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How to Deal with Windows Updates


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Found out while searching for other stuff: Microsoft actually did the needed patching for W10 1909 in the September and October monthly updates, and the features were installed but not activated. That is why (if going from 1903) the update takes so little time - it is turning on the features already installed. (this information was from an official Microsoft page)

 

Speaking of IOS updates - i NEVER update the phone or tablets until the update has been out for close to a month, and I'm not seeing people in mass complaining about it (with the single exception that, when I got the new iPhone 8+, I did not unpair the iWatch 4. So - the system was trying to swallow ALL at once - IOS 12 to 13 AND watch OS 5 to 6.

It all did work without major problems, there were a lot of little things I had to do manually; but it stayed in update for quite a while.

I'm really liking the 8+ as compared to the standard size 6.

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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I think our mindset regarding Windows vs Mac is almost exclusively biased toward our prior experience, no matter how long ago and without regard for what else we were using at the time. Update issues, BSOD, virus prone, klugey/kitchy interface, audio pops, latency etc. We"ve all read and maybe posted about these for years. Yet if we don"t have the particular issue being discussed we may dismiss it as an individuals lack of knowledge/ability to troubleshoot, unique equipment, computer practices etc. For me it"s all about working style and personal preference since I"ve had success with both platforms.

 

I have updates scheduled during the 8 hours/day my equipment is powered off; the PC is always on. Other than when I see the boot up screen in the morning updates are transparent. Updates have never caused a problem or incompatibility with any of my software; maybe I"m just lucky, who knows? I get that some people are working all hours and this post was after a WTF occurrence that I too would be scratching my head over. But since the Mac / PC thing inevitably creeps into these type discussions I"ll also add I have no BSOD crashes, never had a virus (I"m always connected), no audio glitches, low latency and basically the shit just works all the time. And this was true for when I was on Mac almost 20 years ago as well. So what am I doing right?

 

I recognize I"m just a mere hobbyist, I"m not running tons of tracks simultaneously although I"ve attempted to stress my system out of curiosity at times. And I do run a fair number of VSTs concurrently. You guys that are deep into the inner workings of computers and operating systems are way beyond my experience and understanding. But some of your conclusions just don"t jive with my experience. Yes, I"m technical enough and more important determined enough to sweat through the difficult issues. But they always resolve and life is good for lengthy periods of time. There"s got to be a technical reason why my stuff works and for everyone else Window"s sucks .

 

I think it comes down to Windows Compatible not being an all or none proposition like it is with Mac. My experience with audio on PC is RME almost exclusively. Started with a Hammerfall 9652 and have been using a AES 32 PCIe card to an AD DA box for the last 12 years or so. And to this day I don"t think anything exceeds it including FireWire, TB, USB 3.0 . I did have a hell of a ground loop issue with the card that took me over to USB 2.0 for 9 months. That was until I got fed up with the latency and returned to attack the ground loop with a vengeance.

 

Now this is where the mythical cost delta between Windows and Mac starts to fall apart. To do Windows right it takes a very good performing PC (Best Buy special probably not going to cut it) and RME ain"t cheap although for me it has been in the long run. I"m not even sure about laptops as I always have used internal cards in a desktop.

 

 

Anyway I think there are Windows based solutions that truly make the hater"s repeated and tiring gripes old and invalid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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But since the Mac / PC thing inevitably creeps into these type discussions I"ll also add I have no BSOD crashes, never had a virus (I"m always connected), no audio glitches, low latency and basically the shit just works all the time. And this was true for when I was on Mac almost 20 years ago as well. So what am I doing right?

 

I'm with you...as I said, "I'm one of those people who does Windows updates...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."

 

BUT I've had issues with both Windows and Mac. It's unavoidable, although always fixable. The issue with me is I do so much testing of betas and have a hardware-intensive setup. I'm always pushing my computers to their limits, and it's a testimony to both platforms that they've performed as well as they have under the circumstances.

 

The reason for the complaints about Windows is that the permutations and combination of hardware and software are staggering. With Windows, one poorly written driver that's incompatible with some piece of hardware can bring the system to its knees. For example, until recently the 1909 Windows update was blocked because of issues with the Realtek Bluetooth driver. The people who have problems are the ones you hear about; millions of systems are updated without issues. But also, diagnosis is getting better. The Windows troubleshooting options keep improving, and the Intel driver assistant is great.

