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Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

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Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#101

Post by masklinn »

torrent-of-ions wrote: post #59
CydeWeys wrote: post #4

I love the way he's compared the people who tell you to turn off auto-updates with anti-vaxxers; it's quite an apt analogy. Microsoft shares part of the blame here for pushing features that the user clearly doesn't want through updates (especially to the major OS version). Look at the recent ads in Windows file explorer for one example. A lot of the advice to turn Windows Update off is a misguided response to Microso…

Also for forcing restarts for everything. Back when I cared I needed to I used to use ksplice to patch linux without rebooting. If Microsoft made something like this it would stop people switching off the updates.

> Also for forcing restarts for everything.

And not restoring jack shit. I wouldn't mind Windows Update so much if it could competently restart my applications and restore my Explorer windows, but the only thing it does every fucking time is make the taskbar icons disappear until I force-restart the Explorer process.

Though I would still mind it a lot for the insanely slow and unhelpful update process at shutdown, every update requires half an hour of shutdown as the machine does who the fuck knows what with an unhelpful throbber telling you it's at 30% of some arbitrary process you've no idea about and which looks exactly as if the entire thing had crashed.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#102

Post by atemerev »

CydeWeys wrote: post #4

I love the way he's compared the people who tell you to turn off auto-updates with anti-vaxxers; it's quite an apt analogy. Microsoft shares part of the blame here for pushing features that the user clearly doesn't want through updates (especially to the major OS version). Look at the recent ads in Windows file explorer for one example. A lot of the advice to turn Windows Update off is a misguided response to Microso…

> I love the way he's compared the people who tell you to turn off auto-updates with anti-vaxxers; it's quite an apt analogy.

No, it isn't. Anti-vaxxers think that vaccines are harmful (or useless). Most users think security updates are important, they just don't want to be interrupted.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#103

Post by rhodysurf »

setq wrote: post #63
throwanem wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How nice for you! Having active hours be ignored, and the machine update itself in the middle of a workday, has happened more than once to me. (Once would be enough.) It's happened more than once to a lot of other people, too. How far do you expect to get with this argument by implication that that's not the case, and we're all just full of it?

That only happens if you put the updates off of they've been there for a couple of days and you have something running that makes it assume that the machine is still active. People seeding torrents overnight seems to be the only place I see that not happen. See update notifications? At the end of the day, restart and install the updates. It's not rocket science. It doesn't just hit patch Tuesday and then reboot immed…

Some people run complex simulations that take days or weeks to run, and a forced reboot in the middle ruins progress. If someone needs to skip an update on their own machine and their own network that is their right.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#104

Post by simias »

Xylakant wrote: post #75
beagle3 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux (and other Unixes) have been doing live updates to the entire system since .. basically forever; Except for the kernel, there is very rarely a need to restart. And they let you restart the kernel on your own schedule. Windows Kernel developers chose a different set of file system semantics, and that is what makes it hard on Windows. In fact, if you can't afford the restart even when you schedule it, there's ksp…

That's actually not entirely true. Updates to a shared lib require restarting all running programs that use that lib. Not a full reboot, but probably a service restart or you're not protected by the update.

I think rebooting the entire system to make sure all apps and libraries are reloaded is fine (I do that on linux servers at times if I made a big update and can spare the downtime). Making a user-friendly interface to only restart apps that need restarting sounds complicated.

But whatever windows does is way worse, I dread seeing the "please wait while Windows is configuring your updates" screen. I have an SSD, rebooting Windows takes less than 30 seconds, it's a non issue. But those update installs can take a long time and your computer is completely unusable while that happens.

It's also frustrating when that happens while shutting down because I normally turn off my computer's power outlet when I'm done (it switches off the rest of my equipment) so I have to wait patiently for Windows to allow my computer to shutdown before I can do that.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#105

Post by masklinn »

rhodysurf wrote: post #95
kristianc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article points out that you can set hours when Windows will update.

This still isnt always useful. I work in an office that creates and runs CFD software. It often takes days, or weeks to run and the recent windows "feature" of rebooting when it wants to update with no way to shut it off has killed so many peoples work in progress. Its insane there is no ability to only update manually.

> Its insane there is no ability to only update manually.

There is.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#106

Post by retube »

So I have blocked my mother's PC updating from Windows 8 to 10 because it broke everything for her - so I rolled it back. Have prevented the upgrade auto-occurring again by specifying we are on a "metered" connection, which seems to be the standard trick to prevent the upgrade to 10.

