Microsoft should be totally ashamed - W10 uninvited massive 2 hour update is CR#P

debitcardmayhem

I am so sorry you have had a bad experience with Windows 10 or 7 vista or XP or even linux mint. When I return from my holiday and can use a real screen as opposed an apple iscreen I will give your rant it's full attention, so sorry that MSE , Microsoft and others have caused so much trouble. Oh and when I come back your rant will be top of my list of things to Satya :beer:

agarnett

AndyPix wrote: »

You must understand that when you shout about your skills but dont know something as basic as that,
it makes you look a bit silly

Says you.

I made no claim that I was an IT professionally qualified person, simply that I am highly skilled with computers and carry in my head a lot of knowledge - most of it self taught, but not quite all. No I would not be ideal material for the responsibility of running a network in a corporate environment - I can leave that to pointy heads like you. However, I do nøt have to be professionally qualified to be highly skilled in computing matters as discussed in forums like this, and I do not need to know all the buzzwords, jargon and your urban dictionary either.

It is not silly for me or anyone else to fail to know exactly what you mean by your useless jargon when you dump it in a public forum read by non pros. I find out these things when I need to. You on the other hand as the king of your little castle seem uneasy about users who can identify real problems like the serious ones you chose to deny in your contributions, choosing instead to smear me with the suggestion I had mucked up my own machine.

Is there a good reason for you still being here? Aren't there some real pointy-head forums you could inhabit instead?


Read the title of this thread again and then assess your own contribution to the well-being of the majority of MSE'ers since you first read it.

fenlander_uk

'Scuse me for butting in, but how will we know when someone wins this game?

Fightsback

fenlander_uk wrote: »

'Scuse me for butting in, but how will we know when someone wins this game?

Two falls, two submissions or a knockout.

agarnett

Feel free to but in and question, fenlander - looks to me like its pretty obvious that my original assertions are no longer being questioned, just my gall in telling pros where they can stick their unjustified smears against the messenger and their obfuscating jargon.

Question now is, how much of a mess have Microsoft actually made with this staged rollout?

We can read that insiders who enrolled for beta versions got their upgrades first and we can also read that they have probably already received partially corrective updates - there's mention in another thread of a 332GB update being installed, but that was for some other unforeseen fault with "freezing" I think.

We can read that users like me are currently in partial limbo until MS/Kaspersky come up with a fix for antivirus incompatibilities. I guess that means we shouldn't use Microsoft Edge or use our Webcams until that's fixed? No.one is really saying, are they?


However we might assume that many of the supposed 350 million total worldwide W10 installations (that's what I read was the estimate) have still not yet received the Anniversary Update. I wonder how many that actually is? I guess Microsoft will just press on regardless, which suggests that Microsoft are the only winners if that means they get to do what they want to according to their targets, irrespective of the mucked up installations they might cause to persist until they and others have the resources to fix the now well known issues which some diehards choose even now to deny.

stockton_2

Hi agarnett,


I am just an ordinary computer user and I can tell you that a lot of the techies on here are very good at giving advice and keeping people up to date with Windows 10. For example, in another previous thread, I think it was NiftyDigits who showed various ways in which to stop updates and particularly the anniversary thingy. Hence I have never experienced the problem that you have on any of the machines that I am responsible for.

I think your posts have been some-what thought provoking, challenging and undoubtedly "tongue in cheek". There were just two points that were not quite clear to me. In #31 you say that you always keep plenty of head room on your o/s partition, nearly 300 Gb. What is the purpose of that? My o/s drive is just over 112 Gb and that leaves 74 Gb empty. Is that not enough?

Also, in #47 you seem to say that when you fly with your chosen airline you hope you will be the first to notice if the engines don't work pretty well. What would be the advantage of knowing that, at say 20,000 feet altitude:D
Perhaps I misunderstood you.

agarnett

stockton wrote: »

Hi agarnett,

Sorry to hear you missed out on the gym. As a "third-ager" myself I think it takes some courage to go to the gym. Last time I went, the faces on the gym instructors dropped and I just knew they were thinking "I hope this old geezer doesn't have a heart attack, on our watch".

They might think that now, but it is surprising how if we survive the first month or two and get the surplus weight off and the cardio performance on the up without popping anything, how even we old geezers can actually start shaping up all-round quite nicely

Lately I've been using the cross trainer on maximum settings and the bike too, the rowing machine and some various weight machines. However, my son visited recently and decreed that I was ready for some various instruction on free weights to build up my pecs, shoulders and triceps I think he said, as he was assisting me in developing 'my form' (that's jargon for how well I controlled my exercise actions in the correct planes with the right breathing apparently!) So that's what I should have been doing yesterday!

