Is Windows 10 20H2 the worst windows yet?

I think the biggest Windows debacle was Windows Me. I did have a lot of troubles with that. Loved Windows 2000 and Windows 7. I even liked 8 once I found an addon to get the Start button back.
 
Fuck no. Windows 10 20h2 is by far, not even remotely the worst Windows version ever. Try Windows 95 (pre-OSR2 versions) or Windows ME. Windows 8.0 was shit too. Microsoft has had some huge fucking turds and no Windows 10 version makes the list.
Windows 95, ME, and 8 may have all had their problems, but I don't recall updates to them ever deleting users files, and I certainly don't remember it happening with multiple updates. The biggest problem with Windows 10 isn't it as a whole. The base OS is actually fairly solid, and I'd say that Windows 8 was as well. People give Windows 8 a lot of crap and often compare it to Vista. I don't think that holds water. Windows 8 was stable, faster than Windows 7, and outside of some awful UI changes really wasn't a bad system. Unlike Vista, Windows 8 at a technical level actually worked.

The problem with Windows 10 is the support model. Instead of releasing it and then spending the next 3 to 5 years refining it with fixes and service packs like MS had always done previously, they decided to change a whole bunch of crap every 6 months with feature updates. Similar to what a lot of point release Linux distros do (i.e. Ubuntu). The problem is they don't tend to fix more existing issues than they create with feature updates resulting in an increasingly unstable house of cards. Add to that the almost complete lack of internal QA testing after their shift to an insider program based QA testing model, and you end up with a recipe for pain, suffering, and gnashing of teeth. The problem with their QA model is that their source code is closed. They've tried to adopt a testing model that is similar to what Linux distros use, but the issue is that Linux users, for the most part, have access to the source code, can review it, and can submit changes via a pull request. The best a Windows insider can do is submit an error report providing a guess as to what caused the problem, and that's assuming they even bother to do that. If I had to guess, most Windows insiders are in the program just to get access to the latest and greatest features, and don't even bother to submit error reports.

So yes, I think there is a valid argument to be made that Windows 10 is one of the worst Windows releases ever. Not because the foundations are really any worse than versions before it, but because MS can't help but to continually jack it up with borked feature updates that break things. Heaven forbid they actually just spent a few update cycles fixing what's already broken.

Personally, Windows 2000 Professional was probably the best out-of-the-box OS experience I ever had, and I was a gamer running AMD K6 systems at the time. I would have expected to run into problems with that setup, yet did not. Coming from Win98 SE, Win2K was fast, stable, and ran everything I threw at it - including DOS programs - without issue. I never had any problems with any Windows games I wanted to play, and frankly wondered WHY Win2K was withheld from regular consumers. I preferred it to WinXP until WinXP x64 released (which I also had little problem with beyond DOS support being lousy in it).
YES!! In my personal opinion, Windows 2000 SP4 was when Windows peaked. XP SP3 wasn't far behind, and Windows 7 was pretty great as well, but damn was Windows 2000 awesome. Stable, fast, and light on resources. I remember when I first installed 2000. It was on an HP desktop my dad bought me that came with Me. I initially blew away Me and went to 98, but then about a year or so later I installed 2000 based on a friends recommendation, and never looked back. I couldn't believe how much better it was.

EDIT1: Grammar and spelling corrections.
EDIT2: Reference for update deleting user files: https://www.zdnet.com/article/windo...lete-your-files-this-tool-might-recover-them/
 
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The problem with Windows 10 is the support model. Instead of releasing it and then spending the next 3 to 5 years refining it with fixes and service packs like MS had always done previously, they decided to change a whole bunch of crap every 6 months with feature updates.

They stopped doing "change a whole bunch every six months" a while back. A typical user will barely notice any substantial differences between like 1909 and 20H2, and 21H1 looks like it will also be pretty tame. They aren't even doing the "here's a new release let's update for a half hour" thing. 21H1 will be unlocked in an enablement package that's a few megs. Done.

What big changes have they even done in the last two years? Moved some stuff out of control panel maybe? Chromium Edge, which to many users is just a new icon and a slightly different UI? That was a standalone release anyway. They changed the folder icons?!! Heck I am the "deployment person" at work, and in the last what, six years... I've changed maybe a half dozen lines of code in my Windows deployment scripts. Most of my deployment framework hasn't changed since 2016, and it takes about five minutes to update it for a new Windows 10 version. The biggest change I had to deal with in the last three versions was they moved the default shortcut for Notepad and I had to find it and update my xml with the new location. Oh noes.
 
