Windows 10 Is Broken: Fix It, Microsoft!

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There is an editorial at Techgage today titled "Windows 10 Is Broken: Fix It, Microsoft!" that takes Microsoft to task for what they feel is a broken Windows Update system that prevents end users from doing legitimate work. Agree? Disagree? What are your thoughts?

It’s been over a year since Windows 10 rolled out to the masses. It’s been a year since the complaints have been rolling in. One of the most critical oversteps is Microsoft’s draconic control over system updates. It’s high time this was fixed without having to resort to low-level system hacks and workarounds.
 
They'll never fix that because no one is leaving Windows in droves. Until they start feeling it in their wallet they won't care. And, there is no viable option to Windows. No matter how much you want it to be, Linux is not a viable option.
 
If you're leaving unsaved work up when leaving your PC for long periods of time... you deserve whatever you get. Windows update, power surge, or Jimmy the janitor knocking the plug out of the wall / the cat walking across the keyboard. Nothing wrong with the update system, something wrong with the user.
 
Yes, the entire "Windows Update System" is seriously borked. It now takes 5-12 hours for each of my Win 7 and Win 8.1 workstations to complete the "Checking for Updates" task. Really pathetic.
 
silent-circuit said:
If you're leaving unsaved work up when leaving your PC for long periods of time... you deserve whatever you get. Windows update, power surge, or Jimmy the janitor knocking the plug out of the wall / the cat walking across the keyboard. Nothing wrong with the update system, something wrong with the user.
Click to expand...
Indeed, nothing wrong with the update system:

Microsoft Has Broken Millions Of Webcams With Windows 10 Anniversary Update - Thurrott.com
Microsoft removes policies from Windows 10 Pro - gHacks Tech News
 
silent-circuit said:
If you're leaving unsaved work up when leaving your PC for long periods of time... you deserve whatever you get. Windows update, power surge, or Jimmy the janitor knocking the plug out of the wall / the cat walking across the keyboard. Nothing wrong with the update system, something wrong with the user.
Click to expand...

This isn't the case, I know of many people who are in the middle of doing work, and the sytem restarts to install an update, not giving the user a chance to save their work. I understand your point, if that was the case. But mid stream of doing something and a reboot happens for an update is wrong period.
 
I seem to have an issue where joining any windows 10 PC to a domain disables all built in apps including the start menu. Have not been able to locate a fix yet, rather aggravating.
 
My networked printer sharing keeps disappearing. and this most recent update cycle left my computer crashing every single app till I realized it was still installing more updates while i was at the desktop trying to figure out if the recent updates borked my installation
 
Nothing wrong with Windows Updates here. Active Hours seem to be doing its job, and I've NEVER had an occurrence of Windows restarting in the middle of anything that I was doing since I've been running the insider builds before RTM. Most of these headlines we see are from people who are literally ignoring Windows Updates all together, as well as mostly running Windows 10 Home, which in fairness does force updates on you. Once you reach a certain amount of time, Windows WILL install updates and restart if necessary. Overall this is to protect the greater population of dumb Windows users who never do updates. If you're posting on here, you should be more than competent in figuring out active hours, as well as saving your work regularly. No need to fix whats not broken.
 
I wont lie I really liked Win 10 after I first installed it and got it tweaked out, then the updates started rolling in. Every update seems to make this system worse and worse. All 3 of my laptops need to have the network reconfigured after each update, I'm not a computer scientist but wow thats a lot of crap.
 
I have had it a couple of times where Win10 will just reboot out of the blue and start installing updates, not a warning in sight before hand. Absolute garbage.

I haven't had it happen in awhile so I don't know if its a bug that's been fixed or not, but I absolutely hate the Win10 update.
 
