Windows update knocks out internet connections | Hacker News Reader

Windows update knocks out internet connections

bbc.com

97 pointsrusanu170 comments

> "Some customers using Windows 10 have reported difficulties connecting to the internet," said a spokeswoman for Microsoft. "As a first step, we recommend customers restart their PCs. If this does not resolve the problem, visit our website for further support."

The timeless, "please visit our website if your Internet is not working" trick.

Well, if it's only the Windows 10 machines having issues you can still visit the website on your MacBook, iMac, iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch.

There's also the good old "Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue" BIOS message.

This used to be a thing for a reason http://alphahole.net/?p=1011 (But yes now it's basically useless)

The reason they cite isn't valid, for reasons explained in the comments.

The reason the BIOS stops and says "Keyboard not found, press F1 to continue" is to give you a chance to plug in the missing keyboard, so that it can be initialized and supported by the BIOS before continuing to boot.

Any mainboard worth money has a way to skip this check in settings.

Yep. This is feasible because modern OSes don't rely on BIOS to the same extent that DOS did.

Not sure, this seems to encourage hotplugging which can damage AT and PS/2 keyboards or motherboards.

I think the real reason was:

  if (err) {
    puts(strerror(err));
    puts("Press F1 to continue");
  }

The writer of that article is very wrongly informed.

You are being generous, the article is complete bullshit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A20_line

And, of course, as pointed by sibling poster, the i8042 is on the motherboard, not in the keyboard.

No, it never did.

The 8042 isn't inside the keyboard but on the motherboard, and the status register inp(100)&2 is clear even when there isn't a keyboard attached.

The way the BIOS detects a keyboard is by sending a command from the 8042 to the keyboard (usually 255; reset and do basic test) and waiting a few seconds for the ACK.

Users often used the keyboard in those days and might want to know that the keyboard itself wasn't plugged in or working before booting up the computer because the keyboard lines (while often robust) didn't actually support hotplug and plugging in a keyboard while the controller was trying to talk to it could actually damage the computer.

Meanwhile some other people used PC hardware as something other than a PC, and in those cases might not want a keyboard attached that can get damaged, so most BIOS actually let you disable the keyboard startup test.

> Users often used the keyboard in those days

Ah, those were the days. :)

And it is a good thing: imagine how large our pants' pocket would have to be to accommodate one of those good old days keyboard? We would all look exactly like MC Hammer!

Good thing I keep a local copy of the internet on my western digital.

Overkill. I've got it in a floppy. A friend gave it to me 10 years ago.

That's a hell of a Weissman score

Hey! I was cleaning up stuff in my basement last weekend and found a 3.5" floppy disk, and I was wondering what was on it. Now I remember! Thanks.

No joke, I have a printed book somewhere that lists out the entire World Wide Web, and it is actually quite thin.

Of course it was published in 1995.

(I will have to verify the date)

And here is the book. First edition published in 1992:

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781565920637.do#top

Because, you know, nowadays nobody has a smartphone or any other devices capable of browsing the web besides their PC...

I am one of those people who does not have a smartphone and tablet. It is very frustrating as ISPs move to that assumption, but I understand I am in the minority.

Yep. The world is rushing past you.

Many people still don't have smartphones/tablets, it might not be that convenient to use the support site on a small smartphone, if your tablet runs Windows 10 also (as MS would like it to) it could be in the same state, ...

Yep, in that case, you need to call over a friend with one, there is a 99% chance he or she will have one.

Because everyone has a friend who can drop what they are doing and come round right now to help them diagnose a problem with their PC so you can get on with your urgent work.

I'm starting to think that MS secretly wants desktop Windows to die so they can concentrate on server-land OS roles (especially Azure based), Office, and SQL Server. Once their dev tools and office are cross-platform and/or web-based (they seem to be moving that way) they can push people onto Linux/Mac/Other on the desktop and let someone else worry about the intractable problem of maintaining the security of the desktop/tablet OS installs of the filthy masses...

You could also ask someone to print it out and send it to you by fax, if that's your vibe.

Downvoted for what? For trying to find solutions instead of complaining over something that probably no one is going to experience nowadays.

Yes, accessing the website might not be easy/convenient, but so what? It's still a reasonable way to provide a long list of instructions.

++ "Click here if you can't read this email"

Which makes complete sense. Many email readers decide to screw up the formatting of perfectly good emails, and many email providers (notably company mail) decide to mess with the content, thankfully the "click here" statement is nearly always left perfectly usable.

Of course designing a marketing mail such that it doesn't fall afoul of those intrusions is a much better idea.

