Windows 10 driver support is amazing

[Lincon]

Hello everyone,,
I have a small break/fix shop in the Midwest, and I see a wide variety of laptops new and old, up to 10 years old. Every single one has run windows 10 flawlessly with a fresh install on a SSD. Its fast as hell, and windows update finds every driver for every piece of hardware I have thrown at it. The only thing I had to go to the manufacturer for was a utility for changing the color of the keyboard back light on an alien ware laptop. I gotta say, that's pretty ******* impressive. Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for that...

 

[Bighorn]

I'll agree since I have resurrected some 8 Notebooks that other wise would have gone to junk and had no issues with drivers.

 

[BigFeet]

I wouldn't go as far as amazing, but yeah, far, far better than previous version. I have had driver updates from Microsoft that installed the wrong drivers for rather new hardware (network card, track pad, touchscreen on older tablet). But I've installed Windows 10 on old XP and Vista machines with little issue.

 

[StevenG]

The best OP in the world bar none!!! I've been using MS Windows 1 since 1986 and 10 is the best and most efficient, forget about iOS whatever! And I've been saying this, since the release of 10.

 

[DaveCheltenham]

Hello everyone,,
I have a small break/fix shop in the Midwest, and I see a wide variety of laptops new and old, up to 10 years old. Every single one has run windows 10 flawlessly with a fresh install on a SSD. Its fast as hell, and windows update finds every driver for every piece of hardware I have thrown at it. The only thing I had to go to the manufacturer for was a utility for changing the color of the keyboard back light on an alien ware laptop. I gotta say, that's pretty ******* impressive. Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for that...

How much I agree with you Lincon. All the computers I have upgraded in the last 13 years have continued to operate OK. Yes, Windows 8 had some missing drivers but since then, up to Windows 10 1903, all has been well. Admittedly, performance sometimes is lacking but that is down to memory and processor speed in my case. One of my own laptops, Dell Inspiron 6400 from 2006 is still a good workhorse for emails, browing and messaging.

 

[Ferel23]

I'm using Windows 10 Pro and it works very well. I have lots of programs that don't work well on win 7, but now all of them work very well.

 

[StevenG]

Hello everyone,,
I have a small break/fix shop in the Midwest, and I see a wide variety of laptops new and old, up to 10 years old. Every single one has run windows 10 flawlessly with a fresh install on a SSD. Its fast as hell, and windows update finds every driver for every piece of hardware I have thrown at it. The only thing I had to go to the manufacturer for was a utility for changing the color of the keyboard back light on an alien ware laptop. I gotta say, that's pretty ******* impressive. Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for that...

Very true as it’s the same with all the systems that I’ve installed and upgraded, I also fix/rebuild/upgrade laptops/computers and most of the old laptops/computers are "flawless and work fantastic" with Windows 10 Pro or Home!

Just as an example, I've just upgraded a customer’s old Acer Aspire 5650 2nd gen (yes he did upgrade that laptop a bit) to an i7 and SSD PC3 1333 8GB RAM and WiFi/BT (but it’s an ordinary single graphics and run of the mill 9-10 year old laptop) to his "so called new/old” Acer Aspire V3-571G 3rd gen (which is 6 years old) which I've upgraded from its OEM i7-3610QM 4core 8 threads / 2.3-3.3GHz / L2-1MB / L3-6MB / 4GB PC3 1333 RAM, 700GB spinner HDD to an upgraded i7-3940QM 3.0-3.9GHz 4 core / 8 threads / L2-1MB / L3-8MB and changed the standard 1x 4GB RAM PC3-13333 stick to 2x 4GB (8GB) PC3-1600 sticks, then, all I had to do is, swap his 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD drive that had Windows 10 Pro from his old Acer Aspire 5650 to the new Acer Aspire V3-571G, rebooted the system and "wham bam thank you maam" Windows updated all the appropriate drivers and the Acer Aspire V3-571G booted up with no issues and/or blank screens and it worked perfectly with his Windows 10 Pro, exactly as on his old laptop but twice as fast!

Some other things that I recommend to do is:
1. Update the graphics drivers from what the windows update installed as they are not the latest, especially that this Acer Aspire V3-571G has twin graphics of Intel HD4000 and Nvidia GeForce GT 730M and they were out of date.

