Free Upgrade blocked by "incompatible" hardware

[Dave-H]

I had decided that I would try the Windows 10 "upgrade" on my small netbook to assess it before deciding whether I wanted it on my main machine.

The netbook is dual boot Windows 8.1 Pro and Windows XP Pro.

I registered for the upgrade, but nothing had happened as yet, and when I checked today, i was informed that my netbook had been declared incompatible with Windows 10 because there is no Windows 10 graphics driver available for it.

The graphics driver presently installed is the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3600 Series.

Now that doesn't even have a Windows 8 driver available (the machine was designed for Windows 7 only, I had great difficulty even finding a Windows XP compatible graphics driver for it!) but it installed and runs Windows 8.1 absolutely fine, so I've no reason to think that it wouldn't run Windows 10.

Very briefly, does anyone know any way or over-riding the compatibility check so I can get the free upgrade?

Cheers, Dave.

Edited August 30, 2015 by Dave-H

[jaclaz]

This is off-topic, (and actually against the whole purpose of this thread!), but any advice would be welcome.

...

If this is inappropriate for this thread I apologise, please delete it and I will start a new thread about it.

It seems UTTERLY inappropriate to me (here), hopefully if of the same opionion a Mod/Admin will split your post to a new thread, no need to delete this and re-post it.

jaclaz

Edited August 29, 2015 by jaclaz

[Dave-H]

Thanks jaclaz, understood of course.

@dencorso, could you do the honours please?

I don't know whether this should now go in the Windows 8 or the Windows 10 forum, I'll leave that up to you.

[NoelC]

Off topic?  Nonsense!  There is information to be learned by trying to UN-avoid being upgraded to Win 10. 

 

And from the potential return trip. 

 

The other day I ran across some info on the VMware forum about how to manually upgrade a system that is deemed incompatible...

 

Warning:  You're taking a risk by forcing an upgrade.  Think of a plan for what to do if it just bricks up.

 

https://communities.vmware.com/message/2533889#2533889

 

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2126929

 

-Noel

[Tripredacus]

Topic split from here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173752-how-to-avoid-being-upgraded-to-win-10-against-your-will/

I am not surprised that MS wouldn't want to upgrade everyone and everything... they are putting themself at a big risk as it is. They are saying they will upgrade your Windows PC for free and support it for the life of the product. Limiting upgrades based on devices is actually a good idea, since you could install Windows on hardware of any age, presuming it technically works. Consider the fact that (not counting those with no driver support for critical devices) Microsoft is taking over direct support of computers that are likely out of warranty or even obsolete.

Be aware that the upgrade is going to remove your ability to dual boot and you'll have to redo it.

[jaclaz]

I am not surprised that MS wouldn't want to upgrade everyone and everything... they are putting themself at a big risk as it is. They are saying they will upgrade your Windows PC for free and support it for the life of the product. Limiting upgrades based on devices is actually a good idea, since you could install Windows on hardware of any age, presuming it technically works. Consider the fact that (not counting those with no driver support for critical devices) Microsoft is taking over direct support of computers that are likely out of warranty or even obsolete.

Well, no , "support" is a thing of the past, there was *some* support for NT 3.1/3.51/4.00 and for Windows 2000.

It never happened later (and it won't likely happen in the future), if not - maybe - for corporate users (which BTW are the same that had NT/2K at the time).

Something like (say) 90% of existing XP/7/8/8.1 are OEM and the a key point of the OEM license (besides "linking" the software to the hardware) is that support is to be provided by the OEMs (which obviously completely fail at it).

All you got all these years were KB's, which you cannot logically find from MS search - you need google or some other search engine to find one that is relevant to the problem - and you cannot even imagine how an automatically translated KB appears in non-English

Then you can call MS and you have three choices:

1. be guided to perform a set of basic, common, generic troubleshooting steps that have nothing to do with the problem at hand by someone that very likely, besides being often not even talking properly your language on average knows more or less the same as (or much less than) you on the matter at hand and that invariably ends in the suggestion to reinstall the OS.

2. be told that the issue at hand is "by design" and that you should upgrade to the last version of the OS (possibly getting also some new hardware).

3. be told that your issue is not among those covered by support and that you need to pay a fee for the assistance (usually provided by another clueless - though usually very nice - chap that will completely fail to pinpoint and resolve the issue if not by upgrading and reinstalling)

If you think a bit about it, sites like MSFN.ORG have - say - a 20% or maybe 30% part dedicated to new programs, crazy hacks and similar and 70% to 80% dedicated to help/assist fellow members that have issues with this or that product (of which 90% is MS originated) and that are at their wits end after having attempted vainly to find information or support.

