Microsoft Windows updates while it's in use

[Frank Cox]

This absolutely takes the cake!

I'll be the first to admit that my knowledge of Microsoft Windows is almost nil. I tried using Windows 98 for a month back in, well, '98, and decided I didn't like it much.

Today my one-and-only Windows computer is the laptop that I have connected to the projection equipment. The service techs use and support Windows for that application so that's why it is and what it is. It's the ntp server for the projector and cinema server, it runs their remote access software on the (rare) occasions when they need to log into it to check something, and it runs Firefox to talk to and control the cinema server. That's it, that's all it does.

Occasionally when I shut that laptop down at the end of the night it says "update and shut down" and then does a song-and-dance for ten minutes before it shuts down. It's a bit of a nuisance that way but not a really big deal.

Late tonight I finished my test screening of next week's movie (Mummies, which is actually pretty good by the way) and walked into the projection room to shut everything down.

The laptop was showing its blue updating screen, saying "30% completed, do not shut down."

*boggle*

Now this wasn't a particularly big deal since all I wanted to do was shut everything down; it just made me wait an extra ten minutes before I could do that. After it finished its update the laptop rebooted and returned to exactly the screen that I had expected to see when I walked into the projection room so I could do the shutdown and be done.

But what amazes me is that it apparently decided on its own to do that. Maybe it's done that before and I never noticed if it was in the middle of a show, but this is the first time I've seen that since it was at the end of the show.

I've always been under the impression that Microsoft Windows has a reputation for being unreliable, but I just can't fathom the kind of thinking that goes into forcing an update and reboot in the middle of a job.

I can imagine a situation when I walk into the projection room to start the movie and see an updating screen on that laptop. "Sorry folks, the show is going to be ten minutes late starting." It hasn't happened yet but it appears to be a foreseeable event.

Or this: "I'm sorry Mr. President, we won't be able to launch the anti-missile defences for about ten minutes because Windows just decided to run an update."

My flabber is thoroughly gasted!

My computers run updates when I choose to update them and they get rebooted when I choose to reboot them. I guess when you run Microsoft Windows on your computer it's not really your computer any more.

[Steve Guttag]

In Microsoft's mind...you waited too long and therefore it took matters into its own hands. I have the belief...It's MY DAMN COMPUTER and I'll do what I want, when I want, including updates. For all of my "Cardinal Care" computers, I have an update blocker that stops the nonsense. I can update when I want to update (almost never) and Microsoft can't.

Note, when one is running Windows xx home...update options are very limited. With "pro" one gets some choices, out of the box. One of those is, if you leave the computer up 24/7 to just choose the hours where you are NEVER working so it can do updates then (say 4 AM).

[Marcel Birgelen]

It almost amazes me that this is the first time this happened to you, welcome to the world called Windows.

Well, I'd say that Microsoft is also somewhat stuck between a rock and a hard place... while I loathe the amount of control they're taking away from power users, I can understand the policies for the millions of potential zombie PCs out there, that would otherwise never see any updates and almost certainly would become part of some botnet or have their local hard drives and shares encrypted...

What version of Windows are you using? Depending on that, there are options to limit Microsoft's interferrence, at least to such an extend that it doesn't happen during your operational hours.

[Randy Stankey]

Probably the best word I can use to describe anything having to do with Microsoft Windows is "disappointing."

I remember when I got into computers in high school, I learned to use a few different systems. We had Apple-II, Commodore and a couple-few other kinds of computers. Among which was the Wang 1880 and even the original IBM PC which ran MS-DOS. We thought they were all pretty cool but for individual quirks but, mostly, we just wanted to learn about computers. Then Macintosh came along and we thought they were the coolest.

Then, along comes Microsoft with Windows. At first, when we heard about it, we chomped at the bit to get our hands on this new marvel. When we did, our almost universal response was, "Eew!" It sucked and it was a disappointment. You didn't really get anything new and what you did get sucked, pretty bad. We didn't even think of it as a "computer," per se. We saw it as a really bad copy of something we already had which was better in just about every respect.

Often, when I express this to people, their response is something like, "Oh, your a Mac guy..." My response is, "No, I'm an 'anything but Microsoft' guy."

"What else is there," they ask? Then I rattle off the names of two or three different OSes but the response is, "Oh, Linux..."

I'm not an expert at computers. Maybe I'm pretty good but no expert. Even today, I can't understand why anybody would use ANYTHING from Microsoft to try to get work done. To me, using any Microsoft product feels like walking around with a stone in your right shoe while having a dirty pair of binoculars, turned backward, strapped to your face.

It just befuddles me that people would pay money for that crap!

[Martin McCaffery]

Only 10 minutes? I've had MS take over my computer for more than an hour. You never know when it is going to happen or why. We have two identical computers, set up the same way at the same time for our two POS. They update on completely different schedules. Unpredictable schedules, but decidedly different.

Waiting for the day when the complete OS is "in the cloud" and they have total control over when you use your computer.

[Harold Hallikainen]

Waiting for the day when the complete OS is "in the cloud" and they have total control over when you use your computer.

