Windows 10 Critical Error!

I handle 10 computers at work and our 4 home computers along with another 6 at my wifes Charity and each one has been updated to the latest windows 10 version without any issues. I guess I must be quite lucky.

I installed W10 when it first became available. There have been a few updates since then but all went very smoothly.

I'm afraid to go near it.

win 7 is fine on my desktop ( unless the new forum layout looks better in win 10?)

I have a surface pro with win 8.1, which (for me) just works. 

In work where we have 4 win 7 running site specific programs I've been told by the software firms not to update to win 10 under any circumstance. 

SJB

I had the same problem and tried all the published solutions which did not work.

Eventually, I sorted out the Start Menu problem by uninstalling and reinstalling Dropbox.  It seems that quite a few other programs can cause problems on Windows 10.

Edge suddenly appeared again a few days later.

I still haven't got the search bar working.

I thought that Windows 8 was bad but Windows 10 is a complete disaster.  There are many MS Forum discussion threads about this - one has 142 pages!

http://answers.microsoft.com/e...03-87be-1597ab10cb4d

I agree with Mike-B.

I upgraded from Windows 7 Home to Windows 10 Home on my laptop a 3 or 4 few weeks ago, and from Windows 7 Pro to Windows 10 Pro on my Desktop PC a couple of weeks ago and have no complaints. I had previously avoided Windows 8 like the plague - it was horrible (at least up until the 8.1 upgrade)

Only a couple of glitches on my Desktop PC that had to be resolved.

The first was that  I had assumed (and had read elsewhere) that having upgraded from Windows 7 Pro to Windows 10 Pro (and activated) successfully, that I could then create an ISO file to re-install Windows 10 from scratch. I did this & after initial success was subsequently forced to re-activate with help from Microsoft by downloading a specific upgrade file.

The second was that a Windows update appeared to substitute my Windows Account password for my Windows Admin password, causing me some login grief before I realised what had happened.

Both issues quite annoying, but really happy with Windows 10 otherwise.

I've just found a critical design flaw in Windows 10 (it also existed in Windows 8, but they haven't fixed it as, although it affects all installations, it's only rarely a significant problem for the user).

The problem is in the handling of the 'unified programming environment'.  That is, the 'Modern' UI apps that are supposed to work the same way on 'phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops.  All very laudable, but the writers of the apps just design them for tablets and 'phones (rather than ever thinking of laptops and PCs) and so they take exclusive access to things like storage devices and the keyboard.  Unfortunately in Windows 10 on a PC, this behaviour is allowed to continue; so periodically all those near useless tiles on the start page take precedence over the user and any proper Windows programmes you may be using, even when they're not in the foreground.  All it takes is one bug in a 'Modern' app or a sequencing error causing a delay, and the keyboard or the disk can get locked for up to two or three minutes.

Unfortunately this is what is happening to my system, the only actual fix involves using very dirty tricks* to completely disable the 'Modern' UI subsystem.  *There is a windows service to control this, but even setting that to to disabled using the official service UI doesn't work, the 'Modern' UI decides it knows better than the user or the OS controls and re-starts the disabled service anyway.  Renaming the service exe does work.  The rest of the 'Modern' UI subsystem still tries to take control every 10 minutes or so, but fails with an error in less than a second, so the damage to usability is no longer significant.

I agree with Huge - I find it VERY irritating that MS decides when to download the updates on my machine, and then offers me only a choice of when to reboot to complete the install.  And if it decides you are not paying good enough attention, it just does it for you - open programs, and browser windows "lost" are your problem.

To a lesser extent I don't care much for the way they have those wallpaper pictures = not because they aren't nice to look at, but it is again another indication of how "your" machine is just an extension of their world & influence, and they have full access at their discretion.

I've finally found a fix for the worst issues I was having! 

First the reasons:

On major updates, Windows 10 Update has removed manually installed device drivers without any notification.  I spotted that the printer driver had gone, and that the audio driver had been replaced with an inappropriate one.  However I hadn't spotted that some (but not all!) of the system chipset drivers had been replaced with the base level generic drivers, leaving an inconsistent set of system drivers.  

I had turned off all notifications (as they accessed the disk before being posted and this activity took an exclusive lock on the disk), but what I hadn't done was deny priority background execution to all those useless junk apps that are a mandatory part of Windows 10.  It turns out that even in the background, they also take an exclusive lock on the disk (absolute crap design ).

