I'm a tolerant person, but recently I switched from Windows to Mac because the forced Windows updates kept messing me up. One time I left a long simulation running overnight. In the morning, I was greeted by a computer that had automatically rebooted to install updates, killing my simulation. Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doing updates instead. It seems like Windows has become an update engine that will sometimes also do computation for you.
My assumption is there's someone at Microsoft who gets a bonus as long as they keep presenting update graphs going up and to the right, and they don't care how much they mess up the Windows experience in the process.
This is exactly one of the main reasons why I switched to Linux, it doesn't do anything unless I let it or ask it to - with few exceptions.
My anecdote: I was about to have an important meeting and needed to print off some sheets from my Windows-based netbook. The power was low (<3%), so I plugged in the charger and resumed it from hibernation. It had been offline for a little while up until then because of traveling. Seeing the power was plugged in and I was shutting the machine down going into the meeting, Windows presumed that right then was a perfect moment to perform a Windows update. That night I wiped it and put Ubuntu on there.
FYI the Linux experience has been mostly great. There's been maybe a problem once a year, with some driver or package issue - but most of the time it runs great. I can safely run anything on it overnight knowing that it won't decide to do anything on it's own accord.
I'm by no means a low-level OS developer but I can't help but wonder, wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk to copy system-critical files and then quietly stage updates in the partition (all of this with minimal thread priority so that if some other process demands resources/threads, it will pause/defer itself!). When the staged update is complete, it gives you a friendly notification "You have a new update available!" which you can then complete as fast as your disk can copy files (or even just set some flag to toggle the partition in use... The old partition then becomes the new staging partition)
Does that make sense at all or is this an unrealistic idea? EDIT: Maybe this is how updates already work, I'm not sure
"Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doing updates instead. It seems like Windows has become an update engine that will sometimes also do computation for you."
This is, unfortunately, also true of Sonos.
I would say that more than 10% of my attempted sonos usage is blocked by an update process.
If you're just turning on the news for 2-3 minutes while you pack up your things, that's a 100% outage for you.
It's funny you mention this as I had a very similar thought the other night when clean-installing an old gaming PC to try some VR stuff on.
I'm used to using a Mac, and the update notifications can definitely be annoying, but Windows' default update behaviour is another level of excruciatingly bad UX. I assume — perhaps wrongly — that you can stop windows from installing updates on shutdown/restart. However, the other night (on Windows), forcing an update on shutdown was the only obvious option available to me. I can't fathom what the rationale is to force this kind of experience on users.
When I want to shut my computer down, it's because I want it to turn off, not start a new (oftentimes looping) operation to install software that I won't immediately see (or need to see) the benefit of.
I wouldn't mind these forced updated, if they took seconds like on Linux. Why are Windows updates so slow? And why I cannot use my computer when updates are running (like on Linux). Part of the problem is that Windows locks files so they cannot be deleted/replaced when full blown system is running, but it has to be more I don't know about the update mechanism.
I experienced the same when attempting to show Forza Horizon to a friend, not having played it for a bit it required a 300Mb update before launching. I could not find what was updated.
Overall my experience on Microsoft store has been sub-par, eg comparing to steam.
I switched to Ubuntu, gave up hope MS would come out with a Windows-lite with how big Win10 is getting, and how they're trying to put Win10 on smaller devices. A lot of devices that come with Win10 really shouldn't have such a bloated OS, and I mean that even if they're just going to be using Office.
Pleasantly surprised so far with Ubuntu, hardly any hacking to start coding and running databases etc.
Humble tip - You can pause updates for up to 45 days. During this period, you can enable them at your leisure. This is what I do when I'm leaving my computer for an overnight rendering.
It's annoying but if uptime is critical you really need to change the settings for that. The reason Microsoft forces updates by default is because of all the incompetent computer users out there (especially older folks) who bitch and moan about how insecure and unstable their Windows that they haven't updated in 2 years is.
What kills me is that the "active hours" setting stops you from setting longer than 8 hours. I want my server to install updates between 0100 and 0500, but that just isn't possible.
