Windows 10 - First Impressions

[Formfiller]

Frivolity aside, how is it these Microsoft moves aren't getting more attention and more of a reaction?

-Noel

 

Tiredness.

 

The ones who cared already spent so much time with Windows 8 and all the other BS the company put up since 2012 (metro in office, VS, killing of technet, SBS, SL, XNA, WPF, the price increases of their server stack, of office by killing family and 2-PC licensing, the xbone drama)..

 

That list is not complete.

 

It's just so much overwhelming BS from this company. And just when one thought they are getting back on track you look at W10 and.. So, that's why there is less outrage today. Either you accept NuMicrosoft or you kinda move on.

Edited April 17, 2015 by Formfiller

[NoelC]

Yes, fatigue helps explain it.

 

I moved to Win 8.1 due to my skills in reconfiguring and augmenting Windows, but most did not.  Staying on Win 7 so far has worked for them, and Microsoft never really challenged that decision directly. 

 

I just wonder whether they're not aware that Microsoft is preparing to secretly "upgrade" them to Win 10, or are simply in disbelief that they would try such a thing.

 

I noticed the talking head "joscon" has simply just become silent on the "Windows Servicing Guy" blog.

 

-Noel

[Kelsenellenelvian]

The second my win 7 pc boots up as win 10 I will take my tower and club the nearest MS programmer with it.

 

Think of the thousands of people that all of a sudden find the new upgrade they are freely given and what they do when they no longer have things like DVD playback or any of the other things that were removed from win 8 on...

[JorgeA]

^^ +1

 

Wonder how many of all those unsuspecting Win7 users will think that their PCs were taken over by malware, and start calling Microsoft, PC repair shops, and antivirus companies to fix their desktops.

 

--JorgeA

Edited April 18, 2015 by JorgeA

[bphlpt]

And the "upgrade" is non-reversible unless the user specifically and manually made and maintained an up-to-date backup image, unless they want to re-install from scratch.

 

Cheers and Regards

[jaclaz]

And the "upgrade" is non-reversible unless the user specifically and manually made and maintained an up-to-date backup image, unless they want to re-install from scratch.

And in the rather common case of "large OEM" computers this might be poossible ONLY IF they made the recovery set of DVD's (by definition NO ONE EVER makes them if not the people that have anyway other means to restore/reinstall the OS) OR IF they managed to NOT alter the recovery partition (or IF the new OS still allow the use of the Recovery partition).

All in all my guess is that the people currently running 8.1 (from the start or as an upgrade from 8.0) have already had enough troubles and for some sort of karma they will experience less issues than the people still running 7, because all in all the mechanism with the WinRE.WIM are very similar if not downright the same, but I don't think that most OEM 7 used actually that approach, but rather one of the "third party" ones and this might mean troubles.

jaclaz

[Tripredacus]

All in all my guess is that the people currently running 8.1 (from the start or as an upgrade from 8.0) have already had enough troubles and for some sort of karma they will experience less issues than the people still running 7

This already is a problem for people who bought Windows 8 on an OEM computer. Even if they did get or make the recovery DVD... anyone that updated to Windows 8.1 would have to recover back to Windows 8. Then they'd have to fight with Windows Update and the Store to get back up to 8.1/Update 1, etc.

To make matters worse, there was some sort of change in between the time Windows 8.1 came out and say... 6 months ago. The recovery becomes "broken" in a way that they can't run it properly. Originally, if you updated to 8.1, you could run recovery/Refresh from the hard disk and get Win 8 back on. Now if you try to do that, the recovery program will alert you that it can't find the recovery image, even if the partition with the WIM is still present. So then it will ask for you to insert the Windows DVD... BUT it won't accept a Windows 8 DVD, it only will take a Windows 8.1 DVD which the end-user wouldn't have.

Fortunately, the 8.1 DVD it will take is not entirely picky. You don't need the OEM Recovery DVD, I've also been able to have it use one of the System Builder DVDs. It is possible other ones like Retail or VL would work as well, but the edition needs to be the same. You can't use a Core or Enterprise DVD to recover a Pro installation. Using a different DVD does not change how the OS is licensed (retail, oem, sbk, vl) if you do a refresh. It might if you did the full recovery but that takes a long time so I've never tested it.

[jaclaz]

To make matters worse, there was some sort of change in between the time Windows 8.1 came out and say... 6 months ago. The recovery becomes "broken" in a way that they can't run it properly. Originally, if you updated to 8.1, you could run recovery/Refresh from the hard disk and get Win 8 back on. Now if you try to do that, the recovery program will alert you that it can't find the recovery image, even if the partition with the WIM is still present. So then it will ask for you to insert the Windows DVD... BUT it won't accept a Windows 8 DVD, it only will take a Windows 8.1 DVD which the end-user wouldn't have.

 

... and I presume that not many people with a stupid Windows 8/8.1 tablet has a DVD, and will need to "convert" it to a USB stick or similar .

Cannot say if updating the WinRE.wim would be of use in this scenario , however, just to keep everything as together as possible:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173779-is-it-possible-to-update-wimboot-recovery-image/

 

jaclaz

[NoelC]

If we lament the "dumbing down" of Windows, shouldn't we encourage people to learn how to plan for problems?  What's wrong with expecting people to learn how to do backups and prepare Recovery Drives?  Should everything in the world be available for people who no longer care to think?

 

Edit:  I just went through the process of preparing a recovery drive.  It took all of 15 seconds of attention, then completed in about a minute while I was typing this paragraph.