So the answer for me was simple:

1   Reinstate the proper system drivers from AMD,

2   Turn off background processing for all the useless apps (actually this doesn't in fact stop them, but it stops them taking over completely while they are in the background).

P.S.  I haven't yet found if this cures Windows Explorer crashing if I try to copy more than 3 files simultaneously.

Huge,

You have reminded me that I also lost my printer driver at some point - can't remember at what point in time. So you can add this to the other two I have had:

• My Windows Admin password changed to my Windows Account password by an update
• Activation problems whilst trying to install Windows 10 Pro using an ISO file I had created

Despite this, I actually now really like Windows 10, and if you purchase Windows 10 Pro (or upgrade from Windows 7 or 8 Pro) you can also choose when to download updates.

Mind you, the problems you have experienced with system drivers do sound very worrying.

Sloop John B posted:

I'm afraid to go near it.

win 7 is fine on my desktop ( unless the new forum layout looks better in win 10?)

I have a surface pro with win 8.1, which (for me) just works. 

In work where we have 4 win 7 running site specific programs I've been told by the software firms not to update to win 10 under any circumstance. 

SJB

I have Window 7 and I am not taking any risks in uploading Window 10.  Window 7 seems fine so why change it and take the risk of obtaining new problems ..?  Having read previous threads on Window 10 in the Naim Forum; the contents resoundingly guide me to be wise and not upload..   

Romi posted:

Sloop John B posted:

I'm afraid to go near it.

win 7 is fine on my desktop ( unless the new forum layout looks better in win 10?)

I have a surface pro with win 8.1, which (for me) just works. 

In work where we have 4 win 7 running site specific programs I've been told by the software firms not to update to win 10 under any circumstance. 

SJB

I have Window 7 and I am not taking any risks in uploading Window 10.  Window 7 seems fine so why change it and take the risk of obtaining new problems ..?  Having read previous threads on Window 10 in the Naim Forum; the contents resoundingly guide me to be wise and not upload..   

The reason for 'upgrading' a PC to Windows 10 is simple:

1  Windows 7 is now out of support
2  You'll need to do the upgrade sometime (or change to OSX or Linux), and it's free at the moment.

I was one of the sternest critics (and I still think it's fundamentally flawed in some ways), but now I've found the real cause of the problems and fixed that, it's actually remained completely stable for the last three days.  And I've not had any application compatibility problems.

However, where low volume specific business applications are in use, ANY OS upgrades are inherently risky until the application has been fully tested on that OS by the software supplier (this applies just as much for OSX, Linux, mini computers and even mainframes) and that testing takes time.

Huge posted:

Romi posted:

Sloop John B posted:

I'm afraid to go near it.

win 7 is fine on my desktop ( unless the new forum layout looks better in win 10?)

I have a surface pro with win 8.1, which (for me) just works. 

In work where we have 4 win 7 running site specific programs I've been told by the software firms not to update to win 10 under any circumstance. 

SJB

I have Window 7 and I am not taking any risks in uploading Window 10.  Window 7 seems fine so why change it and take the risk of obtaining new problems ..?  Having read previous threads on Window 10 in the Naim Forum; the contents resoundingly guide me to be wise and not upload..   

The reason for 'upgrading' a PC to Windows 10 is simple:

1  Windows 7 is now out of support
2  You'll need to do the upgrade sometime (or change to OSX or Linux), and it's free at the moment.

I was one of the sternest critics (and I still think it's fundamentally flawed in some ways), but now I've found the real cause of the problems and fixed that, it's actually remained completely stable for the last three days.  And I've not had any application compatibility problems.

However, where low volume specific business applications are in use, ANY OS upgrades are inherently risky until the application has been fully tested on that OS by the software supplier (this applies just as much for OSX, Linux, mini computers and even mainframes) and that testing takes time.

I like your background in this matter and I will take note of your advice.  In regard to the second paragraph you stressed that Windows 10 remained completely stable for the last three days.  This sort of worries me, because three days is a very short time and you seem to imply that Windows is not usually a stable appliance over a longer period?   

Romi posted:

 

I like your background in this matter and I will take note of your advice.  In regard to the second paragraph you stressed that Windows 10 remained completely stable for the last three days.  This sort of worries me, because three days is a very short time and you seem to imply that Windows is not usually a stable appliance over a longer period?   

Romi,

I built a PC a couple of weeks ago.

