So I decided to upgrade my desktop to Windows 10 from 7 whilst it's free. Before the upgrade it had a dual boot with Linux Mint 17, which I had set up with the following partitions:
8Gb swap,
60Gb Linux,
60Gb Linux /home,
50Gb Windows,
322Gb shared partition.
I downloaded the Windows 10 installer and started the update. The download is about 3Gb which was fine, but the first problem hit just after. The installer got stuck on "checking for updates", which after googling seems like a common problem. To fix it you have to restart windows update service by opening cmd in admin mode typing
net stop wuauserv
net start wuauserv
I had to repeat this a few times before it finished.
The next problem was that the partition didn't have enough free space, which was a surprise as I only use Windows for games and those are on the shared partition. It turns out that although Windows 7 requires 20Gb to install, a normal install uses ~45Gb after all the updates. After removing some old files and running the disk cleanup it freed up enough space to continue the install, which abruptly failed. My guess is that the disk cleanup deleted some of the Windows 10 installation files. Restarting the installation requires re-downloading the 3Gb of install files, <sigh>.
This time the install got to restarting the computer to boot into real installation. Queue problem #3. Without any warning the Windows installation reformatted my Linux partitions, which left the grub bootloader without anything to boot. The error was
error: no such partition.
Entering rescue mode...
grub rescue>
Various comments on the internet mentioned pointing grub back at the Linux partition, but as mine was not there any more there was nothing really to do but start again.
This time I formatted the drive with a big windows partition (372 Gb) so there would be no problems with running out of space. I installed Linux Mint first, then Windows 7. I updated Windows completely before performing the upgrade again. I hit an issue where Windows would take several hours just to update the list of updates, but after enough time it was complete. This time the Windows 10 upgrade went fine (apart from stopping wuauserv etc.). The final part was to reinstate grub to allow the dual boot. To do this, I booted the Mint Live CD, checked gparted to see the name of the boot partition (sda2) then opened the console and typed
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
sudo grub-install –boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sda
After rebooting, the installation was done.
Many people I know had the Windows 10 install go without any issues, but my experience was truly terrible. It took about 20 minutes to install Mint, but about 2 days to get Windows 10 up and running. I am used to Windows ignoring grub and installing its own bootloader, but completely removing my Linux installation is a first. I hope that it was a bug, because incompetence is more easy to forgive than malevolence. Apart from games I have no use for Windows and this is really not encouraging me to switch over. What I learned is that if you want to upgrade Windows on your dual boot make sure you have backed up everything and have plenty of time to rebuild.
TL;DR - My Windows 10 upgrade experience was terrible
8Gb swap,
60Gb Linux,
60Gb Linux /home,
50Gb Windows,
322Gb shared partition.
I downloaded the Windows 10 installer and started the update. The download is about 3Gb which was fine, but the first problem hit just after. The installer got stuck on "checking for updates", which after googling seems like a common problem. To fix it you have to restart windows update service by opening cmd in admin mode typing
net stop wuauserv
net start wuauserv
I had to repeat this a few times before it finished.
The next problem was that the partition didn't have enough free space, which was a surprise as I only use Windows for games and those are on the shared partition. It turns out that although Windows 7 requires 20Gb to install, a normal install uses ~45Gb after all the updates. After removing some old files and running the disk cleanup it freed up enough space to continue the install, which abruptly failed. My guess is that the disk cleanup deleted some of the Windows 10 installation files. Restarting the installation requires re-downloading the 3Gb of install files, <sigh>.
This time the install got to restarting the computer to boot into real installation. Queue problem #3. Without any warning the Windows installation reformatted my Linux partitions, which left the grub bootloader without anything to boot. The error was
error: no such partition.
Entering rescue mode...
grub rescue>
Various comments on the internet mentioned pointing grub back at the Linux partition, but as mine was not there any more there was nothing really to do but start again.
This time I formatted the drive with a big windows partition (372 Gb) so there would be no problems with running out of space. I installed Linux Mint first, then Windows 7. I updated Windows completely before performing the upgrade again. I hit an issue where Windows would take several hours just to update the list of updates, but after enough time it was complete. This time the Windows 10 upgrade went fine (apart from stopping wuauserv etc.). The final part was to reinstate grub to allow the dual boot. To do this, I booted the Mint Live CD, checked gparted to see the name of the boot partition (sda2) then opened the console and typed
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
sudo grub-install –boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sda
After rebooting, the installation was done.
Many people I know had the Windows 10 install go without any issues, but my experience was truly terrible. It took about 20 minutes to install Mint, but about 2 days to get Windows 10 up and running. I am used to Windows ignoring grub and installing its own bootloader, but completely removing my Linux installation is a first. I hope that it was a bug, because incompetence is more easy to forgive than malevolence. Apart from games I have no use for Windows and this is really not encouraging me to switch over. What I learned is that if you want to upgrade Windows on your dual boot make sure you have backed up everything and have plenty of time to rebuild.
TL;DR - My Windows 10 upgrade experience was terrible
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