 

I do think Windows could be more explicit about updates ("The PC may restart several times, and seeing a blank screen for a period of time is expected"), and this would make people less nervous about updating. And Apple could be more transparent as well - it keeps telling me to update to Catalina, but doesn't say "If do update, you're going to lose a bunch of programs." You'd think it could look into the computer and see there are 32-bit programs.

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I think our mindset regarding Windows vs Mac is almost exclusively biased toward our prior experience, no matter how long ago and without regard for what else we were using at the time.

 

I think this is more true today than ever, but also, more than ever today, budget takes a front seat too. For those of us who grew up working in offices back when the only computer was in a building downtown and there were a couple of terminals in the office for people doing scientific work, when computers started being moved to desktops, it was always PCs, never Macs. I'm sure this was a matter of cost, and the primary office functions - word processing and spreadsheets - worked just fine on those computers. With schools, it was the other way around, and, timeline wise, considerably later. Apple grabbed hold of the education market and the school "computer lab" was full of Macs. Then all the students got iPads. And with the day-to-day applications in schools including art, design, and video lessons, as well as portability, the Mac had the edge.

 

Update issues, BSOD, virus prone, klugey/kitchy interface, audio pops, latency etc. We"ve all read and maybe posted about these for years. Yet if we don"t have the particular issue being discussed we may dismiss it as an individuals lack of knowledge/ability to troubleshoot, unique equipment, computer practices etc.

 

Troubleshooting is one of those things that has pretty much gone by the wayside. In the 1950s and '60s, a teen could troubleshoot a car almost like he (and occasionally she) was born with the ability. But there's nothing physical or tactile about troubleshooting a computer - you can't feel a loose bolt, see a worn tire, or find a leaky hose. Troubleshooting techniques don't involve tools that have been around the house or garage since before you were born. And some computer troubleshooting software is only available to "the privileged" who want to keep their jobs. All us home-grown computer users have little in the way of troubleshooting tools than to re-install software. And - because Apple controlled virtually all the software running on their computers - there were fewer changes that affected operation when a new program or OS update came along. At least it used to be that way. Now, not so much - but we haven't learned to be better troubleshooters, either.

 

There"s got to be a technical reason why my stuff works and for everyone else Window"s sucks .

 

There is. What makes software easier to develop also makes operating systems more vulnerable to both unplanned and planned surprises. Yet, the average home computer user jumps on the latest gadget. And, unfortunately, most software installation programs are designed without an "undo" - when you uninstall a Windows program, there's usually some things left over that, hopefully, aren't harmful at the time but may get in the way of something that you install later. There are un-install programs (I use Revo) that do a pretty good job of cleaning up the mess when removing a program, but they're not perfect. And too much no-longer-needed stuff that gets loaded into memory when the computer boots up can eventually clog up even the most powerful computers. And because most users have no maintenance experience or training, they just blame it on "the computer."

 

Now this is where the mythical cost delta between Windows and Mac starts to fall apart. To do Windows right it takes a very good performing PC (Best Buy special probably not going to cut it) and RME ain"t cheap although for me it has been in the long run. I"m not even sure about laptops as I always have used internal cards in a desktop.

 

I've always had MS-DOS and Windows computers, never had a Mac. When I'm faced with working around someone else's, I'm usually baffled with the user interface and have to tell the owner what I want to do and watch (what seems to be a complex set of clicks) while it gets done. But then, I got a new-to-me refurbished computer recently that had Windows 10 on it. That lasted about five days before I wiped the hard drive and put Windows 7 on it. And I'll admit that I still haven't become fully conversant with Windows 7 after using it for about 3 years, because I keep remembering how I used to do it with Windows XP. But that's life.

 

Now, here's my current problem. The computer that I use on my desk (I have plenty of computers, each having a different primary function - they're cheap when you get them when when they're a few years old) - came from the used computer store with Win7 installed, so I just loaded it up with my standard applications and I've been using it trouble-free for close to a year. I have a builder's copy of Win7 that I use when I "refurbish" a computer, but I didn't bother installing it on this one. Last week I was editing some articles written in Microsoft Word (Office 2000 - I own it) and one had some equations in it that were formatted using the Microsoft Equation Editor, something that I routinely install when installing Word on a fresh computer. The equations displayed just fine on the "desk" computer and the editor worked when I tried to make a change in one. But I was re-working a section and didn't want to bugger up the original in case I didn't like what I wrote.

