Woe is me

My previous Win 8.1 laptop is the one I have wired to my router for speedtests and the like. (I mentioned a week or so ago in this forum it was Vista, having forgotten I swapped them because some thinkbroadband software wouldn't run well under Vista).

When I made that earlier post it was because a Windows icon had appeared in the system tray. As far as I remember I had never asked for notification or anything. I simply hid the icon.

Reading the ongoing threads here I went to look at the directory tree for c:\. Lo and behold I had the $Windows.~BT. A couple of directories, 3.nnGB.

Next day I had another look and there was more, including several files. The bottom one of which was setup.exe. Then .... Aahhhhhh!

As I coasted the cursor across to the tree list to check the overall size, I must have accidentally clicked setup.exe. It started downloading like mad.

Failing to manage to commit suicide, in the end I killed the download process through Task Manager, resolving to steer clear of that directory for a long time. I do not want to update that machine to Win 10 at this point in time. It does everything I want, and I don't want anything to fail due to drivers or whatever.

That I think was Saturday.

This evening I went to run a ttb speedtest and saw a new icon I've never seen before. Hover - "Restart your machine to complete the install". No indication of what I was about to install. Right-clicking didn't help.

Check the directory again and a load more stuff, with several new sub-directories modified today between 17:00 and 17:20. It's sitting there now in that state.

/me = idiot!

/Microsoft - utter PITA!! Why did they push the damn thing in the first place?

As I see it, I have two options.

1) Reboot tomorrow and waste a lot of time making sure I sort out any options offered. Hope all is well at the end.

2) Rename (which probably would not make any difference) or copy elsewhere the contents of the directory, or at least the most necessary-looking sub-directory. Reboot and see if my existing system lives.

Any ideas and advice please folks?

I have a feeling you wont have much luck doing anything. Your old system should be in windows.old. However, you don't know whether anything else important outside that has been modified.

You could always try a windows 8 system recovery if your other ideas don't work out. If they don't and you cant to a system recovery, then it may be time for a re-installation.

You might find the next reboot starts the install process.

Is there a path to that please? It isn't anywhere obvious.

It could be that it is created after I reboot, as all that seems to have happened so far is the main download. No messages or confirmation request at all.

What worries me about a reboot is as I clearly haven't gone via the expected entry point I don't know if anything should have run before setup.exe.

Its usually c:\windows.old

If its not there, then it looks like nothing major has occurred (the upgrade hasn't started) - its possible nothing much will happen on a reset, in which case you may be alright

Ummm. You know this, or you are guessing?

My guess/worry is that if I reboot setup.exe will create that directory and carry on into the upgrade, out of my control until I get to set any options. By which time things will be in a right mess.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 04-Aug-15 14:42:17)

I wouldn't recommend deleting or hacking stuff when it is potentially part way through doing something. At some point you will need to reboot. If it does do the upgrade then there is an option to roll back. My guess is that it has installed a standard windows update rather than win 10 as the win 10 installs I have done it doesn't reboot before doing obvious work for the upgrade.

So, either reboot and see what happens or start deleting stuff and risk borking windows when it may not even be doing the win 10 update anyway.

Of course, you have a full backup in case anything does go wrong?

Full file backup, not disk image. A new disk image right now would of course be useless, as there will be registry settings in place for after the reboot.

I'm sure it is the Win10 anyway. Quite apart from the coincidence of a further download starting as I moved the cursor across the Win Explorer screen and am fairly sure must have "touchpad-tapped" over setup.exe, and that download re-starting itself some time yesterday after I killed it on Sunday, the System Tray icon has appeared telling me to restart to complete and the squashed rectangles Win10 icon (which I had hidden and is what you should start from) has gone.

Plus, if your theory is correct about a possible Win8.1 update, then disabling the Win10 downloaded directory wouldn't cause any problems .

I expect I'll end up restarting and see what happens . New OS is empty at the moment. But there is an autorun.ini that does a couple of settings, and probably hasn't been invoked due to going straight into setup.exe.

Does vista schedule restarts?

It's Win 8.1, see the OP .