I'm using pro and have never had any issue with updates. I'm in a corporate environment (updates not controlled/forced) and use the OS at least 40 hours a week. I've never heard of it rebooting users in the middle of any task, and we have it rolled out to 800+ users. Is this just a home user issue?
 
silent-circuit said:
If you're leaving unsaved work up when leaving your PC for long periods of time... you deserve whatever you get. Windows update, power surge, or Jimmy the janitor knocking the plug out of the wall / the cat walking across the keyboard. Nothing wrong with the update system, something wrong with the user.
Click to expand...
It's not just unsaved work. It's the 20 browser tabs, half dozen notepad instances, 15 PuTTY sessions, Android Studio, and Eclipse open at the same time, plus a handful of Windows Explorer windows. A reboot means I have to restore the browser tabs (not a huge deal...except for the tabs that did a POST request), find and re-open all the .txt files, restart Eclipse and re-open the files that I was working on, restart Android Studio (there goes several minutes of productivity), and restart/re-login to all the various servers.
 
Setan said:
I'm using pro and have never had any issue with updates. I'm in a corporate environment (updates not controlled/forced) and use the OS at least 40 hours a week. I've never heard of it rebooting users in the middle of any task, and we have it rolled out to 800+ users. Is this just a home user issue?
Click to expand...

if you're doing real work you should be running pro or enterprise.

Mohonri said:
It's not just unsaved work. It's the 20 browser tabs, half dozen notepad instances, 15 PuTTY sessions, Android Studio, and Eclipse open at the same time, plus a handful of Windows Explorer windows. A reboot means I have to restore the browser tabs (not a huge deal...except for the tabs that did a POST request), find and re-open all the .txt files, restart Eclipse and re-open the files that I was working on, restart Android Studio (there goes several minutes of productivity), and restart/re-login to all the various servers.
Click to expand...

... You're savvy. Install the third party app, make the policy edits. Zero reason to be whining.
 
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My problem is the network traffic it causes. My son will complain about his game lagging and I assure him no one's doing anything. Then I'll check the one Windows 10 PC that is on at that time, and I'll have crazy traffic coming from it.
 
I like it best when the client has called me to check out some issue and the machine has been turned off and when I boot it up it goes into a patch routine. And I get to sit there and have to make small talk about some sicko in a forum she visits.
 
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YAWN....

Seriously, I have no issues and I am on WIndows 10. I guess that this isn't "cool" for a tech site where a lot of ALT OS nerds gather to talk about their OS like annoying hipsters like to talk about shitty bands that no one cares about as being better, but cést la vie. Because I know just like those hipsters, if their OS ever "got big", they'd ditch it and then say it sucked, just so they can find some new obscure OS to put on a pedestal.

Not saying WIndows is the be all end all - far from it. But most of the bitching I read about it makes people sound like some baby boomer giving a "when I was your age" spiel...
 
I was on the insider builds. Had to stop that as they totally broke gaming. Want hard freezes and stuttering audio? Insider program is for you!

But hey, they don't have testers anymore. They're "agile" now.
 
Been saying this for a year now. Windows Update is completely broken. My Linux Mint boxes update in minutes, my Windows boxes take days to even connect. Why is Microsoft breaking the product I paid for?

It's honestly looking more and more like there are serious problems at Microsoft. The Windows division has been hemorrhaging talent since the Windows 8 disaster and they are now incapable of fixing the problems they've created. Meanwhile they've promoted people from failing parts of the company even further. Julie Larson-Green, the office ribbon lady and the person behind the Metro abomination now runs an entire division of the company. They put Terry Myerson, a Windows Phone guy, in charge of ALL of their operating systems as head of the OS Engineering Group.
 
My main issue with win 10 updates is that 75% of the time it "breaks" my raid array; well nothing that can't be fixed by turning the pc off and on again, but it should not happen period.
 
Zion Halcyon said:
YAWN....

Seriously, I have no issues and I am on WIndows 10. I guess that this isn't "cool" for a tech site where a lot of ALT OS nerds gather to talk about their OS like annoying hipsters like to talk about shitty bands that no one cares about as being better, but cést la vie. Because I know just like those hipsters, if their OS ever "got big", they'd ditch it and then say it sucked, just so they can find some new obscure OS to put on a pedestal.

