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Windows 10 Upgrade from Hell
I emerged from my workshop about 6 p.m. yesterday and pressed the power button on my laptop. A blank screen appeared, and the word “HI” in 36-point type appeared in the middle. It sat there for a moment, then spelled out “We have some updates for you.” “Do not turn off your computer” appeared at the bottom in a smaller size of the same font, and the message in the middle of the screen morphed into “This may take a few minutes.”
The font didn’t look like Windows, and I stared at a while wondering if I had a virus. The screen color slowly changed. Four minutes later the screen cleared, and “HI” appeared in the center again. It went through the whole sequence a second time, this time sitting on the final screen for almost half an hour, with no action other than the color change. Then, “It’s taking longer than we thought” appeared. I left it alone for two hours.
When I came back to it, I had what looked like a Windows desktop. However, there were a whole lot of unlabeled icons stacked on top of the six labeled icons I had on my original desktop, and the taskbar had only the Search bar on it. All the icons were the generic white file, not specific. Clicking an icon did nothing. The start menu did nothing. I decided to leave it overnight to give it an unreasonable amount of time to finish.
This morning nothing had changed. I did the three-finger salute, Control-Alt-Delete, and the task menu showed nothing running. I looked at the processes and didn’t see anything unusual. So I logged out of my account, and at the login screen used the power icon to perform a restart. The restart was normal and started my usual desktop upon entering my password. All now seems well.
Computer-savvy friends tell me that this is a Windows 10 upgrade. They agree with me that it is incredibly stupid. For one thing, at no time did I get any indication that what was happening was connected to Windows or sent to me by Microsoft. There was no branding whatsoever, and nothing felt familiar (and I have used every version of Windows since 3.1).
Most important to me, I never had an option to wait until a time that was more convenient for me to do the upgrade. What if I had really needed the laptop at that moment? I never had an “Upgrade now, ask me again in an hour” or whatever message, like I am accustomed to seeing on various apps like the Kindle reader. I had no option other than letting whatever was happening happen.
What if there was a life-threatening situation that required the computer? Not hard to imagine. What if I was somewhere where I had to shut off the computer and move? Would that have bricked it? I wouldn’t have wanted to leave it at Starbucks overnight. What if I hadn’t known that I could restart the system when I got the useless desktop after the upgrade?
No one at a company the size of Microsoft considered these things?
I’m moving my retirement accounts out of Microsoft stock. Any company so arrogant and ignorant as to pull this sort of trick on their customer base is doomed. I may go with Oracle. Sure, the Java upgrade notices are annoying, but at least I have the option of ignoring them. Microsoft just reminded me that I don’t own this machine, but use it only at their whim. Apple is just as bad. I guess I have to learn Linux.
Published in Technology
A bow tie is a great fashion accessory – provides an opportunity to inject just a shot of interesting color, but doesn’t drop in your salad or blow around in the wind the way a long tie does.
I can send you some suspenders.
Catalina removes all vestiges of 32 bit code, much as Lion removed the last of the 16 bit support about 7 or 8 years ago, so it breaks a lot of software. I have advised anyone using an Apply to stay at Mojave until they are damned sure that they have no legacy stuff they still need to run (such as myself).
Given that Apple announced this code roadmap years ago, and has been popping up compatibility warnings since before Mojave when you try to run old programs, it’s been rather shameful that many consumer-hardware companies have done nothing to address this. I can understand cutting off legacy software support for programs more than, say, 8 years old, but hardware less than 5 years old? Utterly shameful and lazy.
That’s the problem with my office laptop, which has Microsoft Office on it. Upgrading to Sierra in 2016 made it (and Open Office) somewhat buggy, especially forwarding any documents to Adobe InDesign. Upgrading it to Catalina would kill it off completely, so if I do it, I need to budget for either a new copy of Microsoft Office, hope Open Office works with it, or go with Apple’s own software like Pages (which has its own quirks that annoy me like crazy).
Open Office, last I checked, had been largely abandoned. I’d advise on Libre Office, which (last I checked about a year ago) was still being kept up to date.
