Windows 10 launches this week. AMA.
Thrax
🐌Austin, TX Icrontian
I am not a Microsoft employee, but I do follow Windows development personally and professionally. Please ask me anything you want to know about Win10.
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MUST I upgrade before I have access to an ISO for installing from scratch or can I choose to save an ISO when I get my free copy?
8 was the bad one so this one's the good one, right? Or was 9 going to be the good one and they skipped it?
Yes, you must undergo an in-place upgrade from Win7/8/8.1 to Windows 10. Your license will be consumed and converted to a full/activated license for Windows 10 of an equivalent version (e.g. Win7 x64 Pro = Win10 x64 Pro). It appears you will be able to download an ISO and/or create recovery discs that will allow for a fresh install of Win10.
As an aside, the "upgrade" procedure changed in Windows 8 in that the upgrade process is now performing a clean install and migrating files/applications where able. Many people fall into the "I-used-to-do-PCs-but-haven't-upgraded-hardware-or-actually-reinstalled-windows-in-many-years" camp, and missed this critical change as a result. The Win7/8/8.1 upgrade to 10 is effectively a clean install, but your programs happen to be there when you're done.
If you're still really anal about a blank slate install, you'll be able to do it after you jump through the license exchange hoop.
Thanks. I mostly like to secure erase the SSD rather than just reformatting. I won't be able to actually do that during this process, but at least it is a "clean" install.
As a follow-up, Windows 10 has a built-in "Reset PC" function that will completely nuke the OS and reset it to clean factory conditions. So, if your OS is bootable, but it's full of crap and you want a 100% clean experience, you can access the Reset PC app in Win10's settings menu and go back to clean without fumbling for discs or USB keys. It works incredibly well.
Not srs, but 10 is the good one. Here are some popular theories on why 9 was skipped. See the pseudocode towards the end of the article for the prevailing theory.
It is a great day when I get @Thrax to call out my lack of serious AND answer.
Any info on how access to virtualization files in 10 works?
7 was awesome in that if you were in a program files/* directory that had virtualized files, it would have a nice "Compatibility Files" button in the menu. This was good for; A: A quick visual to tell you there are indeed virt files and the program is being redirected to these & B: You can click the button to jump directly to the virtualized files for that directory. In 8 this is gone and you have to navigate into AppData to see if there are any virt files.
I've not googled it but you asked for AMA and that is what's on my mind about 10.
Are you referring to symlinks, created with the "mklink /d" command in Windows?
This is the best I can do as for Microsoft explaining it.
Basically ApplicationA attempts to store data file(maybe a DBF or .ini file) to C:\Program Files (x86)\ApplicationA\Data
Because of default permissions, the Users group does not have the rights to do this. Windows says "Hey, I see what you are trying to do so I will create a directory here (%SystemDrive%\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\ApplicationA\Data) and whenever your program tried to write to the Program Files directory, I will instead write it to the AppData directory. If you try to read a file from the Program Files directory, if it exists in the AppData directory, I will use that instead of what's in Program Files."
From what I gather it does this with protected areas of the registry also but has never effected the software I support so I have not dug into that.
Edit: This is a better explanation of how it works in 7. Even uses an example similar to the one I just typed out. Also I know all the work arounds for this in 7 and 8 (even the earlier iterations in Vista) so I need to make sure it either works the same or I need to figure out how it works in 10.
I am also deeply invested in Windows 10 from an Enterprise standpoint. Feel free to ask and if Thrax cannot answer, I might be able to.
Still evidently functional in Win10, but the compatibility files button was removed in Win8+ and must be reached manually.
Will it run Crysis or do I need to dump this 290x for a Titan X Windowz T3N Edition?
Catalyst 15.7 is a fully certified Windows 10 driver for AMD products. It'll run Crysis.
Is there a method to the rollout order, or is it pot luck?
This thread reminds me of how much I miss serious computer discussion on Icrontic.
That said... I haven't been following PC graphics as closely as I used to. What are the DX12 killer apps out of the gate? Is there anything graphics nuts should be looking forward to at Windows 10 launch?
Luck of the draw. Insider Preview people will go first, followed by OEM machines, then phased deployment of retail boxed copies.
There are some DX12 apps in the works, but like most other versions of DX, real shipping games will follow about 6 months behind the DX release as OS and driver support ramps up to profitable levels for devs.
The big thing I'm excited about is WDDM2.0, a new way to design graphics drivers in Win10. In many cases we're seeing DX11 performance improve because the new driver model has lower CPU overhead. There are some more neat things that WDDM2 enables, but I can't talk about them quite yet.
But if you're a gamer, Win10 is the fastest and most robust gaming OS out there. Win7 diehards: it's time to move up.
does it have the Blue Screen of Death?
It's more of a Gentle Frown of Failure.
When I was doing windows app programming I always just stored the appdata folder as a global and wrote to it. Attempting to write to a system folder at any time was a recipe for fail. I think most apps take that in to consideration.
The REAL question is...
Can it still play nice with Win98?
Potato.
I work in the incredibly technologically backward healthcare industry, where many applications are compatible with MSIE 9 at best. In fact, most don't even work with IE 11 in compatibility mode, they're just that bad. Despite the technological backwater, physicians can't resist "free" so I anticipate a lot of free Windows 10 upgrades going on. Can IE 8 and 9 be installed in Windows 10, or is my industry in for a world of application incompatibility pain starting tomorrow?
Will the Windows 10 upgrade process affect the bootloader? I use third party software (DiskCryptor) to encrypt my hard drive, and doing that would likely result in an unbootable system. Should I plan on decrypting my drive before doing the upgrade?
I would imagine it almost certainly affects the bootloader, but I do not know for absolute fact.
I know this pain all too well. EVOLV, Y U NO CROOS-BROWSER?
IE8 and 9 cannot be installed on Win10.
So to be safe, I should probably decrypt, upgrade and re-encrypt?
Yep!