Microsoft's October Update Failure Is Holding the Whole PC Industry Back

Megalith

Megalith

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It is now November, but Microsoft’s October 2018 Update is nowhere to be found. ZDNet’s Ed Bott has accused Redmond of keeping Windows users in the dark, but the missing update is problematic for PC manufacturers, too: at least a handful of new hardware being released for the holidays include components that are only supported on the October 2018 Update. Additionally, ray tracing on RTX GPUs is somewhat of a no-go partly due to Microsoft’s blunder.

...the holiday shopping season is nearly here, and these PC manufacturers have to release this hardware. So Microsoft has let them release it with the older version of Windows that isn’t officially supported and hasn’t been properly tested. Not only are new PCs shipping with an unsupported version of Windows, Microsoft is also holding back the PC gaming industry. Gamers who purchased an NVIDIA RTX card will be disappointed, and both NVIDIA and EA won’t be able to trumpet and advertise this new technology at the game’s launch.
 
Dang, that's going to suck for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales if Microsoft doesn't get this shit sorted out in rapid fashion.

I just did a fresh install of Pro x64 1809 on an older laptop. No issues so far, but I haven't even installed any of my usual programs yet (Adobe Reader, WinRAR, Core Temp, etc).

We'll see how it goes...
 
Wow I had no idea this Oct update had all this need for new hardware, well I know the RTX stuff was. I thought it was another general update from M$. Bill Gates probably wishes he never retired.
 
Motley said:
Wow I had no idea this Oct update had all this need for new hardware, well I know the RTX stuff was. I thought it was another general update from M$. Bill Gates probably wishes he never retired.
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The main issue here is vendor validation, they are doing their a lot of their testing with only the latest version of Windows 10 and are ignoring older versions of 10, 8.1 and 7. The RTX ray tracing stuff though is dependent on a lot of DX 12 stuff that's only in 1809.
 
I blame the pc manufacturers for writing code for components that is not backwards compatible. You can't blame MS for that.
 
DejaWiz said:
Dang, that's going to suck for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales if Microsoft doesn't get this shit sorted out in rapid fashion.

I just did a fresh install of Pro x64 1809 on an older laptop. No issues so far, but I haven't even installed any of my usual programs yet (Adobe Reader, WinRAR, Core Temp, etc).

We'll see how it goes...
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The last month in the PC world has personally been interesting as I seem to bought into double trouble in October with the 1809 update and a pair of 2080 Tis. Fortunately for me (while knocking on wood) I've not had any major issues with either and 1809 has actually helped with battery life on my Surface devices.

Clearly the update model for Windows 10 has too many issues, be they truly deep technical problems or mostly ones of perception.
 
Z3r0k3wl said:
I blame the pc manufacturers for writing code for components that is not backwards compatible. You can't blame MS for that.
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Red herring. This stuff is squarely in Microsoft's court, since most of the high-profile issues that have plagued the October release were related to user space bugs; their unzip utility and file deletion due to user settings.
 
It makes no sense that the bugs it had would stop pc manufacturers from installing it on fresh systems... The only bugs I know about were one time issues that happened during upgrade. Fresh install wouldn't matter.

WTH other issues are there? I Manually upgraded to it within 1 or 2 days of its first release, no issues. The article stating it is "unstable" is a bit of a reach, and probably just clickbait.

All hype-y article, not much real substance, and 0 evidence from everything I've read as well as my personal experience.
 
naib said:
This entire mess is just commical
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Really more tragic than anything, because it's users and customers that are the biggest losers here. The root problem feels like an absentee CEO where Windows is concerned. He has his head in the cloud, literally and figuratively, and you never hear him advocating for Windows anymore in his public appearances or interviews. He got rid of Terry Myerson and swept Windows under the rug of a couple other divisions; there is no single Windows manager/advocate/champion anymore. Belfiore kinda sorta has a hand in it, but not exclusively, it's in his periphery.

Maybe history will vindicate Nadella and there's no place for Windows in his 5-20 year plan, as he's happily counting Azure-Azure-Azure profits and making Android/iPhone apps. Thurrott has suggested he already decided to pivot away from Windows internally years ago, but fuck if there must not be better way to manage a decline, perceptually or actually. Negative headlines are bad for the company no matter what, even if the chilling effect isn't immediately apparent in today's stock price.

I only hope the backlash creates enough of a stink that even Nadella can no longer ignore it. Dona Sarkar needs to be the first person shown the door - how she still draws a paycheck is one for the ages.
 
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heatlesssun said:
The last month in the PC world has personally been interesting as I seem to bought into double trouble in October with the 1809 update and a pair of 2080 Tis. Fortunately for me (while knocking on wood) I've not had any major issues with either and 1809 has actually helped with battery life on my Surface devices.

