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posted by janrinok on Monday August 10 2015, @09:45PM   Printer-friendly

Microsoft's first cumulative update for Windows 10 - KB3081424 - is causing havoc for some users. How do I know this? Because I spent a good part of my Sunday morning dealing with it, that's how.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that the update puts affected systems into an endless crash loop. The update tries to install, gets to a certain point, fails, and then displays the unhelpful "We couldn't complete the updates, undoing the changes."

If it stopped there things wouldn't be too bad, but because Microsoft now forces updates onto Windows 10 users, the OS kept trying - and failing - to install the update, which in turn placed the system into a periodic crash/reboot loop that put quite a dent in my productivity.

To make matters worse, the tool that Microsoft released to hide or block toxic Windows 10 updates (as reported by my ZDNet colleague Ed Bott) didn't allow me to prevent this update from attempting to install. So I was forced to either abandon the machine until a fix was made available or try to fix it myself.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-cumulative-update-causes-reboot-loop-havoc-for-some-users/


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Francis on Monday August 10 2015, @10:07PM

    by Francis (5544) on Monday August 10 2015, @10:07PM (#220933)

    Makes me glad that my copy is running in a VM and that I backed up the original install image someplace safe. The longer I use Windows the more resistant I've gotten to making it my main install. Just too much downtime over the years because of bugs that should never have gotten into the release.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday August 11 2015, @01:16AM

      by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday August 11 2015, @01:16AM (#221025) Homepage Journal

      If I positively absolutely have to use Wndows because Wine doesn't support an app, I install it on a VM, run that app then shitcan the VM images.

      To the extent I do install Windows in a VM I don't configure its networking because Windows 2000 works better for the work I actually do thany any other releases.

      (With SP3.)

      If you want to keep a lid on Windows Update, block all its server IPs in your router. Download all updates manually, archive them forever so you dont have to download them ever again, then deploy updates at least a week after their release. Best to test in a VM before deployment. If you need totest on real boxen boot off a stick.

      --
      Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @01:29AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @01:29AM (#221029)

        SP3 or SP6? The last Win2k release was SP6, SP3 was the Win2k point release updating the EULA after XP came out (Been to long to remember anything else about it except that it fucked up what packages you could uninstall and made the 2k license more like the XP one.)

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by Hyper on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:25AM

      by Hyper (1525) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:25AM (#221063) Journal

      So, you plan to always run Windows 10 in a VM?
      Good choice. Not an option for everyone though...

      This type of update crash loop is not new.

      Microsoft still releaze toxic updates. One last year was quite bad, and that was for windows server. It prevented core ms system components like .NET from being installed.

      OK, yes, there is a funny side to that: Microsoft Helps World By Preventing Install Of Microsoft Software!

      Back on your desktop; just how many times will it take for MS to brick your machine or just ruin your config before you defenistrate Windows 10?

      • (Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:53AM

        by Francis (5544) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:53AM (#221072)

        Yep. Yes, you are right that it's not an option for everybody, but with a modern computer it's mostly gamers and people who have need of the full capacity of their computer that can't. I wound u

        My cheapo desktop from last summer has 8 cores and 8 gigs of RAM which is more than enough to run all my versions of Windows at the same time if I like. 2 copies of XP, 1 copy of Vista, 1 copy of 7 and 1 copy of 10, although I expect that the copy of 7 won't activate anymore after I took the upgrade.

        I could probably get it to activate under Xen, but I'm not sure what the update policy is going to be on that, seeing as it's the life of the machine and basically any change I've made to my current VM has rendered it unable to activate.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday August 11 2015, @11:45AM

      by VLM (445) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @11:45AM (#221215)

      I've had hardware trouble because some of the few things I still use windows for is stuff like USB eprom/flash burners and semi-exotic radio hardware (freq synthesizers and programming radios and stuff).

      That's not a printer port or a serial port, not as simple as telling WINE to talk to /dev/ttyUSB0 as COM1 or whatever. Maybe the piracy encouraging (because its easier to warez a copy than to use the legal dongle) dongles will get support in WINE and that'll help use weird USB hardware on WINE. I've been hearing that for over a decade of course.

      I have many removable drive trays and two shelves in the tower. Set the bios to only boot off the first SATA port never the second. Then just swap around the trays around as appropriate and backup the tiny little windows drive using freebsd and stash it on the network for safe keeping etc.

