Microsoft mess up again

[tigerburnie]

This latest "update" has just asked if I want to sign up and earn shopping points by shopping with Microsoft, so this is little short of a cynical money making ploy with little to do with software and by the way my anti virus/protection is supplied by someone else, not micro soft. This one, unlike previous ones has not informed me before it was installed or when I switched off. The more I look at it the more I am finding wrong, even Spotify has vanished and my computer now tells me it cannot re-install, so now I am losing money to add to the insult.

[Pete the Elaner]

1 hour ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

I have not been so unlucky as the OP in losing stuff as a result but each time it has taken me a couple of hours to sort out. And most of the updates seem to be rather unnecessary.

Losing data is not bad luck. It is poor planning.

A hard drive can fail at any time & if it is not backed up, you could lose it.

Backup devices are cheap & come in different forms, some of which are easy to use.

If you don't trust cloud (I didn't until I started learning about it), then backup drives are available. I set one up for someone & was impressed with how easy it is to do. Their hard drive failed a few months later & no data was lost. Was this lucky or good planning?

[melmerby]

30 minutes ago, tigerburnie said:

This latest "update" has just asked if I want to sign up and earn shopping points by shopping with Microsoft, so this is little short of a cynical money making ploy with little to do with software

Uh?

Considering Microsoft are a company in business to make money how is this a cynical ploy?

Or do you think companies should just be there to be to give you freebies

Edited April 24, 2019 by melmerby
Bad phrasing removed

[Pete the Elaner]

4 hours ago, Andymsa said:

 

Im sorry Im still not convinced. let's take an example I boot up my laptop that has win7 installed takes about 2 mins tops once it's done all its things. Now my mates laptop, it can take up to an hour sometimes before you can even do any work why because it's installing those updates. As for viruses anyone who goes on the internet should have one of the propriety programs installed and a firewall. I can't see why Microsoft should be criticised for a user deciding if to install an update or not, and if a user wished to install an update then he would do it at a time that was convenient for that user, it's the users choice and he should take responsibility for that choice and would have to accept any issues arising from not updating. Now with win 10 there is no choice anymore, but when updating win 7 I can deceid how many of the updates I want and can easily indentify which one is causing any possible system issues with win 10 it installs the lot, not so easy to indentify any issues that may be there. Now I use computer control of the layout and I want to have a quick op session and having to wait for win 10 to do its updates first is not an option as far as I'm concerned. Then there's the bells and whistles of win 10, as many have said its a bloated op system and takes up far to much space

While I agree with the bit I highlighted, unfortunately they got the blame time after time & this forced them to react by forcing updates out.

Remember we live in a world where McDonalds got sued for not marking a hot cup of tea with a warning of 'hot liquid' after someone scalded themselves. You couldn't make it up.

[beast66606]

1 minute ago, melmerby said:

Uh?

Considering Microsoft are a company in business to make money how is this a cynical ploy?

Or do you think companies should just be there to be to give you freebies, quite clearly you expect people to make you money from spotify, maybe you should be given the service free like you expect MS to do.

 

Asking and forcing to are also different things.

 

Vodafone rang me and asked me if I'd like a bargain - I said "No thanks" - easy peasy lemon squeezy.

[tigerburnie]

Just now, melmerby said:

Uh?

Considering Microsoft are a company in business to make money how is this a cynical ploy?

Or do you think companies should just be there to be to give you freebies, quite clearly you expect people to make you money from spotify, maybe you should be given the service free like you expect MS to do.

I think you missed the point there, I bought a computer with a system on it to run the machine, not to do my shopping for me, should I require their shopping they could just ask rather than add it to my machine, that is what I thought to be rather cynical.

[beast66606]

1 minute ago, tigerburnie said:

I think you missed the point there, I bought a computer with a system on it to run the machine, not to do my shopping for me, should I require their shopping they could just ask rather than add it to my machine, that is what I thought to be rather cynical.

 

You also agreed to the license to use Windows - install Linux as it offends you so much.

[PaulCheffus]

2 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Twice in the last year, Microsoft installing updates has caused my laptop to be unable to restart! That's a pretty basic problem for Microsoft to cause.

 

Hi

 

Likewise both myself and my son have suffered the update rendering the laptop unbootable and requiring a windows reinstall.

