Installed Windoes 10 some months ago, PC froze. Try again?

Hey all,

I have a Acer Aspire S7 laptop, running Windows 8.1 at the moment.

About 8 months ago, I installed Windows 10, and after installing I encountered the following problem:
Every time the laptop would enter sleep mode, it would freeze and not wake up. I had to turn it off by brute force.

I searched online for a solution back then, and saw that other people encountered the same problem, and I didn't find a solution. I then decided to roll back to Windows 8.

I know that in the past year there were a lot of updates in Windows 10. Should I try installing again?

Thanks!
 
That sounds a good move. You are right about the updates and it will take quite a while to get them all installed. The problems that were posted seem related largely to the touchpad/mouse buttons. If you still have the issue maybe you could use a mini usb wireless mouse (and disable the touchpad)? They are a cheap and handy upgrade for a laptop.
 
You won't need to upgrade the Windows 8 installation this time around, as your laptop will have been registered for licensing purposes when you did the original installation of Windows 10.

To reduce the issues to as small a window as possible I'd advise you do a clean install of Windows 10. Head to here and download then create the relevant Windows 10 backup media for your version of Windows: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

When performing a clean install of Windows 10 it will ask for a product key. In the bottom corner of the window you'll see the option to skip this and activate later. Choose that option and Windows 10 will automatically activate once the laptop connects online.

I routinely perform an upgrade of Windows 7/8.1 to Windows 10 and find you get the best mileage with a completely fresh install of Windows. Microsoft initially made this an issue by not accepting Windows 7/8/8.1 product keys (forcing everyone to upgrade to activate Windows 10) but they've now accepted people will want to do clean installs and have reversed this.
 
I'm not sure about that. Each time I've upgraded to W10 I've kept all my documents and programs with no issues whatsoever. It's a heck of a lot more straightforward.
 
I've done it at least 500 times now - in Workgroup and domain-joined environments. As always, your mileage may vary.

I've found in the longer run things work better if you do a clean install. That being said, I'm yet to encounter any broken OSes after upgrading. It's my far the smoothest upgrade process between Windows versions I've ever used but in my experience issues tend to crop up after a little while - especially when it comes to add-ins for Office and older software that some people may rely on, but aren't fully supported in newer versions of Windows.

I've also had some installs totally erase certain software installations. Also had a few completely fail to upgrade. That all being said, I've never had a single install totally destroy itself having completed the upgrade.
 
Windows 10 is known to have issues with some graphics cards. It most certainly did with my desktop. Proceed carefully. ALWAYS back up important documents and files OFFLINE before attempting a major OS upgrade or hardware change. This is just "rare" sense. (If everyone had it - it would be common.)
 
Backing up vital stuff should be something ongoing so that if disaster strikes you are not left needing counselling. Storage is very cheap nowadays. The chances of the W10 upgrade going pearshaped short of a total power failure must be pretty remote and there is a roll back option. Microsoft have done a very good job of providing upgrade paths. Unfortunately, there are always going to be a few problems with hardware due largely to some manufacturers being reluctant to provide suitable drivers but if you aren't a gamer graphics cards are pretty cheap and don't last that long anyway. One of my laptops is ancient but I upgraded from Vista to Windows 7 and then to Windows 10 without needing any different drivers.
 
You won't need to upgrade the Windows 8 installation this time around, as your laptop will have been registered for licensing purposes when you did the original installation of Windows 10.

To reduce the issues to as small a window as possible I'd advise you do a clean install of Windows 10. Head to here and download then create the relevant Windows 10 backup media for your version of Windows: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

When performing a clean install of Windows 10 it will ask for a product key. In the bottom corner of the window you'll see the option to skip this and activate later. Choose that option and Windows 10 will automatically activate once the laptop connects online.

I routinely perform an upgrade of Windows 7/8.1 to Windows 10 and find you get the best mileage with a completely fresh install of Windows. Microsoft initially made this an issue by not accepting Windows 7/8/8.1 product keys (forcing everyone to upgrade to activate Windows 10) but they've now accepted people will want to do clean installs and have reversed this.

I've done it at least 500 times now - in Workgroup and domain-joined environments. As always, your mileage may vary.

I've found in the longer run things work better if you do a clean install. That being said, I'm yet to encounter any broken OSes after upgrading. It's my far the smoothest upgrade process between Windows versions I've ever used but in my experience issues tend to crop up after a little while - especially when it comes to add-ins for Office and older software that some people may rely on, but aren't fully supported in newer versions of Windows.

I've also had some installs totally erase certain software installations. Also had a few completely fail to upgrade. That all being said, I've never had a single install totally destroy itself having completed the upgrade.

Thank you for the great advice!!

If I want to perform and upgrade to Win10 - should I first download and install Acer's pack of drivers for windows 10?
What about software that I currently run on my laptop - like Google Drive and Dropbox - should I uninstall those before upgrading?

And if I want to perform a clean install, how do I go about it? don't I need to perform a hard drive format before?

Thanks!!
 
If you want to do a clean installation of Windows 10 you can download the relevant Windows 10 image for your computer and then use that to upgrade. Just backup anything important before proceeding. As for the drivers, it would be useful to have them downloaded and on a USB memory stick - but you may find you don't need them as Windows 10 is pretty good at locating the drivers it needed while setting up.

If you intend to just do an in-place upgrade, first backup any important files and then continue with the upgrade via the Windows 10 upgrade utility your computer will have no doubt downloaded. Any currently installed software "should" be carried over and work in Windows 10. The in-place upgrade is designed to keep all your files and software in place and just upgrade the OS parts to Windows 10. As above replies though, that isn't always the case so make sure you have backups of everything important.
 
Back