OK, that's interesting. Computers have been able to boot from a network for quite a while. That could certainly be extended to the internet. It would guarantee that every boot up would be the latest code. But, of course, it would not boot at all with a loss of connectivity.

I THINK our Roku box does something close to network boot, at least network load of application. It appears that the basic Roku interface is held in flash memory, but the individual applications (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.) are loaded from the internet when launched. This ensures we are always using the latest version of the application (and allows them to crash every system at once). Since the Roku box is useless anyway without connectivity, there is not the harm that booting a computer OS from the internet would have.

Then there's just running applications on "cloud" servers with the user working with the current equivalent of a dumb terminal (a web browser). I'm writing this on a Chromebook, which is largely a dumb terminal.

Harold

[Jim Cassedy]

> While working a live convention show a couple of years ago, I remember the audio-guy freaking out because less
than 30min before show time, his Microsoft tablet, which he was using to control one of those 'black box" digital
audio mixing systems, decided, without warning, (he sez) that it needed to do a software update. Fortunately,
he also had another copy of the U-I software loaded on a netbook he had stashed out in his truck

> Also, early one morning, while heading to set up a big business conference at a downtown hotel, I recall
walking by an ATM at a major bank, which had a blue screen saying something like "Windows XP Is Updating,
Please Do Interrupt Of Shut Down Your Computer Until Completed" (This was a long time ago when XP
was still one of the dominant operating systems)

> There was a viral video & some photos a few years back when an automatic update took over on the
computer that provided the blue-screen weather map on live TV as the weatherguy looked on helplessly.

> And, of course, we've probably almost all seen an "update" notification windows pop up in the middle of
some corporate big-wigs power-point presentation.

I also hate it when you've got something really important to do, and you can't get into [insert system or
website name here] until you update your password. This happened to me the other morning on the
DeLuxe web portal. - - and then it didn't like, or didn't 'take' my new password, and locked me out for
5 or 10min before I could try again. C'mon guys- - I HAD WORK TO DO!!!. (Fortunately one of my
co-workers had her password stored on one of the computers at work, so I mooched off of her
account until I got mine straightened out) It's very frustrating when such nonsense happens. I'm
not debating the security need for passwords, but there are some websites & systems, that will
at least text a one-time temporary access code to your registered phone number or e-mail address
if you're having trouble with your regular p-word, or working from a remote computer that doesn't
have all your password info stored on it.

[Leo Enticknap]

Or this: "I'm sorry Mr. President, we won't be able to launch the anti-missile defences for about ten minutes because Windows just decided to run an update."

Reminds me of a gag in South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (1999), in which a US Army general is delivering a Powerpoint show, outlining his plans to invade Canada. At a critical moment in his presentation, a BSOD fills the enormous screen in front of the assembled military and politicians, in response to which he stops in mid-flow and exclaims "FUCKING WINDOWS 98!"

Windows isn't the only OS to install updates in the background, though. I can't speak for MacOS, but Ubuntu will do so as well, though not involuntarily. It will tell you that updates are available and ask if you want to install them: if you choose to do so, you can continue working. If any of them require a reboot to take effect, you'll be reminded when it's time.

[Randy Stankey]

While working a live convention show a couple of years ago, I remember the audio-guy freaking out because less than 30min before show time, his Microsoft tablet, which he was using to control one of those 'black box" digital audio mixing systems, decided, without warning...

I had the same thing happen except DURING a lecture with a packed auditorium. Better still, the speaker tried to blank the screen by shutting the laptop. The computer went into some kind of deep sleep mode that took about ten minutes for the thing to wake up from...then it continued with the update which took an unknown amount of time to complete.

After an eternity of dicking around with the computer in front of the audience, we pulled the computer off the stage and got one from the office, backstage. Then, we had to load the speaker's Powerpoint presentation onto the new computer and try to find the place where he left off.

BTW: Has anybody ever used Windows' help system and actually found help? I can't remember a single time when I used help and got anything but pat answers that have nothing to do with the problem I was having.

[Thomas Piccione]

Software updates are not a great user experience for a lot of things, but Windows 10 update is definitely one of the worse ones I routinely deal with. There are some ways to make it less intrusive (like setting active hours, as Steve mentioned above) but sometimes updates will just *happen* and break things for no apparent reason. I had the misfortune of my laptop deciding to run a big version update right before I went on a trip, and the update failed. Not the end of the world, it just spent a solid 30 minutes trying to install, failing, and reverting changes. What was truly infuriating was that it kept trying and failing to install the update whenever it had the chance. I eventually disabled updates for the length of the trip, and that put a band-aid on the problem long enough for a new update to be released that would work. I do not appreciate Microsoft using their users as a testing department.

Windows update, the fact that Windows search seems to get worse with every new version, and the utter dumpster fire that is Windows modern standby all make me want to switch to MacOS. Not exactly a silver bullet though; I truly detest the way Apple treats their customers and lack of support for legacy applications is a huge problem.