The only times I've seen "Click here if you can't read this email" in an email is when the email is image-only, and the images are being loaded from the web (which my email reader rightly blocks), instead of being embedded in the email.

When an email is composed of text, instead of images, there is never a problem.

> Many email readers decide to screw up the formatting of perfectly good emails

I've never had a reader screw up the formatting of a plain text email, nor have I had to click on any links to correctly read the full text of those emails.

Edit: I wanted to add to this that I generally don't unsubscribe from emails that arise from existing relations (signed up for site, etc) as long as they include a "text/plain" part with the message content.

> of a plain text email

Which is unsurprising. However that is not the world most people live in.

True. And probably never will again - but if people like me stop saying things about it, then even multipart with text/plain goes away... then I'm left getting only whitelisted emails because I'll bounce everything else.

Wait, maybe that's not such a bad world to live in after all...

Presumably they are reading this sentence somehow, so they could look at the website the same way.

It would have been ironic 10 years ago, but not today.

If someone only has a single Internet-capable device, it is much more likely to be smartphone, rather than a PC running Windows.

Of course it wouldn't have hurt to add: "or call our support number".

It is funnier to me the "we recommend customers restart their PC" bit , which basically it's the first step every IT support ever tells you to do (possibly after "check that the cable is connected").

No one who ever has done serious IT support should ever tell you to "check the cable is connected".

The proper approach there is tell the person "please unplug the device from the power, wait 10 seconds then plug it back in to let the capacitors discharge".

If you tell people "check the cable is plugged in" they will either tell you "yes of course it is" or else get offended. Telling them to unplug it and plug it back in solves that (and actually might help occasionally too).

Also never ask if the CPU is properly seated. Just ask them to unseat and reseat it.

Catch-22!

This neowin article[1] links to the actual update that caused it, and state that MS have already issued a fix.

For those in the comments asking how can people carry on using Windows in a professional environment with update problems such as this... well proper businesses should be running the LTSB or CBB versions of Windows, AND/OR have SysOp managed delayed updates, which means that they shouldn't have received this update and therefore wouldn't be affected.

[1] https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-breaks-dhcp-with-lates...

> well proper businesses should be running the LTSB or CBB versions of Windows, AND/OR have SysOp managed delayed updates

So contractors and freelancers need to run and maintain their own Windows servers?

Don't get me started on that one! As a contractor/freelancer myself in the Microsoft space, I feel that MS have royally screwed us. We used to have Technet (for approx 200GBP pa) which allowed us access to proper business versions of OSs and other applications complete with a handful of serial numbers. They then took Technet away and told us to just use the 90 or 180 day 'trial' versions of stuff. Not everything is available as a trial, and to be honest, if you are simulating a complex environment in a lab, the last thing you want to do is completely rebuild it every few months.

The only other option (for me anyway) is to continually sub to MSDN platforms ( approx 1800GBP pa) ... it sucks.

Right there with you.

I was a MSDN sub for the last few years since they took Technet.

I just got so fed up with it all, and their constant bad practices, I gave up working in Windows security, and became a web developer, and my entire stack is open source, where I can vent and get a response when someone screws me over.

And the reason you have to restart, not shutdown and power on again, is Windows 10 doesn't shutdown when you click shutdown, it hibernates, because it's so reliable it doesn't need to shutdown.

Is that really true? Wow. Is there a way to force it to shut down?

Hold shift when clicking shutdown

> "As a first step, we recommend customers restart their PCs. "If this does not resolve the problem, visit our website for further support."

Great advice when there's no internet connection. Apart from that, the page looks very tech-heavy. I can imagine many people struggling with the instructions there.

If you can read the advice, you have a connection.

Windows 10 and its forced updates are the best things that happened to Linux in last decade.

While you may be right, it's also a good thing for most Windows users, even if they don't see it. Windows 10 is actually a better OS than Windows 7 in so many ways, for power and casual users. Most (causal) users would probably never upgrade and thus miss out on new features and security updates.

After using W10 for a while now, I've recently been working in a W7 environment again, and it's terrible. There are many little details that have been improved from 7 to 10, and they add up, making the once-so-great 7 feel like Vista or XP.

(No, I'm not paid by Microsoft, this is my real opinion. :P)

Yes, it's especially good when it kicks you out of the Internet connection, decides to restart your laptop while you're rendering a video, or you're in the middle of a livestream, or you're giving a presentation, and let us not even forget the whole "Something Happened" error [0] during the automatic upgrade to Windows 10.

The thing that marked my Windows journey as over was exactly this: an automatic upgrade...

...while I had people waiting for me to give a presentation.