Any idea if this also prevents security updates?

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#107

Post by masklinn »

OJFord wrote: post #93
vezycash wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if Microsoft instead fixed the need to restart for almost every update?

I haven't used Windows since 7, but then it just did whatever it could (perhaps only download) until shutdown/restart. It might've asked if I wanted to, but I just said no, and then it did it's thing whenever I was shutting down anyway. Is it not still like that? MacOS seems worse to me, since restarting when an update exists isn't sufficient: you have to remember to go back to the update and click 'update & restart'…

> Is it not still like that? MacOS seems worse to me, since restarting when an update exists isn't sufficient: you have to remember to go back to the update and click 'update & restart'...

IME OSX is way better, the shutdown update process is much shorter than on Windows (where it is frustratingly long) and not all updates require rebooting.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#108

Post by UK-AL »

chrischen wrote: post #38
vezycash wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if Microsoft instead fixed the need to restart for almost every update?

MacOS handles this perfectly. It clearly notifies you when an update will be installed if you restart.

Windows also tells you it will perform an update on restart. It says "Update and restart" rather than just restart.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#109

Post by nu5500 »

keldaris wrote: post #91
CydeWeys wrote: post #4

I love the way he's compared the people who tell you to turn off auto-updates with anti-vaxxers; it's quite an apt analogy. Microsoft shares part of the blame here for pushing features that the user clearly doesn't want through updates (especially to the major OS version). Look at the recent ads in Windows file explorer for one example. A lot of the advice to turn Windows Update off is a misguided response to Microso…

Personally, I run a single Win10 desktop (all of my laptops are Linux-only) that I update roughly annually, by allocating an entire day for going through the updates one by one and getting rid of any Microsoft malware along the way. I am far more concerned about Microsoft's own malware than any ransomware floating around the Internet. Of course, I've also had SMBv1 disabled for many years (there's no reason to retain…

Really? You're more concerned about the software being provided to you by Microsoft, who is at least presumably trying to keep you as a satisfied customer and provide a secure operating system then you are for faceless hackers connected to the Internet who's whole objective is to either out right steal people's money, disrupt people's lives, or else subvert your computer in order to launch attacks on other users?

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#110

Post by jorams »

In recent years, Microsoft has been pushing automatic updates more and more. At the same time, the updating experience just hasn't gotten any better.

My Linux install never urges me to update. Updates come out many times a day, and I can ignore them entirely for as long as I want. My Windows install continually urges me to update. It makes them increasingly hard to ignore, to make sure I install them. The idea behind this is not bad: many people would postpone updates indefinitely without understanding the consequences. Browsers these days install updates without even asking the user, and complaints about that are rare.

The problem is that updating Windows is a terrible experience. It wants to install updates when I shut down, which on a laptop is often the moment I'm leaving, when I'm ready to put it into my bag and go home. This is a terrible time to install updates. It's even worse because the time the updates take is incredibly unpredictable. Sometimes they're done in a minute, but I've also had a single small update take 45 minutes. I ended up putting the laptop into the bag while it was running the update. When I arrived home it was very close to overheating, had burnt through much of the battery capacity (the battery in that thing isn't very good), and it wasn't done yet.

Then I figured the solution would be to avoid updates at shutdown, always executing them manually when I was going to keep using it for a while. This is how I handle updates on Linux, and it works perfectly. So I tried that a few times, and the experience was terrible. It would always require a reboot immediately after, while I was working. This is a terrible time to reboot.

Meanwhile, every time I update my Linux installations, it's painless. I just run the update command, it tells me exactly what it's going to update, I accept, and I can leave it running in the background. The longest one of those updates ever took was 10-15 minutes, on a machine that hadn't been on for 6 months. Hundreds of packages updated in minutes, without disrupting the work I was doing. An hour or so later I shut it down and from the next boot on I was running the newest kernel.

What Microsoft needs to do is to make updates painless. It needs to be clear what is being updated and how long it is going to take. It needs to stop requiring reboots all the time, and when that is achieved it needs to stop updating on shutdown.

Also important: It needs to stop requring multiple reboots for one update round. Windows, for me, is not the OS that boots by default. Every time it restarts I need to explicitly tell my computer that "yes, unfortunately there are still reasons to keep using this."

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