Another wonderful update for windows 10 from microsoft. Four hours to down load and install and the usual nightmare. Plenty of new things to delete as I do not need them. Outlook will no longer download from the sky website and needs reinstalling. Files will not open until I have closed 3 or 4 windows trying to configure Windows Enterprise.
I think its time to say goodbye windows, any ideas of a good alternative?
Dodger
Or....
...back out the upgrade.
Search Google for how to disable updates (yes, it can be done, it still allows security updates, but not system/software updates) and enjoy a stable system "like wot I dun".
You don't need to do anything risky, it's all check boxes, it can all be undone. I have the same view of Micro****. There software is appalling, full of bugs and overly memory and resource hungry. Unfortunately, there is little option for your "average Joe", Apple has issues and other options require a bit of "geek" ( that is in no way meant as a disparaging remark).
:computerangry:
Quote from: dodger on January 30, 2018, 01:45:36 PM
I think its time to say goodbye windows, any ideas of a good alternative?
It all depends what you use your system for. If it's just surfing and email then Puppy Linux is pretty good. You can install it on a USB stick and run it from there to try it out without making any changes to your Windozy system.
Quote from: keithfre on January 30, 2018, 02:03:02 PM
Quote from: dodger on January 30, 2018, 01:45:36 PM
I think its time to say goodbye windows, any ideas of a good alternative?
It all depends what you use your system for. If it's just surfing and email then Puppy Linux is pretty good. You can install it on a USB stick and run it from there to try it out without making any changes to your Windozy system.
there is always an Apple...
sent from my Big Mac
Just put W10 on my Mac. OSx was doing my head in!
As well as surfing I have alot of word, excel and pdf files that I need as well as emails.
Think I might go back to a repair point and remove the update and see if that repairs the system. Thanks for the replies.
Dodger
What specific problem are you having with updates as it sounds like something more fundamental than just an Update issue (I've only seen about 2 issues with updates on W7 or W10 in the last 4 or 5 years across a whole range of machines!).
Cheers, Mike
I'm with @red_death (http://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?action=profile;u=246) on this: windows updates don't cause me a problem. Yes you get the occasional large refresh but that's never upset any of the computers in our household, we just let them get on with the update and the come back fine.
Personally I think at lot of this tinkering around disabling and removing bits and pieces (bordering on paranoia sometimes) does more harm than good. Oh and I am a software developer on windows and linux platforms.
I've just bought a new laptop with W10. I find it too intrusive personally. I took a copy then installed Linux Mint over it. I'm not a computer whizz kid but I find it far more pleasant to use. It's possible to install Linux along side Windows and at boot up you can choose which OS you want to use.
Another vote for Win 7, had a couple of problems with downloads crashing the system back in 2016, so reinstalled from disc then disabled all updates, no problems since
I agree with Mike and Nick: fiddling around, disabling updates, running unsupported versions... not a great idea. Just let it do its thing!
Running W7 with no updates at all is asking for trouble IMO.
Quote from: njee20 on January 30, 2018, 09:48:37 PM
I agree with Mike and Nick: fiddling around, disabling updates, running unsupported versions... not a great idea. Just let it do its thing!
Running W7 with no updates at all is asking for trouble IMO.
Can't agree I'm afraid.
I spec'd a new laptop, won't go into details - but it boots to a stable system in 65 seconds. First Win10 update...
... boot time to stable?...
...3.5 MINUTES !!!
Backed out the update, spent another 1.5 hours getting rid of Cortana, disabled system "upgrades" (still does security patches) and we're back to a 65s boot.
The sky hasn't fallen in, everything still works, it's just that I'm happy!
Just my experience.
I would happily let it do it's thing if it wasn't for all the rubbish that comes with the updates.
I bought my laptop to carry out specific tasks and use it for them only which means a Bloatware heavy update can use up a couple of days of my PC time to install and configure.
Quote from: Shropshire Lad on January 30, 2018, 11:03:34 PM
I would happily let it do it's thing if it wasn't for all the rubbish that comes with the updates.
