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!@#$% Windows 10!

Donn said:
I've used nothing but Linux (Ubuntu) since 2000. There are updates in Linux land too. Daily, weekly. Depending on settings. They can be quite big too.

If you go with a distribution like Ubuntu (more user-friendly) then you get the downside of a lot of "rolled-in" software that then gets updated, even if you never use it.

I don't know how bad Win 10 is, or why, but updates are a fact of software life on any OS.

All said, close the windows and free the penguin! (Okay, that sounds wrong...)
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Of course. All operating systems have to update. However, my experience with my current OS, LMDE, is simple and straightforward. I have a notification icon which normally doesn't even pop up, but is visible next to my clock. I click on it, and a menu appears which shows what is in line to update with a numerical and coloring scheme to show how important they are, the name of the update and what it's for. You can then select which updates you want and update your system. Some rare instances, you'll have to restart, but for the most part, it's not necessary.

That's it.

Yes, Windows has a similar process as far as making a menu of updates (grudgingly) available, but as we can see, MS goes the extra mile to hide or unintuitively place buttons or menus to control the frequency or automation of updates, and they're well known in placing ads or spamware in the update section and naming them "critical updates" to fool people into re-downloading previously deleted software (for example).
 
I still have an MS Office license, but even that is more trouble than it is worth at times. Leaving windows behind allows me to think less about how my computer works and more about working on my computer.

If Google can keep working on Chrome, it really looks like the next generation will do more of their computing in the cloud than we do. Chromebook's are cheap and easier to maintain in mass. It seems like school districts are saving money by moving away from PCs.
 
One of the final straws for me, was when 10 informed me it had un-installed Office 2003 because it was no longer supported by the operating system..

As it turned out, it wasn't un-installed, but all the shortcuts were removed ..

Office 2003 has suited me well for a long time, and I find no good reason to spend money on something else..
 
I was having all sorts of trouble on Windows 10.

1. System Interrupts would suddenly start chewing up large chunks of CPU time which meant the the CPU was running at 99% and the CPU fan was screaming its head off.

2. The above problem would require a full shut-down and restart, and that often meant forced updates which could take up an hour or two to complete.

3. Programs taking forever to load (Firefox would take almost three minutes to go from double click to homepage loaded - Chrome about the same). Photoshop 90 seconds, ACDSee two minutes.

Finally, the motherboard (an Intel D101GGC with a Pentium-D CPU, 2GB Ram) started having video issues (screen flashing, colours going crazy, and computer rebooting randomly). So, I went out and bought a new motherboard (ASUS B150M-A and an Intel Core i5 - 6500 (3.2 GHz) CPU,
Mem 2048 MB (DDR4 - 2133). I then called up MS to register with the new notherboard

Bingo. Windows 10 runs perfectly, Firefox double click to homepage in under 10 seconds (same for chrome), Photoshop about 5 seconds , ACDsee about the same. The difference is night and day. I put in a stick of 4GB ram, and its even quicker.

There is still an issue with updates taking a while if I have to restart, but since the computer is running 24/7 (I have the virus scan and backup the HDD image to an external HDD using Macrium Reflect in the wee-small hours of every morning) I just have the computer scheduled for a restart at 5am every day. Problem worked around!
 
I finally got a notice for a major Windows 10 update on my oldest machine. A popup box stated something like "If you allow this update, you may not be able to use old non-DRM music or video files on this machine after the update." The only option was a reply box that said "OK, I understand."

And then it went ahead and did the update anyway, without an opt-out option.
 
alfaniner said:
I finally got a notice for a major Windows 10 update on my oldest machine. A popup box stated something like "If you allow this update, you may not be able to use old non-DRM music or video files on this machine after the update." The only option was a reply box that said "OK, I understand."

And then it went ahead and did the update anyway, without an opt-out option.
Click to expand...

MS rebooted during updates on a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine at work several months back even though we had it configured not to do that. It crashed an Oracle app that was backing-up at the time. It took most of a day to fix.

I had the smoking gun. The event log specifically noted that Microsoft requested a reboot despite the fact that we configured it not to do that.

Apparently Microsoft will reboot your computer against your wishes after downloading updates if their update software is itself being updated - whether you like it or not.
 
BStrong said:
You and I are in the exact same boat, and I'd like to disable the auto update feature, but it's a no-go.

I'd like to find the person that thought up this and beat their ass in front of their kids.
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Then you best kill their kids so they won't take revenge by growing up and inventing new and even more horrific OSs.


Vermonter said:
This is why I stuck with Windows 7.
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:thumbsup: I warned people that going from 7 to 10 was like going from steak dinners to eating poo and laughed at the idiots who wouldn't listen.

Then my Win 7 laptop died. :mad: The ****** MS gods are strong these days.


alfaniner said:
And then it went ahead and did the update anyway, without an opt-out option.
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Well what did you expect? For them to give you control over the PC that YOU own? To them that's blasphemy! Madness! It's much better if you let them take over and "improve your experience"
 
bigred said:
...
Then my Win 7 laptop died. :mad: The ****** MS gods are strong these days.
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I have a borked 17" Win 7 Home Pro HP. :(
No recovery possible, I'm shopping for a new install package and that's where it gets weird. MS Store doesn't list it anymore; WallyWorld wants something close to $200; and the ones available on Amazon (~$110) apparently aren't legit. Thanks Amazon for your crappy fulfillment oversight.
I think I'm stuck making my way to a Staples to pick up one in person (pretty rural here... that's not a simple matter).

So... I'm making do with a 10" NextBook and just got bit with the latest forced update 10 days or so ago (not to mention it early deleted the original Win 8.1 it was holding while I tested 10 way back when).

