I have been swamped in the last few weeks with computers that have gone wrong during the upgrade to Windows 10.
Many of these are because people are upgrading because there is a problem with their Windows 7 or 8.1 computer. This is a bad reason to upgrade, folks…
Case A:
PC “cannot find an operating system” – the computer was slow, so the user thought an upgrade would speed it up. Wrong! The hard drive was failing, and the upgrade caused critical boot files to be corrupted, which meant there were no visible files left on the hard drive. Luckily, the drive was intact enough that I was able to successfully use data recovery tools to recover their photos and other documents. However, the cost in labour time is considerable, the data recovery and reinstall takes a couple of days and the user will have a lot of inconvenience in order to reinstall all their programs, SatNav, Printer, iTunes, Office etc. If the person had come to me to diagnose the slowness, I could have cloned the hard drive within a few hours, and everything would have been “as it was” but quicker.
Case B:
Black screen or frozen icons. This seems to happen a lot with Lenovo machines. The trouble is the Chinese Lenovo company put a load of “bloatware” on the computer that conflicts with something during the upgrade process. This can also be caused by “security software” – often known as anti-virus (although viruses are almost extinct, it’s usually trojans, or other malware that are the problem today.) Again, people often upgrade because something has gone wrong. Often, their paid anti-virus has expired, and instead of being sensible, and actually pay for a new one, or remove it and put a free one on, they leave it until they unsurprisingly get infected. So, then, they think, “ah Windows 10 will sort out all my problems.” Wrong again… the malware and Windows 10 will fight, and you’ll end up with a corrupted system.
Moral of the story.
Don’t consider an upgrade to Windows 10 as a solution to a problem. Fix the problem first. If you can’t do it yourself, call a professional.
I can be reached on 01646 602248 or 07934 453989.