I bought my laptop to carry out specific tasks and use it for them only which means a Bloatware heavy update can use up a couple of days of my PC time to install and configure.
Amen brother!
If an update is changing boot time from 1 to 3.5 mins then something is going very wrong and it is unlikely to be MS's fault I fear. Doesn't MS only bundle patches now so anything not been patched is risky. Certainly no bloat ware from MS
The computer was working fine until a major update imposed by Microsoft yesterday. Now 3 hours after removing about 20 updates files the systems are now working as before the updates, outlook will now download emails from the host server and I can open files instantly without having to keep stopping enterprise configurations for every file.
Now I'm thinking about a simple cheap computer for surfing and online activities and using the current laptop for the major offline work so that Microsoft are unable to mess up the systems.
Dodger
To add something that I forgot yesterday failure of something to operate correctly occurs every time Microsoft do a major update.
I've also found an option in settings that allows you to revert to the previous version so they must be aware that they cause problems.
Dodger
Quote from: red_death on January 30, 2018, 11:19:29 PM
If an update is changing boot time from 1 to 3.5 mins then something is going very wrong and it is unlikely to be MS's fault I fear. Doesn't MS only bundle patches now so anything not been patched is risky. Certainly no bloat ware from MS
If the only thing that changes is a MS update, then it must be the issue. No bloatware? You're kidding, right?
I still receive security patches. They don't seem to effect performance.
I must say that generally, over many years, I have had few problems with Windows Update causing problems. This goes as far back as Windows 95 up to the last but one Windows 10 major update. As posted elswhere I noted a marked decrease in start up time for some office applications when opening a file from a short cut and also delays in opening the first email after starting Outlook. this appears to be a common problem and there have been various suggested fixes, none of which work for me. Hoping that a patch, sometime soon, will sort this out.
Even with this problem I don't think its a good idea to inhibit Microsoft updates or fix on one particular set of updates because of missing out patches for security, new features and compatibility issues.
:beers:
I was particularly upset with a update a year or two ago which required a change of video card.
Since then I've had to rollback the first Creators edition update, as it stopped all my emails. This time the new creators edition update has worked perfectly so they've obviously sorted that problem out.
Quote from: emjaybee on January 31, 2018, 08:16:19 AM
Quote from: red_death on January 30, 2018, 11:19:29 PM
If an update is changing boot time from 1 to 3.5 mins then something is going very wrong and it is unlikely to be MS's fault I fear. Doesn't MS only bundle patches now so anything not been patched is risky. Certainly no bloat ware from MS
If the only thing that changes is a MS update, then it must be the issue. No bloatware? You're kidding, right?
I still receive security patches. They don't seem to effect performance.
Not kidding at all - if you install security patches then what else is there to install? What are you classing as bloatwsre?
If you've already removed "bloat ware" or got a problem with drivers then the fact that an update caused problems is not that surprising!
Quote from: red_death on January 31, 2018, 09:04:03 AM
Quote from: emjaybee on January 31, 2018, 08:16:19 AM
Quote from: red_death on January 30, 2018, 11:19:29 PM
If an update is changing boot time from 1 to 3.5 mins then something is going very wrong and it is unlikely to be MS's fault I fear. Doesn't MS only bundle patches now so anything not been patched is risky. Certainly no bloat ware from MS
If the only thing that changes is a MS update, then it must be the issue. No bloatware? You're kidding, right?
I still receive security patches. They don't seem to effect performance.
Not kidding at all - if you install security patches then what else is there to install? What are you classing as bloatwsre?
If you've already removed "bloat ware" or got a problem with drivers then the fact that an update caused problems is not that surprising!
If the laptop works perfectly before an update, then slows down considerably after an update....
...what's the cause?
Back out the update...
...works perfectly again.
I had the latest security patches...
...no problem.
My laptop is set to receive security patches only, and unless they come up with a damn good reason, that's how it'll stay.
I'll leave it there as I think we're straying from the OP, and I keep getting told off for that.
