Upgrading to Windows 10….It’s not that hard

Guys let me know if something is wrong, or just does not make sense to you.  I really need to learn screen shot making and how to draw purty Red boxes around things.  Also how do you insert screen shots anyway??

Upgrading to Windows 10 is Not Hard.

Okay so I upgraded to Windows 10 a week or so back, since I was having trouble with my virtual Pin2DMD.  For whatever reason the external DMD was crashing my Visual Pinball, since the upgrade everything has been running flawless in beautiful colored dots.  So I know it’s hard to upgrade a working machine, since most of had issues getting everything working the first time, we are all a little nervous about upgrading.  IT’s not that bad Honest :)

Step 1)

Back it up – Always back up before you start any type of upgrade.  I just copied my Visual Pinball, P-Roc, Direct Output, Pinabll X Folders onto a USB drive for safe keeping, in the end was not even needed

Step 2)

Download Windows 10 – My good friend Mr Google told me you can still get Windows 10 for free, if you “use” assistive technologies, but at no time did check i did so.  So here is the link from Microsoft

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/accessibility/windows10upgrade

Step 3) 

Follow the Instructions to upgrade to Windows 10

Step 4) 

Have a drink because this can take a while

Step 5)

Okay so we now have Windows 10 working on our computers, and everything did not blow up.  See I told you not so bad…

Step  6)

Where to put your files – For Windows 10 smarter computer people than me, recommend you out all your Visual Pinball related programs at the c: level.  Ie c:Visual Pinball or C:PinballX,  or c:DirectOutput etc.  This allows the permissions to be easier to achieve with Windows 10

Step7) 

Windows Defender – To help any other security issues, I added Visual Pinball folder, also PinballX Folder to the exclusions list by doing the following:

A) Open the Settings app and go to the Update & Security group of settings.

 B)Select Windows Defender and scroll down to the ‘Exclusions’ section.

C) Click ‘Add an exclusion‘. You can add three types of exclusions; select files and folders, certain file types, and processes.

Step  8)

Special Permissions – One of the issues I had was with the B2S Back glass server.  When i first started my back glass refused to move to where it should be.  Anything to do with the back glass server located in the Visual Pinball/tables file, I had to allow to run as administrator.

To do this:

1.  Single Left mouse Click on the file in question to select the file ie B2SBackglassServerexe.exe
2.  Single Right Click on the file, then click on the properties at the very bottom of the Window that opens
3.  Select The Compatibility Tab
4. Place a check mark in box next to run this program as an administrator
5.  Select okay then move on to the next file related to B2S

Step 9)

My last issue came with my DOF, I am using the latest version of R3 beta and using a Pac64led board, along with Zebs’s controller board.  As soon as I upgraded to Windows 10, my DOF lights started to flicker and blower would turn on and off quickly once I started a table.  It seems that Windows 10 is faster, at taking the signals sent from B2S through the USB to the PAC64.  The solution to this is was to plug in a cheap USB hub to help slow down the signal, and allow everything to run happily once again.  Hopefully in the future Swiss Lizzard will have time to fix this issue.  Some fun reading can be found here:

http://vpuniverse.com/forums/forums/topic/2765-how-to-limit-knocker-usage-in-certain-tables/

Step 10) 

Okay if all is right then drink a second beer and play some pinball.  Keep in mind if you don’t like Windows 10, you have 30 days to revert back to your existing operating system

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