OT - more Wndows 10 issues (updates)

I left updating Windows 10 until the last fortnight of Microsoft's

12-month window, in the hope that other mugs would have finished beta-testing it by then, while still giving me time to revert to Windows 7 in the event of a t*ts-up situation. Somewhat srprisingly to me, it all went very well, and everything worked fine afterwards. Have to say I couldn't can't see any benefit at all in having upgraded, but presumably since Windows 7 will be EOL'ed long before Windowes 10, it made sense to do it.

Anyway.

Last week, in common with many people, I was given an apparently massive update to Windows 10 - I never had any option, it just happened (highly inconvenient as it took bloody ages to install). Since then, I find that lots of settings changed, notably the ghastly Cortana, which is the

21st century equivalent of that bloody talking paperclip which used to tap on your monitor. But unbelievably, it's now been rendered impossible to disable (unless you start tweaking the registry, apparently. WTF were they thinking?

But my main issue is that since this compulsory update my old but excellent scanner (a Kodak i30) will no longer work - my PC now claims to have no driver installed, and that there are none available for this scanner (I tried reinstalling the old one, to no avail). And I'm past the 30-day window for simply reverting to Windows 7. I'm well aware that with legacy equipment you run this risk when you update the operating system, and I made damned sure to check this before I originally installed Windows 10. However, this is the first time I've ever heard of it happening when a patch was installed. Thank you, Microsoft, for converting my scanner into a doorstop.

I do have the original W7 installation disks, so when I have the time I suppose there's nothing for it but to do a clean install of that. Brilliant.

Reply to
Lobster
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In article , Lobster scribeth thus

Thanks for that. WIN 7 works fine here no plans to change or need for that matter;)

Reply to
tony sayer

The pattern for Win10 seems to be several months worth of minor updates, followed by a complete install of a major update, rinse and repeat ...

The major versions so far being 1507, 1511 and 1607 (i.e. YYMM naming)

Reply to
Andy Burns

Perhaps it isn't such a bad idea to have a "reinstall the whole damn thing" approach to updates. But...

  • Advise people beforehand.
  • Allow individual choices of when it is done.
  • Make it possible to defer but still get other updates (e.g. security updates).
  • Make it easy to download everything you need at your convenience and when connected to an unlimited network. (Yes - I know about the metered network option.) Or from a source such as a USB stick.
  • Ensure that the reinstalled version really does clean out everything properly and not just install it again or inherit it somehow.
  • Make it easy to choose to reinstall from this updating mechanism at your choice to overcome various corruption issues and other problems. (Refresh, etc., have become rather hit and miss.)
  • Tidy up afterwards. A right pain finding another 20+GB windows.old folder on, for example, an SSD which is barely big enough.
  • Don't break anything at all when doing this.
Reply to
polygonum

If you have the W7 installation disks, you might run it in a VM.

Reply to
Dan S. MacAbre

They have been deliberately making it harder to say no to updates. You will now need to go for one of the enterprise versions (i.e. SaaS style paid for version) to have full control over the update process again.

Check out "wsusoffline" - it will let you download and deploy updates when you want.

Reply to
John Rumm

+1 I've been using that for some years now and find it especially handy for bump-starting W7 updates from a fresh install. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

Reply to
T i m

I have windows ten and the latest update and have never seen hide nor hair of Cortana anywhere. I most certainly have not tweaked the registry and have no memory of disabling it so assume it just never activated on install? I am totally happy anyway never to have seen it so not looking for ways to activate it thanks.

Reply to
Zephirum

En el artículo , Lobster escribió:

You were the mug for allowing it to install in the first place.

In addition to breaking things like printers, scanners and webcams without warning, it's chock full of "telemetry" and spyware reporting back to Microsft.

All your keypresses are logged, anything you speak into the microphone, your documents and images are rifled through, the amount of time you spend using the computer and which applications, your contacts and address books, who you call on Skype and who calls you, etc. etc. are uploaded to M$'s servers. And that's just the start of it.

Yes, you can alter the privacy settings (in multiple locations) to reduce the amount of data sent to Microsoft, but they "magically" "accidentally" seem to get reset at random after an update.