;)
The security patches aren't the problem for me, they are essential and I want to be able to download and install them quickly.
My issue is with the 'feature' updates. They take a long time to load, install and configure and have added such useless, to me, software as Edge, 'exciting Edge updates', Cortana updates and this time a fully featured 3D gaming upgrade which will allow me to have enhanced gaming experience.
All of which are totally useless to me and the first two require disabling, not because I'm paranoid but because I choose no to use them but every time I use the alternative of my choice they remind me to try them instead until they are disabled.
You'd think that by now Microsoft's progammers would be able to get things right first time and not need to keep fixing things that should have been right first time. Possibly also be able to make it sufficiently "fireproof" that security updates should be less frequent.
Quote from: Dorsetmike on January 31, 2018, 10:40:28 AM
You'd think that by now Microsoft's progammers would be able to get things right first time and not need to keep fixing things that should have been right first time. Possibly also be able to make it sufficiently "fireproof" that security updates should be less frequent.
:laughabovepost:
Quote from: Dorsetmike on January 31, 2018, 10:40:28 AM
You'd think that by now Microsoft's progammers would be able to get things right first time and not need to keep fixing things that should have been right first time. Possibly also be able to make it sufficiently "fireproof" that security updates should be less frequent.
Windows modifications:- Too much complexity, too many unforseen effects, too many developers involved, too much time and cost pressure - Almost no chance of an update without something going wrong somewhere.
The humble punters, and device developers are doing the Quality Control and feeding back faults to the Software developers. A bit like us and some of the N gauge loco manufacturers!! :)
:beers:
I think this is just a symptom of where we are now with PCs / technology. In the past, your OS would have been relatively static, not receiving many patches and again the software you ran on it would be the same. This was because sending out updates and patches was quite difficult, people had to download and apply them or looking back a few more years, you maybe had to have media sent to you. As you didn't make or receive many changes the performance of your machine wouldn't have appeared to degrade badly over time.
Now though, most machines are always connected to the Web and it's become very easy for software suppliers to push out updates to you. So you end up with your PC and the software it runs being subject to allot of changes. These mostly provide the great many of us with new features or protection against the latest security issues, but we have to understand what's going on when this happens. A patch to a security loophole, won't improve the performance of your machine, as the code has now had to be made more complex to provide additional levels of protection. Also new updates, generally won't be performance fixes, they will provide a richer feature set and again, you're looking at more complex code which will take longer to run on your box.
As we patch and upgrade our PCs, we are demanding that their fixed resources Memory, CPU and Disk cope with more and more complex software. This is where the tipping point comes, one update or patch just pushes your machines resources over the metaphorical cliff, rather than your app or OS running happily as it did yesterday, now everything takes much longer. Probably the most critical factor is that in the last 10 or so years, people are not being driven to replace their machines as the OS and software is generally still compatible with them. The useful life of a PC is and will probably remain at a maximum of 5 years. Phones for example are probably something like 2 years.
It would be interesting to get an idea of the age of the PCs that people are having performance issues with. As an example I have a laptop on my desk at work, which I still use, but understandably at a vintage age of 12 years and running Win7 Ultimate, it's kind of not so much 'What do you want to do today?' more 'OK if I don't crash in the meantime, what do you want to do at some point this week?'.
Cheers, Mark.
PS Yes I've been working in IT for many years developing software, but mines all tight high performance stuff not bloatware, honest :D
My c5 year old laptop had been getting a bit slow. I put an SSD, and it's revolutionised it. Crazy fast now. 4 seconds to boot up.
I agree with your analogy though Mark, yes boot times appearing to go from 30 seconds to 4 minutes overnight because of an update is obviously attributable to the update, but may not necessarily be the update that's the blame, more your system, or how the update interacts with some quirky piece of software or utility you use.
Not wishing to make an example of you DorsetMike, but I recall you posting a screenshot of your computer previously when seeking help, and you had all manner of slightly unusual plug ins, add-ons and utilities. It's perhaps no surprise that eventually some software update won't play nicely with all these things, but I'd not blame the software update. I still agree with Red_Death -
Microsoft aren't filling your computer with bloatware.