 

I opened a new file in Word, pasted in some text from the original article, and then tried to open the Equation Editor to type in an equation, and I couldn't find it. I looked in the Word Help to make sure I was looking for it in the right place. I was, and darn if it wasn't there. It's located in the Insert menu, under Object, and everything else that's supposed to be under the Insert menu was there EXCEPT Object! So, lacking any other troubleshooting skills or knowledge about this program, I did what every red-blooded American boy would do, and re-installed Word, making sure to include the Equation Editor when selecting what options get installed. That didn't change anything. Still no Insert/Object, so no Equation Editor. Yet, when I opened a file with an equation, just as before, I was able to edit the equation that was there.

 

That's when it occurred to me to think about the history of the computer, and that's where I discovered that the Windows authorization key for this one was different from the that for the five other Windows 7 computers loaded up from my builder's copy of Windows. Sure enough, Insert/Object/Equation Editor was present on all of those Word installations, all installed from the same Microsoft Office disks.

 

I'm completely baffled by this. As far as I can tell, this function on this menu of this application is the only thing I've encountered on this computer that doesn't work right. It's possible that one of the rare Windows updates that I installed on this computer that I haven't installed on other Windows 7 computers could be the source of the problem. My usual procedure when setting up a new computer is to manually run Windows Update ONCE before installing applications on it, because my Win7 installer is several years old (and probably so is whatever the used computer store where I bought this one is, too), and then don't do any more updates.

 

My solution - and this is probably the way it'll remain for the rest of this computer's life - is to keep a Word file with a simple "dummy" equation (created on a a different computer) in a handy place. If I'm working on a new document and I need an equation, I past that dummy equation into the file so that clicking on it will open the Equation Editor.

 

If I had Macs, the only difference between one OS installation and another would be the version number, so (wishful thinking) an update, at least one old enough to get updated to get rid of the known problems with the original update version, wouldn't change anything I didn't want to change.

 

I still don't know enough about this stuff.

 

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Troubleshooting is one of those things that has pretty much gone by the wayside. In the 1950s and '60s, a teen could troubleshoot a car almost like he (and occasionally she) was born with the ability. But there's nothing physical or tactile about troubleshooting a computer - you can't feel a loose bolt, see a worn tire, or find a leaky hose. Troubleshooting techniques don't involve tools that have been around the house or garage since before you were born. And some computer troubleshooting software is only available to "the privileged" who want to keep their jobs. All us home-grown computer users have little in the way of troubleshooting tools than to re-install software. And - because Apple controlled virtually all the software running on their computers - there were fewer changes that affected operation when a new program or OS update came along. At least it used to be that way. Now, not so much - but we haven't learned to be better troubleshooters, either.

 

 

Yes! Troubleshooting is a logical sequence process and it"s the same for computers as it is for cars or refrigerators. I"m a EE so you might imagine my frustration when my wife or kids tells me their PC is hosed and as I"m trying to understand the problem they"re scrolling thru page after page and entering commands like Commander Data on the Enterprise. Or the refrigerator repair dummies that took 3+ months and 6 visits because each time they started from scratch and followed no logical isolation process. Pretty much forced me into learning refrigerator, microwave oven and water heater install/repair.

 

I still don't know enough about this stuff.

 

You and me both. But I can always figure out what I need to when I need to.

 

The issue with me is I do so much testing of betas and have a hardware-intensive setup. I'm always pushing my computers to their limits, and it's a testimony to both platforms that they've performed as well as they have under the circumstances.

 

The reason for the complaints about Windows is that the permutations and combination of hardware and software are staggering. With Windows, one poorly written driver that's incompatible with some piece of hardware can bring the system to its knees. For example, until recently the 1909 Windows update was blocked because of issues with the Realtek Bluetooth driver. The people who have problems are the ones you hear about; millions of systems are updated without issues. But also, diagnosis is getting better. The Windows troubleshooting options keep improving, and the Intel driver assistant is great.

 

 

You"re the guy (or at least one of them ) I should be thanking for making my life easier. And it drives home my point that for people not wanting to deal with the crap on Windows (me for one) we need to research and seek out the tried and proven; even if it cost more initially. Of course with so many opinions and false claims out there we also need to do thorough research and draw smart conclusions. Hey, kind of like troubleshooting :redwall:

 

Great points throughout Mike and Craig

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