Windows 10 . Anybody downloaded it yet?

[Reorte]

At homeI have a win 10 2-in-1 laptop come tablet. In use it crashes on average once an hour at the moment.I cannot decipher the error messages if it stays alive long enough to find them. Take that with the horrid interface(tiles etc), the built in elements such as edge and cortana that you cannot truly diasable and the compulsory update schedule and I never use the ruddy thing if I can avoid it.

Far be it for me to leap to the defence of Windows 10 but you can properly disable Cortana, at least if what I've read is accurate. There's still a process called Cortana running if you do so but all that really is is the built-in internal search that's been in Windows in one form or another for ages. All the other bits are gone. Most of the tile stuff is avoidable, have a look at Classic Shell (or similar), even though that's a third party program getting around it rather than an OS setting.

Edited April 25, 2017 by Reorte

[raymw]

JonBoy, you need to learn how to setup/use w10.

 

edit - Reorte beat me to it.

Edited April 25, 2017 by raymw

[raymw]

fwiw, I've one of these http://www.argos.co.uk/product/5056925 but paid iirc £79 for it, some month's ago. It runs absolutely fine, far better than the samsung android equivalent. I've the desktop set more or less the same as my desktop and hp laptop, it accesses my server, and does everything I expect. It runs the software I write on the desktop with no problems whatsoever. The main problem is my fingers being a bit too fat to precisely select some icons on web sites. That is a physical/hardware problem. I've no idea about the problems folk get with Cortana. As the AI develops, it will be indispensable, so as I keep saying, you may as well get used to it now. If you use the voice recognition, that is now far better than earlier specialist voice recognition software from only a few years ago, and it is continuously improving. The querty keyboard will be defunct in a few years, anyway, with any luck.

[Jonboy]

JonBoy, you need to learn how to setup/use w10.

 

edit - Reorte beat me to it.

I guess that is my main isssue with it really, it is the first bit of tech/software in a very long time that I just don't find particularly instinctive to use.

 

It may well be that I make my own life difficult by not liking video/sound as a medium in general and having an occasional stutter makes voice recognition a pita. I also prefer to locally host and backup my own data and am not a fan of cloud services.

[Ian J.]

Try this:

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/spybot-anti-beacon-prevent-microsoft-spying-windows-10/

 

Keith

 

Interesting. But being third party software written to obstruct something Microsoft seems insistent on forcing users to have, it will always be a game of whack-a-mole between the developer and MS. So every now and then I'd expect Spybot to fail and MS to win, not a state of affairs I like the idea of.

[Reorte]

I guess that is my main isssue with it really, it is the first bit of tech/software in a very long time that I just don't find particularly instinctive to use.

 

It may well be that I make my own life difficult by not liking video/sound as a medium in general and having an occasional stutter makes voice recognition a pita. I also prefer to locally host and backup my own data and am not a fan of cloud services.

It doesn't help that some things appear to have two different ways of doing the same thing (some the more traditional method, some via the newer one). I expect it to eventually settle down in that respect, probably in something that's neither, since the old one is a bit clunky at times and the new not really suited to every little last thing that might need setting.

 

I'm not keen on server-based answers either. They certainly have their uses but my first preference is to keep everything where I have it, no-one else has access, then the servers can be used if I need remote access (not very often) or as a more robust way of backing up things I'm not bothered about being under someone else's control. Having built-in support for that is a good thing, being pushy about it less so IMO. OneDrive needs an MS account and you don't have to have an MS account although that's a much smaller print option in the corner of the screen.

 

For speech recognition to really work it'll need to work out which bits are dictation and which bits are all the "mms, aahs, nope, hmm, what about?"s that accompany most of my writing.

[raymw]

I've just installed 1703 on the desktop pc. I didn't wait for M$ to say the pc was ready. It took about an hour, including updates.It has made no difference to what I see/expect, afaik. Has the new 3d paint, which most likely I will never use, and a few extra bits to edge, which may get me to use it more. Part way through the install, instead of the rotating dots, they pulse the blue screen, between light and dark blue. I reckon that could make some folk feel queasy!

[melmerby]

Of the three PCs in the house all the current updates have installed without drama apart from the Core i7 laptop as mentioned earlier with that one update from 12th April!

Puzzling.

 

I have downloaded 1703 as an iso onto a DVD so I might just install that to bring it right up to date in one go.

