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How to Deal with Windows Updates


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I'm one of those people who does Windows updates. I'll hold off for a week or two, but I do update sooner rather than later. The only time I got bit was when there was a power outage, and my uninterruptible power supply didn't have enough juice to keep the computer going for the duration of the "do not turn off your computer" phase. So here are my recommendations...

 

1. Don't do "update and shut down," do "update and restart." It feels like when you restart after an update, Windows already knows what your computer is up to, and doesn't have to figure it out all over again upon bootup.

2. When the update process starts, Windows may do mysterious things and give you no indication of what's happening. I find that's an excellent time to walk away from the computer and have lunch, clean up the studio, watch paint dry, etc. Then when I come back and find the Windows desktop, I rejoice.

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Windows-free since 2013. No regrets.

 

Apple since 1985, Windows since 1995. Regrets along the way with both. :) I can count on my Mac for day-to-day, but Windows for year-to-year, which is why I use Mac for personal and Windows for my studio/business. Reconstructing the C: drive for Windows reminded me about just how good Windows is regarding backwards compatibility. I was able to re-install programs from well over a decade ago.

 

Frankly, at this point both OSes have borrowed so much from each other, the differences are in the nuances. What I find most concerning about Windows is the move toward having everything in the cloud, and minimizing local storage. It makes great sense for business, but not for individuals. What I find most concerning about the Mac is the laissez-faire attitude about computers. Apple, like Microsoft before it, has now officially been sucked in by the allure of "services."

 

 

 

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Having been involved with computers since the mid 70's , it's just amazing to me how much this technology has evolved that, I just get a kick out using one

that would have been the size of about 5 refrigerators back at that time. Have gone thru so many versions and upgrades but it's still a bit nerve racking to

see an update taking place - with Windows I haven't a clue what is going down the pipe.

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About the updates on windows: you can turn them off when using W10pro. It's a bit of a registry thing IIRC, but I usually just regularly update the virus scan file, but rarely update, except possibly for some components. That works alright for many years already, even though I don't myself use that machine on windows often: it's dual boot able wit some recent enough Linux (Fedora).

 

Unix predates Microsoft and Apple ad as partly Open Source contained a lot of the elements still being dealt with by both already long ago. Except for strange UI mazes, there isn't much a modern machine can do fundamentally more than an early 90s unix workstation with X windows (the same components OS*X* now uses) and the early Mozilla Web Browser, and maybe even an interesting graphics pipeline. I used a "DOS" on the TRS-80 which existed already before "the PC" had been invented, and all kinds of graphics interfaces before windows 3.0 or what is was called became popular...

 

There still the perfectly usable LINUX as Free and Open Source alternative, that runs a large portion of web servers, cloud services, in a way Android devices, and hobbyists' and scientists' desktop machines! Often way more efficient and reliable, and it's likely both mac and windows, running on the same processor architecture, use GNU tools to compile their software, which come from Linux.

 

T

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Windows-free since 2013. No regrets.

 

Mac-free since it was invented.

 

Some regrets when it looked like it was the way to go for audio and far more expensive than the IBM PC clones, but I managed to keep computer-for-audio-free until things settled down and experimenting was inexpensive. I've taken brief excursions into Linux as an audio production platform, but given that the only advantage I could see, along with several disadvantages, is that "it's not Windows," I continue to set it aside.

 

For better or worse, I'm stuck with Windows until someone gives me an up-to-date Mac to try.

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Definitely set up restore points if that's not done automatically.

 

The cumulative effect of years and even decades of updates is something like wood worms and barnacles on a ship. Eventually some little bit or piece breaks down while speed is slowly but unavoidably reduced.

 

At some point you end up where the latest update was the last straw for something, and your PC fritzes trying to do something you've been doing for years.

 

The best thing for the update slow-crawling cancer is an occasional clean install. I used to do this routinely, but now I have so many programs it's a major pain to start from scratch - a couple of full days at least to get everything back up and running about.

 

What I do now is this - I take out my current (call it my "ongoing") Win10 HD, install a fresh new one, and install Win10 on it, do all the updates and get the basics going like Google, Office, printer, scanner, audio interface, other odds and ends. That doesn't take all that long. Then I return to booting off my ongoing HD and keep on using it, keeping the fresh install drive on the shelf next to the lava lamp.

