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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
No. This is an automatic program which scans your photos, then picks them out and does things to them. You cannot turn it off. You can only delete the photos, but you have to remember to recover them.
I’ve been hostage to Microsoft for a long time, primarily because the world of remote television is PC based. (Apple does not play well with others.) Switchers, video routers, graphics, video playback – it all runs on Windows.
That said, the last “upgrade” burned me badly. Adobe has switched PhotoShop/Creative Suite to a subscription service instead of a software purchase. My copy of PS will not load on the newest Windows. There is no level of compatibility mode that will let the install program run. Had I not had it already loaded on my laptop when the update ran I’d be screwed.
“Excuse”? That’s got nothing to do with it. Microsoft know that every problem you have with your computer will be blamed on them. I recall a round table discussion in Seattle where we were discussing the hardware compatibility list. One of the VPs of Product Development said “If a third party video driver causes Windows to blue screen, who does the user blame? Windows, and Microsoft.” He said that was why they were spending so much money and time to get the HCL as tight as possible, even going so far as to help hardware manufacturers write drivers for their products.
Microsoft doesn’t care if you go to bed stupid. But they do care if you go to bed blaming them for a problem caused by Dell, or Nvidia, or Adobe.
If MS would at least quit with the “feature upgrades” and stick to security patches then users would be substantially happier. One of the reasons people delay the Win10 patches is because MS cannot stick to fixing things and has to keep tellings its user base “we know what you want better than you do.” As someone who has to also manage my company’s IT, the Win10 “feature upgrades”, or FU’s as I more readily call them, are a constant detriment. They move things around, re-enable things I had disabled, and cause no end of work delays.
There’s an adage in flying an aircraft: fly the Plane, not the radios. Windows is a means to an end, not an end in itself – I’m at my computer to do work (fly), not to have to figure out every few months what they’ve broken or moved this time.
Didn’t know anyone was till running OS/2.
Of course I’m going to blame Microsoft if they do a mandatory upgrade that causes things from Dell, Nvidia, or Adobe to stop working. Having mandatory upgrades is not going to fix the problem of 3rd party software going blotto at times of their choosing.
I’m sorry, but that is all MS’s own fault. They created a monster that had no controls and now they complain when third parties have no standards.
Thanks for your input. To each his own.
Maybe four years ago, an 80 year old girlfriend of mine had Apple ruin her music playlists when she upgraded her phone. She spent three days doing a work around. It involved over one thousand songs and pieces of music.
And more than likely, if one of her grandkids was a Silicon valley inhabitant, she would have gotten the easy-peasey workaround. The engineers in SV forget that the rest of us do not have a circle of friends that can remind us to do this, or that or explain the latest work around.
Around the house I wear a jumpsuit. No matter how much heavy stuff is in my pockets, my pants never fall down.
This laptop is less than a year old and I had made no changes to the settings other than the display; there had been several Windows upgrades of the kind that ask you to restart. I don’t have a problem with those. They don’t take away my use of the computer while they do whatever they are doing.
I loved OS/2.
I used OS/2 way back when till Windows eclipsed it. Geoworks, too.
This has long been an issue with electronic/computer technology – the people who design and implement it seem not to stay aware that most of their users consider the technology to be a tool incidental to life, not the focus of life as it seems to be for the people of Silicon Valley.
Argh. What an unwelcome memory. Both of the OS, and of my former employee, the mass-murderer, who used to call later versions of it “OS/2 Wrap.” (It was actually OS/2 Warp.)
Next thing you know, we’ll be talking about Token Ring Networks.
PS: Also reminds me of the guy who used to call what we’re talking about as “feature updates” here, “enchantments.” Somehow, I think that’s a better word than the one he was actually searching for (enhancements).
And this reminded me (gosh, I’m old), of my years selling PCs, right from the start, between 1983 and 1987. IBM was trying to get into the home market, and we began every year with the campaign slogan, “This is the year of the home PC!” After a couple of years, we adapted it to, “This is the year of the home PC! It always has been, and it always will be!”
In reality, it took quite a while. And despite such groundbreaking products as the PCjr (snark) and the half-baked chiclet keyboard, IBM never really made a dent there.
My wife did too.
It was like Betamax – a superior product, but one that died due to the opposition’s superior number of users . . .
With the VCR wars, it was Sony’s decision not to degrade the picture quality by slowing down the recording head speeds to make the tapes last longer that was the killer. Panasonic, JVC and the rest realized people would accept a crappy image if it meant they could record six hours of video on one tape instead of just two. The decision made Betacams the default devices for professional users of first generation portable video (including most TV stations), but the refusal to compromise cost them the consumer market. Sometimes you’ve got to know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em.
Which was literally what Steve Jobs said, but it doesn’t bother anyone.
I suppose you’ll blame them for your corns, too.
Those are all nonsense words.
I don’t remember who mentioned Chromebook earlier. This popped up on my tech news aggregator.
If I develop corns from dealing with their upgrades, you can be sure I’ll blame Microsoft.
They make sense to me, though they are not the exact words I’d use.
No they’re not.
It’s been a longstanding criticism of Apple that they have a system that is more difficult for application providers to circumvent, and a lot of ignorant people believed couldn’t be customized. MS operating systems were known for having widely variable interfaces depending on the vagaries of the software programmer.
For a long time, MS has been much more vulnerable to hackers and viruses because they are very sloppy in how they created their operating system.
So, no, they aren’t nonsense words.
Hey, I encountered OS/2 in the wild as late as 2007!
Of course it was running Amtrak’s ticketing system…
And had crashed…
which nearly made me miss my train.
Only my carpal tunnel.
I loved my Beta! The tapes were smaller, and the slow motion was super smooth compared to VHS. When the DVD format war broke out, I waited until I saw which would emerge victorious. Only then did I buy my first Blu-ray player . . .
Same here — I got a stereo Betamax player back in 1984, and hooked it into the stereo tuner, since the local cable company (Warner/Amex back then) was simulcasting some of their channels like HBO and MTV with stereo FM signals. Still have some of the tapes stored, though eventually the machine wore out (I think you can still convert the Beta tapes to DVDs for a price, though other than something special — like the ‘Han shoots first’ version of “Star Wars” with a stereo soundtrack — most of the other stuff is on the Interwebs).
I would kill to get the theatrical versions of the first three Star Wars movies (episodes 4-6). The Director’s Cut versions are a travesty, and Han shooting first was the right thing to do!