 

Keith

[Brit70053]

Following a notification that Security updates & co. couldn't be updated on my laptop running W10 1503 version and that support for 1503 is to be withdrawn soon, I girded my loins for another duel with the upgrade to V1703, with the umpteen failures to install the previous upgrade (Anniversary ?)at the fore of my concerns.

Downloaded the Installation Tool as directed and followed on with the download/ installation etc. etc.

In less than 2 hours my laptop is now running W10 V1703 and so far I've noticed very little difference in my limited use and requirements.

What I did notice as the installation progressed, was that things were done in several stages I'd not witnessed before and I speculate that MS have had to respond to concerns of folk like myself who had previously been unable to get the upgrade to complete.

Now to investigate if I've actually lost any of my music video content as was implied might happen if I did proceed with the upgrade.

 

Regards,

 

John

[raymw]

I've just installed 1703 on the desktop pc. I didn't wait for M$ to say the pc was ready. It took about an hour, including updates.It has made no difference to what I see/expect, afaik. Has the new 3d paint, which most likely I will never use, and a few extra bits to edge, which may get me to use it more. Part way through the install, instead of the rotating dots, they pulse the blue screen, between light and dark blue. I reckon that could make some folk feel queasy!

I found out that the desktop pc was not connecting to my windows server 2012, so the backups were not being made (although I could access the files on server) so I decided to roll-back*  to windows 1607. Not having done a roll- back before, I was concerned about it failing. It worked absolutely fine, and only took about 5 minutes. 1703 (creator) is running fine on the laptop, connected to server, and all, but that was installed automatically as a normal update, not forced by me...

 

Desktop is now saying that windows 10 creator is on its way. I'll wait this time round, instead of pre-empting the update...

 

edit to mention -* I spent a while poking around to find a solution to the non-connection, to no avail, I found that M$ had a problem with sql and 1703, which may have been connected to this.

Edited May 8, 2017 by raymw

[melmerby]

According to BBC text MS have rushed out a security patch supposedly before the "Update Tuesday" offerings, however none of my PCs have found anything.

Anybody had a separate update?

 

Keith

[brigo]

According to BBC text MS have rushed out a security patch supposedly before the "Update Tuesday" offerings, however none of my PCs have found anything.

Anybody had a separate update?

 

Keith

 

Check out this post from Woody

 

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3195411/endpoint-protection/heres-how-to-check-if-your-pc-got-microsofts-fix-for-windows-defender-bug.html

 

Brian

[RFS]

According to BBC text MS have rushed out a security patch supposedly before the "Update Tuesday" offerings, however none of my PCs have found anything.

Anybody had a separate update?

 

Keith

 

BBC have got it wrong - it's a change to Windows Defender which doesn't come with the patch Tuesday fixes.  Go to Start -> settings -> update and security -> Windows Defender and check the engine version is 1.1.13704.0.  Next signature update will install that if it's not already there. 

[RFS]

If you are still running the initial July 2015 version of Windows 10 (known as version 1507), then today's patch Tuesday update will be the last as it will no longer be supported.  Newer versions are 1511 (November 2015 update), 1607 (Anniversary update) and 1703 (Creators update) have all come along since and you will need to update to one of these to continue being supported. 

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4015562/windows-10-version-1507-will-no-longer-receive-security-updates

Edited May 9, 2017 by RFS

[melmerby]

BBC have got it wrong - it's a change to Windows Defender which doesn't come with the patch Tuesday fixes.  Go to Start -> settings -> update and security -> Windows Defender and check the engine version is 1.1.13704.0.  Next signature update will install that if it's not already there. 

 

Windows defender is off as I have Kaspersky Internet Security

If you are still running the initial July 2015 version of Windows 10 (known as version 1507), then today's patch Tuesday update will be the last as it will no longer be supported.  Newer versions are 1511 (November 2015 update), 1607 (Anniversary update) and 1703 (Creators update) have all come along since and you will need to update to one of these to continue being supported. 

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4015562/windows-10-version-1507-will-no-longer-receive-security-updates

I'm on 1607 (14393,1066)

 

Keith

[Brit70053]

Windows defender is off as I have Kaspersky Internet Security

 

 

Keith

That has pre-empted a question I was going to raise, having McAfee security as part of my Broadband package and it seems Defender is switched off by default, so no concerns about the version or patch.

Thanks Keith.

