Warning about HP Laptops - incompatibility with Win 10 Creators Update

[Mouse]

I'm having trouble with the Win 10 System shutting down my broadband when I click 'Post Quick Reply' (I told you it was nuts ), so this won't be anything near as great as the first time I wrote it. The comment didn't have time to autosave here on the Guild server...

Thanks Red

Haven't got a stick/disc with nothing on it, so it may be a couple of days. Really grateful for the explanation. Just have two questions:



Do I have to download the file directly onto the stick/DVD, or can I download it onto my Windows Downloads folder and move it across when I get the stick/DVD? (That may be a couple of weeks)

If I get a stick how big does it need to be?

[Straf]

I'm having trouble with the Win 10 System shutting down my broadband when I click 'Post Quick Reply' (I told you it was nuts ), so this won't be anything near as great as the first time I wrote it. The comment didn't have time to autosave here on the Guild server...

Thanks Red

Haven't got a stick/disc with nothing on it, so it may be a couple of days. Really grateful for the explanation. Just have two questions:



Do I have to download the file directly onto the stick/DVD, or can I download it onto my Windows Downloads folder and move it across when I get the stick/DVD? (That may be a couple of weeks)

If I get a stick how big does it need to be?

Yes, you download the ISO to your local hard disk, then use some software to set it up on the USB drive. I have Ubuntu on a 2GB USB drive. It looks as though it's pretty much full but I'm looking at it from Windows which isn't really able to read all the files on there properly. I'll try booting into it to see what I can fathom out.

[Straf]

Redrobes has just about covered it all there. I can't vouch for Mint because I haven't used it but it's something I'm considering for the future.

Mouse I forgot to mention something about desktop environments. With Windows the user interface, the 'windows' bit is fixed. Apart from changing the appearance and applying themes everything is pretty much rigidly integrated into the OS. With basic Linux it's a command line OS and everything is tweakable. If you were so minded you could change things in the source code of the kernel, recompile it and use that instead. You can do that with anything that is open source. It might be convenient to think of it as layers. The kernel is the core, the base layer. The next layer is the other parts of the operating system, the environment, the various files and programs that do stuff behind the scenes. They ask the kernel permission to use memory, to access the interface, to add some things together, and the kernel orders the hardware to ruddy well get on with it. "Chop chop old chap" and all that.

The desktop environment is another layer designed to make the user experience more visual. It tells the operating system what things to change in files or in memory based on how the mouse has moved or what keys have been pressed. This is what things like Cinnamon are about - it's the desktop environment. There are a number of them available and you might encounter things such as Gnome, KDE and the default Ubuntu one called Unity. I've heard that Unity is going to be dropped by Canonical (the company who 'own' Ubuntu) and default back to Gnome. If you decide to choose Ubuntu over mint I'd probably recommend KDE but don't worry because you can choose to download Kubuntu which already has KDE integrated.

Just for the sake of completion the desktop environment actually runs through something called X. That sets out the various protocols for how the desktop environment will behave so that it 'works'. How it looks and feels to the user is down to the individual environment. So X is another layer, just beneath the desktop. X also deals with the graphics drivers for the graphics card. Sometimes X may crash for some reason. It is possible to go to command line and shut it down and restart it without rebooting the PC. One of my favourite terminal commands is XKill - if something crashes and its window refuses to bugger off I open a terminal, type Xkill and the cursor turns into a X, then I click on the window of the offending program and poof! It's gone. Flashing green lights, thunder and a maniacal laugh are optional

Anyway, there are quite a lot of tutorials around on preparing a USB drive for boot. I forgot to add what Redrobes mentioned though - setting a drive up to boot from will overwrite anything on there so make sure you have it backed up. Oh, and if you are running in 'live mode' (i.e. from USB) then you can opt to set up storage on the hard drive for your sessions or even on the USB drive. So when you shut down it isn't lost.

[Straf]

Woah! I've just tried in vain to boot up from USB. I was able to access my BIOS last week but now I can't, it just gives me a blinking cursor in the top left. Does Windows 10 overwrite the firmware even on custom PCs to prevent other operating systems being installed? I tried using the BIOS bootloader and selected USB HDD but it just went straight into Windows.

I'm going to have to look into this. If the OS is tampering with the BIOS without permission then that is surely some sort of crime.

[Falconius]

Woah! I've just tried in vain to boot up from USB. I was able to access my BIOS last week but now I can't, it just gives me a blinking cursor in the top left. Does Windows 10 overwrite the firmware even on custom PCs to prevent other operating systems being installed? I tried using the BIOS bootloader and selected USB HDD but it just went straight into Windows.

