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I'm a tolerant person, but recently I switched from Windows to Mac because the forced Windows updates kept messing me up. One time I left a long simulation runn

by kens 8y ago

I'm a tolerant person, but recently I switched from Windows to Mac because the forced Windows updates kept messing me up. One time I left a long simulation running overnight. In the morning, I was greeted by a computer that had automatically rebooted to install updates, killing my simulation. Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doing updates instead. It seems like Windows has become an update engine that will sometimes also do computation for you. My assumption is there's someone at Microsoft who gets a bonus as long as they keep presenting update graphs going up and to the right, and they don't care how much they mess up the Windows experience in the process.

warent 8y ago
I'm by no means a low-level OS developer but I can't help but wonder, wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk to copy system-critical files and then quietly stage updates in the partition (all of this with minimal thread priority so that if some other process demands resources/threads, it will pause/defer itself!). When the staged update is complete, it gives you a friendly notification "You have a new update available!" which you can then complete as fast as your disk can copy files (or even just set some flag to toggle the partition in use... The old partition then becomes the new staging partition) Does that make sense at all or is this an unrealistic idea? EDIT: Maybe this is how updates already work, I'm not sure
- ledriveby 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure this is how ChromeOS' update system works.
  - pizzazzaro 8y ago
    Are you sure? Because ChromeOS is just a Gentoo fork where google replaced the package manager to support their binaries instead. Programs running in memory just stay running, even if you update the files that are those programs. This is how Linux works. Restart them when you need the new version. Its clean. Its easy. I kept watching netflix as firefox compiled (~30 mins), and got to close the browser after the next episode was done, and open the latest Firefox to monkey with the new settings.
    - gerdesj 8y ago
      I didn't know that (Gentoo user). I suppose it has more in common with Sabayon as a binary jobbie. The full Gentoo experience is not for the faint of heart but when you have spend hours watching compiler etc output and fixing breakage that would bring most users of an OS to their knees, you lose the dread inherent in OS updates. You are nearly (and generally) correct about programs just stay running even when overwritten but of course programs generally consist of more than one file and might run more than once and if you update part of this and something reloads or whatever, you can end up in a world of hurt. That said, it is behaviour that I have relied on more often than I can count and so have you with your Firefox anecdote. I've done some remote Gentoo updates with systems in quite the broken state - it keeps IT interesting! I once had to get Puppet to install telnetd on some systems so I could repair sshd.
      - R_haterade 8y ago
        Several years ago I remember reading on stack overflow about how someone had managed to rm the ls program on a Linux system. Your anecdote reminded me of the fix. I’ll do some googling and see if I can find it. If I can, I’ll post it here. Hats off to people like you. You’re what we mere mortals aspire to, and it’s always encouraging to hear that someone else has attained a level of mastery. Makes it seem more achievable!
    - ndesaulniers 8y ago
      > Are you sure? Because ChromeOS is just a Gentoo fork where google replaced the package manager to support their binaries instead. Yes, and that's a gross oversimplification. Android got the idea from ChromeOS. I suspect it's possible to reload the OS in place with kexec, but haven't proposed it yet.
    - brigade 8y ago
      Eventually the kernel has to be updated, which you want to reboot for. Plus ensuring that the entire userland is running the same new versions of base system libraries isn't much less disruptive than simply rebooting. Anyway, ChromeOS swaps the system and kernel between 4 partitions [1] - automatic update effectively installs a new system into the system partitions you're not booted from, then tells the boot loader to boot from the other ones next reboot. [1] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/disk-format#TOC-GUID-Partition-Table-GPT- https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/...
- mediocrejoker 8y ago
  This is how some versions of android work. If a new update partition fails to boot, it falls back to the old one automatically.
- Splines 8y ago
  https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-shut-down-a-Windows-10-computer-without-updating-it https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-shut-down-a-Windows-10-comp... So when Windows says you have an update available, the design is that it did all the work that is possible and all that's left is (in theory) the copy bit that's left. My completely ill-informed guess is that there are exceptions to this rule by teams that aren't fully aware of how updates work under the hood and as a result upgrading takes longer than it really should. As time goes by those teams get hit with a stick and they fix things, but the upgrade team probably plays a fair bit of wack-a-mole.
- ndesaulniers 8y ago
  > wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk This is what ChromeOS and Android do. At least on Android Pixel phones, there's A and B partitions for each of the boot, system, and vendor partitions. The bootloader tracks whether A or B should be booted. Userspace downloads the updates and writes to the opposite-than-booted partition. On reboot, the bootloader boots the latest partition. Downsize is these partitions are now double the size, so less space for the user partition.