      Drive trays are fun. I have my normal daily driver freebsd for day to day work, a linux mostly used for minecraft FTB launcher and occasional legacy experiments, a windows steam only gaming drive which I rely on steam to backup, and a windows weird hardware support only drive which I actually do backup. I have a couple other trays with drives in them for various experiments of various level of permanence. I can boot off any of those or stick any of them in as a secondary drive and mess with it from the main OS. Its actually been awhile since I've backed up the windows hardware drive, months now, I should take a look at that...

      Maybe 20 years ago I was dual booting but as soon as I could afford trays I went tray because there's no way for windows to F up the linux partition or bootloader if the linux partition is on a shelf powered down a yard away, for example. Also its cheaper (usually) to buy half a dozen smaller drives than to buy one drive six times as big as "normal" capacity. Once you go tray, you don't go back. I had maybe a dozen PATA trays (and shelves) at one time and ended up tossing them all out for the SATA upgrade. Now that the world is all 2.5 inch SSD instead of larger rotating rust so I "could" toss my last rotating drives and upgrade again to smaller trays, but I'm not terribly motivated to spend the money to accomplish nothing.

      This is just my main desktop. I have two secondary machines also on my desk that only run freebsd and do ZFS RAID across two SSDs, etc. Stereotypically I'll have a web browser on the machine to my left, an editor or some app on the center and a command line to the right. I do experiment with CBSD clustering and I honestly can't remember which network services are running on which desktop. My poor basement fileserver is getting lonely, gradually running out of things to do other than be a giant fileserver / mythtv backend.

      Anyway I haven't found a better solution yet and am somewhat interested if anyone can top this.

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @10:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @10:13PM (#220937)

    Fuck you M$.
    I live Free.
    On Win7

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:17AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:17AM (#221147)

      "Fuck you M$.
      I live Free.
      On Win7"

      Win7 is open source now? Did I miss something?

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Bill Dimm on Monday August 10 2015, @10:19PM

    by Bill Dimm (940) on Monday August 10 2015, @10:19PM (#220939)

    I wonder if this is related to the Windows 7 reboot loop [krebsonsecurity.com] that seemed to hit computers that were set up to dual boot with Linux (and messed up 2 of my computers).

  • (Score: 2) by doublerot13 on Monday August 10 2015, @10:20PM

    by doublerot13 (4497) on Monday August 10 2015, @10:20PM (#220940)

    Thank goodness the updates aren't set to automatically install without asking anyone...

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Dunbal on Monday August 10 2015, @10:24PM

    by Dunbal (3515) on Monday August 10 2015, @10:24PM (#220943)

    You can't really complain when they gave you the OS for free now, can you? And even if you wanted to, be sure to re-read the licensing agreement where you waived all your rights by installing the OS.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Monday August 10 2015, @10:33PM

      by frojack (1554) on Monday August 10 2015, @10:33PM (#220948) Journal

      Sure I can, because it replaced an OS that worked.

      To be fair, on my Surface Pro (first edition), Windows 10 installed flawlessly, the cumulative patch installed flawlessly, and the
      OS seems to be quite stable, much more usable than 8.1.

      I've rooted around and turned off all the privacy issues that I can find, (or the ones that bothered me, at least.). I'm seriously thinking of getting rid of OneDrive all together. I can't use it for anything but the most generic manuals (pdfs) because I simply don't trust Microsoft to keep stuff in my OneDrive private. I'm looking for a client side encryption tool for OneDrive.

      The only thing I notice now is while the computer is sleeping (keyboard closed), it is warmer. Which means its doing something that it didn't use to do while sleeping.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @10:39PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @10:39PM (#220950)

        The only thing I notice now is while the computer is sleeping (keyboard closed), it is warmer. Which means its doing something that it didn't use to do while sleeping.

        Being a Skynet beacon takes a lot of cpu cycles.

      • (Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday August 10 2015, @10:40PM

        by Dunbal (3515) on Monday August 10 2015, @10:40PM (#220951)

        There's probably a limitation clause in the EULA that caps your possible damages at the price you paid for the OS. Gotcha.

      • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:08AM

        by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:08AM (#221054)

        The only thing I notice now is while the computer is sleeping (keyboard closed), it is warmer. Which means its doing something that it didn't use to do while sleeping.