That's easy enough to prevent if you peek into the update settings[0][1]. I have restarts blocked from 8AM-2AM, due to not wanting it doing it during the day when I walk away from work. You would want the opposite. Set that to 5PM-11AM and you'll never have a nightly restart again. I've used Mac and Linux but had issues with all of them, worst being desktop Linux with basic things (for a power user), and Mac software issues[2]. Windows 10 is in my opinion the best version of Windows yet, even if it's also imperfect. You definitely need to dig into the settings if you want things to be right for you, but that applies to every OS, including iOS and Android.
Why don’t they let people set a certain day in the week for major updates (E.g. Sunday), and only the most important micro updates are force-installed immediately?
You should blame your simulation software vendor (which could be yourself, lol). Windows gives software a way to tell, that computer is busy, and if your software did not do that, I am not sure how is this fault of Windows?
Without that, computer might go to sleep, which would happen on any other OS too under default settings.
It never stops to amaze me how unwilling most people are to explore the latest Win10 options to always defer updates by number of days (eg stay a week behind on feature updates to let others be more on the cutting edge), or even temporarily freeze the windows update service by up to a two digit number of days.
If I ever wanted to be sure that no updates took place I'd use the freeze.
Switching OS might be a solution, but it is worth having a look at these first. The upside is never being behind on patches, and there are actually some bloody useful fixes coming down the pipeline especially as far as security is concerned.
Bizarre. I've seen something like this already in spring. A colleague lost all their documents, and calmly claimed it was probably "Windows Update". Apparently it is common knowledge in the office that Windows Update sometimes does that. I could never verify nor reproduce it, and chalked it up to "users say the darndest things". Files were simply restored from backup. Now I'm beginning to wonder if there was more to it.
That being said, I personally haven't had problems with Windows 10 except for the very first months. I'm quite happy how stable it is and how at the same time they frequently push out new, useful features (the new console, ssh, nicer gui, immersive search, package management, ...). Microsoft, please don't mess it up and force me to go LTSB...
The whole user experience of installing Windows 10 is abysmal. Wife got a new laptop and I watched her to the initial setup. Stupid things like an "enter your pin" dialog that automatically opens another dialog that closes if you hit enter. So you quickly type your pin and hit enter and just see the dialog flash. Or the confusing "remove" button for the fingerprint scanner setup that just removes all of your fingerprints without confirmation. That's just one UI. It feels like some shitty enterprise software. Pathetic.
Well I’ve been waiting literally months for a laptop to complete its claim to be “installing” update 1709, and it never does.
The only feedback in the entire update process is a little spinning circle in a list of updates, which spins for hours on end without apparently doing anything until Windows suddenly out of the blue is “ready” to install and reboots. It will appear to get somewhere, reboot again, and somehow return to the desktop as if everything is OK, yet the update list claims that the update failed. Then it spins again.
I mean, even if it’s “good” that it doesn’t auto-install broken updates, it sure seems to be spending the absolute maximum amount of resources in terms of downloading data, consuming energy, wasting my time, etc. I suspect the size of the update is the factor they should most easily be able to control; patch something smaller and maybe it will actually finish. I don’t know, just seems like an utter mess to me.
You probably have the same problem I had, which is a slightly non-standard disk layout. Windows Update will fail without producing any meaningful diagnostics. It took me a lot of time and much effort to finally get past that and get my system working.
Things to check:
Are you UEFI booting an MBR disk? It works, but Windows Setup will fail in future upgrades.
Do you have all the correct and required partitions? If you don't have the right partitions (OEM, EFI) of the right size, Windows Setup will again fail with cryptic errors, none of which say "your partitions are wrong".
Do you have a copy of unsupported software hidden in a sub folder anywhere on your local drives?
Client of mine had an old copy of the Novell client installer (it was never installed on this machine) sitting in a folder named C:\Old_Computer\ . Last year's fall update kept aborting with an unclear error dialog. The install log only gave a vague suggestion that the issues was unsupported software and DID NOT reveal the full path to the offending file, just the title of the software.
Windows desperately needs a shibboleet option, so power users can stop fighting it.
I was able to get the upgrade to finally work after I uninstalled the DisplayLink driver and a Splashtop app (for using an Android device as an additional monitor) and then it finally worked. I don't know which of the two (or both) were the exact culprit, but it was driving me bonkers trying to get that update to work.
If you want to use Windows, just do it. But if you had to experience what it feels like when Windows thinks it is time for an automatic-forced-reboot-update which takes 4 hours the day you have to submit a thesis, then you might know why I am not so fond of Microsoft products anymore...