2. With the Bluetooth (not the WiFi as it worked perfectly) you have to activate it by simultaneously pressing "<Fn> + <F3> Keys" so that the Bluetooth driver reactivates to the new laptop and starts installing new drivers and operates.

3. Also, I upgraded the Acer Aspire V3-571G v1809 OS Build 17134.766 (that was on the SSD) to the latest Win-10 v1903 OS Build 18362.175 with no problems, issues and it runs perfectly with no issues.

Windows 10 is a great OP system and Microsoft should be congratulated on its adaptability, compatibility and ease of usage!

 

[davehc]

We are not all endowed with unlimited bank accounts. From reading the various problems users are having, it seems that a huge majority of the problems , can be the use of dated software. Not all can fork out for the latest (compatible) release of the more sophisticated and advanced software

 

[StevenG]

We are not all endowed with unlimited bank accounts. From reading the various problems users are having, it seems that a huge majority of the problems , can be the use of dated software. Not all can fork out for the latest (compatible) release of the more sophisticated and advanced software

I don't know what software you are talking about? But, in my experience, as I only use major software e.g. like Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop and many other software that were not designed for Win-10 and they all work perfectly with no issues. Just as an example, with Microsoft Office 2003 to 16 (which 2016 is the last version to support Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, and Windows Server 2016) all work perfectly with Win-10 and 2019 (runs on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019. OneNote was removed from the suite in Office 2019. Instead, a redesigned Universal Windows Platform version of the app is bundled with all releases of Windows 10) allot of software that was built for Win-7 work perfectly with Win-10. I don't over bloat my systems with any unnecessary software, hence and why, I very rarely have problems with Win-10 and previous software versions not working.

 

[Beingdinu]

No doubt we really think the Windows 10 is most amazing and intelligent OS till now.

 

[StevenG]

Hello everyone,,
I have a small break/fix shop in the Midwest, and I see a wide variety of laptops new and old, up to 10 years old. Every single one has run windows 10 flawlessly with a fresh install on a SSD. Its fast as hell, and windows update finds every driver for every piece of hardware I have thrown at it. The only thing I had to go to the manufacturer for was a utility for changing the color of the keyboard back light on an alien ware laptop. I gotta say, that's pretty ******* impressive. Microsoft doesn't get enough credit for that...

Windows 10 is unbelievable, I forgot to mention that if you want to take your HDD from one Win-10 computer to another, its easy peasy, just remove your HDD or SSD and install it into the new computer and it works, I've just done that with an SSD 250GB Samsung and took it out of an Acer Aspire One and installed it into an Aspire V5 and it just updated its drivers and booted perfectly, that is amazing and such a great concept from Microsoft, well done!

 

[BigFeet]

Windows 10 is unbelievable, I forgot to mention that if you want to take your HDD from one Win-10 computer to another, its easy peasy, just remove your HDD or SSD and install it into the new computer and it works, I've just done that with an SSD 250GB Samsung and took it out of an Acer Aspire One and installed it into an Aspire V5 and it just updated its drivers and booted perfectly, that is amazing and such a great concept from Microsoft, well done!

It's a good feature for sure, but doesn't always work ideally. I've even had a hard drive with 10 OEM, active on a system that had a retail version tied to it. By the way, it's something linux disto's have been able to do for many years. I did that with Ubuntu back around 2008. I actually have a hard drive with Mint on it that's been in 4 different PC's the last month.

 

[StevenG]

It's a good feature for sure, but doesn't always work ideally. I've even had a hard drive with 10 OEM, active on a system that had a retail version tied to it. By the way, it's something linux disto's have been able to do for many years. I did that with Ubuntu back around 2008. I actually have a hard drive with Mint on it that's been in 4 different PC's the last month.

Yes I know, but its a real advancement for an intensive OP system like windows that is also used by the majority of people, not like Linux.

 

[ClippyBeer]

I'm still in the process of evaluating Windows 10. My first experience with it wasn't good. I had 1709 and let it upgrade to 1803. After the upgrade I found myself unable to print to my HP Laserjet printer. Spent hours Google'ing, trying various suggestions including un-installing/re-installing printer drivers, nothing. Much to my dismay I found several other users on HP's forums with the same problem after upgrading to 1803 with no solution. I had to go back to 1709 and subsequently disabled all updates. I did gamble and upgrade to 1903 with fingers crossed - no issues so far. Updates all disabled after that.

