Another wonderful W10 "update" - caution.

[philehidiot]

Just a word of warning, my PC was updated and YET AGAIN the Windows 10 update has broken it beyond use.

I dunno what they've done this time, it's too late and I'm too angry to troubleshoot but this may be another patch worth delaying and avoiding until they fix it.

I've seriously had enough of this. Every patch is like Russian Roulette. Oh and to make matters worse, I added in an option to get myself into safe mode on boot (like the old days) AND THEY'VE GONE AND DISABLED IT SO I CAN'T JUST REMOVE THE UPDATE.

I HAVE UTTERLY HAD IT WITH THIS REPEATED, ENFORCED BORKING OF MY PC.

I'm going to be investigating Linux for gaming and giving up on Windows if it's at all possible. I'm beyond sick of this. It's every other month requiring hours of work to fix my PC.

[Saracen999]

This is a large part of why I refused to go to W10 in the first place. Not the only reason, but a big part.

I get why MS want everybody on exactly the same platform - it does genuinely make their life easier. Troubke is .... it's at the cost of causing problems to users, as outlined above.

For 25+ years, I've worked to deadlines, and quite regularly, pretty close to the deadline. While I can't entirely avoid a hardware failure taking a PC I rely on down at a critical moment, it is a risk I can mitigate through hardware duplication and, beyond that, okay it's a risk but an unavoidable one.

But for most of tbat 25 years I've had auto-updates turned fully OFF, and I manage updates manually both in terms of what I install, and when I install it. And I time it for a point of relative calm with no looming deadlines. Then, I carefully prepare for it, including replacing hard drives with copies, so if anything goes wrong, I can always revert to the original, To do that means Ghosting several drives then immediately doing an update.

None of that is possible if MS decide that they know best about when to install updates. Never mind the time it can take if all goes well, what if it doesn't.

Generally, editors give themselves some leeway for copy arriving late, but not always and I can't rely on it .... nor do I want to. Rule Number 1 of freelance journalism is to produce high quality work, to brjef, to the wordcount and on time.

Be utterly, absolutely reliable in that, and editors love you and give you plenty of work. But jerk them around, complicate their lives, increase their wordload in any of those points and sooner or later they'll pick someone else rather than you.

MS jerking me around, such as by borking a PC at the wrong moment, has the potential to put my whole liveihood in jeopardy.

Hence my reminder, repeatedly to MS just in case they read this, it's MY flaming PC, Mr. MS, and it will be MY decision when ( and if) ANY software installation or update/upgrade is installed, not yours.

[spacein_vader]

Just a word of warning, my PC was updated and YET AGAIN the Windows 10 update has broken it beyond use.

I dunno what they've done this time, it's too late and I'm too angry to troubleshoot but this may be another patch worth delaying and avoiding until they fix it.

I've seriously had enough of this. Every patch is like Russian Roulette. Oh and to make matters worse, I added in an option to get myself into safe mode on boot (like the old days) AND THEY'VE GONE AND DISABLED IT SO I CAN'T JUST REMOVE THE UPDATE.

I HAVE UTTERLY HAD IT WITH THIS REPEATED, ENFORCED BORKING OF MY PC.

I'm going to be investigating Linux for gaming and giving up on Windows if it's at all possible. I'm beyond sick of this. It's every other month requiring hours of work to fix my PC.

I strongly recommend Ubuntu as a beginners gaming Linux as the strong user base means plenty of knowledge out there and Steam supports it.

Steam Play means that with a bit of fettling within the client itself I've found that the vast majority of Steam games will run on Linux regardless. Gog has quite a large selection too.

These days my Win10 partition only gets booted up for Forza, World of Warships and Apex Legends. I've got everything else working on Linux.

[DanceswithUnix]

I'm going to be investigating Linux for gaming and giving up on Windows if it's at all possible. I'm beyond sick of this. It's every other month requiring hours of work to fix my PC.

SteamOS on a second drive? You need 1TB, but that isn't so bad as an SSD these days and peanuts for spinning rust.

I'm typing this on a Fedora Linux box, but then I have used a lot of RedHat/Centos servers for various jobs so that fits in nicely for me. Knowing Linux is a useful skill for the CV too.

[Galant]

Just a word of warning, my PC was updated and YET AGAIN the Windows 10 update has broken it beyond use.

I dunno what they've done this time, it's too late and I'm too angry to troubleshoot but this may be another patch worth delaying and avoiding until they fix it.

I've seriously had enough of this. Every patch is like Russian Roulette. Oh and to make matters worse, I added in an option to get myself into safe mode on boot (like the old days) AND THEY'VE GONE AND DISABLED IT SO I CAN'T JUST REMOVE THE UPDATE.

I HAVE UTTERLY HAD IT WITH THIS REPEATED, ENFORCED BORKING OF MY PC.

I'm going to be investigating Linux for gaming and giving up on Windows if it's at all possible. I'm beyond sick of this. It's every other month requiring hours of work to fix my PC.

Which update was it?

[philehidiot]

Which update was it?

It'll be the latest batch, I didn't pay attention to what updates were being done, I just noticed a load of disc activity (and of course, what I was doing was running slowly because MS knows when to do things to inconvenience me the most) and checked and it was downloading updates. Then it prompted me to restart, I did, went away, came back and it was borked. Cue shouting "EVERY [insert expletives] TiME!".

Gonna guess it included the one that Hexus has just published a warning about... thanks, guys.... about 12 hours too late.

[Galant]

It'll be the latest batch, I didn't pay attention to what updates were being done, I just noticed a load of disc activity (and of course, what I was doing was running slowly because MS knows when to do things to inconvenience me the most) and checked and it was downloading updates. Then it prompted me to restart, I did, went away, came back and it was borked. Cue shouting "EVERY [insert expletives] TiME!".

