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Windows 10 and Misc. Stuff

pete

Brassica Oleracea
Staff member
Administrator
I wanted to mention a bit about Windows 10 before I go back into hibernation (I'm studying for another computer certification and I'm supposed to be updating my website, but I'm taking a small break).

First, Windows 10 is a free update for anyone who currently has a copy of Windows 7 or 8.x -- or, more specifically, if you have a license key for either. You can download Windows 10 anytime you want. Here's the official link. Or you can wait for the update, if you've signed up. However ... I recommend you don't install Windows 10, yet.

The one persistent problem I've had throughout all the Windows 10 Technical Previews ("betas") and the full release version is that, randomly, things will delete themselves from or "hide" themselves from my desktop. If they're "hidden," I just need to choose a different Theme and *poof* they return, then I can go back to whatever theme I had. When the files delete themselves, they're really deleted. Hey, I even had one of the Technical Previews automatically uninstall Office 365. That wasn't nice, but it shows a precedent for deleting stuff.

There's another known issue that causes your computer to just reboot over and over. I have Windows 10 Pro on three machines and Windows 10 Enterprise Trial on two more. I haven't experienced this problem, but I might just be lucky. Or Microsoft is satisfied in just deleting stuff off my Desktop. Or it could be that I completely wiped my hard drives and installed Windows 10 from scratch.

I've also been playing with Windows 10 on an older Asus Zenbook. Microsoft tries to install an update to the Touchpad which makes it not work. Unfortunately, Microsoft updates are now mandatory, so I can't stop it from updating. However, it does appear that this particular update has been removed and my Touchpad works again.

There's also been a bunch of folks who try to install Windows 10 and they get the very helpful error message, "Something happened." There are a bunch of recommended work-arounds for this, but no real solution. It's happened often enough that social media picked it up a week or so ago.

I'll finish with mentioning that I've heard that the Windows 10 automatic updates can break your display driver. Again, this hasn't happened to me on any of my machines -- and my home machine has an Nvidia, ATI, and an Intel (built-in) video cards.

Microsoft has made some improvements in the look of Windows 10 over the Preview builds, but I still think it's a tad ugly. I haven't played with voice control with Cortana and I don't and you probably don't have the $450 3D webcam to do facial recognition logins, but I can use a PIN rather than my full password to log in if I use my Microsoft account (like, petes@hotmail.com). I don't particularly care about the split screen thing because I use Display Fusion for my (now) four monitors, but I'm glad MS decided to include that feature. I do think there are a couple security holes that most users will miss (download updates from another computer on my network and use trusted contacts' wireless networks), which should keep me in business for awhile -- not to mention that some antivirus software doesn't support Windows 10, yet. I do think that the Start menu is an improvement over 8.1 and that's definitely worth the cost of the upgrade.

There's supposed to be a major update to Windows 10 later this year (I've heard October). It might be a good idea to wait for that update before jumping on the 10 bandwagon.
 
What I don't like is that Windows 10 is trying to download itself as part of my Windows 7 update. WTF! Really? If I wanted Windows 10, I'd download Windows 10. I've tweaked my update settings so that this can't happen again...
 
What I don't like is that Windows 10 is trying to download itself as part of my Windows 7 update. WTF! Really? If I wanted Windows 10, I'd download Windows 10. I've tweaked my update settings so that this can't happen again...
My wife has a Windows 7 laptop and I noticed that the Windows 10 update is checked as a default. You can uncheck the Windows 10 update in the Windows Update control panel, then right-click the update and choose "Hide." You can also uninstall the original Windows Update that made Windows 10 available to you, but the "uncheck and hide" option is a lot easier.

EDIT: I should also comment, as I have elsewhere, that you really should switch to Bitdefender or Avira free antivirus. Both work in Windows 10 and both are highly recommended by, well, everybody. Microsoft Security Essentials/Windows Defender had a couple years as "really good" now it's "really below average." That's a shame, because it was a really nice product.
 
Based on this thread, I did some research and discovered that the annoying Win10 popup is from update KB 2952664 (for Win7 - there is a different one for Win8/8.1). I un-installed it. This morning, the stupid popup is back. Also, Windows is now telling me I am missing an important update - you guessed it - KB2952664. I'll probably need to go clean the registry, or perhaps uninstall using CMD.

Edit: You also need to uninstall KB3035583, which is the executable (GW.exe) that runs the nag popup. Then add both to hidden updates so they don't keep showing up.

Another update. Uninstalling KB3035583 caused both my machines to choke on the re-start. It said something like "Windows is applying updates. Don't turn off your computer". After about an hour, I said the heck with it and turned them off. After a re-start, both resumed applying the updates & appear to be fine. The nag window is gone from the system tray. They really don't want you to remove these marketing updates!

Just noticed the hot link in Pete's post which spells out a lot of what I just said. I hadn't finished my coffee yet when I read his post this morning.
 
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The third "major" update to Windows 10 came out on the 14th.

While I don't necessarily agree with the idea of making all Windows updates mandatory, I do like the idea of having ONE cumulative update to download, rather than the 200 or so (NOT exaggerating for effect) for the last time I installed Windows 7.

One other thing I've noticed is that if I use CCleaner to empty my temp files, I get an error that the "Microsoft Edge Cache Database" needs to be closed before cleaning. Edge is kida-sorta Microsoft's new name for Internet Explorer. I don't use Internet Explorer and I don't have it opened. I wonder if I should attempt to uninstall Edge .....
 
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