It’s been a bad hardware day for me, my MacBook Air that I bought in 2012 stopped working. Â And it’ll cost at least half the price of a new one to fix it. Â So instead of that I don’t want to spend that much right now so I picked up a cheap used Fujitsu laptop. Â It had Windows 7 on it, which qualifies for Windows 10, so I figured I’d just use that free upgrade!
Wow that was a whole day shot by. Â Although now that I’m posting this from Windows 10, it is much more faster and responsive than Windows 7.
The first big problem I had was that this laptop didn’t have *ANY* updates installed.  Service pack 1 for Windows 7 is required for the upgrade, and that is a 1GB download on it’s own!  Then after that, it demanded KB2952664 which wanted forever to install, so I said screw it and run the Windows update, which was 199 updates to go. So after all those hours, I’m finally ready to install Windows 10!
I wanted an upgrade!
So during the install, about 25% of the way in, 83% copying files it suddenly reboots, and then starts to restore my prior copy of Windows. Â Great, something failed. Â Once back in Windows 7 I get this wonderful message:
I love these cryptic errors!
0xc1900101 – 0x20004 The installation failed in the SAFE_OS phase with an error during the INSTALL_RECOVERY_ENVIRONMENT operation.
After trying more updates, defraging, it failed to upgrade another two times. Â So I googled some more, and it turns out that a lot of people had laptops like this Fujitsu that were partitioned 50/50 and people would convert their disk from a basic MBR to a dynamic disk, so they could destroy the un-needed and wasteful D drive, and merge it into a nice C drive. Â So what is the fix? UGH you have to convert the disk back to a basic disk with a normal MBR. Â Except You can’t easily revert as you can convert. Â So a bunch of more time wasted with a Windows Vista DVD that can read the disk, and an external drive let me copy windows off, redo the disk as MBR and restore Windows.
After all that drama the Windows 10 upgrade went without a hitch!
Bottom line, is that it’s probably easier to just buy a copy of Windows 10. Â There is a utility to convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk, Partition Wizard Pro which costs $39. Â Which is better towards a copy of 10.
Oh well it’s finally done.
Update review
Probably a bad time to ask.
You can also get funny results with the registry keys of the default fonts, apparently: http://s24.postimg.org/aqqqeq05h/Gh7tm_S3_Rp6_MBSKZGMbfr238_Yn_QE3_I8_F2_CHLn_KM2_B4vr_J_ZWt.png
do you have a version of that, that isn’t for ants?
http://i.imgur.com/X3xK4qa.png (from Google images, not my screenshot)
that’s kind of cool.
What about selling the 2012 Air as-is if it’s really beyond repair (do you know what’s wrong with it) and using the money to buy another used one? 2011 ones with Sandy Bridge CPUs (which in terms of raw performance aren’t too different from the Ivy Bridge ones that your Air has) can, if you’re lucky be had for 400-500 bucks depending on specs and condition, at least in Germany.
This is not to say you shouldn’t be enjoying your “new” laptop with Windows 10 (which model is it if I may ask, and what it’s specification?) though 🙂
For what it’s worth, I’m typing this on an original (2010) 11-inch MacBook Air with an 1.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM and a 64 GB SSD (which still has about 40 GB free space), running Snow Leopard. Hopefully this one won’t blow up anytime soon.