Windows 10 Day 2: Configuring the operating system

This is day 2 of running Windows 10 on my main computer and while yesterday was all about upgrading to Windows 10 itself as well as talk about some of the shortcomings after updating. Today's experience is better compared to yesterday but there are still some bug here and the with Windows 10. It is not exactly a perfect experience like it was with Windows 8.1 but that what you get for being an early adopter.

Windows 10 Day 1: The actual upgrade - Using Windows 10 on a big monitor is a relatively new experience for me. On the taskbar I can now fit more than 20 applications without splitting into a separate page. Continue reading.

It was a normal day for me and as usual, I was using the computer all day long and for the most part I was doing the usual things like looking through my Twitter stream, reading new articles, watching videos, and also doing a little social blogging on our social media sites. My workflow remained the same but I did started to use some Windows Store apps like Wunderlist and the Mail app.

But that's not all, I was also upgrading the Surface Pro 3 to Windows 10. Surprisingly, I actually have quite a bit to talk about the whole upgrade and initial setup process for the Surface Pro 3.

Surface Pro 3 + Windows 10

Upgrading Microsoft's own hardware to Windows 10 is just like upgrading any other computer, the process is identical. There's no fast track to get the job done. My concern while upgrading the Surface was that errors might pop out as I have been reading quite a number of tweets on Twitter regarding issues with the Surface 3 Windows 10 upgrade.

Anyone else having issues upgrading? Surface 3 here and this is what I get pic.twitter.com/EShvUvcJSm

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) July 29, 2015

I was actually expecting to see the installation bring me up an error but hey, everything worked well. But before that, I have a little tip here if you have not received the notification to upgrade to Windows 10. You could choose to install the ISO file but there's a simpler way. Just make sure that you have the $Windows.~BT folder on your C drive. All you have to do is open command prompt with administrator privileges and type the following string of code wuauclt.exe /updatenow

Make sure you don't mistype the characters and in a couple of seconds (maybe minutes) you should see Windows Update pop up to notify you that the Windows 10 upgrade is now available for your device. I have personally tried this and yes it did work, not exactly sure why but hey, it works.

As for the actual Windows 10 upgrade on the Surface Pro 3, the entire process took about 30 minutes which is significantly faster than the upgrade on my main computer yesterday. That's because my main computer has a lot more files and programs installed and the fact that the Surface Pro 3 has an SSD.

However, I did notice something about the Surface during the upgrade. Just moments after I clicked the upgrade now button, the fan started ramping up real fast to the point that I can actually hear the fan exhausting the hot air out the vents. The frame of the Surface also heated up significantly and I have never seen it at this state before with the fan spinning at an audible level. Also one thing to note if you are upgrading Windows 10 on a laptop, remember to keep the power plugged in throughout to prevent any mishaps related to power failure as the setup doesn't care if the upgrade is being powered through the onboard battery.

After staring at the display and seeing the orb go from zero to 100%, the post-upgrade menus was like what it was yesterday. Everything from the lock screen wallpaper to the desktop files and also the Start Screen layout was brought forward.

But here's the kicker, while everything on screen works as usual and the touch screen was able to process my touch requests, the snap-in Type Cover was a little unresponsive. At first the keyboard was working but that was only for a few keys and the trackpad was completely dead. I tried to re-attach the Type Cover and the problem was still there. How I solved it? Just like yesterday, I did a simple restart and viola, everything works again.

In tomorrow's update, I will talk more using Windows 10 with a touchscreen.

More problems

Today's Bing Wallpaper, the panda says Hi!

Impressively, Windows 10 was running pretty solid in the morning. I woke the PC up from sleep mode and I did not notice any immediate performance drops. Everything worked as is and I even managed to print a file on my printer, No errors, the drivers were supported on Windows 10. 

Windows 10 keyboard shortcuts at a glance - One of my favorite shortcuts is Windows + Tab which opens the brand new Windows 10 Task View. Besides the list of running applications. Continue reading (external link).

What happened after lunch was that I installed the new Windows 10 SDK so that I can continue writing programs for the Raspberry Pi 2 through Windows 10 IoT. Speaking of that, Microsoft didn't only release Windows 10 yesterday (July 29), they also silently released the Public release of Windows 10 IoT core which Microsoft calls as stable. Nothing major about the update, just a lot of bug fixes and they finally added support for Wi-Fi on the Raspberry Pi 2.

As promised, Microsoft also released the full Windows 10 SDK to developers this afternoon. I have been waiting for this since last week when Microsoft officially launched Visual Studio 2015. Interestingly, last week's version of VS 2015 only came with the Windows 8.1 SDK which was a waste of time to download as it isn't technically supported on Windows 10. Nevertheless, SDK has been released and you can add it to Visual Studio 2015 and start developing for the new Universal Windows Platform.

Installing Windows 10 on the Raspberry Pi 2 - Microsoft has updated the installation instructions and it is now fairly simplified and user friendly compared to the original way. Continue reading.

The reason why I am explaining all of this is because it does somewhat relate to Windows 10 and the installation of the new UWP tools for Visual Studio 2015 somehow managed to cause a pretty big problem. Well it all started after the installation completed, I was supposed to fulfill a restart to finalize the update but I was in the midst of doing something so I opted to manually restart in a later time.

Not the best decision, as a while later, both my keyboard and mouse started to act up. The mouse was working but the keyboard became keyless. Some of the keys work but buttons like the space bar and backspace button was unresponsive. Initially I thought the battery was running flat (mind you that both my mouse and keyboard are wireless) and I did a quick check through the Logitech software and the batteries were OK. Then I tried swapping the USB dongle to another port and that didn't work and the mouse ended up being unresponsive and I was left only left with a half-done keyboard.

In the end, I gave up and hit ALT + F4 to restart the computer. Mind you at that time I totally forgot about the pending restart by the SDK installation. As expected, the restart did the trick but I did notice that my previously configured settings for my mouse was lost. All in all, the SDK install was the most legible cause of this error and I can't think of anything else that might've caused this random error.

So, have you upgraded you computer to Windows 10. Tell us you experience and if you did face any unusual events, we would like to hear about them. That is all for today's update, I promise that I'll focus on the core operating system tomorrow and not nag about my problems

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