They stopped doing "change a whole bunch every six months" a while back. A typical user will barely notice any substantial differences between like 1909 and 20H2, and 21H1 looks like it will also be pretty tame. They aren't even doing the "here's a new release let's update for a half hour" thing. 21H1 will be unlocked in an enablement package that's a few megs. Done.

What big changes have they even done in the last two years? Moved some stuff out of control panel maybe? Chromium Edge, which to many users is just a new icon and a slightly different UI? That was a standalone release anyway. They changed the folder icons?!! Heck I am the "deployment person" at work, and in the last what, six years... I've changed maybe a half dozen lines of code in my Windows deployment scripts. Most of my deployment framework hasn't changed since 2016, and it takes about five minutes to update it for a new Windows 10 version. The biggest change I had to deal with in the last three versions was they moved the default shortcut for Notepad and I had to find it and update my xml with the new location. Oh noes.
Most likely he referred to UI changes which are bloody annoying. Things are obscured behind new submenus or combined into new views, often in a way that prevents you from making the changes that used to take a couple clicks easily. Now it might require going through several obscure UI layers. It's a major annoyance for anyone that's used to use the old UI.
 
Most likely he referred to UI changes which are bloody annoying. Things are obscured behind new submenus or combined into new views, often in a way that prevents you from making the changes that used to take a couple clicks easily. Now it might require going through several obscure UI layers. It's a major annoyance for anyone that's used to use the old UI.
Yes. My complaint mostly comes down to Microsoft's constant fussing around with the UI while core functionality (search) is still a broken mess.
They stopped doing "change a whole bunch every six months" a while back. A typical user will barely notice any substantial differences between like 1909 and 20H2, and 21H1 looks like it will also be pretty tame. They aren't even doing the "here's a new release let's update for a half hour" thing. 21H1 will be unlocked in an enablement package that's a few megs. Done.

What big changes have they even done in the last two years? Moved some stuff out of control panel maybe? Chromium Edge, which to many users is just a new icon and a slightly different UI? That was a standalone release anyway. They changed the folder icons?!! Heck I am the "deployment person" at work, and in the last what, six years... I've changed maybe a half dozen lines of code in my Windows deployment scripts. Most of my deployment framework hasn't changed since 2016, and it takes about five minutes to update it for a new Windows 10 version. The biggest change I had to deal with in the last three versions was they moved the default shortcut for Notepad and I had to find it and update my xml with the new location. Oh noes.
Untrue. What they actually said is that they will do large feature updates when they are ready. They haven't committed to any specific deployment model. Yes, 20H2 was relatively small, whereas 20H1 was actually fairly large. They aren't following a specific cadence, but what they are doing is continuing to fail at fixing functionality. Broken search probably being my biggest complaint. I don't want web searches in my start menu to begin with, but I could live with it if I could count on the search function to reliably search my local filesystem, but this is MS so we can't expect that.

And none of what was just discussed takes away from the fact that Microsoft's dismantling of their QA teams resulted in an increasingly shoddy operating system that has had a focus on features more than creating and maintaining a useable system. Windows 10 at release was not bad. Sure, it had its issues, but most of those were the result of the half measures that MS has spent the last 5+ years working on. Take the Settings app for example. It's fine. Really. Or at least it would be if it was complete. If they wanted to kill Control Panel and move everything into a more modern settings app, fine, do it. But do it all at once, not piecemeal. The fact that we are almost 6 years from the release of Windows 10 and Control Panel still exists alongside settings dialogs straight out of Windows 2000 is absurd. But oh boy I've got a People icon in my Taskbar and updates to the Xbox Game Bar I'll never use. Yay, those were important. Windows 10 is kind of like KDE in my mind. Pretty on the surface, but it doesn't take long to get to dialog boxes and menus that remind you of the 90's.
 
Yes. My complaint mostly comes down to Microsoft's constant fussing around with the UI while core functionality (search) is still a broken mess.
Microsoft posts their "what's new in Windows 10" thing right around release time.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-updates-2df971e0-341a-68b1-3bf8-bc3e3ff8c3a5

Which of these "fussing around with the UI" makes you clench your fist? The.. alt-tab change? Emoji keyboard?