Besides all the other crap... it no longer charges fast enough to keep up with normal, light use (just browsing etc.). Can't find any high drain apps and "Battery Saver" mode doesn't seem to be available.
Honestly... that's just bollocks.

And I'd swear the GUI is going backwards.
Used to be getting better and better... this looks more like Win 3.01.
Plus, controls are wonky and cursor accuracy is dodgy. Not a good combo.

I'd go with 8.1 (even on the large non-touchscreen HP lappy) but M$ doesn't seem to want to sell that anymore... back to 7 it is. Wish I could roll back this NextBook. :mad:
 
Maybe.

Honestly, I was enjoying the novelty of 8/8.1 on this NextBook (I've used non-mobile touchscreens at work and home since the late '80s) but 10 just sux.

Another usability issue... IE was perfectly adequate until last week. Now it hangs about every tenth page refresh. I will say... the "recover page" function actually works now, every time. Something I've never seen before in Windows.

And Edge is absolute crap so that's not an option.
Might be fine for a mobile screen, but they've stripped it of just about every user control just for a "clean" UI.

I get the "One Platform to Rule Them All" shtick, but Win10 seems like two steps forward... five steps back. :rolleyes:
 
We have two laptops, one with 10 and the older one with 7. At least the 10 one doesn't keep losing track of the network printer, although it did just have its first "plugged in, not charging" event, a regular occurrence on the older one.
 
Jim_MDP said:
I have a borked 17" Win 7 Home Pro HP. :(
No recovery possible, I'm shopping for a new install package
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First, there is no such thing as Win 7 Home Pro, it's either Win 7 Home or Win 7 Pro.

Second if it's an PC from Hewlett Packard that came with Win 7 pre-installed you can usually buy Windows recovery media from HP Support. http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c00707939
 
stanfr said:
I'm done with Windows unless there is a serious replacement in the near future. I thought 8 was bad, 10 is horrendous. Was maxing out my disk to 100%, had to disable all the bloatware and finally quarantine Cortana to get things running again. My old pc with far less RAM and processing power, running Vista, is lighting fast in comparison. And since I'm stuck in an area with few choices for internet, internet is super slow thanks to Update and all the other nonsense.
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I don't know. Win 8.1 is pretty fast and efficient on my PC from last year. The PC itself isn't very good, but aside from questionable interface changes from win7, I don't have much to complain about. Of course, all my automatic updates are disabled.
 
paulhutch said:
First, there is no such thing as Win 7 Home Pro, it's either Win 7 Home or Win 7 Pro.

Second if it's an PC from Hewlett Packard that came with Win 7 pre-installed you can usually buy Windows recovery media from HP Support. http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c00707939
Click to expand...


Thanks.
I'm going to guess the word I was looking for was "Premium"... I derp. :o

And I'll have a look at what HP offers, and re-evaluate what shreds of the OS are still viable. I don't think I had a drive failure/crash, but it went south pretty fast and every attempted recover step just made it worse.


Skeptical Greg said:
You should be able to get an OEM package on eBay for a reasonable price..

Make sure you get a disk and not just the Key..
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Thanks. I'm always cautious about potential fly-by-night EBay sellers but it's worth a look.
 
Continuing adventures with !@#$ Win 10. :(
It pushed another "update" last week and the fun keeps rollin' on.

A few weeks ago my cheap Nextbook lost left, right and down arrow control (that last makes forum browsing virtually unusable) as well as the letters "b" and "n".

Fortunately I have a Bluetooth kboard/trackpad and have been using that for a month or so... good enough.

Today though... I've lost the "tap to click" on the BT trackpad. :(

I've rebooted over a dozen times, half of which because, it'll lose any click response at all a minute or so after boot, on both kboards. At least a couple of times immediately when I open Settings to see what's what. :(
It even lost the "Bluetooth" section entirely the first few reboots.

And I've NEVER been able to find a way to activate the old "double click to lock the click" on Win 10. This one only locks for the initial move, then releases, not the same at all. That's one of my most used features when navigating Explorer. It's possibly far more advantageous on a laptop without a mouse... and I really miss it.

--------

Win 7 travails continue as well.
I went the easy but costlier route and ordered a recovery DVD pack (specific to my HP build) direct from HP back on the first. Seemed like decently quick fulfillment with delivery expected on the 9th.
Had to call HP on the 10th to ask for a tracking number and was told they've decided optical disks are no longer in favor so they're doing thumb drives and delivery should be the 14th or 15th (by yesterday basically).

Finally got an e-mail today saying it's shipped (today)... no tracking. :rolleyes:
 
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What I really dislike is the fact Windows goes out of its way to hide important information from the user. Makes troubleshooting a real pain.

On Monday a a fellow employee came to me with a problem: when he turned on his laptop, he was seeing the initial POST [Power-On Self Test] screen containing the manufacturer's name and nothing more. I started troubleshooting.
  • Power on, press Alt-F10 to get into the recovery partition. That worked.
  • Troubleshoot --> Advanced --> System Restore failed: no restore points(!)
  • Troubleshoot --> Advanced --> System Startup Repair failed:
    Startup Repair couldn't repair your PC
    Log file: C:\Windows\System32\Logfiles\Srt\StrTail.txt
  • I started a cmd shell to look at the log file, but it stopped responding after I changed to drive C: and attempted to run cd \Windows\System32
  • Restarted, ran cmd.exe and entered chkdsk C: /f. Less than five minutes after starting, the estimated completion time had climbed to 7 hours
  • Suspecting a disk problem, I booted Linux from a USB flash drive and and ran fsck /dev/sda4. Very shortly thereafter I started seeing disk I/O errors being reported on the console.
  • Conclusion: disk is bad
I had to boot the system using LInux in order to confirm there was a problem with the disc! Because all Windows did when it ran into problems reading the disc was hang with no explanation at all.
 
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