Yes, it is. I don’t know about for the Mac without checking…Looks like they have Mac-64-bit.
I’m that way with my iPhone. I just upgraded to an iPhone 8, and the new OS has “features” which have ruined my photographs (automatic “People and Places”, automatic “For You” album, and a “Live Photo” feature, none of which you can turn off).
@belt @douglaspratt I am a geek, but I lack a beard, bowtie, or suspenders. (I do listen to Synthwave, however.)
If you do want to learn Linux, I recommend Linux Mint. It is easier to use for Windows users. Make sure you backup your files first. Linux is good unless you need to use a specific game or program. Linux has drawing, office suite, database, music, educational, internet browsing, email, etc software.
Some points:
Make sure you use a password you remember. Linux keeps you making potentially dangerous changes by asking you to log in – good for keeping kids or others from messing with your machine. This includes installing software.
Control-Alt-Delete does not work in Linux in the same way it does in Windows. C-A-D is the log off command in Linux. You can use System Monitor or a command at the text command prompt to kill disobedient processes.
Everything on a Linux computer is represented as a file. This includes stuff in memory and important system settings. If you can’t change the file with logging in, there’s a reason for that. It’s perfectly fine to keep all your files in your home directory.
You can bypass them, at least. In Photos, tap on “Photos” in the lower left, and you should get a gray menu bar. At the right end it should say “all photos” which gives you the full list without the idiotic curation.
So…Bill Gates really is Satan?
I used Windows (from Dos on) for most of my career, since the tools I needed only ran on it. When I retired, I switched to Mac OS. It was seductive, since the ‘ecosystem’ – as long as you stayed with Apple – was pretty well supported. The problem is that I am not the typical Apple User. I listen to podcasts and not music and since we have a limited bandwidth connection to internet, don’t do any streaming. I also am a tinkerer and the Mac environment discourages that.
I also got tired of both Microsoft and Apple making changes that invalidate a year or more of muscle memory just to be ‘new ‘
I am now a happy Linux (Ubuntu) user. There are plenty of applications to do what I want and I am in complete control of when I update.
I had tried to get Linux running on an old laptop about 10 years ago and it was a pain. These days, it is a much more friendly option.
If you got the kitten positioned with its legs just right, it could stand in for a bowtie.
If I had a dollar. Of course, I’m in IT. We’ve seen a million of these. Figuratively speaking. Enough to have been pretty irritated. It’s a small percentage, though. Most go fine. And we’ve figured out just what combination of feature updates / patches creates this problem, and we avoid it. “Oh, that’s at release X, so we want to apply this and that, and then update.
They (meaning Microsoft) are stuck between a rock and a hard place, though.
Leave it to the average user to update and it won’t ever happen. Then they are far enough out and it’s a complete wipe and replace to get the latest version. Which means a new computer for most users, or getting guys like to come over and futz with it. And we hate it when you ask us. Plus everyone whined about how Microsoft’s release strategy was really just a sell new PCs strategy. Or do no updates and leave yourself at risk. Which in the current state is just plain stupid. That’s right: stupid.
Here is my recommendation: google how to prevent feature updates. It’s a setting.
Then, do the feature updates when you are ready. When it’s not urgent, and nobody is going to die if it fails.
Now, as far as Microsoft thinking about these things? Of course they do. But they can’t possibly test every situation. Every version of every driver. Ever state your PC might possibly be in. They do a lot of testing, but they can’t foresee and fix every problem.
I think Sushi has gotten a bit larger since that picture. More like a muffler, now.
As a percentage of Mac updates I’ve done, I’d say the number of them that has gone bad equals the percentage of Windows updates I’ve done. Well, it’s probably higher, as I haven’t done that many. But really the key with both platforms is to do them regularly. That’s what keeps you out of Upgrade Hell ™!
Who the heck does Microsoft think it is? Here is my post titled “[Coc} you Microsoft!”
http://ricochet.com/680920/coc-you-microsoft/
Flagged: for triggering de-vilification.