  - bschwindHN 8y ago
    This is also how microcontrollers like the ESP32 do over-the-air updates while keeping a "safe" factory firmware version.
- avip 8y ago
  This is how embedded devices do firmware upgrade - I'm not aware of any other sane & safe way to upgrade.
  - Farradfahren 8y ago
    Oh there are, but they are not safe and sane- they are basically network corrected viruses, overwritting the image they where started from like a virus. You do not want to disturb this or deprive it of its lifeline over the phone.
- djsumdog 8y ago
  The original devs for WinNT and NTFS made some interesting decisions with file locking. Hard locks in the Windows world are pretty difficult to identify, much less release. The update stage all the files that need to be change and complete the release process on boot before any system processors are allowed to lock anything.
- finchisko 8y ago
  Or maybe they can implement some overlay FS and updates will be stored in FS overlays. Writing to overlay would be possible even when Windows is running. Effectively shortening time when computer cannot be used due system updates. Basically the only disrupt would be just simple reboot to activate the FS layer due Windows file locking.
- pixl97 8y ago
  I dont think this is the problem itself. A lot of the problem is the user directory is a mess of both user created data and system data all jumbled about. File copy speed itself is rarely the problem. IOPS, where hundreds of thousands of small read and write operations in the registry and other small files dominate the process.
RandomTisk 8y ago
That really long greeting that says "your files are where you left them" that you can't speed up or cancel out of makes me want to kick puppies.
- aarongolliver 8y ago
  You used to be able to ctrl-alt-delete to skip it. They disabled that after a while though :(
- Razengan 8y ago
  The last time I installed Windows most of the greeting messages came off as patronizing or subtly sinister, like that one. Throughout Windows’ history, even before I had ever used Macs, it has felt as if someone at Microsoft keeps having the wrong idea about what people adore about Macs, and tries to imitate that in a “we can do it better” way.
  - temporary_ 8y ago
    Initially I really wondering about the intention behind this new style of messages (casual and personal, lots of "we"), but now I think they are trying to get people used to the idea of "operating system as a service". It seems likely that this is where all these "We've got an update for you, just sit back ;-)" style of messages come from. Curiously, the bluescreen talks about "your computer" having an issue, though, with a sad smiley, no less.
  - lowlevel 8y ago
    Don't worry... your files are right where you left them. As long as they're not in Documents...
    - Razengan 8y ago
      I can’t help but read that message in a “Would be a shame if something happened to them..” tone.
      - 8y ago
mandeepj 8y ago
Humble tip - You can pause updates for up to 45 days. During this period, you can enable them at your leisure. This is what I do when I'm leaving my computer for an overnight rendering.
- cm2187 8y ago
  Doesn't change the fact that you end up having to actively manage the OS not screwing up your workflow, that's not how I would define "good". Plus I would always forget.
  - ragequitta 8y ago
    The alternative is horrifying though. No regular user ever updates their stuff unless they're forced to, and in a world of increasingly horrifying botnets that can cripple the world economy on command, I can see why having the average user update automatically is necessary. Note that the average user (even myself, who is fairly good at keeping the latest version of everything installed) wouldn't have this problematic update with the (potential) data loss installed yet. You would have to have manually done it. Does windows not give you the 250 warnings that it used to to postpone the restart? I turn off my computer every night, so I haven't even noticed that updates occur for ~1.5 years.
    - blep-arsh 8y ago
      Major Windows 10 releases continue to receive security updates for quite some time after a new release drops, so force-feeding major releases to home users is not even necessary to keep users secure. As for warnings, as soon as the update is auto-applied you lose the ability to reboot without having your OS replaced and possibly rendered inoperable. Security updates are quick and mostly painless, on the other hand, but home users don't get to choose what to install.
      - cm2187 8y ago
        I thought the model was 18 months of support now: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifec...
sundvor 8y ago
It never stops to amaze me how unwilling most people are to explore the latest Win10 options to always defer updates by number of days (eg stay a week behind on feature updates to let others be more on the cutting edge), or even temporarily freeze the windows update service by up to a two digit number of days. If I ever wanted to be sure that no updates took place I'd use the freeze. Switching OS might be a solution, but it is worth having a look at these first. The upside is never being behind on patches, and there are actually some bloody useful fixes coming down the pipeline especially as far as security is concerned.
- jaggederest 8y ago
  If you have to go into the settings to get a good behavior, it's useless for 95%+ of users. On the projects I've worked on, most people never open the preferences or settings menu.
- jackfoxy 8y ago
  Even deferring updates is not really good about being in your face enough about having a pending update ready, so eventually it's going to update by itself anyway. Regarding switching to Mac, it never ceases to amaze me all of my colleagues who opted for a company Mac when all the productivity tools they need run natively on Windows, and sometimes not on Mac at all. So they set up a Windows partition which is never big enough and they always have problems with. Their choice was purely out of fan-boyism, and they all regret it.
