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My biggest aggravation with Windows is the pattern of unapproved restarts. Sure, there's usually a setting to disable it, and a popup to delay it, but it's not

My biggest aggravation with Windows is the pattern of unapproved restarts. Sure, there's usually a setting to disable it, and a popup to delay it, but it's not really enough. The setting appears unreliable at best, and the popup is useless when it pops under fullscreen programs. It really only takes one ill-timed restart to damn an OS forever, especially when the restart is chased by lengthy (and impossible to decline) downtime while a patch or upgrade is installed. Restarting on someone during a Skype interview or business call is shockingly unacceptable, no matter how sensible the average case.

WorldMaker 10y ago
The interesting thing here is that Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 all improved the Windows Update restart timing logic and made it more transparent. (There's a section that states "A restart is planned, Windows has determined the most likely idle time to try the restart is 3:43am" now, for instance.) In this case it's Windows 7's Restart logic that is old/bad (and long has been), not Windows 10, but Windows 10 of course is getting blamed for it, not Windows 7. It's another reason people should stop worrying and upgrade to Windows 10. ;)
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  That's not an excuse. Microsoft can and has been pushing updates to 7 to enable the constant upgrade nagging. They've even been continually pushing new updates that get more and more naggy. There is nothing preventing them from including an update that makes 7's restart logic less sadistic, but they've chosen not to do that.
  - eropple 10y ago
    Can you explain to me why Microsoft should expend time and effort to encourage behavior (staying on Windows 7) that increases their costs and increases fragility in their ecosystem? I'm not sympathetic to the dark patterns they use to push people to upgrade, but I'm 100% onboard with not pushing improvements to an older operating system.
    - abakker 10y ago
      What about a computer that runs a specific piece of software (say, Mach3 for CNC control) that doesn't have a win10 alternative. It only runs in windows 7 32 bit. There is no good alternative. I would prefer to make the determination that the machine will NEVER update. I just need it to remain the same until mach 3 updates or an alternative comes along.
      - tracker1 10y ago
        Then disconnect it from the internet, and disable automatic updates... easy, peasy. edit: regarding downvotes... if the software versioning is mission critical for a system, then having automatic updates and being connected to an external network is a risk to that critical system. I wasn't trying to be pedantic, but was being perhaps more terse than some may appreciate.
        oxide 10y ago
        >Then disconnect it from the internet this is not a solution to a problem. it's incredibly reductive and close-minded.
      - eropple 10y ago
        My understanding (I don't keep old OSes around so I can't test) is that Automatic Updates settings are still honored. Is this incorrect? Past that, is there a reason that system should be connected to the Internet in the first place?
    - wang_li 10y ago
      They should simply perform their obligations around providing fixes for the product for the duration of the advertised support period. That they are running software on thousands or hundreds of thousands of machines that was advertised as an update but is instead advertware is a crap move on their part. It's probably not a strong legal argument, but IMO they should be paying me to use my system to run software of their choice, much in the way that I would pay to use Azure to run software of my choice on their systems.
- Decade 10y ago
  In my opinion, there is never a good time to restart. That is simply an artifact of the sad historical circumstances that led to the current state of operating systems. I don’t particularly enjoy waking up to all my programs are closed because Windows decided that tonight was the night that it restarted. It’s slightly better on MacOS, where programs using MacOS-specific APIs can restore their state on startup, but that doesn’t include most of the third-party applications. But MacOS doesn’t force the reboot. Yet.
  - fapjacks 10y ago
    For the record, Linux does not do this, and it is an operating system.
    - notalaser 10y ago