By the way, later that month I learned that I had been lucky as some people ended up being stuck within the update.
When I was _forced_ into the windows 10 update, it went through the process and appeared to finish but didn't put my desktop back. No problem I figured, they put it somewhere.
So I did a file search, found the desktop in a folder, moved it back to the desktop.
A day later it self-restarted and _completed the update_, replacing the desktop with the now empty desktop folder.
I went to the Microsoft store to get them to do a file recovery and they had the _gall_ to tell me it would be $250 plus 7 days and they wouldn't guarantee recovery.
I moved to Mac this year after being exclusively on Windows since '98.
> I moved to Mac this year after being exclusively on Windows since '98.
Funny, I use a Macbook pro at work, and windows at home. I'm not the kind of person that has strong preferences on tech, I use stuff until it stops working well and then I switch.
My several (over time) work macbooks have been really bad. OSX has so many bugs, many of them seem really serious potential security issues (graphical corruption across processes, login screen flickering to the desktop upon waking from sleep, ...). Lots of other bugs are just annoying and make things janky to use. It also does weird things that make me fear it is a fire hazard (e.g. battery draining within 24 hours while the lid is closed in my laptop bag).
On the other hand, a windows small form factor connected to my TV, and a surface pro have been basically hassle free. Obviously windows has bugs too, but none of the ones I've seen make me question security the way I do on OSX.
I don't hope Microsoft dies, I just hope they realize how unreasonably stubborn they are being in forcefully shoving every new update of Windows down users' throats, and and that they then stop doing it.
not to defend them, but my experience with that particular issue is normally they put all your old desktop folder / document folder stuff in c:/windows.old
Is this incompetence the result of Microsoft being unable to retain decent engineers? I mean, who actually would want to work on the next Windows release? You’d have to be a masochist.
Hearsay: I've heard that at least Azure is having problems retaining and hiring talent. Apparently the platform was created in such a rush to compete against AWS that many of its core components are jumbled, unreliable messes, many people internally know this, and when Azure tries to recruit internally no one bites.
It's amazing to me. With the resources MS has, they could rebuild a new OS from the ground up and finally get rid of all the cruft and legacy issues in windows once and for all and still support legacy software via emulation, virtualization or even a compatibility layer a la WINE or WSL. Why don't they do it? Google is building fuchsia, Apple/NeXT was able to take BSD and build MacOS X, certainly MS can do it right?
So glad now I turned off Window's updates (because no matter what I did they kept installing when they shouldn't have).
I have been considering moving to linux for a while now because there's finally good alternatives for some of the apps I use, and I'm definitely going to start the move now.
I had all my user folders moved and this could have been me (and my backup drive just died too!). The user folders were actually part of the reason I disabled them. Every time, without fail, the moved user folders would get duplicated because Windows would recreate them at their default locations. I wouldn't be surprised if this bug wasn't related to that one.
I keep Windows just for gaming so I am immune to this issue. Hell, I even wish Windows installation completely break so I can try Wine.
What I don't get about Windows Update is, that it requires multiple reboots. Why? Also it took long time to process something on first login after the update. What are they doing?
It has never ceased to amaze me the abuse MS customers continue to tolerate.
Edit: Not that I'm suggesting Apple is any better. Proprietary software in general tends to exploit its users in various ways, if not initially, eventually.
I have been running Windows since 3.11 and have never had any of the issues with Windows Update described in this thread since the XP days. Don't think these issues are common, just the vocal minority.
I've never had a issue with Windows Update, but it can sometimes take hours and I like to imagine wth it's doing. My theory is that Microsoft has acres of test computers, so that when I run an upgrade they spin up a computer that match mine, install all the apps and drivers I have, runs the update, and runs some automated tests ...
I personally never used those folder for my documents/music/etc. It wasn't a problem until programs started putting their stuff in there. This is part of the "must-put-on-C:\" behavior you see in much win software that I loathe. A constant pain and reason that C:\ seems never to be big enough.
The only reason I use windows 10 is for gaming. The millisecond linux gaming is supported by all the games I love I will be paying whatever price necessary to drop windows for ever. I use OS X for work and find it a near perfect developer experience for my rather pedestrian use cases.