  - albedoa 8y ago
    They regret choosing a Mac? Or they regret that they were offered a Mac by a company whose productivity tools only work on Windows for some reason?
  - Razengan 8y ago
    Have they tried VMs like Parallels or “translation layers” like CrossOver [0]? [0] https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-mac https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-mac (don’t mind the old style website.)
rsync 8y ago
"Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doing updates instead. It seems like Windows has become an update engine that will sometimes also do computation for you." This is, unfortunately, also true of Sonos. I would say that more than 10% of my attempted sonos usage is blocked by an update process. If you're just turning on the news for 2-3 minutes while you pack up your things, that's a 100% outage for you.
- JonathonW 8y ago
  The distinction being that Sonos updates rarely take more than a minute or two, and I've never seen one that was actually mandatory (the controller app will bug you about it, but it usually works anyways). Would be nice if it could automatically update while idle and I never had to worry about it, but that hardly seems necessary IME. Granted, I've also never had Windows 10 unexpectedly reboot on me or force an update at an inconvenient time, either. If you're proactive about running updates at times that are convenient for you, and don't just ignore every popup and warning that Windows gives you when it's waiting for a reboot, you'll never see it reboot when you don't want it to.
  - wingworks 8y ago
    I agree I've never had Windows do an inconvenient update on me. But I'm like you, I don't ignore all the update warnings, I do it when I go to lunch or whatever. But I know lots of people who will seemingly not take note of any popups that come up and just ignore them forever. Have said that, these days it should be possible to build up a pattern of when you use your computer and do the update when it's never being used.
    - jlawson 8y ago
      >these days it should be possible to build up a pattern of when you use your computer and do the update when it's never being used This'll work for 99% of cases. The remaining 1% is millions and millions of people. I wonder if the system could give you a few weeks grace time to update, and if you keep ignoring it the system starts slowing down (while explaining why and asking to update). Some people will try to ignore forever and there needs to be some way to motivate them to choose a time (instead of taking control away and risking choosing a very bad time).
m3at 8y ago
I experienced the same when attempting to show Forza Horizon to a friend, not having played it for a bit it required a 300Mb update before launching. I could not find what was updated. Overall my experience on Microsoft store has been sub-par, eg comparing to steam.
kgwxd 8y ago
This also exactly describes the modern gaming experience. It's infuriating.
- Razengan 8y ago
  Thankfully most Japanese games still seem to be free of it.
sarreph 8y ago
It's funny you mention this as I had a very similar thought the other night when clean-installing an old gaming PC to try some VR stuff on. I'm used to using a Mac, and the update notifications can definitely be annoying, but Windows' default update behaviour is another level of excruciatingly bad UX. I assume — perhaps wrongly — that you can stop windows from installing updates on shutdown/restart. However, the other night (on Windows), forcing an update on shutdown was the only obvious option available to me. I can't fathom what the rationale is to force this kind of experience on users. When I want to shut my computer down, it's because I want it to turn off, not start a new (oftentimes looping) operation to install software that I won't immediately see (or need to see) the benefit of.
- jpfed 8y ago
  And then it wants to finish those updates after you restart. This cost my wife so much stress when she'd fire up her laptop right before delivering a lecture, only to find it busy for minutes completing the update.
- Vektorweg 8y ago
  Wouldn't be a straight Linux distribution the best choice to avoid anything annoying?
Salgat 8y ago
It's annoying but if uptime is critical you really need to change the settings for that. The reason Microsoft forces updates by default is because of all the incompetent computer users out there (especially older folks) who bitch and moan about how insecure and unstable their Windows that they haven't updated in 2 years is.
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  If uptime is critical, what on Earth are you doing with desktop Windows? There are even server variants now, if you need to have the Windows flavor. And worse: I'm all for auto updates...unless they break the system! (See article.) No wonder people are holding off upgrades. (Not Windows-specific, for sure - but Win10 seems to be the worst offender)
BuckRogers 8y ago
That's easy enough to prevent if you peek into the update settings[0][1]. I have restarts blocked from 8AM-2AM, due to not wanting it doing it during the day when I walk away from work. You would want the opposite. Set that to 5PM-11AM and you'll never have a nightly restart again. I've used Mac and Linux but had issues with all of them, worst being desktop Linux with basic things (for a power user), and Mac software issues[2]. Windows 10 is in my opinion the best version of Windows yet, even if it's also imperfect. You definitely need to dig into the settings if you want things to be right for you, but that applies to every OS, including iOS and Android. [0]https://i.imgur.com/ls2yNMh.png https://i.imgur.com/ls2yNMh.png [1]https://i.imgur.com/T4UTke6.png https://i.imgur.com/T4UTke6.png [2]https://youtu.be/1AO3L-T14E0 https://youtu.be/1AO3L-T14E0
- exodust 8y ago