And it lasted for longer than 20 minutes, at which point, I had to force shut down my computer (which of course, broke the Windows install), boot into the Linux distro I was dual booting, mount the Windows partition from there as read only (because starting from Windows 8, "shutdown" doesn't mean "dismount the partitions" in the Windows world), find the presentation and open it in LibreOffice. And the presentation went as smoothly as it could!

From that point on, I'm completely Windows-free.

So yeah, you can say that forced updates are a good thing, but once they interrupt you while you're doing something important, you probably will not want to touch Windows ever again.

0 - https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...

I definitely have my issues with it as well, but if you have Pro you can customize quite a few update options in Group Policy Editor, and even if you're on Home you can at least set "Active hours" to when you're using your computer so that it updates outside of that. Unfortunately it's limited on an amount of hours, so still kind of forced, but I've learned to accept it.

Forced reboot can be completely disabled (current uptime here is 75 days). Perhaps I tried other things earlier, but this is what finally resolved it for me:

https://superuser.com/questions/973009/conclusively-stop-wak...

Not that I need my computer up for more than a day or two at a time, but that does sound excellent, thanks for the link!

Some of those GPE tricks stopped working in the Anniversary Update. Any remaining ones may follow in future updates.

Disabling the Windows Update service and only enabling it when knowingly wanting to install an update (or Store application) has worked ever since XP, and is unlikely to ever cease working.

> unlikely to ever cease working.

I remember people saying that about the GPE methods a few months ago...

Last time I checked, the "Active hours" setting rudely informed me that I spend too much time in front of my PC. Said hours can't span more than 8h, or something like that.

You can disable automatic updates by marking your internet connection as "metered". Works for wired connections as well as wireless but you need to use the registry editor for wired ones.

While this might work, it's a dirty hack that really, really shouldn't be necessary.

Why should I know such weird tricks to be able to use my laptop to give a damn presentation?

Anyway, it's about two years too late to give me any recommendations about Windows. I couldn't be happier without it.

But when people say that automatic updates are a good thing, I have to intervene and call it bullshit.

I'm pretty sure that windows won't install s if you enable presentation mode.

Automatic updates are a good thing for the others that won't get infected or DDOSed by you, and a bad thing for yourself if the update breaks. It's probably net positive from a strictly utilitarian POV, but not from an individual POV.

The correct way to do network security in any OS is to block every programs from connect to internet unless explicitly allow by users.

It should also notify user a new/unknown program is attempted to connect to internet and allow user option to allow/block. Not the way it does now where every programs are allowed by default. However, that will be in conflict with the new biz model of win10 which is convert itself into a big Ad machine like Google/Android.

BTW, in my win10 configuration, I only allow Firefox, Chrome and Window Defender to connect to internet with Window Firewall. It works well, stable, reasonably fast and long uptime.

Best of all : No more force update from Windows.

Except that: 1. It is my computer, so it should serve my interests. 2. Linux doesn't have automatic updates, and it doesn't seem to get bot netted as much. 3. People would be less resistant to updating on their own if the updates worked.

Big client presentation, halfway through: Bam! Forced upgrade, then 'Something happened'. Welcome to Windows 10.

Pause the presentation, get out my MacBook and continue while cursing the Gods of timing, the computer, and everyone involved who thought that they knew better than the person actually trying to use the damn thing.

...you can schedule updates.

There are many annoyance to a power user in Windows 10, but there is one that should put off even a casual user: the frequently unresponsive start menu.

Start8 and 10 by StarDock have been the best 5€ spent on Windows software.

I used to have that issue - but I block SearchUI / Cortana from making any TCP connections to the net with Windows Firewall.

The start menu is supper fast and search is actually usable for me now.

We have one windows laptop for banking reasons. It is not a performance beast by any means. But whenever we want to do any banking we spend an hour waiting for the upgrade dance to complete. That is not a real problem, but the fact that you can't do anything with it while it is upgrading is!

To much time is spend in the update while nothing else is possible. One update after the other. The amount of work done by the update procedures while holding an exclusive lock on the whole PC is deranged.

Yeah, I've come back to my win10 box having rebooted itself when I have had documents open. Win7 never did that.

Also, win10 can't be skinned (colours yes, design no) - I actually liked the old 'glass plate' look and tried to find themes online. Nope, sucks to be me. Stupid flat design has to be preserved.

Then there's all the phone-home stuff spread around that you need to disable.

I miss my old Win7 box - it Just Worked™.

Invasive update rebooting has been a thing by default since XP SP2, it however used to be the case the override switch to disable it was less well-hidden.