He is certainly in decent shape - it clearly has worked for him!

I am just an ordinary computer user and I can tell you that a lot of the techies on here are very good at giving advice and keeping people up to date with Windows 10. For example, in another previous thread, I think it was NiftyDigits who showed various ways in which to stop updates and particularly the anniversary thingy.

Well good for NiftyDigits, and I wish I'd seen that too, but unfortunately I was caught cold yesterday morning. I don't know if I'd have been able to stop the upgrade purely with the knowledge that I must have downloaded something that was 4GB on Saturday ... however, as you have heard, I knew nothing of the Anniversary Upgrade until it had started and insisted I mustn't interrupt it!

Hence I have never experienced the problem that you have on any of the machines that I am responsible for.

Glad you didn't - does that mean you have not yet upgraded? What about normal background critical updates? Are you deferring those too?

I think your posts have been some-what thought provoking, challenging and undoubtedly "tongue in cheek".

Undoubtedly ... oops the tongue keeps popping out!

There were just two points that were not quite clear to me. In #31 you say that you always keep plenty of head room on your o/s partition, nearly 300 Gb. What is the purpose of that?

Almost all windows o/s I have used previously start slowing down and misbehaving as the drive gets filled up. Simply put, and I don't mind admitting I am not sure exactly how it works in W10, Windows always used to use disk space for "virtual memory" in order to function smoothly. If the drive starts filling up, it seems to struggle. My Asus came with a single hard drive pre-configured as two partitions C: and D was empty and had 575GB free. C: was configured at about 400GB. For the last five years or so, I have simply got into the habit on any PCI am working on of installing Program Files for new Apps as well as all my documents into if I can. I have seen quite a few OS partitions become "clogged" and fragmented and they perform remarkably well again after cleaning up the partitions. So the 300GB is no magic figure, just what it happens to be right now on mine. It'd be less than 200GB now after only a year if I'd not been using

My o/s drive is just over 112 Gb and that leaves 74 Gb empty. Is that not enough?

I really am not very sure these days what is enough except to say that operating systems and Apps have grown stupidly fast since I bought my first PC with a 170MB hard drive and 2MB of RAM! I think that was approx 1991 or 1992? I remember I had Microsoft Access 1.1 installed from 1.44MB floppies! Believe it or not, that included the full suite of Microsoft Office as was, with three different versions of Basic behind Excel, Access and Word Macros!

Microsoft eventually came up with VBA code for use with all three but they didn't save any disk space!

74 GB is not a lot of space thesedays but it might be plenty of headroom for all I know. I'd be concerned if I noticed I had started eating into it in any significant way for example by downloading multi-GB movies from Netflix or wherever.

Also, in #47 you seem to say that when you fly with your chosen airline you hope you will be the first to notice if the engines don't work pretty well. What would be the advantage of knowing that, at say 20,000 feet altitude:D
Perhaps I misunderstood you.

Ah yes, more on the correct exercises and planes? Well the pilots of course are usually locked into the pointy end where it is a bit quiet, so unless they are truly atune to their vibration measuring instruments etc. they may not be the first to know that Engine #1 is making a funny noise and seemingly issuing wisps of smoke. I wasn't suggesting I hoped I'd be the first to notice, more that as a passenger, I probably would be, as I have a pretty good idea what they are supposed to sound and smell like (a bit like as a computer user I have a pretty good idea when an upgrade is installing like it might be a pile of proverbial). Yes I did say smell. Not many realise that cabin air is drawn from the bypass air that passes through the outer part of the engine;)

It is a little known fact that one of the oldest forums on t'internet was/is the AVSIG forum - originally residing on CompuServe as a BBS I think. Pilots were (surprise surprise) some of the first to truly grasp personal computing and the internet with both hands!

At 20000 feet however, and back in the aircraft you've put me in, on most routes I use that would imply we'd either be just over half way up or almost half way down. Either way of course those are the most challenging phases of a flight. Discovery time and correct analysis in such phases is of the essence if things aren't going quite right as was unfortunately demonstrated with British Midland Flight 92 some 27 years ago, which contrary to urban folklore, was not entirely or even primarily down to pilot error. A few things got changed after that. Microsoft take note.