Not saying WIndows is the be all end all - far from it. But most of the bitching I read about it makes people sound like some baby boomer giving a "when I was your age" spiel...
Click to expand...
Honestly if it weren't for these over sensationalized articles, I would never know there were issues with the software.
 
The vast majority of people who have Windows 10 don't care and hey, they are up to date.

Mildly better than hoardes of people who had WU turned off by their kid/sibling/IT-person-that-knows-better-cuz-linux and are running literally years out of date on updates and gee whiz it sure does seem to send a lot of data... whateves, must be important.
 
Dr_John said:
Yes, the entire "Windows Update System" is seriously borked. It now takes 5-12 hours for each of my Win 7 and Win 8.1 workstations to complete the "Checking for Updates" task. Really pathetic.
Click to expand...

There's a KB fix for this that came out last December.
 
Another issue with this is, I used to update every time there was an update.. I might have done it the day after the updates were released--- until they started releasing OS-hosing updates on a regular basis, then I started waiting a few weeks to make sure it wasn't blowing up people's computers.

They want to force immediate updating on people at a time when the quality of their updating is at it's shittiest.
 
I'm running 10 Pro. Windows always notifies me before updates are to be installed. That being said... If you get up from your pc save your work. Because
I have sat down after being gone a while to find my rig at the login screen.
 
Windows ten is seriously broken. I tell you what. Come live where I do. I live in the country. No internet access except for dial up, or my phone. So, guess what? I have to use my phone as a hot spot so everytime I cut it on, windows wants to update using my phone data. Not fixing to happen here, so yes. Windows update is broken. But, do what I do. Just cut windows update completely off.
 
This is pure clickbait. C'mon. You can tell Windows 10 to never reset the PC to finish an update within certain "active hours". You don't lose any work, nor download time as the post suggests (what service is this guy using that can't resume a download???).

Seriously, you gotta be kidding me. I've used Windows 10 for the past 2 years and I have never, ever had the system just reset because it felt like it. I set my hours from 7AM-7PM and set update time at 3AM: if my PC happens to be on all night, it'll restart at 3AM, otherwise, the update will finalize whenever I turn it off.

Then, after saying that Windows Update is the worst because it restarts whenever it wants (untrue) the article provides its own solution of 12h active hours and says that's also bad. If you can't reset your PC at any point in 12 hour you have problems. If you need to not reset your PC in a day, then you're likely a business and should be using the non-consumer-focused Pro version of Windows (legally speaking) and use Windows Update for Business which lets you defer updates. Problem gone.

So, after those fake immediate happening updates (lies) and the not enough 12h to reset, the post again admits you can defer for DAYS (!) and then Windows nags you to update already. AS IT SHOULD. He first complains about immediacy, then about hours, then about days. What's next, weeks and months? Update already. People like that wait months, and then we're all the less secure for it. I'm not just blindly defending MS here. I do wish there was more choice, always, but they have limited some of the choice in order to avoid the horror scenarios we've had with software (old OSs coming back from the dead to infect half the connected population because someone hacked some server using frigging XP 15 years after release), and this has happened with 95, 98, XP, Vista and soon will start happening with 7 and 8 (give it 10 more years and you'll see). Windows 10 cuts this from the root, and that's a good decision. Windows 10 gives more than enough ways to work around your schedule. That doesn't make it bad design or a broken update system. That just reveals that people misuse their software and when something goes wrong, they blame the software instead of themselves for not taking care of it.

Seriously, this is clickbait. Fake issues, at least as the article frames them presenting the little nags and putting them together as if they affected everybody. Each group of users has their solutions designed into Windows 10. My PC is usually on from 7AM until 11PM and this has never, ever been an issue.

Auburn_Tigers said:
Windows ten is seriously broken. I tell you what. Come live where I do. I live in the country. No internet access except for dial up, or my phone. So, guess what? I have to use my phone as a hot spot so everytime I cut it on, windows wants to update using my phone data. Not fixing to happen here, so yes. Windows update is broken. But, do what I do. Just cut windows update completely off.
Click to expand...

