Important information about Windows 10 upgrade

[UT E-Beam Lab]

Has anyone tried to run Windows 10 on an online PFE computer? Thanks.

[Mike Jercinovic]

Looks like we will need to upgrade our PfE host on the probe to Win10 soon, so we are interested to see if there are any known problems.  Has anyone done this recently?

[Probeman]

Looks like we will need to upgrade our PfE host on the probe to Win10 soon, so we are interested to see if there are any known problems.  Has anyone done this recently?

Hi Mike,
I think Ben Buse at Bristol is running PFE under Win10.  I know Gareth is running PFE under Win8 (there is no Win9!).

There was a problem with the old graphics library calls during the peaking and PHA acquisitions under Win8 and even for "locked down" versions of Win7, but now that I've replaced those calls (and I might even be done with replacing the remaining calls this weekend!), it seems to be running fine.

If it were me I would get a new computer with Win10 Professional on it, install CalcZAF and PFE, copy over my old config files from the ProgramData folder and see if it runs under demo mode (InterfaceType = 0), and if it all looks good, just swap the computers.

The only hardware issue is moving the CAT5 cable from the old computer to the new computer.  Remember, you'll want two network cards in the new computer: one for the WWW and one for the instrument private network which has to be statically defined based on the IP address in the Probewin.INI file.

[Ben Buse]

Hi Jon & Mike

No I only run it offline on windows 10. Online computer connected to the instrument is windows 7

Ben

[Probeman]

No I only run it offline on windows 10. Online computer connected to the instrument is windows 7

As far as Windows is concerned, there really shouldn't be any difference between running off-line and on-line PFE as there are no special drivers other than the normal Windows network driver.  And the network driver is used for both off-line and on-line PFE, so bottom line, it should be fine.

[Mike Jercinovic]

Thanks! We actually already have upgraded some Vista and Win8 machines to Win10 elsewhere in the facility and they seem to run PfE offline just fine, at least from what we have tried so far.  Just a bit nervous about upgrading the main PfE machine that actually drives the probe.  We'll see how it goes...

[Probeman]

Thanks! We actually already have upgraded some Vista and Win8 machines to Win10 elsewhere in the facility and they seem to run PfE offline just fine, at least from what we have tried so far.  Just a bit nervous about upgrading the main PfE machine that actually drives the probe.  We'll see how it goes...

Hi Mike,
I think the latest PFE will run fine (on-line) on Windows 10.  It definitely runs fine on Windows 8 (Gareth Seward at UCSB says so).

But...  I never recommend that anyone actually "upgrade" their operating system on their existing computer, as it's my experience that computers just get too slow when you put a new OS on an old computer.  Remember, Microsoft developers probably developed Windows 10 on current hardware platforms and so they "adjusted the system response" to what one expects on that hardware.  So if you can buy a new computer (they're cheap!), you'll probably be better off running Windows 10 I would guess.

Just my 2 cents.

[Paul Carpenter]

A main problem with Windows 10 is the enforced update procedure which results in the computer rebooting during PFE runs; problem observed on the new PC at Rutgers. I see there are possible solutions to turn this off, but the "Anniversary Update" of W10 apparently removes the ability to disallow reboot.

How does the system identify that no software is running so that a reboot can be performed? Is there a setting that PFE software can use to tell the OS that critical software is running and no reboot can occur until that is finished?

This is also an issue for upcoming install at NASA JSC.

Paul

[smatveev]

Dear Paul,
we keep our EPMA PC connected to inranet only. No downloads - no updates might be a solution.
Sergei

[Probeman]

Does this prevent Win 10 from re-booting automatically?

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-prevent-windows-10-rebooting-after-installing-updates

It's a bit complicated, but maybe worth trying?
john

[Probeman]

A colleague mentioned to me that Win 10 Professional (as opposed to Win 10 Home edition) allows one to specify not automatically rebooting after an update is downloaded.  Is that true?

[Karsten Goemann]

We have Win10-64 Pro now on both the Probe Software and Thermo PCs on our new JEOL 8530F+ and although it seems possible to deactivate automatic updates it is not straightforward. It also appears to depend somewhat on what "version" of Win 10 Pro you have. Ours are both 1703.

On the Probe Software PC I have managed to disable automatic updates. I found these links helpful:
- https://superuser.com/questions/957267/how-to-disable-automatic-reboots-in-windows-10
(There are more potentially useful settings in that Group Policy Category such as making sure that "No auto restart with logged on users..." is enabled)
- https://justpaste.it/HowDisableWindows10Update

I've tried the same on the Thermo PC but so far it is still doing the automated updates. The Probe Software PC shows a red notice in the Update window "Some settings are managed by your organization" which seems to indicate that whatever I've done there is slightly different as the Thermo PC is so far not displaying that message. I will have to sit down and carfully compare all of the settings....

So the Thermo PC is currently still rebooting at 4am, as it is not possible to set the "active hours" longer than 18 hours, which is not ideal for combined WDS-EDS runs. For the time being I have "paused" the updates under Advanced Options in the Update window, and when I come in in the morning I unpause, check for updates, install if any found, and pause again...

[Karsten Goemann]

Another thing I recently had with PFE under Windows 10 is that updating PFE through the help menu, running the PFE installer, or trying to uninstall PFE all stopped working. CalcZAF and Probe Image were not affected.

The main/first error message displayed was:
"The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable."

Pointing the installer to a different ProbeForEPMA.msi in a different location did not make a difference. Deactivating virus scanner /firewall didn't help either.

In the end I used the following Microsoft fix to get it working again:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/17588/fix-problems-that-block-programs-from-being-installed-or-removed

When you run it it asks you specifically what you want it to look at in the list of installed programs and I pointed it to Probe For EPMA. It then did its thing and simply reported that it had fixed something without giving any details... According to the info on the Microsoft page for the fix it might have been a corrupted registry entry specifically for PFE.

Cheers,
Karsten

[John Donovan]

According to the info on the Microsoft page for the fix it might have been a corrupted registry entry specifically for PFE.

Hi Karsten,
That is interesting because PFE doesn't use the Windows registry for anything, except to set the Surfer "working directory" just before it launches a quant mapping script for Surfer.  And that is only from CalcImage when one outputs a quant map for presentation.
john

[Probeman]

We have Win10-64 Pro now on both the Probe Software and Thermo PCs on our new JEOL 8530F+ and although it seems possible to deactivate automatic updates it is not straightforward. It also appears to depend somewhat on what "version" of Win 10 Pro you have. Ours are both 1703.

On the Probe Software PC I have managed to disable automatic updates. I found these links helpful:
- https://superuser.com/questions/957267/how-to-disable-automatic-reboots-in-windows-10
(There are more potentially useful settings in that Group Policy Category such as making sure that "No auto restart with logged on users..." is enabled)
- https://justpaste.it/HowDisableWindows10Update

I've tried the same on the Thermo PC but so far it is still doing the automated updates. The Probe Software PC shows a red notice in the Update window "Some settings are managed by your organization" which seems to indicate that whatever I've done there is slightly different as the Thermo PC is so far not displaying that message. I will have to sit down and carfully compare all of the settings....

So the Thermo PC is currently still rebooting at 4am, as it is not possible to set the "active hours" longer than 18 hours, which is not ideal for combined WDS-EDS runs. For the time being I have "paused" the updates under Advanced Options in the Update window, and when I come in in the morning I unpause, check for updates, install if any found, and pause again...

Has anyone found a method to prevent Windows 10 from rebooting after updating?  I found this link but haven't tried it yet...

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-prevent-windows-10-rebooting-after-installing-updates

They suggest disabling the "reboot" task which seems a little extreme.