Similarly, by the way, no Windows version had supported custom theming since XP - if you wanted the XP themes back on Vista/7, you were SOL too.

Also, telemetry has been a thing since at least Vista, and any version since (including 10) let you disable most or all of it as a choice during installation.

The update reboot thing in win7 could at least be continuously postponed for 4 hours at a time, instead of 'now or in 15 minutes, that's it'. I'd also never come back to a update-force-rebooted PC on six years of win7, whereas I have several times in the 11 months I have had win10. Win10 is qualitatively worse in this area, even if the same tickbox exists on both versions.

Fair point on the theming, but the telemetry thing is much more pervasive in 10 than in 7.

I miss my Win NT 4 box the entire OS ran in under 100mb iirc and it performed very well on a range of hardware.

But most of all I miss Windows 2000 where the Win9x UI met the Win NT kernel. It had some annoyances (Find tool used to be fast and not require indexing to find by name - that went away in 2000 and never came back) but it was relatively lightweight. It supported the graphics card, USB devices,and applications that I used. Most importantly it didn't do a bunch of shit without telling me.

The problem is that there's some sort of conservation-of-awesomeness law in play for Windows releases. Every improvement Microsoft makes to the core OS must be balanced by the addition of spyware, Modern UI, "Update your PC now (Y/N) [No] Assuming yes..." and other insanity.

Just give us the good stuff without the crap! Is that so hard?

Yeah, I have the impression that MS often rolls out new stuff too early, causing it to be unstable or disliked by users. I really wonder why they're doing this, considering how huge the user base of a product like windows is, and thus what the consequences are.

But to be fair, also great stuff emerges out of this. For instance, I really liked flat UI when they introduced it, and a few years later other large companies adopted it too.

There are many small improvements in W10 with respect to W7, but there are also many things that are much worse.

It's a privacy nightmare, which takes substantial effort to address.

It now forces shutdown for automatic updates in various circumstances, including throwing away your session while in standby, which can be extremely inconvenient.

Settings are now split between the simplified "Settings" app, which has many options missing, and the old Control Panel.

And of course, solitaire is now an ad ridden resource hogging piece of shit that you have to install from the windows store, instead of the perfectly adequate version that existed in W7. (Not really important, but representative.)

Too bad nvidia is killing linux with optimus.

My dad used Linux on his older computer. It was a bit of a hassle for me, but probably because hardware was malfunctioning.

I bought newer computer for him and installed Windows 10 on it after all the last-version-of-Windows marketing speak. It was not very smooth, but I thought that he must have time to switch. Some strange Windows quirks aside the update mechanism filled disk completely. At that time my dad wanted to have Linux back, because it may have been not entirely smooth, but it was reliable. Windows was trying to update on each shutdown and boot-up and each time it failed, because of lack of space. Every time it took around 10-20 minutes.

My dad bought external HDD and moved all his media files to it to make more space. It did not help. So he went through restoring to defaults or however it is called. But of course more updates came. Now it is somehow broken again. When I will visit him this Christmas I will install Ubuntu on there.

The best update mechanism is on ChromeOS. It is totally hassle free. I am working on a Linux distribution that would also have updates in this way. Two partitions for read-only rootfs. You get new image on the second partition and after restart bootloader tries to start the newer image. If it fails system will be booted-up from the previous image.

Do you have a link to your distribution (if it's public already)?

You can get similar thing in TrueOS (FreeBSD based - aka PC-BSD) using zsf based magic for restoring defaults. I love it. It saved my ass a few times when I broke Xorgs, drivers and other system-wide configs. Give it a try.

Suse is using BTRFS to do some similar stuff, it supports snapshots.

Not yet. For now it's in very experimental phase. When I get somewhere with it I will certainly do Show HN.

Ah, I think I had this the other day. I booted my PC, it updated, when I logged in I had no connection to the internet (ethernet). Was confused but my MBP and phone had working connections so I just rebooted. Worked fine after that.

This is what has been messing up my wife's laptop for the past week. Unfortunately rebooting didn't fix it for me - I need to run "ipconfig /renew" after every reboot.

Time to set a static IP?

Exactly what I did for my spouse's computer. ifconfig /renew and /release didn't work. Said there was no interface that could be released.

Shook my head and set it statically up rather then spend more time on DHCP I don't need. Luckily it was a desktop not a laptop. But... they have a laptop so maybe that's coming.

Yeah, same here. I tried ethernet and wifi, but both didn't work. But I thought our dodgy environment had another bad day, or my flatmate had been messing with the router. At some point you just don't care anymore and are happy if a reboot fixes everything.

