Dealing with the privacy concerns posed by Windows 10 and upgrading an old PC to it

Microsoft’s terms and conditions for the use of Windows 10 have raised widespread concerns that it is invading the user’s privacy as deeply as possible, in much the same way as Google does, in order to deliver customised ads. Moreover, don’t forget that Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Twitter have to provide legitimate governments with any information that they have gathered on particular users.

All of the settings are conveniently gathered together and can be found by going to Settings and clicking on Privacy. The following article deals with the privacy settings and the concerns about them.

Windows 10 privacy issues solved –

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/software/operating-systems/…

With regard to upgrading an old desktop or laptop PC to Win10, care should be taken.

My old desktop PC was successfully upgraded from Windows XP all the way up to Windows 8.1, but when I reserved the upgrade to Windows 10, I got a message saying that the device driver for the graphics chip that is integrated on the motherboard (not a separate graphics card) is not compatible with Win10 and therefore the PC cannot be upgraded.

Since the graphics chip is provided by the motherboard – an MSI 7093 model – I thought that I would just have to buy a cheap PCI Express graphics card that is listed as compatible by Microsoft’s Compatibility Center and then Windows Update would allow the upgrade to go ahead.

Unfortunately, according to its user manual downloaded from its manufacturer’s website, the motherboard provides PCI Express 1.0a and new, inexpensive PCI Express cards use PCI Express 2.1 (or higher version up to version 4.0), which is not backward-compatible with version 1.0a. Some versions of PCI Express are backward-compatible with earlier versions, but that is not so in my case. I could find a PCI Express 1.0a graphics card second-hand, but the chances are not good that the device driver that supports Windows 10 is available, so I am not going to try to upgrade that PC. However, my old MSI M662 laptop, running Windows 7 SP1, passed Microsoft’s compatibility tests after I placed a reservation for Win10 and I am now waiting for the upgrade to take place automatically.

Here is the information on Wikipedia about PCI Express 1.0a and 2.1. Information about the other versions of PCI Express is also provide on that page.

PCI Express –

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#PCI_Express_2.1

About Eric 275 Articles
I am an experienced PC technician who has been the owner and sole writer of the PC Buyer Beware! website since 2004. I am learning all the time in this very dynamic, ever-changing field.