So if I truly noticed something that worried me I guess I'd quickly leave my seat unless the belt sign was on and have a quick word with No.1 cabin crew up front about my fears, urging her to notify the captain that things were perhaps not entirely normal down the back and being very clear about what I had seen and heard and smelled and in exactly which engine!

No#1 could even ask the captain if he or she had smelled anything funny too!


Having done my duty, and if matters were still progressing in a pear-shaped fashion, I'd hurry back to my seat and tighten my belt, then break all the rules, much to the eternal consternation of AndyPix I am sure who would prefer I just sat quiet with hands on my head and relied upon the VSS no doubt already built into my seat, and send some text messages to loved ones containing the usual last wishes, plus of course any useful key observations that the accident investigators might use to prevent other MSE'ers suffering on another flight . Call it prudent manual 'on the fly' (PMOTF) backup if you like where PM means personal messaging and I'd rather not say what the rest means

You see, at 20,000 feet SMSs might just get through and even if they didn't, the phone would still keep trying until we had descended below phone mast height when the phone might finally get a message out before break up alongwith everything, and everyone, else unless we had meantime managed to find a decent runway on the way down

Hopefully that gives you some further clues as to my truly selfless and benevolent character

Jivesinger

agarnett wrote: »

Almost all windows o/s I have used previously start slowing down and misbehaving as the drive gets filled up.

There is a solution to this.

You have a version of Windows which re-installs the complete OS every year or so.

This means the big ever-increasing heap of updates, which is an issue for Windows 7 users whose systems maintain a long list of every update for the last few years, stops being a problem.

And guess what... this is exactly what the Windows 10 Anniversary Update mentioned in post #1 is doing, and why it's such a big download - it's a complete reinstall of the OS, and the list of updates drops to zero again* . When it works, it should make a better and quicker system.

Incidentally I've no idea where the thing about needing 300GB free comes from. Sure, computers slow down when the system drive is nearly full, but 10% free space is reasonable, and on a large drive 30GB rather than 300GB would be enough. Windows 10 will run reasonably on a 32GB tablet or netbook which obviously won't have 300GB free.

Having said that... I do sort of agree that Microsoft aren't making their update process reliable or controllable enough.

If Microsoft gives users decreased control, then they are effectively saying 'you don't need to worry your pretty little heads about updates', but that should means reliability increases in return, because it's harder for the user to protect themselves against the consequences. I'm not seeing that increased reliability and there a number of issues in the Anniversary Update which users seem to have come across. Most users won't see these problems, but for the unlucky few it's at the very least a waste of their time.

* well, it would if there were no new problems.

agarnett

Well that I think is enlightening take on it all, Jivesinger, and kind of puts W10 into its own context - a brand new operating system every year.

I don't think I'd mind too much if Microsoft had given us a choice on when to install it, because as you say, for some of us at least (all Asus users? All Kaspersky users? All webcam users?) Microsoft's keenness to get build 1607 out has been/will result in a waste of our time.

If I might add, it also has introduced uncertainty that some of us didn't have last week or last month about whether antivirus like Kaspersky is working, and also the very little written about question about whether our webcams are also currently a vulnerability because Microsoft has deliberately changed things so multiple Apps (including unwanted/hidden ones?) can use the webcam simultaneously.

As for that free 300GB of headroom on my OS partition - forget it - it is merely what I currently still have on mine after a year of W10 on a 2015 laptop, and which I have opportunity not to reduce until I am forced to, should I use up storage in my other partition. Suffice to say, I won't be storing 100 1.5GB mkv movie files on my C: drive anytime soon!

Might make an interesting experiment though on another day, copy a whole bunch of large files across, to leave say 75GB as a start point, then measure relative performance as each extra 1.5GB movie is added until it becomes intolerable.

Perhaps I could start with a rough experiment and use copies of Anniversary Update install files instead - they're chunkier at over 4GB it seems!

John_Gray

fenlander_uk wrote: »

'Scuse me for butting in, but how will we know when someone wins this game?

There are several possibilities, at least some of which are:

1. agarnett gets bored with writing reams and reams of assorted self-promotion, invective and ignorance, finds something productive to do with his time rather than trolling, and goes away :j :beer:
2. people get so tired of his antics that he gets reported by multiple people and gets banned
3. nobody replies to him, and thus the feeding of the troll stops - this is the least likely, I'm afraid

Perhaps there should be a poll?