Upgraded to Windows 10 today. The Windows 10 upgrade should show up in your Windows Update, but if you’re impatient to can go to this link to download an app that will upgrade right now. Overall the upgrade was pretty painless, but here’s a few problems I ran into:

  • After the upgrade it wasn’t detecting my video card correctly, but a reboot fixed this. Trying to install the latest NVidia drivers failed, because Windows claimed there were already more recent drivers installed.
  • If you log into a Microsoft/Passport/Xbox account (which you need to do if you want to use the app store, for example) then next time you lock your screen, it’ll prompt you to unlock it with your Microsoft account password instead of the desktop password. This means if your windows password is a 20 character random string you keep in your password manager, now would be a good time to fix that.
  • There’s a cool feature called “File History” which is very much like Time Machine from OS/X. To use it:
    • Click on the Start Button.
    • Type “File History” to search for “File History”.
    • Click on “File History, Control panel”. Here you can setup File History to your liking - best if you save to a network location, although you don’t have to.
    • Once File History is done copying files, you can right click any file and choose “Restore Previous Versions” to see previous copies of a file. You can also search for “Restore Files” and pick “Restore your Files with File History”.
  • I went into “Settings”, clicked on “Accounts”, then “Sync your Settings”, and turned off Password syncing. I strongly suspect passwords are encrypted while in transit, and Microsoft doesn’t have access to them, but I can’t find any documentation to support this assumption. I similarly went into “Privacy” -> “Speech, inking, & typing” and turned off “Get to know me”, and “Privacy” -> “General” and turned off “Send Microsoft info about how I write.”
  • Update 2015-08-02: It turns out that Windows 10 will, by default, use your bandwidth to deliver patches to other people on the Internet. Go to “Settings” -> “Update & Security” -> “Windows Update” -> “Advanced Options” -> “Choose how updates are delivered”, and then either set the bottom radio button to “PCs on my local network”, or just switch the switch to “off”.
  • Update 2015-08-02: Go here: https://choice.microsoft.com/en-us/opt-out and opt out.
  • It’s worth your time to go through all the settings under “Privacy” and read them all.