Yesterday I received my new Dell 15-5000 Series 5570 Laptop and it came with Creator Version installed. I suppose I should be grateful that that saved the reinstallation step from Anniversary Version. So, what issues did I discover with version 1703, Build 15063.540?
1. File sort when clicking on Name does not work correctly. I am still diagnosing problem, but for now it appears that the sort is limited to just the first x number of characters. For example, if I have a long named file like a statement coming from a broker where I added at the end the year, say 2016 or 2017 all in the same folder, you would expect looking at the list of files after NAME is clicked and expect the 2016 files to appear first, followed by the 2017 files. Well, instead, you get a 2016, a 2017, a 2016, a 2017, etc. When I narrow down the specifics, I'll post back here.
2. Microsoft's implementation of the User Account Name and the User Profile Folder will probably be a problem for just me. Back in the days when Windows 10 came out, all worked fine. If you [mistakenly] installed you system with the Microsoft Account email address, but later determined that you didn't want that and changed to a Local Logon method, the name you picked for the Local Logon, say SAM would be used in the creation of a user profile name, hence, c:\users\SAM. Well, now, if you used an email MSFT Acct name, say abcde13@xxxxx.net, abcde is used to create C:\users\abcde folder for all your account file. Not very nice since you were expecting SAM. There is no easy way, or a 100% sure way, of changing the user fold name; can't rename, except maybe in SAFE mode or via DOS, but the Registry is already populated with programs and other thing relating to c:\users\abce and will fail. Rename does NOT change all the references in Registry, or even possibly elsewhere. So, the workaround for me is to suck it up and go ahead and change my Local Logon, i.e., User Account name to abcde! Oh well!
3. Installing Brother Printer software from disk, a mere 1-1.5 years old, ended up in an infinite read and error recovery/retry that locked up the entire system. The cause seems to be the Optical DVR/CD device installed in my new Dell. The recovery/retry infinite loop is software error! Some piece of software, driver or application should have abandoned the retries after so many and just give an error. After 4 hours on phone with Dell Support, the manager realized in less than 5 minuted that a new drive needs to be installed. Duh. Other symptoms of problem was the loud clattering noise on older CDs, the inability to execute an Autoplay setup without manually invoking it, taking a long, long time in some cases to even see the disks existence by the operating system, etc. New drive on the way.I'll report back with test results. 10/24/17 Update: We have 2 problems here: (a) the Optical DVR/CD drive that came with my Dell 15-1500 Series 5700 was bad. Only about 5-10% of the time could I use it. Problems consisted of never being recognized by File Manager (no disk ID for the drive), ID in file manager, but never loaded, infinite attempts to try to read any info files on it, Auto Play not recognized, Some but not all data displayed after loading, hangs to application trying to run a file from it, etc. May I mention that these problems apply to Audio disks, Video DVDs, and Data disks that all work flawlessly on two other PCs and/or DVD/CD player attached to a TV. Dell replaced that Optical drive with, NOT a new one, but a refurbished one! The second one got through the Audio and Data disks, except initially failed twice -- seems like it needs to be trained. However, the Video Disks failed about 80% of the time for 12 different movie purchased and original movie disks. The problems were the same as initially on previous Optical drive. Round three coming -- a third optical drive. If this doesn't work, the entire Dell machine is going back unless they replace it with a working external optical drive. (2) No progress on number of retries. I did notice that some software can govern the number of retries and the time before retries. I'm looking into driver-specific software now.
10/24/17 Update for 4, 5, 7 below: These could all be user error 😬. I decided to download different backup software, SYnBack Free just in case I had to abandon SyncToy. Its documentation, since they currently support the product unlike SyncToy that has been abandoned by Microsoft, clearly explains and cautions the user on the differences between backing up methods and how to manage your backups. Briefly, MIRROR your drived ONLY if you want the target drive to look identically to the Source drive at all times. This method will delete files on Target if no longer in the Source. Thus, if you had a really old file on Source and deleted it there, it will also be deleted on your backup. You may not want this. BACKUP method copies only changes to source (edits, movement, etc.) to Target disk, NEVER deleting anything from Target. Sounds promising for those who want the Target as a complete backup over many years and want to maintain a total backup while the Source mast only keeps current files. However, beware that if you do what I do, namely have an Archive folder in my key directories that I use to hold the old stuff, keeping my main view with only current files I need to see, the Target after the BACKUP will now get those files under Archive AND keep them outside before they were move to Archive. In all cases, SYNCHRONIZE is another, it is important NEVER to modify the Target yourself. Well, wrong too. You see, unintentionally, I sometimes backup before I notice that one or more of my personal, sensative files went over unencrypted. I I used the BACKUP method, after encrypting it, I now have bothe the unencrypted and encrypted there! To correct this, I need to manually delete the unencrypted files from the Target. I could use MIRROR to automatically do this, but then all other deletions I made on Source will be deleted from Target. There's no nice solution for me with backing up encrypted files. So, in short, I will be using SYncBack Freeware for backups because they maintain the software and support it and have great documentation.
4. Either the file COPY function or Microsoft's SyncToy product is causing copying failures. For example, I copied, one way or the other or both, and ended up with inconsistencies in the number of items in the source and target directories. In some cases, just some files went missing. In another case, entire subfolders were not there and missing with more than a coincidence, e.g., For 3 folders I had subfolders 2013,2014,2015,2016,2017. The target created the folders only for 2013-2016. 2017 was left out for all three upward folders! Strange. Further testing required to determine the culprit. But, beware that SyncToy and/or COPY may not always work right.
10/24/17 Update (see above):
5. Never, never have a folder named ARCHIVE! I had subfolders in at least 10 directories named that where I accumulated past files in so not to clutter the most current ones. One of the copy methods, COPY or SyncToy decided that the files in each ARCHIVE subdirectory should also be copied outside it one directory level up. I also have seen duplicated pictures with the same name! Again, many hours of debugging ahead.
6. Since I am very proficient and satisfied with Office 2003, I once again installed it on Creator Version only to find several fixes/work around were necessary: (a) After installing from disk, you also need to install Office Service Pack 3 (SP3) AND the Office Compatibility which was for 2007. Why? Because MSFT in all their wisdom removed Control Panel from Start menu, which isn't the problem other than to work to fix it. The real Windows issue is that file association for Excel, namely ,XLS, are NOT assigned to ANY application and MSFT, again with great wisdom, no longer let's you search for actual program .exe files to assign (associate) to the .xls extension. The Compatibility product will assign the .xls to an XML Converter program. You won't see Excel there, but instead this designation. 10/24/17 Update: You can select a specific program, however, you have a hurtle to jump now to get to that point. When the file associations are displayed and you click to the right to add or change a default program, you get the available choices on you system. You now have to go to STORE first and see its offerings. At the very bottom of the offerings is a hypertext to select more programs FROM YOUR SYSTEM. This is what puts you into File Explorer and allows you to explore you system for a .exe file. I don't know if I could have fixed my Excel problem doing this or that the converter was still necessary but, this is how you do it.
10/24/17 Update (see above):
7. Did you ever try to find everything on your system with the word ARCHIVE (problem 5 above) so you can rename them all to ARCHIVES to avoid the copy problem? Forget it! Instead, get the product called EVERYTHING. Search Everything file manager and you'll come to the Voids website. Works like a charm and super fast!
8. Of course Creator still uses title bars that are White by default, rendering finding the active one opened on your screen. Fortunately they at least now allow you to change the titles and other ting's colors via Settings, Personalize.
Come on back for resolutions to these problems.
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