I've heard this before and it's a poor excuse to complain. Windows update clearly says that updates will install except over metered connections. Set your phone hotspot as a metered connection and it won't download anything automatically. Let's be clear: this is not Windows Update being broken, this is WU doing exactly what it's supposed to. This is your faulty behavior. Set the connection to do what you want, and it'll do it.

Likewise, if you live that far away from good internet connection, download updates from MS at work and bring them home in a USB stick. Take a car metaphor: you don't ask car manufacturers to make a version of a car model with a magic engine that consumes half the gas than the regular version just because you live far away. You deal with it and spend more gas. Don't want to do that? Live closer to where you need to be. If a car manufacturer doesn't have to bend to your problems, I fail to see why MS would.
 
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Absolutely agree and this is probably 60% of the reason I still haven't updated, declined to get Windows 10 for free, and stuck to Windows 7.
 
usesoap said:
I'm running 10 Pro. Windows always notifies me before updates are to be installed. That being said... If you get up from your pc save your work. Because
I have sat down after being gone a while to find my rig at the login screen.
Click to expand...

The fix for your "problem" is /literally/ built in to the OS. Set the connection from your hotspot/phone/whatever as "metered". Done.

euskalzabe said:
This is pure clickbait. C'mon. You can tell Windows 10 to never reset the PC to finish an update within certain "active hours". You don't lose any work, nor download time as the post suggests (what service is this guy using that can't resume a download???).

Seriously, you gotta be kidding me. I've used Windows 10 for the past 2 years and I have never, ever had the system just reset because it felt like it. I set my hours from 7AM-7PM and set update time at 3AM: if my PC happens to be on all night, it'll restart at 3AM, otherwise, the update will finalize whenever I turn it off.

Then, after saying that Windows Update is the worst because it restarts whenever it wants (untrue) the article provides its own solution of 12h active hours and says that's also bad. If you can't reset your PC at any point in 12 hour you have problems. If you need to not reset your PC in a day, then you're likely a business and should be using the non-consumer-focused Pro version of Windows (legally speaking) and use Windows Update for Business which lets you defer updates. Problem gone.

So, after those fake immediate happening updates (lies) and the not enough 12h to reset, the post again admits you can defer for DAYS (!) and then Windows nags you to update already. AS IT SHOULD. He first complains about immediacy, then about hours, then about days. What's next, weeks and months? Update already. People like that wait months, and then we're all the less secure for it. I'm not just blindly defending MS here. I do wish there was more choice, always, but they have limited some of the choice in order to avoid the horror scenarios we've had with software (old OSs coming back from the dead to infect half the connected population because someone hacked some server using frigging XP 15 years after release), and this has happened with 95, 98, XP, Vista and soon will start happening with 7 and 8 (give it 10 more years and you'll see). Windows 10 cuts this from the root, and that's a good decision. Windows 10 gives more than enough ways to work around your schedule. That doesn't make it bad design or a broken update system. That just reveals that people misuse their software and when something goes wrong, they blame the software instead of themselves for not taking care of it.

Seriously, this is clickbait. Fake issues, at least as the article frames them presenting the little nags and putting them together as if they affected everybody. Each group of users has their solutions designed into Windows 10. My PC is usually on from 7AM until 11PM and this has never, ever been an issue.



I've heard this before and it's a poor excuse to complain. Windows update clearly says that updates will install except over metered connections. Set your phone hotspot as a metered connection and it won't download anything automatically. Let's be clear: this is not Windows Update being broken, this is WU doing exactly what it's supposed to. This is your faulty behavior. Set the connection to do what you want, and it'll do it.

Likewise, if you live that far away from good internet connection, download updates from MS at work and bring them home in a USB stick. Take a car metaphor: you don't ask car manufacturers to make a version of a car model with a magic engine that consumes half the gas than the regular version just because you live far away. You deal with it and spend more gas. Don't want to do that? Live closer to where you need to be. If a car manufacturer doesn't have to bend to your problems, I fail to see why MS would.
Click to expand...

