So I fired up my PC when I got home from work and checked my notifications, to find Windows 10 was on its way. This was all rather exciting, I could hear the voices in my head :
“Hurry up and get it installed“.
However the voices on Twitter were a different matter :
“No no no“.
“Insane in the membrane”
“You must be marbles and conkers“.
However I resisted the urge to stop the update, again my own voices speaking, although at times conflicting :
“One Windows to rule them all“.
“My precious, my precious“.
“Turn back Dick Whittngton“.
“Umm I think you’re confusing stories now and need to stop this!”
Eventually, files had been downloaded, updates had been run, apps had been configured, settings had been configured and I logged in.
Hurrah! Success. Now I should say at this point that this is not my suggested method of upgrading an operating system. I’m a big fan of the clean install. However I decided to let the Microsoft process do its work and I was rather impressed to discover that the apps I largely use seem to be working fine, without any need to reinstall them.
However I did get prompted to install a new graphics card driver. This I should point out is the combination of graphics card driver and operating system that Inara Pey highlights in a blog post – Second Life project updates 31/1: server, VMM, group issues, Windows 10 issues :
The second issue appears to be the return of a problem specific to Windows 10 and AMD graphics drivers first reported in March 2015. This causes the graphics card name to be saved as garbled text into the Windows registry, with the result that any program explicitly requiring the name of the graphics card in order to run correctly can encounter problems (although those which don’t will continue to run OK). As v3-style viewers are designed to explicitly save the GPU name at log-out (it is stored in the settings.xml file), those using Windows 10 / AMD systems may be affected. This is because the garbled card name gets written to the settings.xml file, along with other global settings applied to the viewer by the user, when logging out. This makes settings.xml unreadable by the viewer at the next log-in, so the viewer fails to obtain information, and so reverts all global settings (including graphics) to their defaults.
This doesn’t look like a showstopper to me, indeed it’s not a showstopper. However please read Inara’s blog post for full details on issues with Windows 10 and Second Life.
I did run into a very minor issue in both Firestorm and the official Second Life viewer on initial run. This was related to me having ticked remember password and the errors appears like this on first login :
The good news is that I ticked remember password and logged in, with both Firestorm and the official Second Life viewer and this error did not reappear on subsequent logins, so it’s just a quirk that is easily dealt with.
Next I looked at how the offiical Second Life viewer views Windows 10 :
The viewer is running in Windows 8 compatibility mode, but the Second Life viewer is able to detect that the real version is Windows 10.0. This will be because the class that is read to provide this information remains the same in different versions of Windows.
The upgrade went smoothly for me, but I’m running on older hardware and in 32-bit mode. There are reports of some people experiencing problems with the upgrade and it has failed for some people. As I said earlier, ideally I would do a clean install, but for now I’m happy with this upgrade.
My next question was therefore, where should I head next and I spotted a very interesting looking location where it looks like you can party like it’s 1867.
The blurb says :
Travel back to the year 1867 and visit an expansive virtual replica of Pfaffenthal in Luxembourg City. This project is part of an exhibition at the Luxembourg City History Museum, but you can also explore from home in Second Life
I will have to take a closer look at this location very soon.
SLURL To Virtual Pfaffenthal : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Pfaffenthal%20Vauban/168/17/29
Paul Therott had a good tip. You can still do a clean install once you activate your new copy of 10. From there on out you can do clean reinstalls without having to activate 10 again. https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/5008/windows-10-tip-associate-your-pc-with-your-free-windows-10-license
I have heard of voice issues with Win10 and SL is this an issue?
I haven’t used voice since upgrading to be honest.
I managed to do a clean install and upgrade to 64 bit without any activation issues, so I’m happy about that. During the install process you do get asked to enter a key, but following advice from other articles, I skipped that and once it was all done, Windows happily activated.
Thanks for the link, that’s a good article.