Gonna guess it included the one that Hexus has just published a warning about... thanks, guys.... about 12 hours too late.

It is getting a bit silly. I had an older update remove a number of lesser known apps from a client PC. Spent hours getting back up and running. Not a word of warning about anything, no option to leave them there. Just wiped them out. Haven't had the issue since, but that memory isn't going to be leaving me any time soon - paranoia mode has been engaged ever since.

[raygdunn]

I've had no immediate trouble with this week's update.

My main frustration with the auto updates is reaching the end of an evening, selecting shutdown and finding my only option is to install an update. (Just flipping the power switch can have consequences)
Installing the update may take five minutes or occasionally closer to an hour for a full reboot! Also occasionally if left idle for a while, it decides to start the reboot to install on it's own. I haven't tried setting the active hours option to cover 24 hours though...

Overall I feel that I did the right thing upgrading from Windows 7. I'm still kicking around the idea of a clean install... Too much to reinstall to not lose a few things.

(I am annoyed that the very standard Xbox 360 controller driver causes my mouse to drift rapidly to one side, after the PC has been booted for say a half hour. Took me ages to find that I could fix the problem by unplugging the controller USB connection instead of a reboot and investigating mouse drivers. I guess buying a different gaming mouse probably is the answer)

I've used Linux variants for years for work, but still have doubts about it's use for things like gaming.

[NOTE: Found my Xbox360 problem. Needed to select the "Disable" profile in Steam for that controller, when not playing a game]

[peterb]

Still on Windows 7 and have no reason to move. I only use it for a couple of legacy applications that are also unlikely to be updated.

[Corky34]

Not worried about EOL for Windows 7 in the next ten months?

[peterb]

Not worried about EOL for Windows 7 in the next ten months?

No, it’s not going to stop doing what I want it to do.

[philehidiot]

So it's asking me if I want to remove the latest feature or quality update.

Well it wasn't "quality" and I suspect the only thing it did was to remove features (i.e. the feature of a working PC) so I'm not sure which to choose. I'll take it all out. In the meantime my Mac is asking if I would like Microsoft to update Oriface on it... I didn't realise Macs were suicidal by nature but evidently so.

Looking at past "known issues" with updates, workarounds include "ignore the error"... helpful.

Oh and one last little trick to make my life harder.... I know my password to log in to Windows and my email and so on. I use it every day. When trying to uninstall the updates, it will NOT accept my password and I have to use the missus's account to do it. It's an impressive bug.

End of the story here, I uninstalled both of the last quality and feature updates and the PC now works fine.....

...until MS force that update upon me once again.


EDIT: I have some limited experience with Kali Linux (although only in so much as I needed to get it working on a Mac via a VM) so I thought I might give that a try but if Steam is supporting Ubuntu then that kinda makes the decision for me. Only downside would be that the missus would still want to use Windows (I doubt she has any interest in learning Linux) and so when she accesses Windows 10 on a rare occasion it'll a) be vulnerable due to a lack of security updates and b) probably auto-install a patch that breaks it almost immediately.

[TooNice]

Still on Win7, but my PC is 8 years old so no surprise there. I am looking forward to upgrading this year (or early next).. but hang on, there are no more options to *not* auto-update?

That is a huge deal. A few months per year I end up having either no Wi-Fi, or Wi-Fi within very limited time frame. For instance, right now I am staying in an appartment with no Wi-Fi at all. This time last year I was staying in an appartment with no Wi-Fi, but there is a common room, open until 10PM, with Wi-Fi. I can't have my laptop start downloading updates at 9:58PM. I can't have my laptop start downloading updates when I am briefly tethering with my mobile.

Please tell me that my concerns are misplaced o.O

[spacein_vader]

EDIT: I have some limited experience with Kali Linux (although only in so much as I needed to get it working on a Mac via a VM) so I thought I might give that a try but if Steam is supporting Ubuntu then that kinda makes the decision for me. Only downside would be that the missus would still want to use Windows (I doubt she has any interest in learning Linux) and so when she accesses Windows 10 on a rare occasion it'll a) be vulnerable due to a lack of security updates and b) probably auto-install a patch that breaks it almost immediately.

For the best support in Steam enable the beta client. It contains a lot of the linux compatibility improvements for games far sooner that the standard one.

Still on Win7, but my PC is 8 years old so no surprise there. I am looking forward to upgrading this year (or early next).. but hang on, there are no more options to *not* auto-update?

That is a huge deal. A few months per year I end up having either no Wi-Fi, or Wi-Fi within very limited time frame. For instance, right now I am staying in an appartment with no Wi-Fi at all. This time last year I was staying in an appartment with no Wi-Fi, but there is a common room, open until 10PM, with Wi-Fi. I can't have my laptop start downloading updates at 9:58PM. I can't have my laptop start downloading updates when I am briefly tethering with my mobile.

Please tell me that my concerns are misplaced o.O

Your concerns are misplaced, you don't have to migrate to a system with automatic updates. Windows 8.1 is supported until 1/10/2023.

Frankly I'd rather take my chances with the enforced updates but YMMV.

[Saracen999]

Not worried about EOL for Windows 7 in the next ten months?

Like peterb, I'm not worried either, in large part to my Win7 machines not being net-connected. But they will continue to run the software and support the hardware I currently use. What it will stop me doing is buying new hardware that doesn't have Win7 support. Oh well. It'll save me money on hardware, too.

[jimborae]

My Hackintosh Intel NUC looks better & better with every windoze 10 update!