Untrue. What they actually said is that they will do large feature updates when they are ready. They haven't committed to any specific deployment model. Yes, 20H2 was relatively small, whereas 20H1 was actually fairly large.
20H1? It's not like they made windows circular or moved the Start button into the fifth dimension. They only had what, six months?.. to crank out the update, they weren't exactly going from XP to Vista here. A quick search on Youtube turned up a 7ish minute video by a slow talker that explains the changes from the time: .

He explains all the major changes with demonstrations in just over five minutes . That's "fairly large?"

As for "shoddy" or whatever complaints, ya know, whatever. There's already been several posts in here about how many people aren't having issues. If you're going to go on about how Windows 10 has things you don't need, well, if you want an OS that every single byte is only things *you* use, write your own. Until then, much like the crisper in the refrigerator (the drawers at the bottom) that few people use to actually keep anything crisp, we get the xBox game bar and the People icon. Too bad.
 
Microsoft posts their "what's new in Windows 10" thing right around release time.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-updates-2df971e0-341a-68b1-3bf8-bc3e3ff8c3a5

Which of these "fussing around with the UI" makes you clench your fist? The.. alt-tab change? Emoji keyboard?


20H1? It's not like they made windows circular or moved the Start button into the fifth dimension. They only had what, six months?.. to crank out the update, they weren't exactly going from XP to Vista here. A quick search on Youtube turned up a 7ish minute video by a slow talker that explains the changes from the time: .

He explains all the major changes with demonstrations in just over five minutes . That's "fairly large?"

As for "shoddy" or whatever complaints, ya know, whatever. There's already been several posts in here about how many people aren't having issues. If you're going to go on about how Windows 10 has things you don't need, well, if you want an OS that every single byte is only things *you* use, write your own. Until then, much like the crisper in the refrigerator (the drawers at the bottom) that few people use to actually keep anything crisp, we get the xBox game bar and the People icon. Too bad.

My complaints have less to do with the way things look, and more to do with what seems to be a lack of prioritization on Microsoft's part. The point I've been trying to make is that instead of focusing on stability improvements or fixing broken functions, they seem to be more focused on adding new whiz-bang features. Not to keep going back to the same example, but search is the most blatantly obvious. Windows Search has been broken since release, but instead of addressing it they keep adding more garbage. I've never said I want a perfect OS, nor do I expect there to ever be one. As a Linux user primarily, I can tell you that Linux isn't perfect either. I'm just saying that I feel like Microsoft's priorities have been out of order. Thankfully they have seemed to put new features on the back burner, and are focusing on stability improvements (finally), but it took them way too long and way too many updates that were breaking users systems.

Ultimately, use what makes you happy. I personally got frustrated enough with Windows 10 regressions a few years back that I switched to Linux for the vast majority of my computing. It brought the fun back for me. Is it perfect? Not a chance. Is it fun? Yes. And that's why I use it. I have fun with it. I can't say I have fun using Windows anymore. Not like I used to back in the Windows 2000 and XP days.
 
My complaints have less to do with the way things look, and more to do with what seems to be a lack of prioritization on Microsoft's part. The point I've been trying to make is that instead of focusing on stability improvements or fixing broken functions, they seem to be more focused on adding new whiz-bang features. Not to keep going back to the same example, but search is the most blatantly obvious. Windows Search has been broken since release, but instead of addressing it they keep adding more garbage. I've never said I want a perfect OS, nor do I expect there to ever be one. As a Linux user primarily, I can tell you that Linux isn't perfect either. I'm just saying that I feel like Microsoft's priorities have been out of order. Thankfully they have seemed to put new features on the back burner, and are focusing on stability improvements (finally), but it took them way too long and way too many updates that were breaking users systems.

Ultimately, use what makes you happy. I personally got frustrated enough with Windows 10 regressions a few years back that I switched to Linux for the vast majority of my computing. It brought the fun back for me. Is it perfect? Not a chance. Is it fun? Yes. And that's why I use it. I have fun with it. I can't say I have fun using Windows anymore. Not like I used to back in the Windows 2000 and XP days.
"Stability improvements" - This needs elaboration, because it's too general. Like, a system randomly crashing? Can we extrapolate that to all systems? Are all systems, 50%, 25%, 12%, 6%, 3%, 1%, .5% randomly crashing? How often? Is it task-based? ... Are we talking about the occasional borked update? Do *these* affect all systems, 50%, 25%, 12%, 6%, 3%, 1%, .5% of systems? Do they get resolved fairly quickly and we get past them? Do we have verified, genuine statistics to validate these claims?

