I run Windows 10 on two computers – a 128Gb laptop with only 5Gb free hard disc space (“small device”) and a desktop computer.

Microsoft has taken a leaf out of Apple’s book and made their OS updates practically compulsory on the grounds that you will not have adequate software security if you are not running the latest updates.

All very well, but although I am not sure how big the “compulsory” update downloads are, I do know that on my very slow ADSL-1 internet service, the downloads seemed to take priority over all my internet bandwidth, effectively leaving me without internet access all weekend, unless I temporarily aborted the download by rebooting the computer – but this would only delay the inevitable and would prevent me getting further smaller security updates.

And no, Microsoft didn’t seem to think it would be smart to offer users an option of only downloading one version and then re-using it on all computers – no each computer has to download its own version.

Eventually, the download completed on the desktop computer and after much time running through the install process and then more time waiting after you first log on for it all to finish – it at least seems to be working well.

Now the “small device saga”:

Finally the download finished on my laptop and after much time initialising the install gave a fail error of “not enough disk space – need more than 5Gb of hard disc space”.

I freed up a little more tried again and it again failed with not enough space so after noting the option to select an external drive, I then freed up space on my micro SD card and selected that drive.

I started the update yet again, and all went well ….. until … the computer rebooted ….

Failure to run update with an SD card!

I was then presented with a black screen with the Samsung logo and an error message “Please insert external drive then press OK” and a circular rotating waiting icon.

All very sensible except that the micro SD card is already in the laptop and has not been removed and the keyboard and mouse was now effectively disabled – no way to hit the OK button. I ejected the SD card and re-inserted but still nothing happened – so I waited an hour or so just in case it was busy doing something behind the scenes … but eventually my patience gave out and I hit reboot.

Reboot took me to exactly the same scenario as above forcing me to reboot again.

This time, thankfully it decided that it would restore the old version of Windows and after much time, it did this without issue.

In desperation, I decided to get heavy handed with my disc clean up and copied program folders for Delphi XE to a back up drive then deleted those folders temporarily so I now temporarily had > 15Gb free space.

To be sure, I disabled my antivirus software.

At last, the update ran to completion and my laptop was working – but now there was no space to restore those important program files.

I thought I would try to be smart and copy the Windows.old folders to an external drive before deleting it – this seemed to work until the last 1% of files refused to copy due to insufficient rights despite me being admin and attempts to re-try – eventually I gave up on this concept of insurance.

So, I ran system cleanup (right click on C: drive, select Properties then Disk Cleanup, then System Files and once it has analysed this, you choose Windows previous version and temporary install files – knowing that once these are deleted, there is no going back to your old version.

But I needed space, so once the above was completed, I restored my program folders by copying them back from the external backup drive and now my laptop seems to be running as before.

I am not sure I need any of the added software functionality, but at least now I can get ongoing security updates.

For some reason Delphi XE no longer opens – I get an Out of System Resources – FIX: set desktop graphics font = 100% (higher values cause the error).

Thanks Microsoft for many hours of my life being wasted.

ps… not all good ….

My v4.50 of TMS Software TadvSmoothGauge VCL control now causes an “Invalid Floating Point Operation” when an app with this control runs in Win 10 Anniversary Edition – the same app runs fine in older versions of Windows. FIX: purchase latest version of TMS controls.

Ebay checkout now is not working in the updated Microsoft Edge browser – gives error code 70245.