 

Regards,

 

                John

[melmerby]

Just done the update to 1703 using an iso image onto my laptop.

 

Two attempts, the first I abandoned 2.5 hours in with hardly anything done as I was going out and didn't want to leave it unattended.

 

Second attempt 30 mins to "revert to previous windows" when I switched it on, then 3 hours from start to up and running.

Seems to be OK, can't see much obviously different apart from the blatant plugs for Edge and Cortana after it started.

 

This is a Core i7 laptop with 8Gb memory, separate 2Gb graphics card & 750Gb HDD.

It is for some reason one of the slowest of the 4 PCs in the household to upgrade!

 

It's now Win 10 version 1703 (OS Build 15063,296)

 

Keith

Edited May 12, 2017 by melmerby

[Nick G]

How many hours a week do you Windows users spend updating it?

[Kiwi]

How many hours a week do you Windows users spend updating it?

Absolutely zero. I simply don't understand people that seem to need to. It's totally automatic. Every few weeks I'll go to the PC in my home office in the morning to find it has updated itself and rebooted. All I have to do is login.

 

I moved to Win 10 about 6 months after it came out, which was also completely pain free, and have never had even the slightest problem since. I can only assume the plethora of issues raised here must be largely self-inflicted. In my opinion 10 is the best version of Windows yet to be distributed.

 

I speak as an 8 - 10 hours per day power user.

[Ian J.]

I've been using Win10 at work as the laptop I was using had to be replaced. It's not a bad operating system from a design, usage and speed point of view. What lets it down is the forced updates and the leaking of information back to MS, who I simply don't trust (I don't trust Google, Apple, or any of the other big companies either).

[melmerby]

Absolutely zero. I simply don't understand people that seem to need to. It's totally automatic. Every few weeks I'll go to the PC in my home office in the morning to find it has updated itself and rebooted. All I have to do is login.

 

I moved to Win 10 about 6 months after it came out, which was also completely pain free, and have never had even the slightest problem since. I can only assume the plethora of issues raised here must be largely self-inflicted. In my opinion 10 is the best version of Windows yet to be distributed.

 

I speak as an 8 - 10 hours per day power user.

So you leave your computers on all the time?

 

If so a total waste of power. No wonder we use so much unnecessary power these days.

(Don't get me on people leaving TVs on for two weeks while on holiday either)

My PCs get switched on when needed, Then they download an update if there is one and ask for a restart which I don't want whilst I'm using it so I do a manual restart when convenient.

 

As the Creators Update is in effect a new Win 10 and rather large, I decided to do it at my convenience via an ISO image rather than as normal, then I could monitor it's process whilst doing other non computer related tasks.

 

Keith

[melmerby]

Re Creators update

 

I have done the same with my desktop PC which up to now has always updated without any problems whatsoever and it has totally knackered it.

It booted up, presumably after everything was done with the following message on screen:

 

"Reboot and select proper boot device

or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key."

 

I cannot enter the Bios or boot from a CD/DVD or do anything else as the keyboard is totally unresponsive.

 

Any suggestions ?(and nothing from smartarse apple twits either)

 

Ignore all that

I eventually managed to get into Bios and found the SSD was switched out of the options to boot from!

( I needed to keep the BIOS key pressed whilst it is booting, not when the options are on screen, by then it is too late).

 

Everything works fine. - total update time was between 60 - 75mins.

 

Keith

Edited May 13, 2017 by melmerby

[raymw]

fwiw, my desktop pc and server are both on 24/7. Goes to sleep/hibernation if not used for a while, but needs to be on to do backups etc. Switching on an off, other than being the 'goto' for fixing problems is not a good idea, unless components designed for power cycling. They're building Hinkley C near here, ready for when I get a few more hdds.

[PhilJ W]

Anyone on Windows 10 affected by the hackers who caused so much disruption to the NHS? There shouldn't be but Windows XP users are apparently the worst affected.

[melmerby]

fwiw, my desktop pc and server are both on 24/7. Goes to sleep/hibernation if not used for a while, but needs to be on to do backups etc. Switching on an off, other than being the 'goto' for fixing problems is not a good idea, unless components designed for power cycling. They're building Hinkley C near here, ready for when I get a few more hdds.

Old wives tale.

 

These days electronics suffers little from powering up/down, if it does it ain't up to the job. Do you leave your TV on 24/7? No different.

 

Keith