        Check your settings on how updates are delivered. Apparently by default it uses your bandwidth (and by extension I assume your processor) to get updates from and send updates to other PC's on your network and other PC's on the internet. Aside from whatever it is sending to Microsoft...

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:28AM

          by frojack (1554) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:28AM (#221065) Journal

          That was the first thing I killed off.

          Netstat shows no such connections.
          Checking on my firewall, I see no unexplained connections.

          Still, its not sleeping as deeply as it used to. So it must be doing something.
          I'm going to leave it sleeping on battery to see if it behaves differently.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @03:48AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @03:48AM (#221091)

            The killer app is watching you :).

            It is part of Skynet and it will come online in 2017...

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by physicsmajor on Monday August 10 2015, @10:27PM

    by physicsmajor (1471) on Monday August 10 2015, @10:27PM (#220945)

    Why does anyone tolerate this in something they pay money for? I moved my parents to a LTS release of Linux Mint when they retired. Not only has it been rock solid stable, it also breathed new life into old hardware and has resulted in an unbelievable lowering in "family tech support" burden. The calls I do get, which are few and far between, generally can be fixed by applying bugfixes/updates and/or restarting the browser.

    They also aren't getting spied upon by the OS itself (see yesterday's story about the insane EULA for Win10), and don't have to worry about malware.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @10:49PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @10:49PM (#220958)

      You do realize that there are hardware and software products that just do not run on Linux of any stripe? Wine is not always an option.

      Linux is good - I have it on three on my computers and I installed it on my laptop in response to W10 upgrade issues. However, I am forced to keep two of the machines as dual boot with W10 and WinXP due to software and hardware problems in Linux.

      Linux is not the universal solution. Unfortunately.

      However, for those that do not have these issues, Linux is a very good alternative to Windows of any generation. I like Mint XFCE, but use Xubuntu instead - it cooperates better with some older hardware.

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:03AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:03AM (#221049)

        due to software and hardware problems in Linux

        It doesn't sound at all like the problem is "in Linux".
        The problem appears to be in your hardware supply chain--specifically *YOUR* choice of vendors.
        Clearly, *YOUR* RFQ did not specify the OS compatibility required.

        ...and have you contacted The Linux Driver Project?
        Last I heard, they had HUNDREDS of guys waiting in line to make hardware Linux-compatible. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [lwn.net]

        we have over 300 different people who have signed up to be a developer of a Linux driver, volunteering their talents and time to help Linux out.[...]

        Very few companies signed up for drivers.

        Not accepting gratis labor is a sign of a really shitty vendor.

        -- gewg_

        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:37AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:37AM (#221152)

          You're making the silly assumption that the hardware is new. IFF you get to spec out the hardware first - yes you can do that. If the hardware's already in place, replacing Windows with Linux solves nothing.

          But you also assume that all hardware is available in some Linux form. Not so - there are real life commercial products with no Linux support and _no_ Linux alternative. Some medical equipment and industrial is not available in Linux form - some is still stuck with WinXP. Yes it's a vendor problem, but that doesn't make Linux the solution.

          I know of one factory with assembly equipment running on an IBM 704 - which dates back to the '50s. If it works, don't mess with it. The cost of replacing all the equipment just so they could run a Linux PC would make no sense.

          You live in a Linux world. I live in the real world.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:13AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:13AM (#221162)

            I know of one factory with assembly equipment running on an IBM 704 - which dates back to the '50s. If it works, don't mess with it. The cost of replacing all the equipment just so they could run a Linux PC would make no sense.

            In that case they probably have an IT department to take care of it, with testing and QA before rolling anything into production, so they probably won't be bitten by forced updates to the consumer version of an OS that was just released.

      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:04AM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:04AM (#221051) Journal

        Linux is not the universal solution.

        Yes it is! And even if it is not, it would seem to be closer than Windoze. Near universal solution is better than an actual infinite loop. And as Linus Torvalds once said, "Linux can run an infinite loop in under 4.5 seconds!"

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:29AM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:29AM (#221066) Journal

        Yes, we realize that. In fact, that is part of the reason we like Linux - virus writers mostly fail to support Linux.