I have a dual boot machine with windows 10 on a slow platter drive and ubuntu on a very fast SSD. I only ever launch windows to play games... and I hate it. I don't launch windows very often and as soon as I do it starts hammering the disk downloading and processing updates. Even before it tries to actually complete the update, it makes the computer almost unusable for an unpredictable period of time.
[+] [-] kens|7 years ago|reply
My assumption is there's someone at Microsoft who gets a bonus as long as they keep presenting update graphs going up and to the right, and they don't care how much they mess up the Windows experience in the process.
[+] [-] bArray|7 years ago|reply
My anecdote: I was about to have an important meeting and needed to print off some sheets from my Windows-based netbook. The power was low (<3%), so I plugged in the charger and resumed it from hibernation. It had been offline for a little while up until then because of traveling. Seeing the power was plugged in and I was shutting the machine down going into the meeting, Windows presumed that right then was a perfect moment to perform a Windows update. That night I wiped it and put Ubuntu on there.
FYI the Linux experience has been mostly great. There's been maybe a problem once a year, with some driver or package issue - but most of the time it runs great. I can safely run anything on it overnight knowing that it won't decide to do anything on it's own accord.
[+] [-] warent|7 years ago|reply
Does that make sense at all or is this an unrealistic idea? EDIT: Maybe this is how updates already work, I'm not sure
[+] [-] rsync|7 years ago|reply
This is, unfortunately, also true of Sonos.
I would say that more than 10% of my attempted sonos usage is blocked by an update process.
If you're just turning on the news for 2-3 minutes while you pack up your things, that's a 100% outage for you.
[+] [-] sarreph|7 years ago|reply
I'm used to using a Mac, and the update notifications can definitely be annoying, but Windows' default update behaviour is another level of excruciatingly bad UX. I assume — perhaps wrongly — that you can stop windows from installing updates on shutdown/restart. However, the other night (on Windows), forcing an update on shutdown was the only obvious option available to me. I can't fathom what the rationale is to force this kind of experience on users.
When I want to shut my computer down, it's because I want it to turn off, not start a new (oftentimes looping) operation to install software that I won't immediately see (or need to see) the benefit of.
[+] [-] RandomTisk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] finchisko|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m3at|7 years ago|reply
Overall my experience on Microsoft store has been sub-par, eg comparing to steam.
[+] [-] tootahe45|7 years ago|reply
Pleasantly surprised so far with Ubuntu, hardly any hacking to start coding and running databases etc.
[+] [-] mandeepj|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Salgat|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kgwxd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exodust|7 years ago|reply
I'm still on Windows 7 and my laptop is Windows 8, where I can safely disable updates until I'm good and ready.
My understanding of Windows 10 was that there is a way to control when updates happen if using the Pro version? Is that not the case?
[+] [-] amaccuish|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BuckRogers|7 years ago|reply
[0]https://i.imgur.com/ls2yNMh.png
[1]https://i.imgur.com/T4UTke6.png
[2]https://youtu.be/1AO3L-T14E0
[+] [-] fstanis|7 years ago|reply
I'm aware it's a security risk, but I also keep nothing of value on that machine nowadays.
[+] [-] manmal|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostmsu|7 years ago|reply
Without that, computer might go to sleep, which would happen on any other OS too under default settings.
See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/winbase...
[+] [-] sundvor|7 years ago|reply
If I ever wanted to be sure that no updates took place I'd use the freeze.
Switching OS might be a solution, but it is worth having a look at these first. The upside is never being behind on patches, and there are actually some bloody useful fixes coming down the pipeline especially as far as security is concerned.
[+] [-] captainmuon|7 years ago|reply
That being said, I personally haven't had problems with Windows 10 except for the very first months. I'm quite happy how stable it is and how at the same time they frequently push out new, useful features (the new console, ssh, nicer gui, immersive search, package management, ...). Microsoft, please don't mess it up and force me to go LTSB...
[+] [-] winrid|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisper|7 years ago|reply
https://mobile.twitter.com/WithinRafael/status/1048473218917...
[+] [-] makecheck|7 years ago|reply
The only feedback in the entire update process is a little spinning circle in a list of updates, which spins for hours on end without apparently doing anything until Windows suddenly out of the blue is “ready” to install and reboots. It will appear to get somewhere, reboot again, and somehow return to the desktop as if everything is OK, yet the update list claims that the update failed. Then it spins again.
