Senor, what you have is typical of many users who want to have Linux available with all the open source tools and software, and have sufficient space on their hard drive for both Windows and Linux. Since you've migrated from W7 to W10 via upgrade, the underlying partitions were not affected, and you apparently have a Windows friendly partition to begin with, so you might be okay for now. When you get a chance, you might want to boot up into Linux, and see if you can access your data on the Windows NTFS partition (C: drive). I found a problem with that tonight, as M$ has locked down the W10 data on my machine, though it might work mounting it up read-only. Previously, I could boot up in Linux and access all data on my system with no issues.

The problem I'm describing doesn't have anything to do with Windows NTFS or Linux ext3 file system types. It has to do with the format and construct of the partitions themselves, which are simply "chunks" of space allocated out for various uses. You can only have one "set" of partitions per hard drive. In your case, you have four partitions, plus the logical extended partition marker, which is fairly typical. You'll also have another section or two for the boot loader, which is grub in your case. In the past, it didn't matter whether the install of Windows, a Windows partitioner, or Gparted or other Linux partitioners were used to create them - they all played together fairly nicely.

Using the Linux tools, I could not manipulate or install anything on the partitions that were created with the W10 DVD install partitioner.I could only delete them, and then redefine a completely raw disk with a "GParted" or Linux partition type. When I booted up the W10 DVD, it could not use any of the GParted partitions for an install, and wanted it deleted and reformated to its liking.

Therefore, at this time, if doing a new install of Windows 10, the partition you need must be Windows approved, and apparently can't be created with the current versions of Gparted. Maybe this will change over time, but I have my suspicions. When initially announcing W10 a couple of years ago, M$ wanted to lock the bootloader for any PC sold via OEMs to only allow one o/s on it. Since I was building my own system, my ASUS motherboard allowed me to toggle off the secure boot. But from what I've seen so far on Windows 10 (all defaults share your data, and assume a M$ centric existence), it won't be long before even having separate drives won't help. You'll need two systems to run each flavor of o/s....

[senortout]

Alright, I like that you are considering the situation, making time for me. I am still trying to imagine your setup in an attempt to find something unique in both our situations! One thing I discovered may or may not interest you, and perhaps other members of the forum....this last post of yours (below) references that you can no longer access Windows files while running Linux...this strikes home with me since I had discovered exactly that on my system. However,I doggedly examined the possible reasons for that occurrence and will try to describe my solution to that situation. Simply stated when you are in Windows, now, with Windows 10 installed (as opposed to Windows 7, which I used before) you are actually leaving it (again, Windows 10) in a "busy" state and can no longer access files from the Linux operating system! As a result, it needs to be tricked into a real shutdown (God help us all). Then to access those Windows files from within Linux the solution is to restart Windows 10, not shut it down, because this will take you to the grub 2 boot menu, where you can start Linux instead; at this point you will once again have access to your Windows 10 file system. Although this may seem strange to you stop to think about it...going into restart clears the stuff microsoft needs to clear to complete many many system updates.so catching microsoft in the middle of a restart cycle is now the only way to make it available to Linux. If you do have a win10-Linux dual boot system lying around give it a whirl. Maybe you even know a way to access Linux system files from within a Windows 10 system, I sure would use that if I had such a thing. Again thanks for taking the time.

Originally Posted by Hoofless_Wonder

Senor, what you have is typical of many users who want to have Linux available with all the open source tools and software, and have sufficient space on their hard drive for both Windows and Linux. Since you've migrated from W7 to W10 via upgrade, the underlying partitions were not affected, and you apparently have a Windows friendly partition to begin with, so you might be okay for now. When you get a chance, you might want to boot up into Linux, and see if you can access your data on the Windows NTFS partition (C: drive). I found a problem with that tonight, as M$ has locked down the W10 data on my machine, though it might work mounting it up read-only. Previously, I could boot up in Linux and access all data on my system with no issues.

The problem I'm describing doesn't have anything to do with Windows NTFS or Linux ext3 file system types. It has to do with the format and construct of the partitions themselves, which are simply "chunks" of space allocated out for various uses. You can only have one "set" of partitions per hard drive. In your case, you have four partitions, plus the logical extended partition marker, which is fairly typical. You'll also have another section or two for the boot loader, which is grub in your case. In the past, it didn't matter whether the install of Windows, a Windows partitioner, or Gparted or other Linux partitioners were used to create them - they all played together fairly nicely.

Using the Linux tools, I could not manipulate or install anything on the partitions that were created with the W10 DVD install partitioner.I could only delete them, and then redefine a completely raw disk with a "GParted" or Linux partition type. When I booted up the W10 DVD, it could not use any of the GParted partitions for an install, and wanted it deleted and reformated to its liking.

Therefore, at this time, if doing a new install of Windows 10, the partition you need must be Windows approved, and apparently can't be created with the current versions of Gparted. Maybe this will change over time, but I have my suspicions. When initially announcing W10 a couple of years ago, M$ wanted to lock the bootloader for any PC sold via OEMs to only allow one o/s on it. Since I was building my own system, my ASUS motherboard allowed me to toggle off the secure boot. But from what I've seen so far on Windows 10 (all defaults share your data, and assume a M$ centric existence), it won't be long before even having separate drives won't help. You'll need two systems to run each flavor of o/s....

[Hoofless_Wonder]

In the past, I've been able to access the C:drive in Windows read/write when booted up in Linux. I've always shut down each o/s and powered back up, and not hibernated or performed a restart. Now, for some reason, a shutdown of Windows 10 leaves that disk in "hibernated" state. Since I spend most of my time in Linux, it's not that big of deal, but sometimes I'll have copies of files I want to move around. You may be right in that Microsoft feels that the partition with the O/S needs to be protected between restarts - perhaps to apply fixes, perhaps just to be yet another thorn in Linux user's sides.

I do not know of any tool that allows access to Linux file systems when booted in Windows.

But I did discover today that I can access a NTFS "drive" that I formatted with Gparted on a 3rd drive in my desktop, so I will continue to have the capability to easily share data between the operating systems. which is nice. If I had more time, I'd also try creating a set of partitions on a drive using the Windows partitioner, and then go back and try to install Linux in one of them. I had some problems with a couple of flavors of Linux trying that, but it also wasn't my main goal - I got burned with the onboard Window's partitioner once when attempting a rescue of XP, and it smoked Linux and a data partition as well.

Anyway, it sounds like the Windows 10 operating system partition is more protected now. Since I'm jumping from Vista to W10 on my desktop, I'm not sure if W7, W8 or W8.1 also behaves this way. But at least with Vista, I could mount up the C: drive with no issues. It also appears that Windows 10 requires a partition that it defines when performing a new install. So this may complicate the setup process for those that thought they could just install it on an open partition on any old drive.