"Broken functions" - Again, needs elaboration. We need a list of 10 broken functions and how they are broken. Not "doesn't work the way I expect" but "I click this and I get an error" broken. I personally am not aware of any common or relatively uncommon function in Windows 10 that just plain give errors.

Search I can't vouch for since I rarely use it, but aside from being a little weird, it's reliably found the things I've been looking for.
 
The telemetry aside, Windows 10 is a great OS. I've had the same installation since it came out. I've had a couple small issues but it has run better than any other OS in their stable. Hell, I just went from an Intel z170 platform to a B550 platform with the same drive. It booted, complained, restarted and it was good. I don't think that would have happened on any other PnP OS.

I remember the days of Windows NT, my God if you had the incorrect revision of a driver, things simply didn't work. You had to test every aspect of the build and when it was finalized; do not touch it.

I think that the OP needs to upgrade any firmware to the latest, do a fresh install and perform a few tests because it certainly doesn't seem to be running they way it should. I also have Win10 on a laptop from 2009, an old I7-880 and it runs butter smooth on both.
 
The telemetry aside, Windows 10 is a great OS. I've had the same installation since it came out. I've had a couple small issues but it has run better than any other OS in their stable. Hell, I just went from an Intel z170 platform to a B550 platform with the same drive. It booted, complained, restarted and it was good. I don't think that would have happened on any other PnP OS.

I remember the days of Windows NT, my God if you had the incorrect revision of a driver, things simply didn't work. You had to test every aspect of the build and when it was finalized; do not touch it.

I think that the OP needs to upgrade any firmware to the latest, do a fresh install and perform a few tests because it certainly doesn't seem to be running they way it should. I also have Win10 on a laptop from 2009, an old I7-880 and it runs butter smooth on both.
Windows 10 is NT just with some improvements. Back then IT admins had a joke saying, Windows NT can be spelled 'Windows EnTee' which in Finnish means 'Windows I won't do it' :D
 
Windows 10 is NT just with some improvements. Back then IT admins had a joke saying, Windows NT can be spelled 'Windows EnTee' which in Finnish means 'Windows I won't do it' :D
Oh yes, that's right. I forgot about that bit of lore. 'New Technology' sure has come a long way since then, iterative improvements with each release.
 
That depends on whether you are judging any Windows 10 version "vanilla configuration/as is" or de-bloated/optimized configuration. Once de-bloated and optimized, I think 19043.844 is the best-performing and the most stable Windows 10 version. Given how many modifications can be made on Windows and Android devices, it is difficult to judge such Operating Systems in their "vanilla" state, but developers and marketing teams should clearly communicate that Windows and Android are like LEGO constructs that you can de-construct and re-construct to your liking (to a degree)

Apple Operating Systems are that are easy to judge for their "vanilla" configuration because there is very little you can adjust on Apple Operating Systems (compared to Windows or rooted Android).
 
The telemetry aside, Windows 10 is a great OS.
I'm still interested to know what people, particularly in 2021, believe "telemetry" is. It's somewhere between two very distinct poles:

a. A few bytes get sent to MS under very specific circumstances.

b. Microsoft, in conjunction with your ISP, secretly uncaps your internet connection into a 400Tbit upstream connection. It uses QoS to hide this. It then proceeds to upload dozens of copies of all of your storage (storage vendors have special code to prevent this from turning on the hdd activity indicator), and every device connected on the local network, to a massive secret data center on the dark side of the moon. (to amass all user data there are trillions of storage devices in this data center and it covers the vast majority of the dark side of the moon)

You had to bring up telemetry, so I'm asking if you think the amount of data MS collects, and the types of data they collect, fall closer to a, or to b.
 
I have a Win 10 primary desktop, multiple MacOS laptops, and a server running Linux in my home. I recently swapped my desktop's Win 10 LTSB for Win 10 Pro in order to play Cyberpunk 2077 and I'm honestly surprised at how crappy this operating system is, especially since I had no complaints with LTSB. There are so many UX annoyances (settings still split between CP and Settings), bugs (search will randomly stop working), poor multi-monitor support (arbitrarily doesn't recognize 2nd monitor is off, and will send new windows off-screen), and so on - none of which occurred on LTSB. If this were new software I could understand but it's 2021 and this is Microsoft's flagship mainstream product for God's sake. Utterly shameful.