I mean, even if it’s “good” that it doesn’t auto-install broken updates, it sure seems to be spending the absolute maximum amount of resources in terms of downloading data, consuming energy, wasting my time, etc. I suspect the size of the update is the factor they should most easily be able to control; patch something smaller and maybe it will actually finish. I don’t know, just seems like an utter mess to me.
[+] [-] g051051|7 years ago|reply
Things to check:
Are you UEFI booting an MBR disk? It works, but Windows Setup will fail in future upgrades.
Do you have all the correct and required partitions? If you don't have the right partitions (OEM, EFI) of the right size, Windows Setup will again fail with cryptic errors, none of which say "your partitions are wrong".
[+] [-] jasonjayr|7 years ago|reply
Client of mine had an old copy of the Novell client installer (it was never installed on this machine) sitting in a folder named C:\Old_Computer\ . Last year's fall update kept aborting with an unclear error dialog. The install log only gave a vague suggestion that the issues was unsupported software and DID NOT reveal the full path to the offending file, just the title of the software.
Windows desperately needs a shibboleet option, so power users can stop fighting it.
[+] [-] slantyyz|7 years ago|reply
I was able to get the upgrade to finally work after I uninstalled the DisplayLink driver and a Splashtop app (for using an Android device as an additional monitor) and then it finally worked. I don't know which of the two (or both) were the exact culprit, but it was driving me bonkers trying to get that update to work.
[+] [-] wozer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JepZ|7 years ago|reply
By the way, later that month I learned that I had been lucky as some people ended up being stuck within the update.
[+] [-] user3359|7 years ago|reply
When I was _forced_ into the windows 10 update, it went through the process and appeared to finish but didn't put my desktop back. No problem I figured, they put it somewhere.
So I did a file search, found the desktop in a folder, moved it back to the desktop.
A day later it self-restarted and _completed the update_, replacing the desktop with the now empty desktop folder.
I went to the Microsoft store to get them to do a file recovery and they had the _gall_ to tell me it would be $250 plus 7 days and they wouldn't guarantee recovery.
I moved to Mac this year after being exclusively on Windows since '98.
I hope Microsoft dies andisgraceful death.
[+] [-] arthurfm|7 years ago|reply
Regardless of OS it's always a good idea to have backups of your important data.
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/19/apfs-bug-macos-data-los...
[2] https://www.iezzi.ch/leopard-1051-massive-data-loss-bug/
[+] [-] creato|7 years ago|reply
Funny, I use a Macbook pro at work, and windows at home. I'm not the kind of person that has strong preferences on tech, I use stuff until it stops working well and then I switch.
My several (over time) work macbooks have been really bad. OSX has so many bugs, many of them seem really serious potential security issues (graphical corruption across processes, login screen flickering to the desktop upon waking from sleep, ...). Lots of other bugs are just annoying and make things janky to use. It also does weird things that make me fear it is a fire hazard (e.g. battery draining within 24 hours while the lid is closed in my laptop bag).
On the other hand, a windows small form factor connected to my TV, and a surface pro have been basically hassle free. Obviously windows has bugs too, but none of the ones I've seen make me question security the way I do on OSX.
[+] [-] mehrdadn|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tinza123|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] okket|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ttul|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 013a|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abledon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seiferteric|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] technion|7 years ago|reply
I'm thinking back across years worth of recruiter spam and Microsoft would be the only major company that's not represented.
[+] [-] QuinnyPig|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alan_n|7 years ago|reply
I have been considering moving to linux for a while now because there's finally good alternatives for some of the apps I use, and I'm definitely going to start the move now.
I had all my user folders moved and this could have been me (and my backup drive just died too!). The user folders were actually part of the reason I disabled them. Every time, without fail, the moved user folders would get duplicated because Windows would recreate them at their default locations. I wouldn't be surprised if this bug wasn't related to that one.
[+] [-] ezoe|7 years ago|reply
What I don't get about Windows Update is, that it requires multiple reboots. Why? Also it took long time to process something on first login after the update. What are they doing?
[+] [-] newnewpdro|7 years ago|reply
Edit: Not that I'm suggesting Apple is any better. Proprietary software in general tends to exploit its users in various ways, if not initially, eventually.
[+] [-] art0rz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] z3t4|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Krasnol|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ben_jones|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] le-mark|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JepZ|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shkkmo|7 years ago|reply