Clearly the update model for Windows 10 has too many issues, be they truly deep technical problems or mostly ones of perception.
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Glad to hear about the extended battery life. The previously mentioned laptop that I just installed 1809 on was done purely off the battery from 100%...after the install, all the Windows updates, and one manual driver download and install, it still had 65% left while showing about 2h 40m run time remaining (performance slider all the way to the left when on battery power). This is on the original battery with 93% of its original capacity...calibrated before fresh install.

I'm interested to see if real-world use over the next couple/few weeks shows a measurable increase for battery life on this particular laptop.
 
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It's just AMAZING to me that nVidia can't fit everything they want and more into a 500+MB video card driver. The whole Windows 10 OS is only about 4GB. That's just pure BS about the hardware waiting on the OS. Bullet items, checklists and marketing fluff. BS.
 
As if there is anything RTX available at the moment. ZDNET's credibility is a joke.
 
Poseur said:
It's just AMAZING to me that nVidia can't fit everything they want and more into a 500+MB video card driver. The whole Windows 10 OS is only about 4GB. That's just pure BS about the hardware waiting on the OS. Bullet items, checklists and marketing fluff. BS.
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It's almost certainly the optimizations done for games over the past few decades piling up. Point being, it's not just pure drivers. The whole industry is kind of backwards because a major game gets released, so companies like Nvidia and AMD rewrite and add on their drivers specifically to make those games run faster. It get cumulative and is just not a great practice for long term stability in general.
 
This is the end of the world as we know it... and I feel fine...
 
Hehe, the article is about the wrong company... He should concentrate his efforts on the RMA edition cards rather than the shit show M$ updates have been lately …:D
 
heatlesssun said:
The main issue here is vendor validation, they are doing their a lot of their testing with only the latest version of Windows 10 and are ignoring older versions of 10, 8.1 and 7. The RTX ray tracing stuff though is dependent on a lot of DX 12 stuff that's only in 1809.
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Microsoft does testing? Evidence says otherwise...
 
Poseur said:
It's just AMAZING to me that nVidia can't fit everything they want and more into a 500+MB video card driver. The whole Windows 10 OS is only about 4GB. That's just pure BS about the hardware waiting on the OS. Bullet items, checklists and marketing fluff. BS.
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yes they can...

Code: 
 ls -lh /lib/modules/4.19.0-gentoo/video/nvidia*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  82K Oct 27 17:02 /lib/modules/4.19.0-gentoo/video/nvidia-drm.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  21M Oct 27 17:02 /lib/modules/4.19.0-gentoo/video/nvidia.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.3M Oct 27 17:02 /lib/modules/4.19.0-gentoo/video/nvidia-modeset.ko

ls -lh /usr/portage/distfiles/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-410.73.run 
-rw-rw-r-- 1 portage portage 103M Oct 23 21:07 /usr/portage/distfiles/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-410.73.run
Thats a 100meg download producing 22meg driver.
Just because windows requires a tonne of rubbish doesn't mean a vendor producing for that platform always produces bloat
 
Master_shake_ said:
Windows as a service working great.
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Not really sure so much when it comes to this specific thing. They way this is working out, they would have had to release an entirely new OS to support RTX and we all know how Nvidia would do with that. (Not well for the first year or so.)
 
tordogs said:
I got no free upgrade--paid hard cash for the copy of Windows Pro--and continue to be a stupid beta tester for MS!
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Well, I do not consider anyone as stupid or dumb, ever. That said, if you continue being an unpaid beta tester in protest, maybe it is time to move to something else?
 
I updated my 3 laptops to 1809 the other day. wasn't worried about data loss as there isn't anything really stored on them. I hardly use them, I usually turn them on to install Windows Updates, then put them away, lol.
 
Zepher said:
I updated my 3 laptops to 1809 the other day. wasn't worried about data loss as there isn't anything really stored on them. I hardly use them, I usually turn them on to install Windows Updates, then put them away, lol.
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OMG! You're the bull's eye in the M$ target demographic! Congrats! :ROFLMAO:
 
It's only holding the windows experience up.

Switch to Ubuntu Linux today and stop wasting your time with this garbage.

Would you like to know more?
 
BloodyIron said:
It's only holding the windows experience up.

Switch to Ubuntu Linux today and stop wasting your time with this garbage.

Would you like to know more?
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No dude, just no. As long as you need to knock down one thing to build your own up, you own is going no where. Try to see if the OS can stand on it's own, without saying: "Yes but, it's not Windows!"
 
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