And there are tens or hundreds or similar "third party" forums all around the world, all full of users that need assistance that MS and OEMs evidently fail to provide.

 

To give you an example in another field, how many forums are there where members help each other with the difficulties of mounting IKEA furniture?  

Would this mean that assembling a stupid cabinet is easier than having - say - a stupid computer stupidly connect to a stupid printer or have a stupid screen actually display properly?^[1]

Or maybe it means that their support actually works?

 

 

Mind you, there is nothing "bad" (in the sense of "evil") in providing no useful or very scarce support, but - as always - let's call things with their name.

 

 jaclaz

 

 

^[1] And just for the record, yes   in latest years, thanks to the senselessly complex "optimized" drivers from the hardware manufacturers, the lack of valid industry standards (or the existing ones being ignored)  and the flawed way newer Windows NT systems manage them, yes,  connecting a printer or a display, installing the corresponding driver and have the devices work properly has been a nightmare, even for very experienced and knowledgeable people.

Edited August 30, 2015 by jaclaz

[Dave-H]

Thanks @Tripredacus for moving the post.

I've edited my first post to remove the parts that were only relevant when it was in the other thread, to avoid confusion.

 

Off topic?  Nonsense!  There is information to be learned by trying to UN-avoid being upgraded to Win 10. 

 

And from the potential return trip. 

 

The other day I ran across some info on the VMware forum about how to manually upgrade a system that is deemed incompatible...

 

Warning:  You're taking a risk by forcing an upgrade.  Think of a plan for what to do if it just bricks up.

 

https://communities.vmware.com/message/2533889#2533889

 

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2126929

 

-Noel

Thanks Noel. much appreciated!

I'll have a look at that and see if it's worth trying.

Cheers,

Dave.

[dencorso]

I'll have a look at that and see if it's worth trying.

IMO, it sure is. Do make a full backup of both your OSes' partitions 1st, of course, and then give it a go!

But be sure double-check your ability to reverse things, just in case, before plunging into it.

[Dave-H]

Well, I'm downloading Windows 10 now, so it did work! Thanks again for the link to the fix @NoelC.

I have a fairly recent ISO backup of the whole machine, so hopefully I'm covered in case of disaster, but we'll see.

Wish me luck!

[Dave-H]

Well, it took ages, but I now have Windows 10 Pro on my netbook!

Thanks very much again to @NoelC, and the guys at vmware of course!

 

My first reaction is that it's ugly, even compared to Windows 8.1!

It's stuck with the Basic Display Driver at the moment though, so I'll reserve judgement on it until after I've (hopefully) got the proper graphics driver installed.

I'm getting error messages from Nero telling me that it can't find advrcntr5.dll as well, but I guess that will come good if I reinstall it, assuming that the version I've got is not completely incompatible with Windows 10 of course!

Edited August 30, 2015 by Dave-H

[NoelC]

You're welcome - glad it helped!

 

Hop over to Big Muscle's sub-section of the forum and try out his Aero Glass for Win 8+ program for prettying up the Win 10 display.

 

-Noel

[Dave-H]

Well sadly I'm now at the point of giving up with Windows 10 on my netbook.

As I was warned, the graphics driver is completely incompatible, even more so than with Windows 8.1.

It installs fine, and the lock screen and logon screen are fine, but it crashes as soon as it tries to load the desktop (VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE) and try as I might I cannot resolve this.

There are people working on a driver for the Intel GMA 3600 for Windows 10, but there's nothing available as yet.

 

It's annoying, because it must be so close to working. If I change to the basic display driver, and then update to the Intel driver while the machine is running, it installs and the display changes to the correct resolution, and it seems fine, but as soon as I reboot it crashes again.

 

Rather annoyingly, I don't have the option in the recovery menu to roll back to Windows 8.1.

I did a reset of the machine at one point and told it to remove everything, and that might have removed the option, although the old OS is still there in the Windows.old folder, there seems to be no way now to get back to it from within Windows 10.

I'm going to try the backup I've got of the whole system on an external drive, and see if I can restore from that.

[GrofLuigi]

Kill that useless TDR. In my opinion, it creates way more problems than it solves.

[Dave-H]

I very much doubt if the graphics driver would have been stable even if I had suppressed the TDR crash, but thanks for that reference!

I'm now restoring my System Image Backup, so I will see if it does indeed put me back where I was before!

Watch this space......

[NoelC]

Kill that useless TDR. In my opinion, it creates way more problems than it solves.

 

I agree with Dave-H on this but I also agree that the timeout is WAY too short (1 second?!?) on a typical Windows system.

 

I've lengthened it on my (graphics development/test) systems to 90 seconds as I recall.

 

-Noel