 

Then when I'm starting to have problems with one of my programs on my ongoing HD, I try to work that out. If I can, great. But whether I can or can't, at that point I'll do a fresh install of the problematic program onto the clean install HD and see if the problem recurs. Which tells me a lot for purposes of trouble-shooting the ongoing HD installation. And as a bonus, I'm slowly preparing the fresh install HD for taking over and retiring the ongoing HD.

 

And if I happen to have a horrible crash with my ongoing, I already have a huge head-start getting set up on the new clean install HD.

 

And of course, the fresh/clean install HD runs circles around the aging ongoing HD and is usually far more stable and free from computer arthritis and temporary hangs. So I get this "feelin' 10 years younger!" thing computer-wise.

 

nat

 

 

 

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No OS is perfect and I didn't intend this to denigrate into another endless Mac vs Windows debate. I gave up Windows because the peripherals on my WIN2K desktop machine would mysteriously stop working. I had a WINXP netbook that I had to take off the net because it kept getting infected by drive-by malware attacks. I worked with computers for 30+ years and am hardly a novice, but I am also a practical man and if I cannot depend on a machine to function reliably then I will look for a better one. By the time Win7 came around it required replacing EVERY component in my computer system; as long as I had to spend that much $$$, I decided to jump ship. OSX may have its faults, but it is more reliable and a lot less frustrating than Windows.
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No OS is perfect and I didn't intend this to denigrate into another endless Mac vs Windows debate.

 

Either one is my favorite OS when it's working. Either one is my least favorite OS when it's not :)

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I stick with Macs for the same reason I have mostly stuck with Korg: their worlds let me get on with my work semi-gracefully without four levels of burning hoops per function. Its all a matter of personal approach now, but I loosely agree with the old saw: "Macs are designed from the user INwards. Windows is designed from the engineers OUTwards." Oddly enough, Jesus uses a Mac, whereas Satan uses Linux. :deadhorse:

 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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Just read today that the "19H2" update will be called November, and that it won't be a total reinstall this time, but more like a big Cumulative Update; not as many changed things, so maybe less problems. The second of the two yearly updates is supported longer than the first each year.

Howard Grand|Hamm SK1-73|Kurz PC2|PC2X|PC3|PC3X|PC361; QSC K10's

HP DAW|Epi Les Paul & LP 5-str bass|iPad mini2

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Jim

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Latest Windows 10 update fubar....

 

I was typing a response to my doc via the patient portal this a.m., when Win10 decides it must update right there, right then. It rebooted me without asking "now? or later?". The update took about an hour - at one point I got this ludicrous message "This is taking longer than expected, but we'll finish as soon as we can."

 

So it finished, auto-rebooted my machine, and what did I get?

 

Blank screen -oh, well, my little applet that shows my CPU temperature popped up. And a tiny box saying "Your personalized preferences" that went into "not responding" mode once clicked on. Absolutely nothing else. My Windows key did not bring any response. Alt-Control-Del brought up the usual choices, so I tried Task Manager. Nope - Task Manager won't run.

 

Got an error message that Windows Explorer could not run, "Wait? Or Shut down?".

 

So I uplugged all external stuff, did a hard reset a few times, same thing. Blank screen. Tried all the key combinations I could find. Nothing.

 

Next was getting on the wife's PC and, of course, finding hordes of other people in the same boat. And a few dozen, "try this's and try that's". I tried about a dozen. Finally, I found the way to get the Windows blue troubleshooting screen and was able to simply undo the latest update. I say "simply" but the pain in the ass still lingers.

 

Still, that worked! Yay, sort of. Once back up, I immediately went to get into my Windows Update Settings to make sure no more hijacking updates would occur. Can't get into Windows Update Settings - not via Control Panel, not via System Settings, not via command line, not via voodoo or a PC exorcism.

 

I did at least create a Restore Point the minute I got the update reversed.

 

So back again to the wife's computer to google up another couple dozen "try this's and try that's" for the problem with no access to Windows Update Options or Sytems Settings, for that matter, too - well, I'll try them later. Lost a couple of hours already today undoing Microsoft's latest genius update.

 

nat

 

 

 

 

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I did at least create a Restore Point the minute I got the update reversed.