 

 Cheers

 

Paul

[RFS]

30 minutes ago, tigerburnie said:

This latest "update" has just asked if I want to sign up and earn shopping points by shopping with Microsoft, so this is little short of a cynical money making ploy with little to do with software and by the way my anti virus/protection is supplied by someone else, not micro soft. This one, unlike previous ones has not informed me before it was installed or when I switched off. The more I look at it the more I am finding wrong, even Spotify has vanished and my computer now tells me it cannot re-install, so now I am losing money to add to the insult.

 

If you don't like these ads then you can turn them off.  See how to do so here - https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/remove-ads-windows-10-3669292/

[tigerburnie]

Not offended, as I said it's an irritant, I use my pc for play now, not for earning a living, but imagine if the car company I worked for updated your cars management system and when you indicate to turn left you headlights come on and when you indicate right the windscreen wipers came on, maybe not life threatening, but inconvenient wouldn't really cover it would it?

[tigerburnie]

5 minutes ago, RFS said:

 

If you don't like these ads then you can turn them off.  See how to do so here - https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/remove-ads-windows-10-3669292/

Rest assured when(or if) they get round to fixing the gremlins I shall be doing just that, counter productive doing it whilst it's broken.

[melmerby]

4 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

My 2009 machine cannot take Win 10 because there is no driver update for some piece of kit (graphics card?), and on Sunday I seemed to get an apologetic message from Microsoft saying Win 7 support stops next January. How much importance is attached to car model support after 10 years? 

 

 

It's always Microsoft's fault!  They're easy to blame for all computer ills.

But it could just as easily be the machine maker's fault for not supplying the necessary update.

if you have components from the bigger makers (AMD, nVidia, Intel etc.) you could still be using 15+ year old machines on Win 10 as they supply drivers.

I was using just such a machine last year until it had a Motherboard failure.

It started with Win XP, I upgraded it to Win 7, then Win 10.

Win10 ran better on it than Win 7 and used less resources.

 

As to lack of support for 10 year old products (Cars IMHO are an exception to the normal) I have found well under 10 years for some products.

I bought a miniDV camcorder but unfortunately unbeknown to me at the time, the purchase rather co-incided with the change from tapes to memory chips for storage and the dropping of Firewire interfaces on PCs which it used for control and transferring of files to the PC.

Within a couple of years I ended up with a PC without a Firewire interface and also couldn't run the software. Meanwhile I had bought a compact digital camera and found it totally outpeformed the camcoder. So one little used now obsolete camcorder.

This is not the first time something has been rendered obsolete by technology advances and lack of third party updates.

Edited April 24, 2019 by melmerby
added more info

[tigerburnie]

22 minutes ago, Pete the Elaner said:

Losing data is not bad luck. It is poor planning.

A hard drive can fail at any time & if it is not backed up, you could lose it.

Backup devices are cheap & come in different forms, some of which are easy to use.

If you don't trust cloud (I didn't until I started learning about it), then backup drives are available. I set one up for someone & was impressed with how easy it is to do. Their hard drive failed a few months later & no data was lost. Was this lucky or good planning?

Anything worth having, or stuff I wouldn't want to fall into the wrong hands is firmly backed up on an external hard drive.

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, tigerburnie said:

Anything worth having, or stuff I wouldn't want to fall into the wrong hands is firmly backed up on an external hard drive.

I have several HDDs on my main computer, including an external USB one) and everything important (and other stuff less so) is scattered around drives other than the C:

I do have a USB3 4GB hard drive that I bought especially for doing backups but as yet I haven't managed to get Windows itself to do one. I just end up with an empty image!

So I just save folders to it myself.

[Joseph_Pestell]

3 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

Losing data is not bad luck. It is poor planning.

A hard drive can fail at any time & if it is not backed up, you could lose it.

Backup devices are cheap & come in different forms, some of which are easy to use.

If you don't trust cloud (I didn't until I started learning about it), then backup drives are available. I set one up for someone & was impressed with how easy it is to do. Their hard drive failed a few months later & no data was lost. Was this lucky or good planning?

 

OP did not suggest that his hard drive had failed. That would be quite another matter.

[RFS]

37 minutes ago, melmerby said:

I have several HDDs on my main computer, including an external USB one) and everything important (and other stuff less so) is scattered around drives other than the C:

I do have a USB3 4GB hard drive that I bought especially for doing backups but as yet I haven't managed to get Windows itself to do one. I just end up with an empty image!

So I just save folders to it myself.