I'm going to have to look into this. If the OS is tampering with the BIOS without permission then that is surely some sort of crime.

I don't think so. I have no trouble accessing the BIOS on my machine, but I also haven't played around with the boot order at all. Windows does do something to tie the OS to the motherboard in order to keep track of licenses, but I don't know what that is. I always assumed they got some sort of id number of the board and checked it against a central database when you go online, but maybe they do actually do something to the board.

Edit: maybe it is defaulting to windows after a failure of some sort? Can you flash a stored copy of the bios to the board again?

[Voolf]

Woah! I've just tried in vain to boot up from USB. I was able to access my BIOS last week but now I can't, it just gives me a blinking cursor in the top left. Does Windows 10 overwrite the firmware even on custom PCs to prevent other operating systems being installed? I tried using the BIOS bootloader and selected USB HDD but it just went straight into Windows.

I'm going to have to look into this. If the OS is tampering with the BIOS without permission then that is surely some sort of crime.

I have never heard of Win interfering with Bios. It is unlikely, you have to be able to acces Bios no matther what you have on your HDD (it is not related at all), you can unplug you HDD (or SSD) and you can still enter Bios.

[Mouse]

I do hope you aren't right about that, Straf, or I might as well throw this laptop in the bin if I can't use an alternative OS on it.

If the worst comes to the worst, and Windows really is behaving like a little Hitler with the hardware, how difficult would it be to re-format the hard drive and start from scratch without any trace of Windows?

Thanks for the information prior to that statement. I'll still give it a go, just to see if I am also locked out of the BIOS.

[Falconius]

I do hope you aren't right about that, Straf, or I might as well throw this laptop in the bin if I can't use an alternative OS on it.

If the worst comes to the worst, and Windows really is behaving like a little Hitler with the hardware, how difficult would it be to re-format the hard drive and start from scratch without any trace of Windows?

Thanks for the information prior to that statement. I'll still give it a go, just to see if I am also locked out of the BIOS.

I think Straf is just being paranoid. You can reformat through the BIOS if you need. You really need to make sure you've got your files backed up.

[Voolf]

There was several ways to turn off the updates in win10 and the best is always to edit windows registry. I heard that with the anniversary update they "fixed" the registry so it does not work anymore if you have this update. I don't know myself i dont use Win10 yet. I did the trick with registry on my wifes' father pc and it worked.

You can also try to just disable Windows Update services which was always the easiest way to get rid of updates on every win along with the first edition od Win10.

New updates were always a problem from Win95 to new Win10. It is not new. I suggest to disable them and only install big ones after 4-6 months when all mistakes were fixed with following updates to the old ones. I actually stopped the updates on Win XP service pack 3. I had never any problem with my Win7, Win8 and now Win8.1. I did install some updates on those OS to fix particular problems, but 2-3 fixes out of ten thousand updates is like nothing.

Ps. Win10 is the first Win that is violating your privacy big time, so i also suggest to turn off all things in privacy as well as read some guide on internet how to protect yourself from lettting MS looking what you have in your hard drive. This is actually bigger and main problem for me why i still havent upgraded to 10.

[Redrobes]

About the ISO file, yes you must download it to your local hard drive. You cannot just plug in the USB stick and move it across like another file you need to use an app like that Disk Imager, or whatever to burn the file to the drive. The ISO is a copy of the drive image with all the bits set up so that it is bootable. Its like a bit pattern of the whole drive rather than a file. If your laptop came with a DVD writer built in which most do then you only need a writable DVD disk to try it out. Again, you need the ISO file on your harddrive downloaded from the net then you use a program which burns DVDs like DVDBurner or the SoftThink one.

As for windows changing the BIOS I am not sure at all. I would have thought that unlikely. But were talking BIOS here so even if you wiped windows off the machine then the issue still exists. My only thought is that maybe there is a quick boot option which skips the listing. I bought a machine for somebody recently and it was a devil of a job to get to the bios. I had to look it up and you needed to insert a pin or paper clip into this little hole in the side of the machine to get to the bios interface. What with this and the recent M.E foobar I think were all getting tired of this and in future I think ill be asking for some online reviews about the BIOS / boot procedures and capabilities before I buy somebodys laptop. I used to like Novatech (co uk) as they are the only people I know of who would sell you a laptop without the OS on it. Everyone else you had to buy it with MS on it and then take it off and throw it into the bin. They are in Portsmouth if your along that way. £373 gets you 8Gb quad core laptop but I think the one you have is completely fine if it had a bit of a memory upgrade given the type of work your doing on it.