Quote from: emjaybee on January 31, 2018, 09:29:38 AM
Quote from: red_death on January 31, 2018, 09:04:03 AM
Quote from: emjaybee on January 31, 2018, 08:16:19 AM
Quote from: red_death on January 30, 2018, 11:19:29 PM
If an update is changing boot time from 1 to 3.5 mins then something is going very wrong and it is unlikely to be MS's fault I fear. Doesn't MS only bundle patches now so anything not been patched is risky. Certainly no bloat ware from MS
If the only thing that changes is a MS update, then it must be the issue. No bloatware? You're kidding, right?
I still receive security patches. They don't seem to effect performance.
Not kidding at all - if you install security patches then what else is there to install? What are you classing as bloatwsre?
If you've already removed "bloat ware" or got a problem with drivers then the fact that an update caused problems is not that surprising!
If the laptop works perfectly before an update, then slows down considerably after an update....
...what's the cause?
Back out the update...
...works perfectly again.
I had the latest security patches...
...no problem.
My laptop is set to receive security patches only, and unless they come up with a damn good reason, that's how it'll stay.
I'll leave it there as I think we're straying from the OP, and I keep getting told off for that.
;)
I agree with entirely as this is usually the problem I get.
Dodger
At work The four machines I currently use,
1, is Dos,!!! (due to be retired shortly) not allowed on the network
1, is Win 7
2, are win 10, and they are 2013 aged machines (not surprisingly DELL)
at home,
The main PC has bits that are now 25 years old, although the motherboard, 9 years old and the SDD was it's christmas present this year. it's windows 10, Office Pro for which I get legal copies from MS as part of a company deal for $10
Laptop 2 years old same software as above.
Two android tablets..
Quote from: Dorsetmike on January 31, 2018, 10:40:28 AM
You'd think that by now Microsoft's progammers would be able to get things right first time and not need to keep fixing things that should have been right first time. Possibly also be able to make it sufficiently "fireproof" that security updates should be less frequent.
As I see it, Mike, they are trying to come up with new ideas to keep up with competitors, phone industry, and geeks. The totally ignore Mr/s Average who wants a computer to do work on and often only use simple software packages. Most of the work I do on a computer I could do with MS works and windows 3.11.
It wouldn't be so bad if they gave a choice if things to install, I've lost count of the times I've uninstalled candy crush saga, or tested the systems properly in the first place.
Dodger
My laptop is about 5 years old and is perfect for what I need. It may fail one day but until then it is staying. I can find better things, model railways, to spend my money on than buying the latest laptop just to please the industry.
As an aside I bought a Samsung J3, mainly to save taking the laptop on holiday. An update just before Christmas prevented me transferring photos to the laptop. A few days later a patch cured the problem.
Dodger
QuoteI think its time to say goodbye windows, any ideas of a good alternative
Been using ubuntu linux which mint is based on,for many years without any issues.For surfing,email and office tasks it will do everything you need,the only issue is if you need to run specific windoze software,but with wine and virtual box you can get most things running if theres not a similar open source version.The best bits,its free ,runs on old hardware, and you can update to the latest version whilst your still using the machine.
I agree with TMH, Mint is pretty good.
Disclaimer: I work for Intel
That said pretty much all my machines are a few years old because I run Linux on second hand workstation/server systems that are really fast and expandable compared with typical desktops but as far as their original market is concerned too old (things like the Dell T5500 workstations)'. Most of it runs Linux although some of the games stuff is Windows 7 because of things like Roblox. Only new bits on them are graphics cards and sometimes SSDs.
Quote from: themadhippy on February 02, 2018, 03:43:41 PM
Been using ubuntu linux which mint is based on,for many years without any issues.For surfing,email and office tasks it will do everything you need,
The issue I have with linux is file management. I'm used to a drive C for the system and drive D for data files and a Norton Commander-style two-pane file manager for managing files and moving them around. I have found similar file managers for linux, but not as friendly, and navigating the unix-style drive and directory structure used by linux is a pain in the proverbial. When downloading files, for instance, I like to know where they are and be able to move them around. But for that I might well have switched to linux some time ago.