[Marcel Birgelen]

OK, that's interesting. Computers have been able to boot from a network for quite a while. That could certainly be extended to the internet. It would guarantee that every boot up would be the latest code. But, of course, it would not boot at all with a loss of connectivity.

I THINK our Roku box does something close to network boot, at least network load of application. It appears that the basic Roku interface is held in flash memory, but the individual applications (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.) are loaded from the internet when launched. This ensures we are always using the latest version of the application (and allows them to crash every system at once). Since the Roku box is useless anyway without connectivity, there is not the harm that booting a computer OS from the internet would have.

Then there's just running applications on "cloud" servers with the user working with the current equivalent of a dumb terminal (a web browser). I'm writing this on a Chromebook, which is largely a dumb terminal.

Most modern software I'd call "cloud connected" and not so much "running in the cloud". If you look at a Citrix or RDP environment, then you're actually working on a Terminal Server somewhere remote, where only the "text and images" and the input of your peripherals (keyboard and mouse) are transfered "over the wire", it's the modern version of the old-school VT100 terminal.

But most modern stuff tends to run as a web application and as such is more of a hybrid beast than a true piece of "cloud software", as the web application usually uses a whole bunch of locally driven code in the form of JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3 and nowadays also stuff like WebAssembly.

Regarding software updates... what still makes me wonder is how complicated the Windows Update infrastructure must be, because even in 2023, with most machines nowadays running on SSDs and having ample memory availabe, those updates still seem to take ages, especially compared to a Ubuntu or Debian based Linux system, where most software updates are handled within seconds or if it's a real big one, maybe in a few minutes. Many Microsoft updates look more like entire Operating System replacement operations, rather than fine-grained, component based upgrades, which only frustrates the entire process even further.

Another thing I dread is that Microsoft is known to break stuff with Windows updates, just last year alone we had like three CRITICAL updates that broke essential infrastructure due to the patches introducing new problems. Those things have cost many hours of my life already. It's not like Mac and Linux systems are without issues, but in general, those systems behave far more consistently than their Microsoft-powered counterparts.

I still remember a time when software bugs were a rarity. I blame Microsoft for starting a culture, in where it is acceptable to deliver half-baked, half-finished products that are then updated via separate software updates into something halfway workeable. I remember as far back as the release of MS DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0 that it suddenly became more common to face random bugs, but it wasn't until Windows 95 that Microsoft started to unload full-blown crap onto the mass consumer market. By the time Windows 98 rolled around, Microsoft's image was already one of a shoddy, monopolistic software developper that only cared about the money they raked in.

[Steve Guttag]

I highly suggest getting a Windows Update Blocker to put an end to this nonsense. I'm not saying that one should never update their computers but I am saying that you all know your use cases and you should take control over when updates should occur.

Running update blockers has increased my computer reliability immeasurably. My remote computers almost never update and they also almost never change and never surf the web. My desktops are left to update regularly and during "off-hours." The laptops, which I use more like tools than a personal computing device are between those two ranges where they get updated but on my terms. It has brought sanity into my world.

[Gordon McLeod]

I get royally pissed when windows update breaks part of a 3rd party software or deletes a hardware driver
Steve what do you recommend as a good blocker

[Darin Steffl]

I don't seem to have any problems with Windows updates in general. Mine auto update at like 3am if the computer is active and not in sleep mode. I can't recall any time it's broken any drivers. I'd say my Mac computers are the most stable for sure but I've had good luck with Windows in general EXCEPT for Windows Me which was the worst OS they every released. I didn't like Vista either but the rest have been fine. I run 11 on all my PC's now. "Me" had an incredible amount of issues and was buggy. I probably reinstalled it every year on our PC just to keep it running right.

I've never had a Windows PC decide to update while I'm using it because I'm always sleeping at 3am. I'd suggest you check your settings and adjust your "Active Hours" so it will never update during that time range.

[Randy Stankey]

I truly detest the way Apple treats their customers and lack of support for legacy applications is a huge problem.

What? Like running a 32-bit app on a 64-bit machine? Why would you want to? But... If you must... It can be done. All the way back to OS 10.4 (Tiger).

As a matter of fact, you can run an entire 32-bit OS on a 64-bit machine. Somewhere, down in a pile of boxes in my basement, I have a firmware patch that will allow you to do that. Then you can run all your 32-bit stuff by dual booting back to the old OS. No Parallels necessary.

I still have Adobe CS-4 that runs on my computer just fine. Same for Final Cut 6. I'm moving from Adobe to GIMP/Inkscape because of Adobe's subscription model. I am using Adobe less and less. Eventually I won't need it at all. Final Cut, I don't use regularly but I still can when I want to.

I can run any OS up to 10.11 (El Capitan) without patching. If I update the Bluetooth firmware, I can run up to 10.13. (High Sierra) If I don't care about using BT, the update isn't needed. I can run any OS X version up to 10.15 (Catalina) with a firmware patch. If I want OS 11, OS 12 or OS 13, it can be done with tinkering but I just don't care to do that.

Not bad for a 15, going on 16 year-old computer.