Don't get me wrong, MacOS and Ubuntu both have their share of pain points but neither fail basic UX tasks as hard and as often as Win 10 Pro. I used to roll my eyes and dismiss Apple "It just works" users as technically challenged folks needing permanent training wheels but it's to the point where MacOS is legitimately a better OS for just about every use case other than gaming. I keep hearing Microsoft is "back" but have yet to see anything compelling much less ahead of the competition.
 
I'm still interested to know what people, particularly in 2021, believe "telemetry" is. It's somewhere between two very distinct poles:

a. A few bytes get sent to MS under very specific circumstances.

b. Microsoft, in conjunction with your ISP, secretly uncaps your internet connection into a 400Tbit upstream connection. It uses QoS to hide this. It then proceeds to upload dozens of copies of all of your storage (storage vendors have special code to prevent this from turning on the hdd activity indicator), and every device connected on the local network, to a massive secret data center on the dark side of the moon. (to amass all user data there are trillions of storage devices in this data center and it covers the vast majority of the dark side of the moon)

You had to bring up telemetry, so I'm asking if you think the amount of data MS collects, and the types of data they collect, fall closer to a, or to b.
I was only using telemetry as a general term, not in an quantifiable way. But if I were to guess:

C. Microsoft has already implanted their technology in everyone's brain and is collecting their life's history from the perspective of the host's eyes in conjunction with more data points than we are aware we have in order to build a race of super beings that can travel though time so that they may save the dodo bird from extinction.
 
There are so many UX annoyances (settings still split between CP and Settings), bugs (search will randomly stop working), poor multi-monitor support (arbitrarily doesn't recognize 2nd monitor is off, and will send new windows off-screen), and so on - none of which occurred on LTSB. If this were new software I could understand but it's 2021 and this is Microsoft's flagship mainstream product for God's sake. Utterly shameful.

CP/Settings - I know some people spend genuine, verifiable, recorded *hours*, every single day, in Control Panel. It's 99.3% of their day. I also know.. they are not Regular Users. A Regular User, and even a few degrees beyond a Regular User, doesn't use Control Panel for anything. There is nothing there for these people. Regular Users. You may not be regular. You may use Control Panel as much as my silly example described. If so, sorry, but you're not MS's UX design goals. MS is targeting Regular Users, the 99% one could say. Regular users *do* use Settings, for stuff like Windows Update, maybe localization stuff, theme settings, whatever. MS has gotten pretty much everything Regular Users use, out of Control Panel and into Settings.

Search - Again, I rarely use Search but it's always worked when I have. We have users at work who use Search a lot, and issues with it are extremely rare across the user base. Zero? No. But uncommon enough that off the top of my head I can only think of one user who has reported any search issues in the last.. few years? It just isn't something reported.

Multi-Monitor - At work I use dual screens, but I don't have scenarios where I need to turn a monitor off while the PC is on. The monitors come on when the PC comes on, and they go to sleep when the PC is turned off. The only quirk I'm immediately aware of is DisplayPort is noticeably more finicky than HDMI. Since we don't tend to use DisplayPort monitors with Macs I'm not aware if they exhibit similar issues. Again, we have many users at work with dual screens, and they've even gone through the trials and tribulations of setting up home offices, and display issues just don't get reported.

Don't get me wrong, MacOS and Ubuntu both have their share of pain points but neither fail basic UX tasks as hard and as often as Win 10 Pro. I used to roll my eyes and dismiss Apple "It just works" users as technically challenged folks needing permanent training wheels but it's to the point where MacOS is legitimately a better OS for just about every use case other than gaming. I keep hearing Microsoft is "back" but have yet to see anything compelling much less ahead of the competition.
Big Sur not only had a mess of a launch, and Apple put MS to shame on update sizes for Big Sur being what.. almost 13GB, because heck let's just download Intel and Apple architecture as a single blob cuz yeah that's practical. macOS 11.2.2 released, and is 3GB, and the only major fix it has is for.. USB-C ports. The OS needs a 3GB update to fix USB-C ports. If you've spent any time on the deployment side of things with MDMs it's got all kinds of issues. Windows 10, which had MDM support sorta shoved in, behaves better on an MDM platform than macOS does, which has had MDM in it for years.

The big issue with macOS UX is all the freakin' notification bubbles for permissions for everything. It is genuinely *complicated* for a user to install Zoom on macOS and enable remote control. THAT SHOULD NEVER BE COMPLICATED.
 