 

4GB is a bit small - assume it's 4TB? 

 

Have you tried Macrium Reflect? I use the Free Edition to do regular images and one of the advantages is that Macrium will mount the image as a virtual drive so you can restore individual files if needed. 

[melmerby]

15 minutes ago, RFS said:

 

4GB is a bit small - assume it's 4TB? 

 

Have you tried Macrium Reflect? I use the Free Edition to do regular images and one of the advantages is that Macrium will mount the image as a virtual drive so you can restore individual files if needed. 

Ah! maybe that's the problem

Yes it is 4TB. Cheers, I'll have to check Macrium Reflect

[antrobuscp]

After following this thread, I did a quick search for the forthcoming 1903 upgrade. Much of what is planned is of no interest to me, but it does appear that users will have more control over when future updates are applied. Further, the system will perform more checks before major updates go ahead to try to ensure the machine is compatible. This could be a double-edged sword, though, I guess. Users of Win10 Home will gain more control over timing and deferral of updates. I didn't keep a note of the precise link I found but there is quite a bit of information on the net if you are interested.

 

HTH 

 

Colin

 

[RFS]

1 minute ago, antrobuscp said:

After following this thread, I did a quick search for the forthcoming 1903 upgrade. Much of what is planned is of no interest to me, but it does appear that users will have more control over when future updates are applied. Further, the system will perform more checks before major updates go ahead to try to ensure the machine is compatible. This could be a double-edged sword, though, I guess. Users of Win10 Home will gain more control over timing and deferral of updates. I didn't keep a note of the precise link I found but there is quite a bit of information on the net if you are interested.

 

HTH 

 

Colin

 

 

This PC is on the Release Preview level and it already has had 1903 installed by Windows Update. It was absolutely painless and took 12 minutes from start to stop (my Windows C drive is a very fast SSD!).  If like me you run the Home Edition then you now have the option to pause updates for up to 7 days if you feel the need to. I've found 1903 so reliable it's now on the wife's PC and the Traincontroller one too in the railway room. Wife never noticed anything had changed which says a lot.

 

Microsoft have made great strides in improving the process of upgrading to new versions of Windows. Remember the upgrade from XP to Vista (which I skipped - Vista was awful) and XP to Windows 7? Full rebuild necessary. Now a little over 12 minutes and Windows Update does it. Not only that it preserves all your existing software (provided it's a supported release!) as well as your settings etc. 

[antrobuscp]

That's good to know, RFS, except that my hardware and some software is getting a bit long in the tooth now. I'll see what reaction there is when the upgrade becomes common.

[Steamport Southport]

I've had problems since as well. Seems to be trying to update all the time, double clicking on things and scrolling down for no reason whatsoever.

 

 

This is a newish computer before anyone suggests I should update. 

 

 

 

Jason

[Izzy]

I have just had Win10 v 1809 try and install on the small laptop I mentioned in an earlier post. It failed due to lack of enough free HDD space, and asked me to delete files to finish the install. I of course declined, and cancelled it. It seems there may be an option to use external storage so the next time I may try that to see what happens. From what I have read the install needs between 10-20gb space, presumably for temporary files, which is a no go on one with only a 64gb drive. How someone with a smaller 32gb drive would get on heaven knows.....

 

But this did make me wonder if in some cases the install had just deleted files itself to find room, and why some had lost all their files or the system had become corrupted as a result.

 

Izzy

[melmerby]

I'm trying to see the logic of selling a computer with as little as 32Gb?

Considering the low cost of memory, it seems to be downright penny pinching.

[Sir TophamHatt]

22 hours ago, tigerburnie said:

Anything worth having, or stuff I wouldn't want to fall into the wrong hands is firmly backed up on an external hard drive.

 

Although I half read something about the next update not playing well with external drives during the update.

Whether this is Windows installed on an external drive (why?) or what, I don't know.

 

Might also be worth looking at some size detecting software (TreeSize is quite good).  It'll show you in nice pie charts and tree menus what is taking up space and where it is.

Edited April 25, 2019 by Sir TophamHatt

[Guest]

3 hours ago, melmerby said:

I'm trying to see the logic of selling a computer with as little as 32Gb?

Considering the low cost of memory, it seems to be downright penny pinching.

 

Well it is penny pinching.

 

I bought a 32Gb laptop the other week. It cost £100 so I expect the margins were quite slim.