Running a clean install of W10 pro (64bit) without a problem, totally stable, no crashes, hasn’t missed a beat. In fact I installed W7 pro (32Bit), upgraded to W10 pro (32bit), then downloaded W10 pro (64) ISO disc for a clean install. The clean install took 20 minutes, very easy, no searching for drivers, the SSD drive, printer, scanner and monitor where working perfectly.

I don’t know if this is relevant, but there’s a sticker on the motherboard box stating W10 ready, perhaps with an old motherboard W10 wouldn’t work so well.

BUT. I do agree with you; if it’s not broke don’t fix it. My wife has a 3 year old notebook running W8, I definitely won’t be installing W10 on that.

Anybody know if I need to install virus software when W10, or is the W0 protection good enough.

I have Windows 10 installed on a hi-end PC that I have just built, and on a laptop that must be at least 4 years old. Both are pretty much 100% stable.

fatcat, I suspect that many on this forum will disagree, but I would install a good Internet Security package on your PCs. The current ones to go for (in my opinion) are Kaspersy or Symantec (Norton). There are quite a few others I wouldn't touch with a barge pole.

I've been using F-Secure for the last couple of years on my old PC, wife notebook and an old laptop, I renewed my 12 months subscription about 2 months ago.

Would you go anywhere near F-Secure with your barge pole.

Romi posted:

I like your background in this matter and I will take note of your advice.  In regard to the second paragraph you stressed that Windows 10 remained completely stable for the last three days.  This sort of worries me, because three days is a very short time and you seem to imply that Windows is not usually a stable appliance over a longer period?   

Hi Romi,

That's just to contrast to the situation before I sorted out the Windows 10 system drivers (with the mixed up default drivers Windows 10 installed itself, it was crashing every few hours).

I believe that the system will probably now be fully stable in between the re-boots required by updates, as was the case with Windows 7.  In later years, when Win 7 needed fewer system updates the machine could stay stable for months with no problem, I have no reason to believe that the same won't also now be the case with Windows 10.

On the other hand my primary system is over 5 years old and is due a major hardware refresh next summer - I'm waiting to see how well the AMD 'Zen' core processors behave, otherwise it'll be the Intel's next 'tock' release (Kaby Lake).

fatcat posted:

Anybody know if I need to install virus software when W10, or is the W0 protection good enough.

Win 10 anti malware protection is better than nothing, but is still somewhat limited,  It's primarily intended to provide an adequate level of 'heard protection' to protect the general community from a global pandemic rather than to protect individual users.

For this purpose, it only has to react to malware that is already starting to become prevalent.  In the initial phase of a virus's 'life', there are few infections whilst it starts it's exponential growth phase.  Only when the number of viruses active in the wild becomes significant does the 'heard protection' mechanism need to kick in.  Microsoft's anti-virus thus only needs to react quite slowly to achieve it's intended aim.

On the other hand, the commercial anti virus products aim to protect individuals - they need to react to new threats as soon as they are detected.  They also have additional features such as installing 1st stage keyboard hooks, to prevent keyloggers stealing passwords, methods to filter browsing streams and reduce the risk from 'drive by' attacks and e-mail malware filtering.  I personally recommend Kaspersky and F-Secure; however, IF you have an exceptionally fast machine, the Symantec system is usually also very good, but it is power hungry.  It's also very important to use the security features of the browser you use (such as Google Chrome's site blacklist, FireFox's block on client side redirection, and blocking the execution of native code).

Fatcat,

i think I could bring myself to touch F-Secure without the use of even a very short barge-pole. It has a pretty good reputation, although not a package I have used myself.

as Huge has stated, Symantec ha a pretty bad reputation until recently for dramatically slowing down PCs, which is why I personally switched to Karspersky for a period of 4 years or so. However the last couple of iterations of Symantec have improved dramatically, and I now feel that Kaspersky & Symantec are now much of a muchness.

i am hesitant to name the specific packages I don't like, because I am not really an expert (a little knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing), but, of the big name products, I really have never been impressed by Mcafee.

Thanks. Two thumbs up for F-Secure.

That's good enough for me, I'll install it later.

In my opinion a good backup regime is equally important as additional anti-malware protection.  I recently published information on a scheme that's much more robust than the normal approaches, and resilient enough to even deal with a 'ransomware' attack:
https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...security-using-a-nas

I just realised that in my two previous post I wrote 'heard protection' when the correct term should be 'herd immunity'.  Apparently my language skills haven't quite returned to normal as yet!