  That update option window says "max 18 hours". Doesn't help when leaving computer for 24 hours+ to render. The other thing is you might have critical work happening, and really don't want any risk of problems due to updates. So even if you're not using PC, you don't want updates to happen for a couple of weeks or longer until project isn't so critical. The forced updates, even for advanced users, is the single reason I refuse to update to Windows 10.
  - BuckRogers 8y ago
    If you are not going to be at the desk for 24+ hours at all, then you would hit this slider[0]. Updates don't come through that often though. A patch every 30 days, a service pack every 6 months. I run 30 days behind on patches, and 365 days behind on service packs. If your machine is used that often for 24+ hour rendering projects, you might want a non-home edition of Windows10 such as LTSC. I do agree though that there should be a simple option, "do not restart for updates until I click on a prompt". I'm on the same page, but I'm not convinced the situation is as dire as everyone makes it out to be. [0]https://i.imgur.com/XMTGtGr.png https://i.imgur.com/XMTGtGr.png
    - pixl97 8y ago
lostmsu 8y ago
You should blame your simulation software vendor (which could be yourself, lol). Windows gives software a way to tell, that computer is busy, and if your software did not do that, I am not sure how is this fault of Windows? Without that, computer might go to sleep, which would happen on any other OS too under default settings. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/winbase/nf-winbase-setthreadexecutionstate https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/winbase...
- ryandrake 8y ago
  The onus should not be on the user or the user's application to tell the computer "don't do this thing". It should be up to the user whether some thing gets done. The user is supposed to command the computer, not the other way around.
  - paulryanrogers 8y ago
    One counterargument could be that users who ignore updates too often will lose control to malicious software over time.
- xfer 8y ago
  There is a setting for sleep timer, which people disable on desktops. It seems pretty ridiculous to suggest to call an api, to not randomly do things that the user didn't instruct.
bArray 8y ago
This is exactly one of the main reasons why I switched to Linux, it doesn't do anything unless I let it or ask it to - with few exceptions. My anecdote: I was about to have an important meeting and needed to print off some sheets from my Windows-based netbook. The power was low (<3%), so I plugged in the charger and resumed it from hibernation. It had been offline for a little while up until then because of traveling. Seeing the power was plugged in and I was shutting the machine down going into the meeting, Windows presumed that right then was a perfect moment to perform a Windows update. That night I wiped it and put Ubuntu on there. FYI the Linux experience has been mostly great. There's been maybe a problem once a year, with some driver or package issue - but most of the time it runs great. I can safely run anything on it overnight knowing that it won't decide to do anything on it's own accord.
- shams93 8y ago
  I switched to linux in 1998, it was much harder back then now its arguably easier to install ubuntu than to upgrade windows 10.
  - Piskvorrr 8y ago
    "The OS which you have to constantly hack upon with weird commands, just to retain basic functionality" - yeah, that's Windows nowadays.
- msaharia 8y ago
  I shifted to Linux full time this year from MacOS. The only thing I desperately need is a replacement for is MS Office. Any ideas? I'm a power user, which Google word is simply not good for.
  - Zolomon 8y ago
    LaTeX[0] might work for you. [0]: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
    - 8y ago
exodust 8y ago
Well said kens, and those are great examples of having manual control over updates. There's a lot more examples too. I'm still on Windows 7 and my laptop is Windows 8, where I can safely disable updates until I'm good and ready. My understanding of Windows 10 was that there is a way to control when updates happen if using the Pro version? Is that not the case?
tootahe45 8y ago
I switched to Ubuntu, gave up hope MS would come out with a Windows-lite with how big Win10 is getting, and how they're trying to put Win10 on smaller devices. A lot of devices that come with Win10 really shouldn't have such a bloated OS, and I mean that even if they're just going to be using Office. Pleasantly surprised so far with Ubuntu, hardly any hacking to start coding and running databases etc.
- icemelt8 8y ago
  Ubuntu doesn't have Photoshop.
manmal 8y ago
Why don’t they let people set a certain day in the week for major updates (E.g. Sunday), and only the most important micro updates are force-installed immediately?
- anticensor 8y ago
  Some major updates replace other broken major updates.
  - manmal 8y ago
    I guess they could make an exception if booting up failed.
finchisko 8y ago
I wouldn't mind these forced updated, if they took seconds like on Linux. Why are Windows updates so slow? And why I cannot use my computer when updates are running (like on Linux). Part of the problem is that Windows locks files so they cannot be deleted/replaced when full blown system is running, but it has to be more I don't know about the update mechanism.
- pixl97 8y ago
  Very little time is spent in replacing actual files. Huge amounts of time are spend in the registry and other small IO operations. Also .net rebuilding wastes huge amounts of time.
amaccuish 8y ago
What kills me is that the "active hours" setting stops you from setting longer than 8 hours. I want my server to install updates between 0100 and 0500, but that just isn't possible.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
fstanis 8y ago
I just disabled Windows Update completely (by disabling the service) after 3 such incidents. I'm aware it's a security risk, but I also keep nothing of value on that machine nowadays.