The old adage comes to mind: there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

Actually, you can back out of the anniversary update as I had to do this the first time it did the update as it made several programs crashI left it running the none anniversary update and got some normal updates and read up on things. The crash, it said in my case was probably due to a bug when the update was used on some amd chipped machines, shades of the issue with xp many years back I thought, but I chanced it and its been working OK. t HP scanner I have also will no longer work, and according to hp, I have a very old scanner and thus they decided not to support it any more, which I suspect is going to be the same for many older, and old apparently is 6 years or so, scanners. Mine is way older, and has an annoying fault where it gets stuck, so I guess its fair play. I do agree about the curtana, or sultana as I call it. Load of rubbish gimmick on a desktop pc. Should be disableable. Add to that that it will not obey your default browser settings either and goes into Edge no matter what you do

To be honest, all windows 10 really is is a facelift for Windows with even more restrictive practices for even admin users, and lots of messages about try our new software and all that guff. For some reason they want me to try Office 360, why should I want to have a version of bloatware that I have to pay to rent?

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

No if it had been my only pc,I'd not have done it, but its interesting to use it and I suppose if you were coming to it fresh it is not that bad. Having now put in classic shell and the ribbon menu removal mod its better. Now I need a a UAC killer and we might be getting somewhere for a single user machine.

Does anyone know if 10 will support some of the older creative lab soundblaster live cards.. I always found them better than the current on board surround sound ones for recording. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

Ha ha... Well, it also removed the admittedly hacked copy of Outlook express when I did the anniversary update and lost all its email with just one comment that it was not supported software and had been removed.

To my mind, ok it may have been hacked to work on 7 and 10 but in use its far more user friendly than crappy mail clients have been that followed it. Why they reinvent the wheel worse has always eluded me. If a third party can make it work Microsoft should have found it a doddle to do and could also have fixed the irritating memory leak bug that sometimes affects it as well. I just don't see the point in doing all that extra work for no gain. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

+1. My old scanner works with the Vista driver, but I had to download and reinstall it
Reply to
Stuart Noble

I've had Windows 10 on three of my computers for many months without any problems. I've also installed or updated many friends' computers with it as well. None have complained of any issues at all.

Reply to
Bod

One of the excellent reasons not to go anywhere near Win10. I've never run updates and every time I've had to use another computer, often in a hurry, more often than not it'll suddenly decide it's got more important things to do than let the operator do what they want.

Win 10 particularly is absolutely hell bent on faffing around with pointless updates (as is everything else these days) to the extent of running of Torrent style peer-to-peer network to re-distribute then from

*your* computer.
Reply to
Scott M

I have to say that when I saw that option (luckily it was in plain sight), I unchecked it immediately. Bandwidth's precious enough, as it is.

Reply to
Dan S. MacAbre

After an update Windows 10 converted my PC into a slowly blinking strobe that was unfixable. Reinstalling Windows 7 felt like coming home. ;-)

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

In message , Bod writes

Well, I think that means you have either been very lucky or that you are not using your machines in any d-i-y way.

Some responses to points made in other posts:

Yes, the anniversary update made the dreaded Cortana re-appear ( and I have a vision of Rod Speed talking to Cortana with his mouth full and a keyboard clogged with bits of biscuit).

I see that one of the lists of the last month's relative usage of OS's showed that W7's usage has started to increase again.

Enforced updates and especially "upgrades" are utterly misguided in an operating system which, by definition, should remain stable. Enforced driver updates have resulted here in having to disable all updating on a touch screen laptop**. I have paid MS for an OS or for a licence to use that OS. If I get it working the way I want, I don't expect features to change willy-nilly. I expect my carefully set up and optimised machines to continue to work over the years. I'm happily using specialised XP, Vista and W7 machines for specialised audio and primitive video tasks, but I can't trust W10 to do any of these.

There are some potentially good features in W10, particularly in the areas of technical logging and analysis.

** A Lenovo X200 tablet laptop with pen and resistive touch screen. Works fine in W7 with pressure sensitive pen touch and finger touch, but W10 may provide facilities to log bluetooth data from the odb2 in the Grand (never again) Cherokee, so it would be nice to have a touch screen in the car. W10 insists on updating the Wacom driver to the current version which doesn't work with this version of touch. From Lenovo forums, I think I'm fairly near the cutting edge, having identified and found the two old drivers I need to install and I now, as long as I hold off updates, have pen and finger touch, but, but but, the finger touch only sees the old screen buttons and not the modern "Metro" big square controls. At this stage I decided to try to get a life back.
Reply to
Bill

En el artículo , Bill escribió:

:)

Life's too short without Micros~1 silently breaking things behind your back or deciding to take your PC down for an extended period for an update, usually just when you need to be getting on with some work.

Reply to
Mike Tomlinson

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