I was only using telemetry as a general term, not in an quantifiable way.
Well like if I were to say "aside from your face, you seem like an ok person." Like, there would be an obvious followup question there.

I'm asking the followup question. What does telemetry do, that you felt the need to call it out?
 
CP/Settings - I know some people spend genuine, verifiable, recorded *hours*, every single day, in Control Panel. It's 99.3% of their day. I also know.. they are not Regular Users. A Regular User, and even a few degrees beyond a Regular User, doesn't use Control Panel for anything. There is nothing there for these people. Regular Users. You may not be regular. You may use Control Panel as much as my silly example described. If so, sorry, but you're not MS's UX design goals. MS is targeting Regular Users, the 99% one could say. Regular users *do* use Settings, for stuff like Windows Update, maybe localization stuff, theme settings, whatever. MS has gotten pretty much everything Regular Users use, out of Control Panel and into Settings.

Search - Again, I rarely use Search but it's always worked when I have. We have users at work who use Search a lot, and issues with it are extremely rare across the user base. Zero? No. But uncommon enough that off the top of my head I can only think of one user who has reported any search issues in the last.. few years? It just isn't something reported.

Multi-Monitor - At work I use dual screens, but I don't have scenarios where I need to turn a monitor off while the PC is on. The monitors come on when the PC comes on, and they go to sleep when the PC is turned off. The only quirk I'm immediately aware of is DisplayPort is noticeably more finicky than HDMI. Since we don't tend to use DisplayPort monitors with Macs I'm not aware if they exhibit similar issues. Again, we have many users at work with dual screens, and they've even gone through the trials and tribulations of setting up home offices, and display issues just don't get reported.


Big Sur not only had a mess of a launch, and Apple put MS to shame on update sizes for Big Sur being what.. almost 13GB, because heck let's just download Intel and Apple architecture as a single blob cuz yeah that's practical. macOS 11.2.2 released, and is 3GB, and the only major fix it has is for.. USB-C ports. The OS needs a 3GB update to fix USB-C ports. If you've spent any time on the deployment side of things with MDMs it's got all kinds of issues. Windows 10, which had MDM support sorta shoved in, behaves better on an MDM platform than macOS does, which has had MDM in it for years.

The big issue with macOS UX is all the freakin' notification bubbles for permissions for everything. It is genuinely *complicated* for a user to install Zoom on macOS and enable remote control. THAT SHOULD NEVER BE COMPLICATED.
Remote control IF ANYTHING SHOULD NOT BE TRIVIAL. And there are no 'notification bubbles' except when the installer asks for permissions like UAC does. Big Sur is a big mess right now, granted. You may even have to reboot in order to give an application special access. It's ridiculous and I'm sure they'll change it soon.

Oh, and Zoom is a buggy Chinese product with multiple known security issues. You should not use it.
 
Well like if I were to say "aside from your face, you seem like an ok person." Like, there would be an obvious followup question there.

I'm asking the followup question. What does telemetry do, that you felt the need to call it out?
The irony here is that I was doing my best to leave the whole data collection/privacy debate off the table and give my impressions of the OS user experience. I was not calling it out, I was not throwing shade, I was not condemning it, I was removing it from the conversation since everyone uses it as a catch all for everything that's wrong with Windows 10....that I am now forced to define.
 
Windows 10 has started out OK, but every new version they force on you introduces new issues, and solve none. My troubles were steadily increasing ever since I've started using it. It was not so long ago that it decided, because you know it's no longer the user that decides, that it shall upgrade itself to 20H2. And it's a nightmare.

  • 9 out of 10 boots would take minutes, with the one fluke working normally.
  • 5 out of 10 startups would end with networking disabled, having to manually unplug the Ethernet cable then reconnect it for it to work, or disable / enable cycle the network adapter in the device manager.
  • 1 out of 10 times it would boot to automatic startup repair for no reason whatsoever when turning on the computer after it was shut down properly, so no failed boot attempts before.
I've gotten used to these, and even expect them to happen, but today W10 decided to take things to the next level:

Starting, no network, which I was expecting, only this time it was different, because it didn't say network cable unplugged as usual, there was just no network connection period, despite the cable being live. So wtf?
Let's see the built in trouble shooter even if it usually doesn't solve shit: Error: Service is not running ?! That's very strange.
After some manual troubleshooting, it turns out, DHCP service is not running either that's why there is no network.
Trying to start DHCP service manually: Access Denied.
In the meantime it turns out a bunch of network related services are out of order including the firewall. That's just neat, imagine if I was connecting directly to the internet on DSL or a public wifi?