        The sane and rational thing to do, is to abandon those softwares and hardwares that don't support Linux. On Linux, you, your company, even your dog, can search for, and install software to your liking - and alter that software to make it more to your liking. On Windows, all you get is what some proprietary vendor offers - and you very seldom have any idea what that software is doing.

        • (Score: 3, Touché) by frojack on Tuesday August 11 2015, @04:39AM

          by frojack (1554) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @04:39AM (#221101) Journal

          You over state the case.

          Most people can NOT make their linux software better. Step outside of your own provincial little world and you find that not everyone is a programmer.

          Most proprietary software does exactly what it says it does. Those that don't cease to be purchased, and that pretty well kills them off.
          People can actually tell that their taxes weren't computed correctly, their email never goes through, or their cad drawings don't actually print.
          They can't fix the software, but they sure as hell can determine that it is doing what it sold as doing.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:53AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:53AM (#221157)

            Blackboard is a proprietary educational software system.
            Getting the vendor to patch bugs or add features is like pulling teeth.

            Moodle, OTOH, is FOSS.
            There are Moodle developers for hire across the landscape, ready to modify the software to your specifications.

            not everyone is a programmer

            As the above example demonstrates, that is not necessary.

            The concept of a bounty on a bug|missing feature is another paradigm available to FOSS.
            Closed code slams that door tight.

            Sometimes just mentioning a feature that you think would be cool to the app's development team can make a light bulb go on over their heads.
            (The LibreOffice crew comes immediately to mind.)
            With a proprietary software vendor?
            Good luck contacting any actual techies.

            -- gewg_

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:20AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:20AM (#221167)

            Most proprietary software does exactly what it says it does. Those that don't cease to be purchased, and that pretty well kills them off.

            People can actually tell that [...] their email never goes through

            You are contradicting yourself. That has not killed Exchange Server off yet.

            I used to work as a sysadmin, and I can tell you that every single time an email disappeared, an Exchange Server was involved. While email is not officially guaranteed anything, the protocol does make it really hard for a mail to get lost. The sending mail server does not remove a mail from the queue before the next hop mail server explicitly has acknowledged and taken responsibility for it.

            We used email for some automated data exchanges (no human involved, e.g. from one financial system to another), and the only times mails were lost... Exchange Server.

          • (Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:45AM

            by Anal Pumpernickel (776) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:45AM (#221177)

            Most people can NOT make their linux software better. Step outside of your own provincial little world and you find that not everyone is a programmer.

            Even non-programmers benefit when anyone can work on the software. For one thing, they can hire anyone to implement their desired changes. For another, people will often decide to contribute to Free Software of their own accord, and non-programmers and programmers alike benefit.

            Most proprietary software does exactly what it says it does.

            And perhaps more. Maybe it also contains backdoors, violates the users' privacy, and has other anti-features. Who knows?

            Those that don't cease to be purchased, and that pretty well kills them off.

            Unless the problems aren't so staggering as to chase them away completely. Microsoft and Apple like to get people 'addicted' to their software as early as possible so that they are dependent upon it. It would take a colossal amount of abuse and screw ups to chase normal people away. And that's what proprietary software does: It forces you to be dependent upon your masters as long as you use it.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:13PM

            by Nuke (3162) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:13PM (#221223)

            Most proprietary software does exactly what it says it does. Those that don't cease to be purchased

            Ah! the Grantham Grocer Fallacy [demon.co.uk]

            Ie, that in a free market the "best" emerges by competition, and the inferior goes to the wall; no political or other outside interference is necessary or desirable. ...... In this free market theory there is an assumption, usually unspoken, that the customers are all-knowing and all-wise.

            But they are not.

          • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday August 11 2015, @09:22PM

            by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 11 2015, @09:22PM (#221457) Journal

            I'm sorry, but in my experience FOSS software is more likely to perform as it claims to perform than is proprietary software. This despite the fact that most claims made by proprietary software vendors are so vague that they cannot be falsified. (The benefit of a marketing division.)

            That said, there were decades when I had niche needs that were not properly filled by FOSS software. That has become much less true over time. It's true that the place filled by Deneba Canvas is not properly filled even by a combination of the Gimp and Inkscape...but it's pretty close. And the spot filled by Finale is not properly filled even by a combination of Muse (MuseScore?) and Frescobaldi. But it's close.