      On the other hand, many/most distributions have major releases every 6-12 months, and the upgrade process is a lot more hit and miss. I have Debian and (unexpectedly enough...) Fedora services that I've managed to drag along two and, respectively, three major releases. On the other hand, I can't remember ever managing to get a clean upgrade on Ubuntu after 8.04 or so. My latest attempt has been miserable, I spent half a day nursing my Ubuntu station at work back to health. Besides, it's a trend that I expect to see reversed soon enough, given the direction in which Linux desktop is heading nowadays. Edit: empirically, what has greatly simplified my life in this matter is being old-fashioned about partitioning. I keep /home and /opt separate, so upgrading typically consists of saving a list of packages, wiping everything but /home and /opt, doing a fresh install and reinstalling the packages. Depending on what I'm installing (OpenBSD on my laptop, Debian on my desktop) it takes about five minutes of accepting defaults and waiting for progress bars to fill, then another ten minutes until the packages installs (most of those ten minutes is spent on LaTeX, to be honest).
      - fabianhjr 10y ago
        > many/most distributions have major releases every 6-12 months, and the upgrade process is a lot more hit and miss. You might want to try a rolling release distro, something like Antergos (Arch + Tweaks)
- malka 10y ago
  > It's another reason people should stop worrying and upgrade to Windows 10. ;) Never. Microsoft has lost my trust forever with these issues.
- oxide 10y ago
  The only reason for me to upgrade is DirectX 12 exclusivity, a practice I personally abhor, and always have. Luckily, there are no games on the PC that use DirectX12 beyond some hackjob implementations for DX11 games. I think I'll be just fine on Windows 7. I may upgrade when the OS is "finished." For now, though, I think I'll let others trudge through the mud of a forced public beta. Maybe, just maybe, I might take the plunge when the video games I built my PC for actually require me to. Until then? No thank you.
- Aelius 10y ago
  Windows 7 would forcibly shut down and reboot, without warning or indication, if you delayed updates long enough. Any laptop I owned with 7 could and often did spontaneously restart, no matter what I was doing. I'm not shy about installing updates, but if I'm busy working I would delay it a couple times. Then I'd not use the laptop for a few days (with it in sleep mode), by then I'd have forgotten about the update. I was bitten by forced reboots in 7 many times. 8 added a "Your PC will reboot in 15 minutes" and that was so much better from a laptop perspective. W10 insider builds currently tell you to set "inactive hours", and this works fairly well for both phone and laptop. My phone updates while I sleep, my laptop pings me to reboot at my leisure, for it is never awake & inactive.
  - vocatus_gate 10y ago
    Disable the "Windows Update" service. Problem solved.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Oh, frak their idea of "idle time". I went to settings to change it, I honestly wanted to give it a reasonable time window when I'm not likely to use the machine. Guess what? The "busy time" is limited to 8 hours. Because no one ever uses a computer for more than 8 hours a day? Well, but I do. Frak that.
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
My biggest issue with Windows Update (specifically) is that it has absolutely no clue what a laptop is. If I'm on a laptop, I'm likely to be out working from site to site, so don't force me to keep my laptop ON so updates can install! Ugh. This is just stupid-headed engineering.
- freehunter 10y ago
  I love the "We will install updates at 3:30am". I'd really like to see you try. My laptop will be in my bag in the hotel room at 3:30am. Hilton will be really happy with you burning the building down when you remotely switch on my Thinkpad with no ventilation.
  - noxToken 10y ago
    I have never had a Windows laptop boot up for scheduled updates. In that event, it always waitied for the next manual boot.
    - freehunter 10y ago
      Yeah, I haven't either, that's why I said "I'd love to see you try". You'd think the system would be smart enough to realize that it's literally never been awake at 3:30am.
      - morcheeba 10y ago
        The ACPI power spec allows the computer to set an alarm and have it woken up at a particular time... like 3:30am
    - delecti 10y ago
      If the computer is sleeping it can wake up. Not sure about hibernate.
      - cptskippy 10y ago
squeaky-clean 10y ago
> The setting appears unreliable at best, and the popup is useless when it pops under fullscreen programs This! Anyone saying this is new behavior caused by the Windows 10 update has never been booted out of a WoW raid at 3 am because the restart pop-up didn't show beneath the game window. Windows Update has been doing this since XP.