Last night everything was working normally, I shut down the computer properly and this is what greets me today, when I'm on a crunch week anyway.

Fucking Windows10
Sounds like you have some hardware issues ..or "memory training" issues .. if overclocking, run defaults .. if running XMP profile, either run RAM slower or bump up RAM voltage a smidge (I hear that's a thing for Corsair RAM to run even XMP with some)

if you want to do Ford Mustang comparisons some more ...
My 20H2 Mustangs:
5600x,ASRock x570 Taichi, 2 x 16GB 3200@3600 1:1 fclk, 5700xt with 2 monitors (no issues, but I never turn one or the other off while my PC is on) ..always boots in about 15-20 seconds..never had network issues
3800xt,ASRock x570 Steel Legend, 2 x 16GB 3200, RX 580 4GB .. 1 monitor .. boots in about 25-30 seconds .. no network issues
3600, ASUS B350-Prime, 2 x 16GB 3200, RX 570 4GB, 3 monitors with no issues (don't turn any off when PC on though).. boots in about 20 seconds, never had NIC issues
Dell older i5 Intel laptop , 2 x 8GB , boots in about 20'ish seconds . .gigabyte nic has never had issues .. I run a VPN on it without issue. It just installed some 21H2(?) Feature updates without issue ..not sure what those "features" are though

You might want to just do a fresh install .. maybe a BIOS update if available first .. sounds like you have some issues to sort out, but Win10 has been pretty rock solid for me and what I do with my setups...
 
I'm using 1909 version which works perfectly. Not one single issue on this Asu Z170-K mobo board. I updated my Dell laptop to 20H2 as it was also using 1909. Works fine. I then decided to update my desktop. After a reboot, everything seem to work just fine except the PC would not go to sleep. Each morning as I came into my office area, the PC was on and the only item that was asleep was the monitor. I tried to restore the defaults for power options, but that had no affect the next day. Only the monitor would be in sleep mode.

So today I decided to see maybe if it was a driver issue. I currently have driver updates turned off. I saw a few and one was a USB3: ASMedia. So I updated it. I then had to reboot, and my keyboard no longer works. It's a USB keyboard. I tried to plug it in another USB slot in the back but that did not work. I looked in Device Manager and saw the exclamation point for the ASMedia. I manually downloaded drivers for it but nothing would work from MS Catalog. I did not even have the option to roll back the driver. Wasted about 3 hours trying to fix it. I did not even see any options for uninstalling an optional driver.

So out comes Macrium Reflect to the rescue. I just made an image on 3/1/2021. I had a new Samsung EVO 500GB SSD that I restored the image on. My original Samsung EVO was only a 250GB. No issues restoring the drive. Took about 10 minutes. I then had to manually resize the disk to see the rest of the drive. So now I'm back to 1909. I currently have the option set to 365 for major updates.

Why the hell do they keep coming up with new features? I only want security updates.
 
I hate they broke the storage space gui... was a real pita to use powershell to change partition layout and expand the array when needed.
 
Microsoft posts their "what's new in Windows 10" thing right around release time.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-updates-2df971e0-341a-68b1-3bf8-bc3e3ff8c3a5

Which of these "fussing around with the UI" makes you clench your fist? The.. alt-tab change? Emoji keyboard?
So in your opinion, it's ok for Microsoft to bury settings behind obscure menus so that you need to start hunting for tutorials or reading release notes to find them?
Nobody reads those release notes but EVERYBODY suffers from the unnecessary mucking about with the interfaces.

It even bites me because I sometimes need to explain a setting location to a customer and it's annoying as hell to realize it's not where it was the last time. Luckily some of the old menus can still be called directly from the CLI.
 
I think they are confused if win 10 is still windows or an os like Android in regards to settings, but if they would Pic a route and get there it might not be that bad.
 
So in your opinion, it's ok for Microsoft to bury settings behind obscure menus so that you need to start hunting for tutorials or reading release notes to find them?
If you're not capable of finding whatever setting you're not able to find, despite a search box IN the Settings panel, I dunno. Learn?

I'm curious to know what settings people need to keep changing on a regular basis. Not really from you though.
 