Same here, we have two Windows 10 computers, one new, one upgraded from Win7, and the new one suddenly had no internet connection.

Rebooting it helped.

I had rebooted the router for other reasons the day before and thought that could have been the reason, but seems not.

Things make sense now... I had a client of mine call me late in the day claiming her back PC can't get internet (wired connection) despite the security PC right next to it is fine. Had her do the basic steps; reboot, check wires, try switching ports in the router and none worked. Planed to visit her today to see what the heck type of malware one of her employees infected her with somehow or NIC went bad suddenly.

I've had similar problems with several different Windows laptops on several different Windows versions. Every now and then they lose their connection to the internet - not to the router, just to the internet. Things that have fixed it at various times - deleting the entry for the device driver and recreating it with an automated hardware scan; Reverting to the Microsoft version of the driver; Fiddling with the device driver settings (hate doing that). I suppose it comes down to mismatches between the OS, device drivers and hardware produced by different companies at different times.

I've had this on all 5 machines I've updated to windows 10, it always loses the internet when first installed and various amounts of fiddling as you've described eventually fixes it. Very frustrating, especially when trying to talk a untechnical family member through the process remotely. This certainly isn't a new problem.

This seems to be an issue with certain network card drivers that were shipped in-box with the RS1 RTM release - my Intel I218 controller tended to have this issue until I moved on to RS2 pre-releases.

I left Windows 10 months ago because they have real show stoppers that shouldn't exist.

In my case, my network interfaces vanished and couldn't be reinstalled or restored. A PC is not much more than a fancy lump of coal without networking, so it was the final straw.

How they continue to screw up relatively simple things is beyond me.

I'm just glad that Microsoft doesn't make aircraft or automobiles.

> I'm just glad that Microsoft doesn't make aircraft or automobiles.

Yeah, about that...

> Microsoft is open to partners requesting an operating system for cars, and Johnson specifically cites examples of being able to work in self-driving cars eventually.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/3/11850214/microsoft-self-dri...

Oh no, a young child! Press the brake!

> WinCar Updating... Restarting...

I think Microsoft's new model is: ”I noticed you were trying to apply the break, watch this ad for for break tokens or pay 9.99 for 10!”

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3039827/windows/7-ways-window...

Sounds like ransomware.

In a firm with 80+ employees only one guy with an ancient PCI Ethernet card had problems after upgrading to Windows 10 and his drivers were fixed a week later. So I don't know what you're talking about.

Poke around in the internet. Outliers like you always exist but you're the exception, not the rule.

If you actually go poke around the Internet you will see that people have tons of problems with Windows 10 drivers. Three examples I and people I know encountered:

1)crashing SSD drivers (the "fix" for that is to disable some power management settings for an SSD "sleep mode" which are not visible by default so you need some registry poking)

2)problems with wireless modems (in Thinkpads, fix is to disable and enable the device from time to time, of course it says the device is working correctly all the time which doesn't help)

3)crashes after updating from Windows 7, apparently some permissions don't update correctly and part of the system assumes it should have some permissions but it doesn't and the system crash (fix for that is apparently doing a clean install), this is bad because it doesn't even write anything to event log for some time before the crash

You can easily find tons of people talking about those problems if you google. That are only driver/system problems, there is also huge mess with forced updates which you don't have enough control over. For example if Windows 10 decides to update you can't shut down the system anymore so if you need the computer now and it freezes you need to wait till updates complete (it's easy to imagine how it's not acceptable when you want to do a presentation, a quick fix or react to something before leaving home).

Windows is 10 is huge mess and people having problems with it are definitely not outliers.

And you definitely do not want the average consumer user trying to download drivers because they will inevitably find them on some shady downloadz site and end up ransomed or worse.

If you poke the internet, you will find people having tons of problems with virtually EVERYTHING, hell, I'd bet that one of the bigger uses of the internet is searching for every kind of solutions. The notion that the number one OS used by non-technically minded people, the OS that supports the greatest amount of HW, has the loudest crowd of people looking for help is perfectly understandable and doesn't signal anything by itself.

Mayor OS upgrades are painful, no matter the flavor, and it totally looks like Microsoft has made some mayor blunders with this one, but if I wanted to know whether this one is specially abominable, I'd probably pay more attention to what sysadmins have to say about it, and not some randos in the internet.

You forget that Windows is THE biggest and most used non-technical-users-oriented OS in the world. I am pretty convinced that at least 80% of what you're pointing at is not Microsoft's fault. That's like blaming the soil for not killing parasites on the veggies you grow in your backyard.