by kens 8y ago

warent 8y ago

I'm by no means a low-level OS developer but I can't help but wonder, wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk to copy system-critical files and then quietly stage updates in the partition (all of this with minimal thread priority so that if some other process demands resources/threads, it will pause/defer itself!). When the staged update is complete, it gives you a friendly notification "You have a new update available!" which you can then complete as fast as your disk can copy files (or even just set some flag to toggle the partition in use... The old partition then becomes the new staging partition) Does that make sense at all or is this an unrealistic idea? EDIT: Maybe this is how updates already work, I'm not sure

ledriveby 8y ago
I'm pretty sure this is how ChromeOS' update system works.
- pizzazzaro 8y ago
  Are you sure? Because ChromeOS is just a Gentoo fork where google replaced the package manager to support their binaries instead. Programs running in memory just stay running, even if you update the files that are those programs. This is how Linux works. Restart them when you need the new version. Its clean. Its easy. I kept watching netflix as firefox compiled (~30 mins), and got to close the browser after the next episode was done, and open the latest Firefox to monkey with the new settings.
  - gerdesj 8y ago
    I didn't know that (Gentoo user). I suppose it has more in common with Sabayon as a binary jobbie. The full Gentoo experience is not for the faint of heart but when you have spend hours watching compiler etc output and fixing breakage that would bring most users of an OS to their knees, you lose the dread inherent in OS updates. You are nearly (and generally) correct about programs just stay running even when overwritten but of course programs generally consist of more than one file and might run more than once and if you update part of this and something reloads or whatever, you can end up in a world of hurt. That said, it is behaviour that I have relied on more often than I can count and so have you with your Firefox anecdote. I've done some remote Gentoo updates with systems in quite the broken state - it keeps IT interesting! I once had to get Puppet to install telnetd on some systems so I could repair sshd.
    - R_haterade 8y ago
      Several years ago I remember reading on stack overflow about how someone had managed to rm the ls program on a Linux system. Your anecdote reminded me of the fix. I’ll do some googling and see if I can find it. If I can, I’ll post it here. Hats off to people like you. You’re what we mere mortals aspire to, and it’s always encouraging to hear that someone else has attained a level of mastery. Makes it seem more achievable!
  - ndesaulniers 8y ago
    > Are you sure? Because ChromeOS is just a Gentoo fork where google replaced the package manager to support their binaries instead. Yes, and that's a gross oversimplification. Android got the idea from ChromeOS. I suspect it's possible to reload the OS in place with kexec, but haven't proposed it yet.
  - brigade 8y ago
    Eventually the kernel has to be updated, which you want to reboot for. Plus ensuring that the entire userland is running the same new versions of base system libraries isn't much less disruptive than simply rebooting. Anyway, ChromeOS swaps the system and kernel between 4 partitions [1] - automatic update effectively installs a new system into the system partitions you're not booted from, then tells the boot loader to boot from the other ones next reboot. [1] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/disk-format#TOC-GUID-Partition-Table-GPT- https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/...
mediocrejoker 8y ago
This is how some versions of android work. If a new update partition fails to boot, it falls back to the old one automatically.
Splines 8y ago
https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-shut-down-a-Windows-10-computer-without-updating-it https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-shut-down-a-Windows-10-comp... So when Windows says you have an update available, the design is that it did all the work that is possible and all that's left is (in theory) the copy bit that's left. My completely ill-informed guess is that there are exceptions to this rule by teams that aren't fully aware of how updates work under the hood and as a result upgrading takes longer than it really should. As time goes by those teams get hit with a stick and they fix things, but the upgrade team probably plays a fair bit of wack-a-mole.
ndesaulniers 8y ago
> wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk This is what ChromeOS and Android do. At least on Android Pixel phones, there's A and B partitions for each of the boot, system, and vendor partitions. The bootloader tracks whether A or B should be booted. Userspace downloads the updates and writes to the opposite-than-booted partition. On reboot, the bootloader boots the latest partition. Downsize is these partitions are now double the size, so less space for the user partition.
- bschwindHN 8y ago
  This is also how microcontrollers like the ESP32 do over-the-air updates while keeping a "safe" factory firmware version.
avip 8y ago
This is how embedded devices do firmware upgrade - I'm not aware of any other sane & safe way to upgrade.
- Farradfahren 8y ago
  Oh there are, but they are not safe and sane- they are basically network corrected viruses, overwritting the image they where started from like a virus. You do not want to disturb this or deprive it of its lifeline over the phone.
djsumdog 8y ago
The original devs for WinNT and NTFS made some interesting decisions with file locking. Hard locks in the Windows world are pretty difficult to identify, much less release. The update stage all the files that need to be change and complete the release process on boot before any system processors are allowed to lock anything.
finchisko 8y ago
Or maybe they can implement some overlay FS and updates will be stored in FS overlays. Writing to overlay would be possible even when Windows is running. Effectively shortening time when computer cannot be used due system updates. Basically the only disrupt would be just simple reboot to activate the FS layer due Windows file locking.
pixl97 8y ago
I dont think this is the problem itself. A lot of the problem is the user directory is a mess of both user created data and system data all jumbled about. File copy speed itself is rarely the problem. IOPS, where hundreds of thousands of small read and write operations in the registry and other small files dominate the process.

