Windows 10 latest update.

[Snowwolflair]

I like your analogy but its the wrong way round.

The engine is the computer hardware and the engine management software is the OS, and guess what if you take your car in to Ford for a service they will change the engine management software without telling you.

A fair point, Snowwolflair but if it were Ford that destroyed the engine management software, I would expect them to fix it.  Microsoft are completely unaccountable.

My Laptop is a Lenovo, not a cheap budget model.  Ironically my second-spare £150 "e-machines" laptop was apparently unaffected.   

I don't normally get pulled into these discussions, but I feel increasingly frustrated by Microsoft and the rest of the computer industry...  .    Letting off a bit of steam!!!


Cheers Jon 

In theory Ford engines and software is a closed system like Apples.

However lets say you buy and fit a Chinese alternator to your Ford and at the next service when the engine management system is updated it fails, who is responsible?

Similarly if you buy a fake Ford, can you blame Ford that their software does not work on it.

[PostModN66]

This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one..

Should I have known that Avast was "bad" software?

Cheers Jon 

[red_death]

Thanks Lindi and Snowwolflair - some fascinating stuff.

Individual problems kind of demonstrate my point - I'm definitely not blaming users and completely sympathise with anyone affected (having had my work desktop fail yesterday - nothing to do with MS!) - but without seeing the set up of your computer it is difficult to comment on why YOUR computer had a problem. Though as Lindi has pointed out there can be some common problems with particular software interactions.

Like most things in this world we hear about when things have gone wrong much more than we do about things going right.

None of which is any consolation if it is your PC that is affected!

Cheers, Mike

[Snowwolflair]

This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one..

Should I have known that Avast was "bad" software?

Cheers Jon 

No way for you to to know but waiting for others to find failures before upgrading is always a good strategy. 

My view is that Avast has not tested their software properly before release or have done something "not yet" specified by Microsoft.  Bit like changing lanes on a motorway while looking in the other direction.

[njee20]

This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one..

Should I have known that Avast was "bad" software?

No, probably not. Back in the day there was a real need for 3rd party anti virus software. These days Windows Defender is as good as any of them for 99.9% of users. It'll run better, won't slow your system down as much and won't introduce these conflicts. Save you money too.

[PostModN66]

This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one..

Should I have known that Avast was "bad" software?

No, probably not. Back in the day there was a real need for 3rd party anti virus software. These days Windows Defender is as good as any of them for 99.9% of users. It'll run better, won't slow your system down as much and won't introduce these conflicts. Save you money too.

Is Windows Defender something that comes with Windows 10?  And do you have to do anything to start it running, or will it do so by default?

Or should I Google the above questions? 

Cheers Jon 

[njee20]

It's definitely there by default, but may be disabled to minimise conflict with AVG. open the start menu and type Defender - should bring it up.

[ntpntpntp]

Must admit none of our household's AVG protected PCs suffered any problems with last year's Windows Creator Update nor with any subsequent updates.

I noticed our music studio PC went through a big update a couple of nights ago but I've not yet checked it over since.

I am going off AVG though, it's putting up too many nagging boxes about trialing this-and-that other bits of software etc. which I'm not interested in. I probably will switch our boxes back to Defender at some point when I can be bothered!

[trkilliman]

Wow, what a response to my original post about the W10 update messing up my acer laptop.

Comments about windows defender being quite adequate are very interesting. Are we paying some, if not all of these virus protection companies for nothing?   It makes me think back to a previous occasion when windows crashed, after using an extra "facility" that comes with my paid for antivirus. I thought I would use their find and erase duplicates tab...and it crashed Windows.

The owner of my local p.c. repair shop, said that antivirus concerns should stick just to that, and offering all of the "extras" to endear them to customers actually causes more harm than good in most cases.

Since getting my laptop back a few day ago, I have struggled to reinstate my virus protection license and have downloaded their free trial.

I am beginning to wonder if I should bother, and simply use Windows defender...?

[Snowwolflair]

Malewarbytes is the best of a bad bunch.

[dodger]

Malewarbytes is the best of a bad bunch.

Have to agree with you on that statement.

Incidentally this was the first MS major update that didn't mess my settings and personalising up, but again a number of useless and unwanted programs were added to waste hard drive space.

Why do I have to use onedrive and can I delete it?.

Dodger

[Nick]

I am beginning to wonder if I should bother, and simply use Windows defender...?

Short answer - yes.

I can't put my hand on current usage stats, but it's now running on a large proportion of PCs. Obviously, since it ships with all modern machines.

I've been using MSE/Defender on all the machines I am responsible for over 7 or 8 years, I forget exactly. That was up to 20 at one time, and is now 4. Yay! In addition, I've recommended it to anyone who asked, so am probably responsible for over 30 installations, and many more physical  machines as various items have been swapped out or replaced.

I've never had a problem with any of them, nor has any machine become infected. YMMV.

Why pay for something bundled in the OS and whose definitions are updated very regularly?

[guest311]

from my experience, you can't get rid of most of the c**p that comes with windows, you just have to live with it, or consider linux, which was my son-in-law's suggestion.

tried to uninstall lots of the bits I don't want / use but it won't let me

[Nick]

Why do I have to use onedrive and can I delete it?.

Dodger

You don't have to use it, and can uninstall it (at least on my W10 installation). I don't know how much space that will save as OneDrive is an integral part of MS's current strategy, so is probably fairly deeply embedded in the OS. You may well only be uninstalling the user interface.

[ntpntpntp]

You certainly don't *have* to use OneDrive.  I only use it to share recordings with the rest of my band.   I encourage everyone in our household to store their data on our central network drive which is backed up (reasonably) regularly and the copy kept off-site.