As for the forced updates -- what would you have them do? Most of the virus and system-level exploit problems on XP and 7 stem from the fact that some people go out of their way to NEVER update their OS. Again, what would you do if you were MS? You can't rely on any random grandma to be update-conscious. Most people shrug an unplanned restart and forget about it in 5 minutes.

IMO the compromise if you don't pay for a high-quality user-grade OS to not have control over the update times is fair. If you want to have control, you can pay.

I see both sides of the argument and I was an MS hater years and years in the past. But IMO they made the right call this time.

There simply is no universal win situation for MS when we talk about such a hugely adopted product like theirs. They did well.

>>As for the forced updates -- what would you have them do?

The same thing they do on Windows server: display huge red banner: "you need to update". Hell, make the banner bigger and more flashing every time. Make it emit sounds if I don't update for a few days. Just don't make me update right now because right now might be critical time for me.

It's really is a no-brainer. Forced updates policy is a disaster. The solution is really simple as well: nudge more and more persistently.

>> You can't rely on any random grandma to be update-conscious

Even a grandma is going to notice ever growing red banner with a button "ok, update now".

I don't think both of us have solid enough knowledge in user/consumer psychology but FWIW, I think this would incite a much more violent reaction.

Emit a sound, you say? I can mute everything with a press of two-keys combo in half a second. Banner? People go out of their way to silence the Windows 10 updates in general. People who weren't technical decide to become technical just to "get back at Microsoft". Look it up, it's all out there in the internet for the future generations to collectively shake their heads in shame.

So you know, if Homo Sapiens wasn't what it was you would actually be right. But facts and history aren't on your side I am afraid.

Finally, I think Microsoft had to introduce at least one small leverage on the users to tempt/strongarm them to actually buy the higher licenses of Windows 10 where you can control the update times.

Windows is the most widespread consumer OS. I don't think it's so villainous that they give you 95% for free and ask for money if you want the other 5%.

As a first step, we recommend customers restart their cars. If this does not resolve the problem, drain out all the batteries and then charge your car again. And, finally, visit our website for further support.

And this is exactly why i dont understand the usage of windows in a professional environment.

You have to make updates because of security but then updates fuck up your work environment.

The fact that it can at any time force a reboot of the machine is truly ridiculous for something aimed at office workers.

More than once has a conference room laptop rebooted in the middle of a meeting because even the "postpone restart" only gave us durations less than that of the meeting. Then it doesn't prompt again, it just restarts. Surely the user couldn't be doing anything more important than a security patch right?

We had it update the morning of our product release. It was partially my fault as I hit update and shut down the night before, but we lost about 25 minutes of work right as the day started.

The IT guys weren't doing their job, WSUS exists for a reason.

What about those making presentations outside of a business? Like teachers/academics? Or some dude who wants to present something to his club? Surely none of those could possibly matter more than a security patch, right?

Bring back the Mainframe Priesthood! Make IBM Great Again!

It's not realistic for every company to manage their own updates, especially not smaller companies.

Even mandating companies having a person/department managing updates, or potentially screw up a workday for people if they don't have that IT person, is not particularly advantageous.

It's not realistic for every company to manage their own updates, especially not smaller companies.

Worse, you're no longer even allowed to schedule updates according to your business needs if you don't have an Enterprise license. Organizations that are too small to support their own 1960s-style MIS priesthood are completely at Microsoft's mercy.

I thought Win 10 Pro has the Group Policy for this as well, or did they take it away in an update? (I mean, it is ridiculous to reserve that for the business-use versions, but I thought at least those get it)

It has it, i use it, and people are FUDing based on hearsay or worse, their own failure to look things up.

It has it, i use it, and people are FUDing based on hearsay or worse, their own failure to look things up.

OK, here's your chance to correct the proverbial record. True or false: As with previous versions of Windows, I can configure Win10 Pro to download updates, install them, and/or reboot when, and only when, I tell it to.

I can also choose to limit updates to genuine security-related matters. For any given update, I will be able to access the information needed to make this judgment, with no attempt at obscuration or deception on Microsoft's part.

Under no circumstances will the appearance, feature set, or functionality of my Windows 10 Pro installation change without my permission.

Further, I do not need to download and apply hacks of uncertain provenance to achieve these goals, nor do I need to maintain a separate "update server."

Again: true, or false? A one-word answer will suffice but specific details are also welcome.

True.

For the following statements:

> As with previous versions of Windows, I can configure Win10 Pro to download updates, install them, and/or reboot when, and only when, I tell it to.

> I can also choose to limit updates to genuine security-related matters.

> Under no circumstances will the appearance, feature set, or functionality of my Windows 10 Pro installation change without my permission.