            --
            Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday August 12 2015, @12:06AM

              by frojack (1554) on Wednesday August 12 2015, @12:06AM (#221501) Journal

              But don't forget that it only in the last several years that interoperability with Windows document formats finally arrived in the Linux world. Mostly in the form of ODF packages that were released for both windows, mac and linux.

              The arrival LO and OO allowed many many shops to solve the document handling issues, usually by abandoning MS Office all together. Its amazing how quickly most people can make that jump and never look back.

              These days you can survive in a microsoft shop running any modern distro, usually causing no inconvenience to yourself or your workmates. That wasn't always true. For a while, my day job specialized in the integration of Linux workstations and servers into windows shops. There were things that didn't work well, there were things that didn't work at all.

              Quickbooks (love it or hate it, it still rules) is still a nightmare, unless the users use the semi-functional on-line version, or run something under wine or in a VM.

              As a lone user, you might find some not-too-horrible combinations of packages that do what you want, (or almost), but as soon as your work product depends on others, and their's on your work product, things get tricky.

              --
              No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday August 11 2015, @11:00PM

            by darkfeline (1030) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @11:00PM (#221485) Homepage

            The average person can reasonably hire someone or ask a friend to add a feature or fix a bug in FREE software. It would likely be cheaper than, e.g., calling a plumber. That's why FREE software is so important; go read some of Richard Stallman's writings. He may be crazy or autistic, but his fears have proved true time and again.

            The same cannot be said for proprietary software.

            >Most proprietary software does exactly what it says it does.

            Not really. Having dealt with a lot of misbehaving software, I have observed that in reality the rate of "misbehavior" is more or less the same between free and proprietary software. The difference is that in free software, it is much easier to fix. Either someone else has already fixed it for you, you can fix it yourself, or, as I note previously, you can hire or ask someone to do it for you. Believe it or not, most FOSS devs are happy to improve FOSS software as long as you ask nicely.

            --
            Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:09AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:09AM (#221160)

        You do realize that there are hardware and software products that just do not run on Linux of any stripe? Wine is not always an option.

        These days, there are more hardware and software that just do not run on Windows.

        My brother had to get a new scanner after updating to Windows 7. The old one works fine on Linux. A colleague had the same problem with a printer. Works fine on Linux.

        Lately, I have been looking for a TURN server for Windows. We make an app using WebRTC at work, and we are a pure Windows shop on the server side. Yet, we have to have this one Linux machine that nobody updates (the guy who installed it doesn't work here anymore), because for WebRTC we need a TURN server. Several hours of Googling by several people has turned up nothing.

        We've also been looking for an XMPP server. Not some Cygwin crap that needs to be started manually after reboot, something that comes with an MSI installer and a standard Windows Service. Something that even a Windows guy could install (we are a small shop, with no sysadmins on staff).

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by termigator on Monday August 10 2015, @11:08PM

      by termigator (4271) on Monday August 10 2015, @11:08PM (#220963)

      Unfortunately, working with Windows pays the bills. For the project I am on, the customer runs Windows, so the software has to run on it (and run in IE, ugh). For my personal systems, I run linux, but for work that pays, have to run Windows where I install Cygwin and other OSS software that I am productive with.

      As for Win10, I installed in an evaluation version in a VM. I only need it to test the software project I work on. Primary work (that pays the bills) environment is Win7.

      Crossing my fingers that the company IT department does not force us to upgrade to Win10.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday August 11 2015, @04:49AM

        by frojack (1554) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @04:49AM (#221104) Journal

        Crossing my fingers that the company IT department does not force us to upgrade to Win10.

        In my day job, where we knew months ago that our software would work under 10, we still Like Windows7, but have no objection to Windows 10.
        In fact, for end users we prefer it, because Microsoft has made it harder for end users to arbitrarily decide to install software in some random ass location, and started protecting the root of the drive (just like linux).

        Everything we use, and everything we write works just fine under 10.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:29AM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:29AM (#221170) Homepage
      Good on you. Mint isn't for me, but if there are comfortable and convenient distros for people not like me, then that's good for linux generally (similarly, mopeds on the roads are good for harley-riding hells angels, as the more two-wheelers there are the better it is for all of them).