WorldMaker 10y ago

The interesting thing here is that Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 all improved the Windows Update restart timing logic and made it more transparent. (There's a section that states "A restart is planned, Windows has determined the most likely idle time to try the restart is 3:43am" now, for instance.) In this case it's Windows 7's Restart logic that is old/bad (and long has been), not Windows 10, but Windows 10 of course is getting blamed for it, not Windows 7. It's another reason people should stop worrying and upgrade to Windows 10. ;)

PhasmaFelis 10y ago
That's not an excuse. Microsoft can and has been pushing updates to 7 to enable the constant upgrade nagging. They've even been continually pushing new updates that get more and more naggy. There is nothing preventing them from including an update that makes 7's restart logic less sadistic, but they've chosen not to do that.
- eropple 10y ago
  Can you explain to me why Microsoft should expend time and effort to encourage behavior (staying on Windows 7) that increases their costs and increases fragility in their ecosystem? I'm not sympathetic to the dark patterns they use to push people to upgrade, but I'm 100% onboard with not pushing improvements to an older operating system.
  - abakker 10y ago
    What about a computer that runs a specific piece of software (say, Mach3 for CNC control) that doesn't have a win10 alternative. It only runs in windows 7 32 bit. There is no good alternative. I would prefer to make the determination that the machine will NEVER update. I just need it to remain the same until mach 3 updates or an alternative comes along.
    - tracker1 10y ago
      Then disconnect it from the internet, and disable automatic updates... easy, peasy. edit: regarding downvotes... if the software versioning is mission critical for a system, then having automatic updates and being connected to an external network is a risk to that critical system. I wasn't trying to be pedantic, but was being perhaps more terse than some may appreciate.
      - oxide 10y ago
        >Then disconnect it from the internet this is not a solution to a problem. it's incredibly reductive and close-minded.
    - eropple 10y ago
      My understanding (I don't keep old OSes around so I can't test) is that Automatic Updates settings are still honored. Is this incorrect? Past that, is there a reason that system should be connected to the Internet in the first place?
  - wang_li 10y ago
    They should simply perform their obligations around providing fixes for the product for the duration of the advertised support period. That they are running software on thousands or hundreds of thousands of machines that was advertised as an update but is instead advertware is a crap move on their part. It's probably not a strong legal argument, but IMO they should be paying me to use my system to run software of their choice, much in the way that I would pay to use Azure to run software of my choice on their systems.
Decade 10y ago
In my opinion, there is never a good time to restart. That is simply an artifact of the sad historical circumstances that led to the current state of operating systems. I don’t particularly enjoy waking up to all my programs are closed because Windows decided that tonight was the night that it restarted. It’s slightly better on MacOS, where programs using MacOS-specific APIs can restore their state on startup, but that doesn’t include most of the third-party applications. But MacOS doesn’t force the reboot. Yet.
- fapjacks 10y ago
  For the record, Linux does not do this, and it is an operating system.
  - notalaser 10y ago
    On the other hand, many/most distributions have major releases every 6-12 months, and the upgrade process is a lot more hit and miss. I have Debian and (unexpectedly enough...) Fedora services that I've managed to drag along two and, respectively, three major releases. On the other hand, I can't remember ever managing to get a clean upgrade on Ubuntu after 8.04 or so. My latest attempt has been miserable, I spent half a day nursing my Ubuntu station at work back to health. Besides, it's a trend that I expect to see reversed soon enough, given the direction in which Linux desktop is heading nowadays. Edit: empirically, what has greatly simplified my life in this matter is being old-fashioned about partitioning. I keep /home and /opt separate, so upgrading typically consists of saving a list of packages, wiping everything but /home and /opt, doing a fresh install and reinstalling the packages. Depending on what I'm installing (OpenBSD on my laptop, Debian on my desktop) it takes about five minutes of accepting defaults and waiting for progress bars to fill, then another ten minutes until the packages installs (most of those ten minutes is spent on LaTeX, to be honest).
    - fabianhjr 10y ago
      > many/most distributions have major releases every 6-12 months, and the upgrade process is a lot more hit and miss. You might want to try a rolling release distro, something like Antergos (Arch + Tweaks)
malka 10y ago
> It's another reason people should stop worrying and upgrade to Windows 10. ;) Never. Microsoft has lost my trust forever with these issues.
oxide 10y ago
The only reason for me to upgrade is DirectX 12 exclusivity, a practice I personally abhor, and always have. Luckily, there are no games on the PC that use DirectX12 beyond some hackjob implementations for DX11 games. I think I'll be just fine on Windows 7. I may upgrade when the OS is "finished." For now, though, I think I'll let others trudge through the mud of a forced public beta. Maybe, just maybe, I might take the plunge when the video games I built my PC for actually require me to. Until then? No thank you.
Aelius 10y ago
Windows 7 would forcibly shut down and reboot, without warning or indication, if you delayed updates long enough. Any laptop I owned with 7 could and often did spontaneously restart, no matter what I was doing. I'm not shy about installing updates, but if I'm busy working I would delay it a couple times. Then I'd not use the laptop for a few days (with it in sleep mode), by then I'd have forgotten about the update. I was bitten by forced reboots in 7 many times. 8 added a "Your PC will reboot in 15 minutes" and that was so much better from a laptop perspective. W10 insider builds currently tell you to set "inactive hours", and this works fairly well for both phone and laptop. My phone updates while I sleep, my laptop pings me to reboot at my leisure, for it is never awake & inactive.
- vocatus_gate 10y ago
  Disable the "Windows Update" service. Problem solved.
TeMPOraL 10y ago
Oh, frak their idea of "idle time". I went to settings to change it, I honestly wanted to give it a reasonable time window when I'm not likely to use the machine. Guess what? The "busy time" is limited to 8 hours. Because no one ever uses a computer for more than 8 hours a day? Well, but I do. Frak that.

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

My biggest issue with Windows Update (specifically) is that it has absolutely no clue what a laptop is. If I'm on a laptop, I'm likely to be out working from site to site, so don't force me to keep my laptop ON so updates can install! Ugh. This is just stupid-headed engineering.

freehunter 10y ago
I love the "We will install updates at 3:30am". I'd really like to see you try. My laptop will be in my bag in the hotel room at 3:30am. Hilton will be really happy with you burning the building down when you remotely switch on my Thinkpad with no ventilation.
- noxToken 10y ago
  I have never had a Windows laptop boot up for scheduled updates. In that event, it always waitied for the next manual boot.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    Yeah, I haven't either, that's why I said "I'd love to see you try". You'd think the system would be smart enough to realize that it's literally never been awake at 3:30am.
    - morcheeba 10y ago
      The ACPI power spec allows the computer to set an alarm and have it woken up at a particular time... like 3:30am
  - delecti 10y ago
    If the computer is sleeping it can wake up. Not sure about hibernate.
    - cptskippy 10y ago

squeaky-clean 10y ago

> The setting appears unreliable at best, and the popup is useless when it pops under fullscreen programs This! Anyone saying this is new behavior caused by the Windows 10 update has never been booted out of a WoW raid at 3 am because the restart pop-up didn't show beneath the game window. Windows Update has been doing this since XP.