> I do not need to download and apply hacks of uncertain provenance to achieve these goals, nor do I need to maintain a separate "update server."

Caveats:

Selecting specific updates requires a third-party tool, wumt, or going manually with a known KB id via the windows update catalog site: http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/home.aspx

The windows UI will only let you process all currently queued ones, if and when you choose to do so. (Though it does have an option to defer feature updates, which delays those by "months", but leaves security updates alone.) Further, when windows puts out combined updates (like these: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4000825 ) you can't tease them apart in the Windows UI. However, you can, if you know the KBxxxx, use the catalog to download things separately as install files and skip over the automated process entirely.

The above however only applies to selecting what to install. Under no circumstance will Win10Pro, if configured so, install or download anything without your direct approval.

That said, there is a certain second caveat which might need to be mentioned: Once you have completed an install process for an update requiring a reboot, windows will proceed to lock you into the "i'll reboot then, but you can push it back a few weeks" procedure. However since the decision when to install is up to you, i don't consider this a big caveat.

... except the interactive UI has an option to reschedule a pending update installation/reboot for up to a week at a time.

MSFT licensing has always been an unnavigable mess of SKUs, but the Professional SKU presumably hasn't been cut short this much that one can't set a local update server - it however is kind of problematic that even Microsoft's own documentation isn't a reliable source at most times...

except the interactive UI has an option to reschedule a pending update installation/reboot for up to a week at a time.

This doesn't meet my needs, sorry.

Your fault for not getting the appropriate group policy. Don't use consumer OS in the workplace!

Haha, I assumed there was probably a way to change that behaviour, but it is the only Windows machine here and I suspect a fairly low priority.

But even as a consumer using it at home for gaming, it's still fairly annoying.

I hate this braindead nonsense so much. What if you're NOT in the workplace? Does everything important or non-interruptible only ever happen at a workplace? What if you're a high-schooler presenting your final project to your teacher for grading or something? What if you're in the middle of watching a movie with your family?

You don't seriously expect to have any form of control over a consumer OS, do you? What do you think this is, Linux? How very dare you!

Set active hours and keep your machine updated quickly or don't use Windows 10 consumer editions. Or use Linux/OS X.

Forcing updates is the correct choice for consumers otherwise Microsoft gets blamed for their compromised machines, so it makes sense for them, and I don't blame them.

This is badly implemented appliance thinking. Other appliances have forced updates that are tested and that don't interfere with the users' lives.

If only it was just a matter of setting a GPO. These are the hoops you have to jump through in late 2016 http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-permanently-stop-windows-10-r...

Only if your machine is not Enterprise (which it should be in a business) or Pro joined to a domain, which if your machine is not, it is essentially "consumer"

If you have edge-case needs that that require days of uptime fork out for the right version or rent a server.

Microsoft made the correct choice here: consumer versions (Home, Pro not joined to a domain) should be kept automatically updated.

Don't like it? Move to linux or OS X. That's the cost of not wanting another XP.

Even on a non-joined Pro you will be able to set group policies to control updating in a fine-grained manner. Source: I'm doing that.

Except on Win10Pro it IS just a matter of setting a GPO.

Does it actually reboot "at any time" though? In the last few months I only remember it rebooting "outside of productive hours", which you can set somewhere (and have a sane default for most office workers).

A lot of workers have bitlocker encrypted laptops, those have to reboot during the day by definition and yes they will force you to do so.

"postpone restart" gives up to a week.

Not in all circumstances, I suspect that perhaps if you've already postponed up to a week before you get given shorter time frames the next time around. For Win 10 at least, we've been given an hour as the longest time frame.

That is why WSUS exists, for professional environments to validate and have control how those updates are deployed.

Bit annoying they just release a monthly bundle now though instead of each KB patch.

But users would just remove the updates that let us monetize... I mean... Provide targeted suggestions to them!

This would make sense when this issues wouldnt only typically happen one some devices while not on others.

Do you know a system where updates never break things?

No. But i know of a system where you have enough control over it to avoid updates in the wrong moments and be able to fix the issues yourself when you know what you are doing.

Hint: Its not Windows

Uh, the same applies to Windows as well - you just need to know more than you would probably expect to need to know to override defaults that are intended to prevent people from shooting themselves in the foot, and to read a tad more convoluted log files than would be typical on other systems.

Probably, the only experience i have in any other OS than linux is the custumer side. And its a hell on Windows IMO

I know of systems that don't take control of the machine for 30-60 minutes to update themselves (on a regular basis, no less). That's a breakage right there, because the machine is not usable. *nix happily updates itself and keeps on running - you only lose control of the box if there's a kernel upgrade that needs a reboot... which is done on your timetable.