      I had a funny "compatibility" issue with an old notebook I just bought. In Windows (no idea which, I wouldn't know one from any other) I could do only panel (lo-res), only hdmi (a few different resolutions, including quite hi-res), or cloned displays (pinned to the panel's resolution). One slightly botched linux install later (I had intended to leave the Windows as dual bootable, /just in case/, but failed), using xrandr I can have the panel and the hdmi simultaniously and independently running together - and the hdmi has about 20 different resolutions available to it. And this is on a laptop which allegedly has notoriously very poor graphics support under linux (a GMA Intel chip with an IMG graphics processor on it. I bought it because it was cheap, and I was a bit "tired"). So "very poor" is apparently almost better than what MS Windows provides. I say almost, as the hardware scaling of video overlays doesn't (yet) work (because IMG are incompetent tossers, and I knew this is a demonstrable fact already because I've been one of their clients), which means that I need to set the HDMI screen to the closest resolution, and let the telly do the hardware scaling (which it does perfectly well).
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @11:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @11:10PM (#220964)

    I do like the ring of that.

  • (Score: 2) by seeprime on Monday August 10 2015, @11:21PM

    by seeprime (5580) on Monday August 10 2015, @11:21PM (#220972)

    Thanks to the overconfidence of Microsoft forcing upgrades, our PC repair business is getting busier. Since more new machines are being upgraded daily, without the users making a system image first, the work will keep on coming in. We requested that each customer make a system image, using Macrium Reflect, prior to doing the Windows 10 upgrade. Many don't want to take the extra half hour to do so.

    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Tuesday August 11 2015, @03:11AM

      by Francis (5544) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @03:11AM (#221077)

      I'm not sure it's overconfidence so much as a lack of faith in the endusers to actually install the updates. The thing I don't get is why they're doing it for more than just security updates. Adding new features like this is just asking for trouble.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @11:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @11:23PM (#220974)

    Remember back in July 2014 when Microsoft laid off about 12,500 employees? http://www.zdnet.com/article/beyond-12500-former-nokia-employees-who-else-is-microsoft-laying-off/ [zdnet.com]

    Among those were "dedicated testers" in the Windows group. You're welcome.

    Also, consider the previous release dates for the previous major consumer versions of Windows (via Wikipedia):

    Windows 7: Release To Manufacturing: July 22, 2009. General Availability: October 22, 2009.
    Windows 8: Release To Manufacturing: August 1, 2012. General Availabilty: October 26, 2012.

    Normally, "Release to Manufacturing" is a code freeze where Microsoft ships a gold master to the PC OEMs (Dell, Lenovo, etc.) so they can then perform their own hardware testing and qualifications, which takes about 2 months. In the interest of a misguided attempt at "agile development" ( http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/how-microsoft-dragged-its-development-practices-into-the-21st-century/ [arstechnica.com] ), Microsoft decided to make some ultra-aggressive changes:

    1. Change the release schedule to make Windows 10 available to the public on RTM release.
    2. Offer the "Free upgrade for a year" program to jump-start the adoption of the newer OS and counter another Vista malaise (so far it's working; StatCounter is measuring Windows 10 browse activity at 3.5%: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/09/windows_10_climbs_to_355_per_cent_market_share_win_81_dips/ [theregister.co.uk] ).
    3. Make security updates mandatory (except for Professional and Enterprise customers) and constant (i.e.: no more "Patch Tuesday", just a constant flood of half-broken updates).
    4. Make driver updates mandatory and automatic, overriding administrator discretion, and fighting with vendor-supplied update mechanisms (there's already been an ugly situation with NVidia driver updaters being preempted by Windows 10's updater).

    This is all a giant burning runaway train of a situation, and the press isn't going to provide adequate coverage until it starts setting other things on fire. This reboot loop is the first, and is frankly an amateurish failure of testing (Windows should be able to handle unresolvable SIDs, as they occur all the time in Active Directory domains when old users are deleted). This is almost as bad as last August's patch that triggered a Blue Screen of Death if there were shortcuts in the Fonts folder ( http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/blue-screen-stop-0x50-after-applying-update/6da4d264-02d8-458e-89e2-a78fe68766fd?auth=1 [microsoft.com] ).

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @11:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @11:44PM (#220983)

      Well, they did appoint someone to CEO that looks like a hipster that's impersonating Steve Jobs. So no surprises there at all.