RandomTisk 8y ago

That really long greeting that says "your files are where you left them" that you can't speed up or cancel out of makes me want to kick puppies.

aarongolliver 8y ago
You used to be able to ctrl-alt-delete to skip it. They disabled that after a while though :(
Razengan 8y ago
The last time I installed Windows most of the greeting messages came off as patronizing or subtly sinister, like that one. Throughout Windows’ history, even before I had ever used Macs, it has felt as if someone at Microsoft keeps having the wrong idea about what people adore about Macs, and tries to imitate that in a “we can do it better” way.
- temporary_ 8y ago
  Initially I really wondering about the intention behind this new style of messages (casual and personal, lots of "we"), but now I think they are trying to get people used to the idea of "operating system as a service". It seems likely that this is where all these "We've got an update for you, just sit back ;-)" style of messages come from. Curiously, the bluescreen talks about "your computer" having an issue, though, with a sad smiley, no less.
- lowlevel 8y ago
  Don't worry... your files are right where you left them. As long as they're not in Documents...
  - Razengan 8y ago
    I can’t help but read that message in a “Would be a shame if something happened to them..” tone.
    - 8y ago

mandeepj 8y ago

Humble tip - You can pause updates for up to 45 days. During this period, you can enable them at your leisure. This is what I do when I'm leaving my computer for an overnight rendering.

cm2187 8y ago
Doesn't change the fact that you end up having to actively manage the OS not screwing up your workflow, that's not how I would define "good". Plus I would always forget.
- ragequitta 8y ago
  The alternative is horrifying though. No regular user ever updates their stuff unless they're forced to, and in a world of increasingly horrifying botnets that can cripple the world economy on command, I can see why having the average user update automatically is necessary. Note that the average user (even myself, who is fairly good at keeping the latest version of everything installed) wouldn't have this problematic update with the (potential) data loss installed yet. You would have to have manually done it. Does windows not give you the 250 warnings that it used to to postpone the restart? I turn off my computer every night, so I haven't even noticed that updates occur for ~1.5 years.
  - blep-arsh 8y ago
    Major Windows 10 releases continue to receive security updates for quite some time after a new release drops, so force-feeding major releases to home users is not even necessary to keep users secure. As for warnings, as soon as the update is auto-applied you lose the ability to reboot without having your OS replaced and possibly rendered inoperable. Security updates are quick and mostly painless, on the other hand, but home users don't get to choose what to install.
    - cm2187 8y ago
      I thought the model was 18 months of support now: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifec...

sundvor 8y ago

It never stops to amaze me how unwilling most people are to explore the latest Win10 options to always defer updates by number of days (eg stay a week behind on feature updates to let others be more on the cutting edge), or even temporarily freeze the windows update service by up to a two digit number of days. If I ever wanted to be sure that no updates took place I'd use the freeze. Switching OS might be a solution, but it is worth having a look at these first. The upside is never being behind on patches, and there are actually some bloody useful fixes coming down the pipeline especially as far as security is concerned.

jaggederest 8y ago
If you have to go into the settings to get a good behavior, it's useless for 95%+ of users. On the projects I've worked on, most people never open the preferences or settings menu.
jackfoxy 8y ago
Even deferring updates is not really good about being in your face enough about having a pending update ready, so eventually it's going to update by itself anyway. Regarding switching to Mac, it never ceases to amaze me all of my colleagues who opted for a company Mac when all the productivity tools they need run natively on Windows, and sometimes not on Mac at all. So they set up a Windows partition which is never big enough and they always have problems with. Their choice was purely out of fan-boyism, and they all regret it.
- albedoa 8y ago
  They regret choosing a Mac? Or they regret that they were offered a Mac by a company whose productivity tools only work on Windows for some reason?
- Razengan 8y ago
  Have they tried VMs like Parallels or “translation layers” like CrossOver [0]? [0] https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-mac https://www.codeweavers.com/products/crossover-mac (don’t mind the old style website.)

rsync 8y ago

"Another instance was my daughter's birthday party, where she wanted to show a movie. The computer decided to spend an hour doing updates instead. It seems like Windows has become an update engine that will sometimes also do computation for you." This is, unfortunately, also true of Sonos. I would say that more than 10% of my attempted sonos usage is blocked by an update process. If you're just turning on the news for 2-3 minutes while you pack up your things, that's a 100% outage for you.

