Warning about HP Laptops - incompatibility with Win 10 Creators Update

[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]

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.

[Greg]

If your friend's Wacom isn't working properly, then it is most likely to be the driver. Driver updates are available on the Wacom website, and if its not obvious which one is the one intended for her particular model, there's a very good live chat service. That's how I remedied my own Wacom problems.

I cannot speak for your friend, since you haven't said if this was related to the Creator's Update or not, but my own Wacom problems were actually caused by the Creator's Update corrupting my Wacom driver.

There are other drivers on my system which have also been damaged by the Creator's Update. I am still trying to track them down and uninstall/reinstall things as I go. It's not easy when there is more than one thing wrong to work out what exactly is being caused by what.

Needless to say - I have an extreeeeeeeeeeemly low opinion of Microsoft right now, and I'm not likely to forgive them. My next machine is quite likely to be a Mac.

WHOOAA, this thread expanded quickly!!

Yeah, it definitely was the drivers and after numerous trials and errors with the live chat people. It was sorted, but then decided to flip out every so often regardless and she'd have to repeat the process of uninstalling everything Wacom related and I have a feeling she even had to manually edit/delete one of the files that came along because of an incompatibility every time. Needless to say, it was a bit of a nightmare and one which I've never seen happen to anyone else. I know the drivers can glitch out from time to time, but they're usually pretty easy to fix.

I don't really have much to add to the actual topic over all the knowledgeable people on here, but I've been pretty fortunate with Windows and not really having any issues myself. It does annoy me to no end how they try to force these updates on you and even when you say no 100 times, it decides to do it for you. I know some of my family have had issues running W10 on their older spec PC, which I've tried to help with, but after every update, something goes wrong or has changed something you didn't want changed.

Anyway, enough digressing, I hope you find a workaround for it all Mouse and it seems there's some great info and advice on this thread for it!

[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?

[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.

[Mouse]

WHOOAA, this thread expanded quickly!!

Yeah, it definitely was the drivers and after numerous trials and errors with the live chat people. It was sorted, but then decided to flip out every so often regardless and she'd have to repeat the process of uninstalling everything Wacom related and I have a feeling she even had to manually edit/delete one of the files that came along because of an incompatibility every time. Needless to say, it was a bit of a nightmare and one which I've never seen happen to anyone else. I know the drivers can glitch out from time to time, but they're usually pretty easy to fix.

I don't really have much to add to the actual topic over all the knowledgeable people on here, but I've been pretty fortunate with Windows and not really having any issues myself. It does annoy me to no end how they try to force these updates on you and even when you say no 100 times, it decides to do it for you. I know some of my family have had issues running W10 on their older spec PC, which I've tried to help with, but after every update, something goes wrong or has changed something you didn't want changed.

Anyway, enough digressing, I hope you find a workaround for it all Mouse and it seems there's some great info and advice on this thread for it!

MS carry out numerous smaller updates in the background - any of which may be damaging the driver all over again. You aren't informed that its happening, and even if you do catch it by noticing how much broadband its swallowing, there's no cancel button.

You can limit them to a certain extent by switching your broadband information to 'metered broadband' in the settings, but even if you do that (as I have done), you eventually get messages telling you that an important security update needs your permission to download. Once you click 'yes' to the important security update it doesn't just download that particular update, it downloads the whole backlog of updates that you were trying not to get. You can't stop it. It just.... 'is', and it won't let you defy it.

In some ways, having Win 10 is a bit like having your entire virtual world assimilated by the Borg.

[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.

[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.