[NewsPoster]

Microsoft's distribution of Windows 10 to users may be causing issues for some Internet users, due to the sheer amount of bandwidth being used. While Microsoft has apparently put a lot of effort into making the release of the free upgrade as error-free as possible, problems are still surfacing despite attempts by the software giant to minimize issues, including extremely slow download speeds for a number of updaters.

According to StreamingMediaBlog, Microsoft has reserved space with major third-party content delivery networks (CDNs) to provide users with the software. It is claimed Microsoft has reserved up to 40Tb/s of capacity from all of the CDNs combined, and was seeing over 10Tb/s of traffic from early on Tuesday, when it went live in some timezones. For perspective, some recent live events from Apple have peaked at 8Tb/s of bandwidth, making Microsoft's reserved capacity five times that of what Apple has experienced.

As is to be expected, there are some issues with the download, expected to be at least 3GB in size. Some users on Reddit report extremely slow downloads, with some waiting for hours without much progress. One MacNN writer is experiencing similar problems, with a notebook downloading at less than 0.5Mb/s, despite having a connection multiple times larger in capacity, unused by anything else. This is most likely caused by throttling on the part of the CDNs, combined with high demand.

Other users have discovered a common error where the update simply states "something happened" without any indication of what went wrong, which would be humorous in other circumstances. Another common installation error, identified as 80240020, is said by SuperSite for Windows to be caused by an interruption or corruption of a download, with the only real solution being to delete the downloaded files and start again.

An unusual Windows 10 installation error

Lastly, while Microsoft has put in place a queueing system, with upgrades occurring in waves instead as a free-for-all on Microsoft's servers, it appears there is a way to skip the queue. According to Lifehacker, Microsoft's Media Creation Tool gives the option to upgrade the existing Windows install, as well as to create separate installation media.

MacNN will be reviewing Windows 10 over the next few days.

[coffeetime]

This is probably because the majority of 80%-90% market share uses Windows. Mac OS X doesn't effect much due to lower market share based.

[prl99]

Let's put it another way. Microsoft pushed the reservation program to every PC running Windows 7 and 8 whether someone asked for it or not. I've read other articles where people clicked on it without knowing what it was just because it was on their desktop (typical of my father-in-law). I would guess the majority of users made the reservation without being prepared thereby automatically forcing the entire download onto their PC. Yes, there are more Windows PCs but I wonder how many enterprise PCs had to scramble to disable Microsoft's forced downloading. Mac users have an easy option to either allow automatic updates or not and I believe the only forced download of any software by Apple are security updates. This process was new for Microsoft and shows that they want to make sure they get (trick) everyone into downloading Windows 10. However you feel about their products or tactics, they had the opportunity to adjust the number of downloads in each locality by spacing out when each PC got their download. It appears everyone/most got them all at the same time. This is poor planning on Microsoft's part.

[aroxnicadi]

I see Microsoft hasn't changed over the years with those useless dialogue boxes coming up giving you archaic messages that neither you or Microsoft could decipher.

[Charles Martin]

Coffeetime: when you include iOS upgrades, Apple and Microsoft face very similarly-sized audiences regarding upgrades, but as prl99 said another issues for MS was what we'll call "accidental pushing" of reservations, which probably didn't help matters.

[cashxx]

I upgraded the partition on my Macbook from Windows 7 Pro to Windows 10 Pro without much of an issue. I used the media creation tool and downloaded the 64-bit ISO and burned it to DVD and also left that tool make two thumb drives and it all worked fine. I have an Early 2009 17" Macbook, the biggest thing for me was the drivers. Tried running bootcamp again and it says Windows 7 is needed so I had to do the drivers manually. The biggest pain was I didn't have trackpad drivers at first, but was pretty easy getting everything going again.