JonathonW 8y ago
The distinction being that Sonos updates rarely take more than a minute or two, and I've never seen one that was actually mandatory (the controller app will bug you about it, but it usually works anyways). Would be nice if it could automatically update while idle and I never had to worry about it, but that hardly seems necessary IME. Granted, I've also never had Windows 10 unexpectedly reboot on me or force an update at an inconvenient time, either. If you're proactive about running updates at times that are convenient for you, and don't just ignore every popup and warning that Windows gives you when it's waiting for a reboot, you'll never see it reboot when you don't want it to.
- wingworks 8y ago
  I agree I've never had Windows do an inconvenient update on me. But I'm like you, I don't ignore all the update warnings, I do it when I go to lunch or whatever. But I know lots of people who will seemingly not take note of any popups that come up and just ignore them forever. Have said that, these days it should be possible to build up a pattern of when you use your computer and do the update when it's never being used.
  - jlawson 8y ago
    >these days it should be possible to build up a pattern of when you use your computer and do the update when it's never being used This'll work for 99% of cases. The remaining 1% is millions and millions of people. I wonder if the system could give you a few weeks grace time to update, and if you keep ignoring it the system starts slowing down (while explaining why and asking to update). Some people will try to ignore forever and there needs to be some way to motivate them to choose a time (instead of taking control away and risking choosing a very bad time).

m3at 8y ago

I experienced the same when attempting to show Forza Horizon to a friend, not having played it for a bit it required a 300Mb update before launching. I could not find what was updated. Overall my experience on Microsoft store has been sub-par, eg comparing to steam.

kgwxd 8y ago

This also exactly describes the modern gaming experience. It's infuriating.

Razengan 8y ago
Thankfully most Japanese games still seem to be free of it.

sarreph 8y ago

It's funny you mention this as I had a very similar thought the other night when clean-installing an old gaming PC to try some VR stuff on. I'm used to using a Mac, and the update notifications can definitely be annoying, but Windows' default update behaviour is another level of excruciatingly bad UX. I assume — perhaps wrongly — that you can stop windows from installing updates on shutdown/restart. However, the other night (on Windows), forcing an update on shutdown was the only obvious option available to me. I can't fathom what the rationale is to force this kind of experience on users. When I want to shut my computer down, it's because I want it to turn off, not start a new (oftentimes looping) operation to install software that I won't immediately see (or need to see) the benefit of.

jpfed 8y ago
And then it wants to finish those updates after you restart. This cost my wife so much stress when she'd fire up her laptop right before delivering a lecture, only to find it busy for minutes completing the update.
Vektorweg 8y ago
Wouldn't be a straight Linux distribution the best choice to avoid anything annoying?

Salgat 8y ago

It's annoying but if uptime is critical you really need to change the settings for that. The reason Microsoft forces updates by default is because of all the incompetent computer users out there (especially older folks) who bitch and moan about how insecure and unstable their Windows that they haven't updated in 2 years is.

Piskvorrr 8y ago
If uptime is critical, what on Earth are you doing with desktop Windows? There are even server variants now, if you need to have the Windows flavor. And worse: I'm all for auto updates...unless they break the system! (See article.) No wonder people are holding off upgrades. (Not Windows-specific, for sure - but Win10 seems to be the worst offender)

BuckRogers 8y ago

That's easy enough to prevent if you peek into the update settings[0][1]. I have restarts blocked from 8AM-2AM, due to not wanting it doing it during the day when I walk away from work. You would want the opposite. Set that to 5PM-11AM and you'll never have a nightly restart again. I've used Mac and Linux but had issues with all of them, worst being desktop Linux with basic things (for a power user), and Mac software issues[2]. Windows 10 is in my opinion the best version of Windows yet, even if it's also imperfect. You definitely need to dig into the settings if you want things to be right for you, but that applies to every OS, including iOS and Android. [0]https://i.imgur.com/ls2yNMh.png https://i.imgur.com/ls2yNMh.png [1]https://i.imgur.com/T4UTke6.png https://i.imgur.com/T4UTke6.png [2]https://youtu.be/1AO3L-T14E0 https://youtu.be/1AO3L-T14E0