Quote from: njee20 on January 31, 2018, 12:45:09 PM
Not wishing to make an example of you DorsetMike, but I recall you posting a screenshot of your computer previously when seeking help, and you had all manner of slightly unusual plug ins, add-ons and utilities. It's perhaps no surprise that eventually some software update won't play nicely with all these things, but I'd not blame the software update. I still agree with Red_Death -
Microsoft aren't filling your computer with bloatware.
Had a look through my previous posts and my gallery, the only screen shot I can find is one of Micrografx Picture Publisher, an image editing software I've been using since V2 in 1991/2 through V 10 which I'm srill using; maybe you could post a link for me.
As I've stated I use Win 7 Pro 64 bit with upgrades disabled on 2 PCs and a laptop both PCs and laptop have solid state drives for programmes, hard drives for data, images, audio etc; I use Firefox as browser and Thunderbird for Email; AVG free, Adblock plus, Google for search and maps none of which I would class as unusual. Foxit for PDFs, Audacity for Audio work, Avidemux for video, Picasa for photo viewing, and a Jigsaw puzzle programme, again nothing there particularly unusual except perhaps the jigsaw one although I would class it uncommon rather than unusual.
I worked in electronics for over 40 years, much of that time I was instructing both in the RAF and Industry so I consider myself reasonably conversant with the subject; I also spent some time programming 8080, 8085 & Z80 processors in machine code (not assembler).
Quote from: keithfre on February 02, 2018, 04:08:50 PM
The issue I have with linux is file management. I'm used to a drive C for the system and drive D for data files and a Norton Commander-style two-pane file manager for managing files and moving them around. I have found similar file managers for linux, but not as friendly, and navigating the unix-style drive and directory structure used by linux is a pain in the proverbial. When downloading files, for instance, I like to know where they are and be able to move them around. But for that I might well have switched to linux some time ago.
Agreed ,at first the linux file structure seems odd,but then again think back to the very first time you used any operating system.Theres no real need to go much further than the home directory ,or in windows speak c:/users/username, the individual directories for downloads, documents etc all can be found here,but there physical location can be on another drive,and its easy to copy your home file from an old machine to a new one,keeping most of your stuff intact. Theres no need for 3rd party file managers as you can open individual directories in separate windows and individual files or directories can be dragged between them, however if you do want a third party file manager the biggest advantage of linux comes into play,most of the software is free,not just free trial.
Quote from: Dorsetmike on February 02, 2018, 05:21:28 PM
Quote from: njee20 on January 31, 2018, 12:45:09 PM
Not wishing to make an example of you DorsetMike, but I recall you posting a screenshot of your computer previously when seeking help, and you had all manner of slightly unusual plug ins, add-ons and utilities. It's perhaps no surprise that eventually some software update won't play nicely with all these things, but I'd not blame the software update. I still agree with Red_Death -
Microsoft aren't filling your computer with bloatware.
Had a look through my previous posts and my gallery, the only screen shot I can find is one of Micrografx Picture Publisher, an image editing software I've been using since V2 in 1991/2 through V 10 which I'm srill using; maybe you could post a link for me.
Every chance I was wrong, and apologies if that were the case, I recall a thread with someone seeking advice on (if I recall) a toolbar they wanted to use that had been "broken" by Microsoft, and it appeared they used huge numbers of obscure programs and add-ons which were clearly bloating the computer vastly more than any update! For me that epitomises the issues with Microsoft - people just have real edge case usage scenarios.
The weird corner cases are always a problem - always will be. Linux tries not to break stuff, Microsoft likewise.
The one that really amazes me is Apple - breaking support for loads of older iOS apps in iOS11. That's causing several people I know utter mayhem because the apps they depend upon are never going to get updated to 64bit, and their kids favourite games likewise.
Alan