I am not a big fan of the telemetry so I disabled all of that and some other background processes to get better performance on the Dell Inspiron Zino HD 400 I have it installed on. I also had problems with the wifi driver. I couldn't get a good connection no matter what settings I tried (I am assuming it is the drivers since it worked fine in Windows 7). Dell doesn't have Windows 10 drivers for this model PC and even upgrading the drivers didn't help. I ended up purchasing a USB wifi dongle that came with its own Windows 10 drivers which resolved the issue. I do like the DLNA/Miracast feature and Edge seems OK but not really relevant since it will be converted to Chrome in the near future. Cyberfox is my main browser.

For the record I have been building/supporting PCs since MS-DOS 3.3 days. My initial impression of Windows 10 is that is a bit top-heavy, much like Vista was with lots of tweaking required to achieve optimal performance. Windows 7 ran smoothly out of the box. I know I have to get used to Windows 10 since Windows 7's support EOL is right around the corner.

Will have to wait and see.

 

[StevenG]

I'm still in the process of evaluating Windows 10. My first experience with it wasn't good. I had 1709 and let it upgrade to 1803. After the upgrade I found myself unable to print to my HP Laserjet printer. Spent hours Google'ing, trying various suggestions including un-installing/re-installing printer drivers, nothing. Much to my dismay I found several other users on HP's forums with the same problem after upgrading to 1803 with no solution. I had to go back to 1709 and subsequently disabled all updates. I did gamble and upgrade to 1903 with fingers crossed - no issues so far. Updates all disabled after that.

I am not a big fan of the telemetry so I disabled all of that and some other background processes to get better performance on the Dell Inspiron Zino HD 400 I have it installed on. I also had problems with the wifi driver. I couldn't get a good connection no matter what settings I tried (I am assuming it is the drivers since it worked fine in Windows 7). Dell doesn't have Windows 10 drivers for this model PC and even upgrading the drivers didn't help. I ended up purchasing a USB wifi dongle that came with its own Windows 10 drivers which resolved the issue. I do like the DLNA/Miracast feature and Edge seems OK but not really relevant since it will be converted to Chrome in the near future. Cyberfox is my main browser.

For the record I have been building/supporting PCs since MS-DOS 3.3 days. My initial impression of Windows 10 is that is a bit top-heavy, much like Vista was with lots of tweaking required to achieve optimal performance. Windows 7 ran smoothly out of the box. I know I have to get used to Windows 10 since Windows 7's support EOL is right around the corner.

Will have to wait and see.

So have I "been building/supporting PCs since MS-DOS 3.3 days" and prior but and firstly, no wonder that you have so many problems, as the Zino HD 400 with its AMD Athlon II X2 215 or even lower grade cpu's are a pretty old and vintage 2009 mini PC, with a 2 core and 2 thread 1MB cache cpu which is pretty slow, also, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 from AMD is a DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 2.0, PCI-E 2.0 x16, Powerplay, DisplayPort support up to 2560x1600, HDMI support up to 1920x1080 and should be pretty good for Win-10! I'd suggest that you try and upgrade the cpu to at least an AMD Athlon II X2 270 3.4GHz or even an Athlon II X2 280 3.6GHz, 2 core 2 thread but with 2MB cache, which is compatible with your socket AM2+ / socket AM3 board, you can purchase these cpu's very cheaply on ebay etc, also, you will get a 25% increase in performance by doing this upgrade. Also, how much ram do you have installed? Do you have 4 GB or 8GB? As 8GB is more appropriate for Win-10 especially with a slow system like the Zino HD 400.

With the printer driver, what HP LaserJet do you have? As Win-10 has most of the drivers (must be very unusual not get a driver for that printer with Win-10) with the WiFi, you should change your card, there are a variety of upgradable cards e.g. WiFi/BT that you can upgrade to (I've done that to all my old laptops that only had 2.5G and no BT to 2.5-5G/BT cards) its a very simple job and cheap and also, you mustn't have the latest drivers for Win-10 or your card is on its way out.