exodust 8y ago
That update option window says "max 18 hours". Doesn't help when leaving computer for 24 hours+ to render. The other thing is you might have critical work happening, and really don't want any risk of problems due to updates. So even if you're not using PC, you don't want updates to happen for a couple of weeks or longer until project isn't so critical. The forced updates, even for advanced users, is the single reason I refuse to update to Windows 10.
- BuckRogers 8y ago
  If you are not going to be at the desk for 24+ hours at all, then you would hit this slider[0]. Updates don't come through that often though. A patch every 30 days, a service pack every 6 months. I run 30 days behind on patches, and 365 days behind on service packs. If your machine is used that often for 24+ hour rendering projects, you might want a non-home edition of Windows10 such as LTSC. I do agree though that there should be a simple option, "do not restart for updates until I click on a prompt". I'm on the same page, but I'm not convinced the situation is as dire as everyone makes it out to be. [0]https://i.imgur.com/XMTGtGr.png https://i.imgur.com/XMTGtGr.png
  - pixl97 8y ago

lostmsu 8y ago

You should blame your simulation software vendor (which could be yourself, lol). Windows gives software a way to tell, that computer is busy, and if your software did not do that, I am not sure how is this fault of Windows? Without that, computer might go to sleep, which would happen on any other OS too under default settings. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/winbase/nf-winbase-setthreadexecutionstate https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/winbase...

ryandrake 8y ago
The onus should not be on the user or the user's application to tell the computer "don't do this thing". It should be up to the user whether some thing gets done. The user is supposed to command the computer, not the other way around.
- paulryanrogers 8y ago
  One counterargument could be that users who ignore updates too often will lose control to malicious software over time.
xfer 8y ago
There is a setting for sleep timer, which people disable on desktops. It seems pretty ridiculous to suggest to call an api, to not randomly do things that the user didn't instruct.

bArray 8y ago

This is exactly one of the main reasons why I switched to Linux, it doesn't do anything unless I let it or ask it to - with few exceptions. My anecdote: I was about to have an important meeting and needed to print off some sheets from my Windows-based netbook. The power was low (<3%), so I plugged in the charger and resumed it from hibernation. It had been offline for a little while up until then because of traveling. Seeing the power was plugged in and I was shutting the machine down going into the meeting, Windows presumed that right then was a perfect moment to perform a Windows update. That night I wiped it and put Ubuntu on there. FYI the Linux experience has been mostly great. There's been maybe a problem once a year, with some driver or package issue - but most of the time it runs great. I can safely run anything on it overnight knowing that it won't decide to do anything on it's own accord.

shams93 8y ago
I switched to linux in 1998, it was much harder back then now its arguably easier to install ubuntu than to upgrade windows 10.
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  "The OS which you have to constantly hack upon with weird commands, just to retain basic functionality" - yeah, that's Windows nowadays.
msaharia 8y ago
I shifted to Linux full time this year from MacOS. The only thing I desperately need is a replacement for is MS Office. Any ideas? I'm a power user, which Google word is simply not good for.
- Zolomon 8y ago
  LaTeX[0] might work for you. [0]: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
  - 8y ago

exodust 8y ago

Well said kens, and those are great examples of having manual control over updates. There's a lot more examples too. I'm still on Windows 7 and my laptop is Windows 8, where I can safely disable updates until I'm good and ready. My understanding of Windows 10 was that there is a way to control when updates happen if using the Pro version? Is that not the case?

tootahe45 8y ago

I switched to Ubuntu, gave up hope MS would come out with a Windows-lite with how big Win10 is getting, and how they're trying to put Win10 on smaller devices. A lot of devices that come with Win10 really shouldn't have such a bloated OS, and I mean that even if they're just going to be using Office. Pleasantly surprised so far with Ubuntu, hardly any hacking to start coding and running databases etc.

icemelt8 8y ago
Ubuntu doesn't have Photoshop.

manmal 8y ago

Why don’t they let people set a certain day in the week for major updates (E.g. Sunday), and only the most important micro updates are force-installed immediately?

anticensor 8y ago
Some major updates replace other broken major updates.
- manmal 8y ago
  I guess they could make an exception if booting up failed.

finchisko 8y ago

I wouldn't mind these forced updated, if they took seconds like on Linux. Why are Windows updates so slow? And why I cannot use my computer when updates are running (like on Linux). Part of the problem is that Windows locks files so they cannot be deleted/replaced when full blown system is running, but it has to be more I don't know about the update mechanism.

pixl97 8y ago
Very little time is spent in replacing actual files. Huge amounts of time are spend in the registry and other small IO operations. Also .net rebuilding wastes huge amounts of time.

amaccuish 8y ago

What kills me is that the "active hours" setting stops you from setting longer than 8 hours. I want my server to install updates between 0100 and 0500, but that just isn't possible.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

fstanis 8y ago

I just disabled Windows Update completely (by disabling the service) after 3 such incidents. I'm aware it's a security risk, but I also keep nothing of value on that machine nowadays.