 

I think that doing a major update nukes any restore point you created. Also apparently, the registry backup function no longer backs up the registry! At this point, the only safe option is to image your hard drive.

 

That said, the reality is far more people don't have problems with Windows updates than do. But, given the number of people experiencing similar problems, it's doesn't speak well of Microsoft's beta testing procedures.

 

Deciding to do a fresh C: drive install has really helped my productivity. Yeah, it was a pain in the butt to re-install all those programs (although thankfully, companies are making the process much easier). But frankly, I can't complain. The only time I've had problems with updates was with my main music computer, which had Windows 10 overlaid on Windows 7 instead of being a clean install, and has had all kinds of abuse from loading in a zillion programs for reviews and testing all these years. However the straw that broke the camel's back ended up being a hardware issue that conflicted with the updates.

 

I did have two HORRIBLE updating experiences, one on Windows, one on Mac. I couldn't understand why it was impossible to do the updates. It turned out the problem in both cases was bad RAM - it had nothing to do with either OS. I've now added RAM checking to my backup and maintenance procedures.

 

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I did at least create a Restore Point the minute I got the update reversed.

 

I think that doing a major update nukes any restore point you created. Also apparently, the registry backup function no longer backs up the registry! At this point, the only safe option is to image your hard drive.

 

That said, the reality is far more people don't have problems with Windows updates than do. But, given the number of people experiencing similar problems, it's doesn't speak well of Microsoft's beta testing procedures.

 

Deciding to do a fresh C: drive install has really helped my productivity. Yeah, it was a pain in the butt to re-install all those programs (although thankfully, companies are making the process much easier). But frankly, I can't complain. The only time I've had problems with updates was with my main music computer, which had Windows 10 overlaid on Windows 7 instead of being a clean install, and has had all kinds of abuse from loading in a zillion programs for reviews and testing all these years. However the straw that broke the camel's back ended up being a hardware issue that conflicted with the updates.

 

I did have two HORRIBLE updating experiences, one on Windows, one on Mac. I couldn't understand why it was impossible to do the updates. It turned out the problem in both cases was bad RAM - it had nothing to do with either OS. I've now added RAM checking to my backup and maintenance procedures.

 

I plan on doing the imaging thing. I need to buy another hard drive for the laptop to image to. I'm going to just sacrifice the DVD/CD reader/writer and install the new HD where the DVD reader is now. I have an external USB DVD/CD reader/writer that is faster than the one that came with the laptop, so no downside.

 

And yeah, Win10 overlaid on Win7 is like putting up a new building on Venitian real estate. With time, you'll have big problems.....

 

nat

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
Been a PC user since DOS 5 and Mac owner since the Mac Plus.

 

Still use both.

 

Really miss hardware DAWs. :)

 

You can still get Alesis HD24s on eBay...

 

You can still get Mackie HDR24/96s on eBay, too. And if you get tired of it, it has an Intel Celeron motherboard and it'll run Windows 98se, maybe even XP if you put more memory in it.

 

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They need to rename "Update and shut down" to "Update and and the next time you turn on the computer we will keep you waiting while we take our time finishing the update while you yell at the screen that you are in a hurry."

 

You forgot "And you won't really know when it will be done. Could be seconds, could be hours."

 

But to be fair...I haven't had problems with updates (knock on silicon), except for the one that I can't really pin on Microsoft.

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They need to rename "Update and shut down" to "Update and and the next time you turn on the computer we will keep you waiting while we take our time finishing the update while you yell at the screen that you are in a hurry."

 

which takes us back to the beginning of this thread ;)

 

1. Don't do "update and shut down," do "update and restart."

 

 

:yeahthat: always

 

:nopity:
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And I'll add one more thing...

 

I updated my office computer, and it took less than a minute. It went through its incrementing percentage, warned me not to turn off the machine, and all was well.

 

But I also updated my music computer, and it stopped at 30%, restarted, went blank for an uncomfortably long period of time while the hard drive did its thing, finally the BIOS screen showed up...then another pause. Then the Windows welcome screen! Great!!

 

Except it went away for a while as well, then picked up at 30%, did the rest of the update, and all was fine.