 

 

-Noel

Edited April 19, 2015 by NoelC

[Formfiller]

Did you guys know that the Windows 8.1 update was brute-forced on Windows 8 users? I guess the only reason it isn't widely known is because Windows 8 was such a success in general...

 

 

 

 

 

This appeared automatically after important updates KB3008273 and KB2973544.

 

And once this screen appeared, you had no choice except to postpone. And after the second time, even postponing didn't work anymore.

 

I want to stay with Windows 8.0, but I'm given a band notification which requests to confirm upgrade to Windows 8.1.

The notification can be postponed only twice, third time it forces the upgrade.

 

 

 

I couldn't stop it. It got to the point where it just reset my computer and finished installation itself

[... ] After the install I had to delete every app it installed. Change back every setting it changed. Had to delete countless things and I am still fixing settings. It put its BS search engine on my computer and even added things to my favorites bar (unforgiveable). At this point in my life I am done with Microsoft for good. This computer is going to be sold very shortly and very unimpressed by this violation of my computer. No means no.

 

 

 

 

I failed to stop it too

. Even though I turned off that stuff it had already downloaded and scheduled the Windows 8.1 update and it started updating when I turned off my machine late last night.  I wasn't having any of that so I shut off the power, twice.  That cancelled the update but left my Windows 8 in a non-functional state where it was complaining about NTLDR missing and giving error code 0xc000000f.  The Windows 8 automatic system repair on my DVD wouldn't fix it because it thought it was now a different operating system I think.  The refresh option would not work on it either.  

To make things extra annoying Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to erase all system restore checkpoints before doing the Windows 8.1 update, so there was no way to get anything back with that either.

 For anyone without considerable technical know-how I'm guessing there would have been no option other than a complete fresh Windows install.

 

I am really steamed about this.  The whole way the Windows 8.1 update works rubs me the wrong way.  The Windows 8.1 update should have had an obvious way to disable it and answer "Never offer me this again" when it tried to get me to installed and it didn't ...

When it made the final installation request there should not have been only install now and install in 1-4 hours as options

.  It should have had a cancel option as well.  It shouldn't just take control of my computer when it decides to update and give me no way to pause it to resume later in case I need to turn my computer off due to battery or time concerns.  Finally there should have been some way to uninstall the update if it was installed accidentally. Everything about the way it works is disrespectful to me as the end user just as WIndows 8 itself was as an "upgrade" to Windows XP or Windows 7.

 

 

 

 

I have been reading all your comments and I am just as ANGRY about this as all of you. I also feel my computer has been hijacked and

there was no way I could have stopped it

.

I cannot believe the company takes the liberty to really do this to users.... Already I was forced to use Windows 8, which I didn't want from the get-go and now am being force-fed 8.1?????? without my permission????? On a day I ABSOLUTELY needed to work on my computer and it was taken over by computer dictators for over an hour? No one from Microsoft will make sure that all my apps work, or that my Internet connection is fine, or that all of my software would work (which they do not!!!!!). They will send me a polite answer with a link that supposedly should help me but that will do F-all.

Thank you for your lack of respect.

 

 

 

http://superuser.com/questions/887706/how-to-disable-auto-upgrade-from-windows-8-0-to-8-1

http://www.askvg.com/how-to-stop-automatic-forced-upgrade-from-windows-8-to-windows-8-1/

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-windows_install/forcing-me-to-upgrade-to-81-is-wrong/7c1261c6-2c5d-4cdb-a99d-8dd4706e8a36

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-windows_update/force-fed-windows-81-and-need-to-get-rid-if-asap/826071ef-1001-484f-8359-4f113368a568

Edited April 20, 2015 by Formfiller

[MagicAndre1981]

yes, I noticed this and hided them in WindowsUpdate.

[NoelC]

So the $64 question is:

 

Is this the shape of things to come with the Win 10 "upgrade" for both Win 7 and Win 8.1 users who have not hidden all the "updates to enable the upgrade to Windows 10"?

 

-Noel

[TELVM]

[ralcool]

Similarly,

 

It was only the other week or so, lacking data on my limited internet connection- I decided to switch into the slow ring to delay build 10041 downloading and using precious bandwidth.

 

Reading some of the bugs in that build, I was pleased at my choice. Until the reboot one week later. It was pushed into the slow ring and silently downloaded onto my system.

 

Then the reboot thay may be requided (lol) 

and lo,

 

"Missing Operating System"

 

Seems my system that has gone from Win8 and every test build upgrade process perfectly -- now failed.

 

In a nutshell, there appeared to be some kind or partitioning changes and the disc wasn't visable in the recovery console.

 

Only a bootrec /fixboot would temporarliy restore access in the cmd prompt. But would fail again on reset.

odd.

 

I restored it manually using a disc image I run periodically, back to build 9926, and tried to disable updating in the registry

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update\AUOptions (0)

 

Ya know, it did work for a few days- then somehow I woke up to the same message again. Missing OS.

 

This time the bootfix was slightly better as I was able to access the drive in a different machine and extracted the downloaded esd and made an iso from it. Clean install - and its working again.

 

Still no Realtec audio since 9841, and I thought a clean install would cure that. And some motherboard drivers not found.

 

Anyway, gotta run.. time pressure.

[MagicAndre1981]

 

Is this the shape of things to come with the Win 10 "upgrade" for both Win 7 and Win 8.1 users who have not hidden all the "updates to enable the upgrade to Windows 10"?

 

I think Microsoft will try to force users to 8.1 to minimize the support for the old Windows 8.