This. This shit right here.
 
euskalzabe said:
This is pure clickbait. C'mon. You can tell Windows 10 to never reset the PC to finish an update within certain "active hours". You don't lose any work, nor download time as the post suggests (what service is this guy using that can't resume a download???).
Click to expand...
Yea its sad how tools are there to limit when restart happens but people now days seem to lack common sense. Right on the update window it has a link to CHANGE the active hours of the machine and IT WON'T RESTART during those hours but people seem to blind and stupid to understand that.
 
silent-circuit said:
The fix for your "problem" is /literally/ built in to the OS. Set the connection from your hotspot/phone/whatever as "metered". Done.



This. This shit right here.
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My favorite is how you see people talking about how they are trying their hardest to NOT update their PC.

I mean shit, MS can't get a win at all. They give people the option to update and they don't update at all, then they force it and people go through loopholes to NOT update. fucking weird.
 
Trimlock said:
My favorite is how you see people talking about how they are trying their hardest to NOT update their PC.

I mean shit, MS can't get a win at all. They give people the option to update and they don't update at all, then they force it and people go through loopholes to NOT update. fucking weird.
Click to expand...

My favorite thing is that the biggest downside most bring up is killing old webcams. I'm sorry -- you get the OS upgrade for free, which would've normally been $100+. It's incompatible with your webcam.

OK, that's unfortunate, I grant you -- but here's the thing. Your printer or scanner that stopped working when you upgraded to Windows 98 or NT or 2000 or XP or Vista or 7 or 8 or 8.1.... the thing you may well have spent $300+ on... no one wrote an article about that. But webcams? That's serious business.

Similarly, back when your HP LaserJet 4L stopped working it wasn't actually Microsoft's fault so much as HP's. They refused/failed to write a new driver for the new OS. The printer still worked fine, the OS just couldn't talk to it with the old software anymore. The webcam situation is basically the same; there was and is nothing keeping Logitech and any other (are there any other?) affected manufactures from writing a new driver or wrapper to fix compatibility issues. Should Microsoft have been more forthcoming about compatibility issues? Obviously -- I'm not defending their behavior wholly. At the same time, Logitech should pay their software people for a fix rather than just bitching. Cost of doing business.
 
If anything MS was probably extremely forth coming with their driver model and encouragement to update older hardware. This happens with every major OS and there's always something like you said.

If it's not scanners it's printers or sound cards or video cards or controllers or webcams.

Most likely the situation is those OEMs thought it wasn't worth it to upgrade their driver for older hardware and let it laps. I'm sure my old 720p Logitech cam is broke too but since FaceTime I've yet to use anything else.
 
Instead of talking about it, here is the update that fixed windows 7 updates on my laptop for me. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3102810

Took me ages of shifting through stupid Microsoft reps not paying any attention to shit and just pasting non related fixes to actually find the real fix. "We are glad of your interest in windows 10"... fucking retards. Even a fresh install of windows 7 sp1 is broken on updates. And the giant windows 10 ad that is front page for windows updates now. Fuck this shit.

Anyway, neighbour had a problem with her win10 malware infected laptop, the screen was blank but still had cursor. She was freaking as she had been working on myob all day. I told her it was fine as it auto saves whenever you do an entry, but yea, that stupid shit windows 10 interrupted her and my day. I pressed the power button, the computer restarted itself and then after waiting about 15 minutes as it rebooted itself 3 times installing updates it was good again. Fucking garbage that shit is, glad I never put it on any of my most used machines. They have windows 7 and 8.1.
 
OEM said:
They'll never fix that because no one is leaving Windows in droves. Until they start feeling it in their wallet they won't care. And, there is no viable option to Windows. No matter how much you want it to be, Linux is not a viable option.
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As long as everyone thinks with this kind of prejudice, it will never be unfortunately.
 
I for one have no issue with the update system, but as one user mentioned, that network traffic it eats up (internet traffic) is a real PITA, I suggested this on the feedback system (not much upvotes though). maybe eventually we will get to a state where updates at least don't require you to restart your pc (only one can hope, I know). but seriously, security-wise, updating your system (mobile,pc), should really be a priority.
 
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