Windows 10 latest update.

[Philip.]

glad to know I'm not the only one, this latest W10 update completely bricked my lappy  slowly but surely getting it back working 

[woodbury22uk]

The only issue I had was that it appeared to delete the driver for the "English - United Kingdom" keyboard, which I had to download and make the default. The original default "English - United States" version gives # instead of £, and something else for @, as well as some other obscurities.

[trkilliman]

So is anyone else using Windows Defender as their antivirus please?

[austinbob]

So is anyone else using Windows Defender as their antivirus please?

After reading all the posts I started using it yesterday together with Malwarebytes.

[Nick]

The only issue I had was that it appeared to delete the driver for the "English - United Kingdom" keyboard, which I had to download and make the default. The original default "English - United States" version gives # instead of £, and something else for @, as well as some other obscurities.

I think that may be because MS are rolling out something called "Locale Experience Packs" (I may have got the name wrong). The intention being to bring all the locale specific settings like keyboards, units and dictionaries together in one place, making it easier to change setups and run multiple languages on one machine. I think. Digging into it is on the to-do list, but a long way down...

[Dr Al]

This is where I fundamentally object to the way things are headed in the computing world - we essentially have less and less control of our own machines (and worse, our data) that we paid for and therefore should be able to do as we wish with - i.e. turn off updates, schedule them appropriately. Moreover, the data collection (which is really where MS wants to make the money now in windows, as functionality additions are scant between versions now) is large and generally reasonably hidden, so the average user will just let it happen. There are plenty of videos on Youtube showing quite how much gets sent to MS, even when you turn a lot of it off, and more videos showing how to turn *all* of it off.

Quite simply, I've stuck with Windows 7, given I have an "Ultimate" license for it. I have a cloned boot hard drive as a backup with a known good functioning recent copy of my install on it (I do this periodically) so that if the install does get borked for any reason, I can be functional again in 30 seconds by simply changing which drive I boot from. The drive itself is an old disk form an old machine, so cost nothing - slow, but would keep things going until the faster SSD was put right.

There's no functional improvement in Win10 that does anything better - if anything it's dumbed down. My workplace is the same, and they do not update until OSs are properly established and shown as trouble free (typically 3 years!). The only thing you can't do on a win 7 rig nowadays is DirectX12 gaming, otherwise I see little need to upgrade - Cortana is simply a data mining exercise, and no functionally better than simply googling what I want to know.

In terms of security, the key is having a good firewall, antivirus (free ones like AVG seem ok to me), but much more crucially you need to be utterly ruthless with what you open on your machine - no emails of unknown origin (and certainly *NO* attachments from unknown origin, and those you do open should be scanned), no memory sticks with unknown origin files on them (scan them), and no dubious websites. I have also switched to using Opera as a web browser as it's fast, but more importantly has inbuilt ad-blocking and an inbuilt free VPN to stop websites tracking your IP.

I suspect the time is coming where MS will be unseated as the dominant OS supplier - they have nothing new, novel or groundbreaking to offer since WinXP, IMHO, and I suspect they are well aware of it. When Win7 support runs out, I suspect many will be exploring changing to Linux.

Cheers,
Alan

[njee20]

I suspect the time is coming where MS will be unseated as the dominant OS supplier - they have nothing new, novel or groundbreaking to offer since WinXP, IMHO, and I suspect they are well aware of it. When Win7 support runs out, I suspect many will be exploring changing to Linux.

Can't see it myself. According to data from StatCounter here, the market share is as follows:

Windows: 81.73%
macOS: 13.16%
Unknown: 2.46%
Linux: 1.66%
Chrome OS: 0.98%

You can as good as ignore MacOS as those are obviously Mac users, so you're talking about needing a 2300% increase in Linux users for it to equal Microsoft! That assumes that everyone leaves Microsoft for Linux rather than any alternative too.

Linux is very niche, and will never achieve mass market penetration. I think you grossly overestimate how many people are disenchanted with Windows!

[Dr Al]

Windows: 81.73%

I think the key thing is that still a very large portion of that is Win 7 (much more than MS want), and it's when those running Win 7 change that it'll be interesting to see what they change to.

The door seems wide open for someone new to bring an operating system that doesn't mine your data - I agree that Linux is niche - it's not as simple as it could be. In the mean time, if you have to go win10, investigate turning everything off if you value data privacy.

Cheers,
Alan

[njee20]

Personally I still disagree.

W10 now has wider usage than W7 (here, 47.21% on W10 versus 39.44% on W7. You need to factor in what proportion of those W7 users are enterprise users who have no say in their OS too. We're on W7 here, with plans to move to W10 in due course. I personally changed my personal computers to W10.

The graph in that link clearly shows that people are moving from W7 to W10, the two are a near perfect mirror image. Again, the market share of the other OSs is minescule. Data mining is valuable, the dominant market share of Windows suggests that most people don't really care about it either frankly (I'll be honest, I'm not too worried by it), so I'm not sure there is a "wide open" opportunity for another OS that doesn't harvest that valuable data. You're still talking about appealing to a tiny sub-section of the market, and there's Linux for them.

[red_death]

I resisted changing from W7 to W10 for as long as I could as I really like W7 but a new laptop came with W10 and I've been pleasantly surprised.

Cheers M

[Snowwolflair]

Windows 10 with the service packs is now very good.  Was a bit hairy early on.  Unfortunately not all BIOSs will run it so I use both.

[njee20]

I had a laptop on W8 and was very quick to update that to W10! I held out longer on the desktop with W7, but like Mike have found 10 very good. With SSDs in both they boot in under 5 seconds and have proved very stable.

[Dr Al]

Data mining is valuable, the dominant market share of Windows suggests that most people don't really care about it either frankly (I'll be honest, I'm not too worried by it)

This is what they rely on - a lack of knowledge amongst the general user base - what surprises me that folk who do have some idea actually trust them so casually with this data! But like the boiling frog, if it's gently and quietly done, folk don't notice. Personally, I object to this (mainly on principle) - Cortana apart, there's no need for it for the OS to function. Plus you end up using your own bandwith (however little of it), which you're paying for, to send this data. Personally I feel this is my data, and I therefore want complete control of it, and on principle if anyone makes money on it, it should be me; not a corporation who has bordered on being disingenuous with what they are doing with it.

I'm maybe different from most, as I don't swim with the tide on these things, so will be sticking with Windows 7 for the foreseeable future until it either ceases to perform the functions I require, or becomes demonstrably insecure. I did the same with XP and was running it until about 6 years ago, no trouble - the need to update PCs these days is far less frequent than it used to be, so my 6 year old machine is still specced higher than many new machines today - I therefore see the most likely need to update as a physical hardware failure rather than software dictating it.

Cheers,
Alan

[Snowwolflair]

I have found a great way to wind up online marketers.  i have started to fill in email requests as GDPR@.............

[REGP]

Unlike some unlucky others members of the Foruma number of the updates I tried to down load to Windows 10 failed and I have  the atttached message in Settings, Windows Update.

Updates going back to April headed 2018-02,-03, 2018-03 & 2018-05 have also failed.

I've tried temporally disabling McAfee Firewall & Internet Security and Restarting the Laptop without any success.

My Aspire laptop is still working do I need worry about downloading these?
Any advice appreciated.

Ray