If you're not capable of finding whatever setting you're not able to find, despite a search box IN the Settings panel, I dunno. Learn?

I'm curious to know what settings people need to keep changing on a regular basis. Not really from you though.

Yeah, it would be good if they were all in one place. However, I have never really needed to go online to figure out where a setting is. Android, on the other hand......
 
click start, start typing what your looking for. not that hard to find a setting...
 
Yeah, it would be good if they were all in one place. However, I have never really needed to go online to figure out where a setting is. Android, on the other hand......
That might sound like a good idea, but putting *every conceivable setting* in Windows in one pane might not really be ideal for most users. I'm reminded of that "God Mode" panel people found:
https://4sysops.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Windows-10-GodMode.png

Look at those scroll bars and tell me that it's a practical interface for *most* users. Not you, *most* users.
 
If you're not capable of finding whatever setting you're not able to find, despite a search box IN the Settings panel, I dunno. Learn?

I'm curious to know what settings people need to keep changing on a regular basis. Not really from you though.
It seems you're missing the point entirely. The problem is not when you do something on regular basis. It's when you need it once per month or once per year. Then, if it's been moved away for some random reason, it causes a lot of grief when it's not where it was before.
 
It seems you're missing the point entirely. The problem is not when you do something on regular basis. It's when you need it once per month or once per year. Then, if it's been moved away for some random reason, it causes a lot of grief when it's not where it was before.
can you give us an example? 'cause searching through start finds everything ive ever looked for...
 
can you give us an example? 'cause searching through start finds everything ive ever looked for...
LOL search gives you nothing if you don't remember the exact term to search for. Not to mention how broken Windows search has always been. Add in language specific differences in terms (yeah, there are actually non english-speaking people in the planet) and it's a disaster.
 
LOL search gives you nothing if you don't remember the exact term to search for. Not to mention how broken Windows search has always been. Add in language specific differences in terms (yeah, there are actually non english-speaking people in the planet) and it's a disaster.
lol so no. ok then...
 
LOL search gives you nothing if you don't remember the exact term to search for. Not to mention how broken Windows search has always been. Add in language specific differences in terms (yeah, there are actually non english-speaking people in the planet) and it's a disaster.

I never had a single issue with Windows Vista search.
 
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lol so no. ok then...

Naw, man... I gotta give that one to B00nie. I forget the names of things ALL the time. And searching for "round thingy" and "blue widget" are not gonna cut it when that happens.

I have the same problem in Smite. Periodically HiRez blows away your carefully manicured item list and then you have to type the first few letters of the name of the item to find it. Except I rarely remember the name of the item - I remember it's ICON, just not it's NAME.

Edit: For those that don't know, Smite is a 3rd-person MOBA game.
 
So example on older windows you could say right click the icon for networking... On now its like 3 extra clicks, and say if you want to change network stack, you can or get you wifi signal.
 
Naw, man... I gotta give that one to B00nie. I forget the names of things ALL the time. And searching for "round thingy" and "blue widget" are not gonna cut it when that happens.

I have the same problem in Smite. Periodically HiRez blows away your carefully manicured item list and then you have to type the first few letters of the name of the item to find it. Except I rarely remember the name of the item - I remember it's ICON, just not it's NAME.

Edit: For those that don't know, Smite is a 3rd-person MOBA game.
if he can remember file names to use in the CLI he can type them into the start menu. " Luckily some of the old menus can still be called directly from the CLI."
ok, thats a game.
 
Never had a single one of these bad experiences, other than I can't stand how MS is continuously trying harder to get you to log in to an MS account (every few days I get the "complete your account setup" window or w/e it's called that tries to force you to put in your MS account info.) But no weird crashes, startup delays, or any of that stuff.
 
if he can remember file names to use in the CLI he can type them into the start menu. " Luckily some of the old menus can still be called directly from the CLI."
ok, thats a game.
Even if I can remember or check the direct commands required, the vast majority of the planet do not, or even realize there is this option available.
 
Never had a single one of these bad experiences, other than I can't stand how MS is continuously trying harder to get you to log in to an MS account (every few days I get the "complete your account setup" window or w/e it's called that tries to force you to put in your MS account info.) But no weird crashes, startup delays, or any of that stuff.
Agreed! Windows 10 has been very stable for me on multiple systems.

My main gripes are, as you said, the forced integration with the MS account and forced telemetry (just give me an option to turn it off please).
 
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