ChromeOS.

Probably Android from version 7 if OEM is using the two partition scheme. Of course if he is bothered enough to even provide updates in the first place.

Nadella gutting the Windows Q&A team (probably so he can increase the Windows user tracking team) is a gift that keeps on giving.

Or, the marketing team which wants you to fucking love Windows 10.

They can start by not forcing me to use IE Edge + Bing to search the internet from the start menu.

I shouldn't have to install a third party app to change the default browser and search engine that gets launched from the start menu search. (which I did anyway)

No matter what you do, you're not getting me to ever use your browsers ever again MS. I grew up in the 90s and am currently a web dev. I know exactly what pieces of trash your browser devs produce.

... except nowadays Chrome is pretty much the equivalent of IE during the 4-6 era, adding various barely-standardized APIs (not even behind flags - why?) that don't work in any other browsers and having whole teams of 'developer evangelists' telling people they should target Chrome first and foremost.

Most of their experimental stuff are behind flags, and the parts that aren't tend to be finalized or in a stage of finalization but chrome tends to be the first to implement.

Safari and edge are both quickly caching up (even passing chrome in many areas), and as much as it saddens me, Firefox is only falling behind.

Wow, seriously Microsoft? How the hell do you create a dependency chain where one service bug knocks out another service that's critical for daily use? Reboots should frankly be unacceptable, right up there with re-installing the OS. This is the general problem with a lot of today's software (barring OSS stuff). No company gives you a stable, reliable point where you can just use their tools for what they are intended. Every company wants you on their update treadmill and you're forced to use some horrendous UX that some designer thought up while eating a granola bar during their 14 hour work week /s. The only solution that I've found to get a reliable system is to avoid web apps like the plague, disable updates on the OS and all installed software. Don't update unless you have to.

Does anybody has first hand insight about how these bugs in basic functionalities are not catched by tests?

Microsoft laid off a large portion of their in-house QA team recently.

To meet the new Windows QA team, just find the nearest mirror.

With the whole Insiders program this sounds literally like crowdsourcing QA...

... or allowing ISVs to more generally test their applications for compatibility with new Windows releases without a full-on testing/partner contract with MSFT.

For the few Windows applications I maintain, targeting preview builds is a great way to anticipate things that will break in future RTM releases due to perfect compatibility being unattainable.

This is probably the only way but it doesn't apply to businesses like ISPs. They can easily blame Microsoft even if they could have tested the new patches. But... does anybody get patches in advance to test them or is it only for releases?

The real issue is that these "items" are characterized as "features", not as "bugs". And of course Windows 10 has NO "basic" functionalities, ONLY "advanced" ones.

You forgot to add "... after thirty years in the business"

better option: Switch off your Windows 10 PC and don't turn it back on again.

I still struggle to understand why Microsoft is used at all? The only sane explanation I can think of is that Microsoft have some licenses that people need to do certain tasks (They extort money from android makers for fear of nuisance suits it seems) Surely if developers stood together we could root out this Microsoft pest once and for all?

You forget that Windows 10 is a stable and well-rounded OS that also lets you run some software Linux can't.

It's horrible on my older-but-still-very-adequate Dell laptop. It ran Windows 7 well, but I get frequent blue screen restarts in Windows 10. It's a driver issue I'm sure, but not holding out hope that Dell will be releasing Win 10 driver updates for older laptops at this point.

That's a vendor problem though, consider it a lesson learned and stick to a well-known line with good OS support. I got burned myself when purchasing the first-gen Lenovo Yoga - tons of custom drivers that work poorly on Windows 10.

You forget that Linux is a stable and well-rounded OS that also lets you run a lot of hardware that Windows can't.

It's just more stable and easier to use as a desktop OS to me.

And I say this as someone that has a bash terminal open 99% of the time (one compiled specifically for Windows).

And let's not act like an update on a Linux machine has never fucked up networking.

I haven't used MS for many years and most of the internet runs some form of nix. it is just a brand not an actual thing in my view

I'm not really sure what you are trying to say there, but I was just pointing out that many developers not only use Windows but like it.

It's got it's pain points and cruft like anything, but I'm generally pretty happy with it.

My point is that developers should wean themselves off linux

> My point is that developers should wean themselves off linux

I assume you meant to write Windows, or are you proposing everybody switch to FreeBSD or Mac OS?

Still, it's an odd response to someone answering your question of why they use it.

haha serious concentration lapse there, wean themselves onto Linux or some nix. Its way more fun

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