Btw, I'm running laptops that are 8-9 years old on Win-10 Home and Pro but and its a big but, they are all Intel systems that I've upgraded their cpu's to i7's and to the max of their cpu capacity, that are running 8GB ram with either PC3-14200 or the least PC3-12800 ram, all running SSD drives and even upgraded their motherboards to accomodate NVIDIA graphic internal processors, which were the top speced systems of their day and they all run perfectly with 'no issues' and they all have handle v1903 and every prior versions of Win-10 . Just remember, you can't get blood out of a stone and its the same with Win-10 lol cheers.

 

[ClippyBeer]

So have I "been building/supporting PCs since MS-DOS 3.3 days" and prior but and firstly, no wonder that you have so many problems, as the Zino HD 400 with its AMD Athlon II X2 215 or even lower grade cpu's are a pretty old and vintage 2009 mini PC, with a 2 core and 2 thread 1MB cache cpu which is pretty slow, also, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 from AMD is a DirectX 10.1, OpenGL 2.0, PCI-E 2.0 x16, Powerplay, DisplayPort support up to 2560x1600, HDMI support up to 1920x1080 and should be pretty good for Win-10! I'd suggest that you try and upgrade the cpu to at least an AMD Athlon II X2 270 3.4GHz or even an Athlon II X2 280 3.6GHz, 2 core 2 thread but with 2MB cache, which is compatible with your socket AM2+ / socket AM3 board, you can purchase these cpu's very cheaply on ebay etc, also, you will get a 25% increase in performance by doing this upgrade. Also, how much ram do you have installed? Do you have 4 GB or 8GB? As 8GB is more appropriate for Win-10 especially with a slow system like the Zino HD 400.

I'm more than well aware of the limitations of the hardware I'm running it on. I have 4GB and am able to stream 1080P smoothly. No 10bit HEVC happening here though without major surgery. I have no plans on investing any $$ on a machine this old. I may as well buy a new PC. There were a lot of unnecessary background processes that I disabled to achive optimal performance.

With the printer driver, what HP LaserJet do you have? As Win-10 has most of the drivers (must be very unusual not get a driver for that printer with Win-10) with the WiFi, you should change your card, there are a variety of upgradable cards e.g. WiFi/BT that you can upgrade to (I've done that to all my old laptops that only had 2.5G and no BT to 2.5-5G/BT cards) its a very simple job and cheap and also, you mustn't have the latest drivers for Win-10 or your card is on its way out.

It's not the printer, it was Microsoft's replacement of those drivers in the 1803 update that caused the issue. Reverting to 1709 magically fixed the problem. There were several users on HP's forums with the same problem after the 1803 update. I blame myself because I didn't follow my own advice:
Early adopters = unpaid beta testers.
I may be new on this forum but not new to Windows 10 and my experience with a device that was working perfectly inexplicably stopped functioning after an update is not unique.
I waited a few months before installing 1903, no issues so far. I already upgraded the WiFi card with a USB 802.11ac 5GHz WiFi dongle.

Btw, I'm running laptops that are 8-9 years old on Win-10 Home and Pro but and its a big but, they are all Intel systems that I've upgraded their cpu's to i7's and to the max of their cpu capacity, that are running 8GB ram with either PC3-14200 or the least PC3-12800 ram, all running SSD drives and even upgraded their motherboards to accomodate NVIDIA graphic internal processors, which were the top speced systems of their day and they all run perfectly with 'no issues' and they all have handle v1903 and every prior versions of Win-10 . Just remember, you can't get blood out of a stone and its the same with Win-10 lol cheers.

It almost sounds as if you're telling just buy a new i7 16GB Ram PC just so I can run Win 10.

 

[chales-smith]

Slightly disagree, the Windows 10 keep downloading the updates and slow-down the PC speed during downloading process.

What more?? It keep downloading the updates even after Download Data Limit set, it cross the limit and download above 5 GB every month.

Downloading update is okay, but it keep downloading almost every alternate day, and slowdown the pc.

 

[chales-smith]

Forgot to tell you, Adobe Photoshop not worked in Windows 10, the system freeze whenever try to launch the Photoshop application.

 

[gaelldew]

Never had any problems at all with running Ps or L/room on any Win 10, which I let it run the updates on auto. Have you tried reinstalling Photoshop.

 

[chales-smith]

Never had any problems at all with running Ps or L/room on any Win 10, which I let it run the updates on auto. Have you tried reinstalling Photoshop.

Yes, i have re-installed photoshop several times, but it always freeze. Even, several other users are facing similar issue, which discussed on other sites.