Its not that difficult anymore.There are several friendly distributions out there. Most famously Ubuntu, I think is the best known for being easy to use. https://www.ubuntu.com and my favorite right now it MX linux which advertises itself as a midweight desktop, simple and stable. https://www.mxlinux.org
both have a live cd or usb stick option – which means you can try out the OS by booting from a USB stick (or cd/dvd rom) to see how well the system will run on your hardware – and just as importantly if you like it.
This is beyond annoying. I have got around most of the “We’re from Microsoft and we’re here to hep,” issues by connecting to WiFi, even from my desktop PC, because that allows me to tell it I have a metered connection, which gives me more control over the updates (I have 10 Pro). I’m not at much of a disadvantage doing this, because our only Internet option out here is satellite (which actually is a metered, and incredibly expensive connection), which is so painfully slow anyway that connecting wirelessly doesn’t have much of an impact. (It took a little over an hour to download 38MB to my desktop on the satellite yesterday. I got so ticked off, I downloaded it in about 5 seconds on my LTE-connected iPad, saved it, connected through FileBrowser to my desktop and copied it over there. During the time this took me, I think the satellite downloaded about 0.3MB.)
Even with it not installing updates unless I tell it to, though, it still has a tendency to change things without warning. I’ve noticed this particularly with the Office updates, where it’s always changing my Outlook send and receive settings to automatic, although I do not want them to be.
I have 30-years of stuff tied up in Microsoft apps, but if they keep this up, I could be done soon, too.
@ douglaspratt, your post title is redundant: where did you think windows Update’s came from?🙂
This is no excuse for Microsoft. And I doubt they really are bothered if users of their products go to bed stupid every night. There are lots of stupid things out in the world. If Microsoft wants to fix stupid, it could try to do something about Democrats. Or they could develop an OS with properly defined layers that would not have security problems all over the place. Of course, such a product would have no backward compatibility with the current OS, so Microsoft would have to compete with itself for customers.
This is why I hate computers. I am always uncertain to what I’m supposed to do, and the risks are huge. Give me an old fashion mechanical device any day.
Isn’t this news from 2015 or so?
Why hasn’t everyone migrated to MacOS by now? You’ve had to buy a new computer since then and you should know better by now.
Because there’s Chromebook. Got one for my mom (age 86) a few months ago and she’s happy to be free of Windows complexity.
I use Google Docs and Gmail every day. But I don’t keep any sensitive stuff there. That goes in OneDrive. I trust MS more than Google.
MacOS? Haven’t used it since about 1989 and never looked back.
Just like to say for the record that I’m a Microsoft fanboy (and I.T. Director) and I think Windows 10 is great. My guess is you put off doing any Windows Updates as long as possible, so Windows finally forced the feature upgrade. You need this to keep Windows 10 on a supported build. Get the updates regularly and this won’t be a problem. The update from the 1903 build to 1909 was no bigger than the regular monthly update and took just a few minutes. You can set the “active hours” so Windows won’t install updates or reboot during those times. I’ve done hundreds of Windows feature upgrades and have never seen it take this long.
It’s unpardonably rude.
Hasn’t it been “the year of the Linux desktop” for like 15 or 20 years now?
I’ve used openSUSE and Ubuntu on my home laptop and they’re pretty good and easy to use these days, but Windows is still easier, and you can run real Office and use OneDrive and Your Phone and other cool stuff.
I think that the “getting on our nerves” aspect is a feature, not a bug. In any event, there doesn’t seem any way out, other than learning Linux.
I did the same migration back in 2012. I took the slow road and used both a Windows machine and a (then new) MacBook Pro for about six months. Having now ditched Windows for nearly 8 years, I don’t miss it one bit. And I’m still using that MBP laptop daily — and it runs Catalina with no issue. Sure, I did some minor upgrades to it (bumped the RAM to 16GB and installed an SSD), but I’ve not had to buy a new computer for 8 years. 8.
Make the leap away from Windows, if you can. It’s worth the work.
Eight years? Some of mine are old enough to drink legally in every state of the union. They’re running just fine, and they aren’t crappy, proprietary, overpriced Macs, either.