 

So here's the other piece of advice: after you select "update and restart," just walk away and do something else. Come back in 15 minutes, and bypass the "Is it going to update? Is it going to die? Will I ever be able to boot my computer again?" lesson in anxiety! The odds are it will end up okay.

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The most recent "feature update" from 1903 to 1909 version was released a couple of days ago. Did it on 3 W10 VMs under Parallels on Macbook Pro, did it on 6 hardware computers also yesterday.

Installs more like a normal monthly update. Start to finish on most of the above was less than ten minutes. Download was very fast, and didn't use the usual 3+ GB per machine download (unless one downloads and installs from DVD/USB). Reboot - screen went to about 30%, then first reboot, screen came back and spinner spun for a few seconds, then another reboot, when screen came back to login, the usual extra 5 to 10 minutes wait while the Modern Interface Apps are re-installed was missing - the machine(s) read to use (in my case, image backup was the next step).

 

However, winver.exe definitely shows that computer is now on 1909 version.

 

(added) one other thing - previous machine updates have varied a lot in time when it hit 75 to 80% while each application's registry information was moved to the new windows. This update took about the same amount of time on machines with similar processor, RAM, and SSD from computers that have very little added programs/data to systems that have massive amount of programs/data.

Howard Grand|Hamm SK1-73|Kurz PC2|PC2X|PC3|PC3X|PC361; QSC K10's

HP DAW|Epi Les Paul & LP 5-str bass|iPad mini2

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Jim

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Aha! So THAT explains the "pause at 75% to 80%" phenomenon.

 

Good to hear the positive report on 1909...maybe my music computer updated to that. Just checked my office computer, still on 1903.

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Added: At least at present, Microsoft is auto pushing the 1909 update. It will show up UNDER the list of updates, and you must push a button to initiate the process. Not to say that at some time in the future they may auto push it.

 

Howard Grand|Hamm SK1-73|Kurz PC2|PC2X|PC3|PC3X|PC361; QSC K10's

HP DAW|Epi Les Paul & LP 5-str bass|iPad mini2

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Jim

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It will show up UNDER the list of updates, and you must push a button to initiate the process. Not to say that at some time in the future they may auto push it.

 

It's encouraging that they took the criticism about updates to heart.

 

At the moment, it seems like the ire about updates has shifted to Apple, and the iOS 13 fiasco...not to mention Catalina breaking things. I'm sure it will all settle down at some point, but the Apple Faithful I know have had their faith shaken. As for me, I never expect things to work :)...so if they work, I'm happy. If they don't, I'm not surprised.

 

Interestingly, Microsoft has kind of followed the same path as Cakewalk. Cakewalk has introduced new features, but since being acquired by BandLab, the updates have been more about stability, workflow, and UI. I wouldn't be surprised if Windows does a breather, and sticks to fixes for the next several updates.

 

The only program that I update as soon as it's available is Studio One. I can always go back to a previous version, and the changes are usually focused in a specific area. So I assume they need to test only that area deeply, and can leave the others alone.

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I'm pretty complacent with Windows - no updates, nothing later than Win7 - but I'm finding web sites that I've accessed for years that no longer work with even the latest version of Firefox, and some even have trouble with Chrome. Very annoying. But updates for my phone (a Motorola currently running Android 9) are something that I'm having a harder and harder time to keep up with. Every couple of months, there's an update that's only described as "security improvements" but something always changes when I install one. And apps aren't written to span updates, and hosts that the apps talk to change all the time, requiring updating the app before it can be used.

 

The other day I was in Home Depot trying to find something. I couldn't find a human so I went to the Home Depot app on my phone where they have a usually correct aisle locator. I had just used it a week ago for the same purpose, and this time I got a "you must update the application in order to use it" message. Not even a "well, I'll run this time but you'd better update to the new version when you get home." And the one SPL meter app that I was able to calibrate over a reasonably wide range quit working right after updating to Android 8. It runs, but the multi-point calibration lets you do it but it doesn't actually work. I wish everything that used to work would just continue to work, but there are too many balls in the air all the time.

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That's one of the main reasons people bought iPhones - if your hardware could keep up with the OS, you could usually run the programs. Android is a hot mess, but my Android phone works...I'm not updating my iPhone until iOS 13 gets an "all clear."
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