Kicking the Win10 2004 tires

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Windows 10 By TB Capen The newest Windows is trickling out to a PC near you — or maybe not. The mystery with Version 2004 is why it’s been offered to
[See the full post at: Kicking the Win10 2004 tires]

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Brian1664, abbodi86, woody

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I had two PC’s that never was offered the upgrade through Windows update. One had a block for awhile which was indicating in Windows update and then that went away but never offered a upgrade. My home built desktop never was offered it either but had no blocks on it. I never felt I was missing anything anyway so didn’t really care. One day I got around to running the Windows upgrade tool you download and it installed the upgrade without issues. Probably just another glitch of many and here we are almost to Fall upgrade so does it matter?

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My greatest issue when running 2004 was that in the upgrade process, it broke something upgrading to the new, non-Cortana Windows Search. I couldn’t type in the Taskbar search box, and I couldn’t type in the File Explorer search box either.

DISM would report no issues and SFC would report errors that either couldn’t be repaired, or eventually, that it repaired errors every single time (wash, rinse, repeat).

I tried a number of different things, and finally managed to fix it by completely reinstalling all Windows Search components through PowerShell (which also included needing to manually kill multiple in-use processes).

Since then, I’ve gone back to 1909 as a clean install, and I’d hesitate to go to 2004 without installing clean.

We are SysAdmins.
We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
We engage in support, we do not retreat.
We live for the LAN.
We die for the LAN.

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Just thought I’d share two tidbits. First, when the update was offered on my fairly new (2.5 years) Dell, I tried to let it install on its own and the installation failed and automatically reverted to 1909. I waited another month (for another round of fixes) and then, when the “install message” appeared, I tried again. This time it worked. It also worked seamlessly (after 4 hours) on 5 computers I updated in mid September. I think the mess occurred because the 2004 update was very buggy and Microsoft had to fix it before it would install.

My second, trivial note is on a “new feature” (the only one I actually found interesting). You can now change the color and size of the mouse pointer and the insertion point cursor. Both new options appear in Settings under Ease of Access. (And I REALLY  have to add, “Big Deal” for an update that took 4 hours to install on every computer!)

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Trev

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re: Kicking the Win10 2004 tires.

I had Win7 installed with the ESU package, which I found awful. Some updates would work some wouldn’t! A waste of £60.00… I bit my lip and purchased a retail version of 2004 pro.

I can’t say I am that impressed! As far as updates go, it tells me updates are waiting, (I have it paused for 7 days), but I cannot tell if it is just one or more updates. With Windows 7 you could go and have a good look. Maybe there is a way. I have to admit I tend to Update then ask question when I’m surprised! My Fault I know! (Update) I have just been shown a Definition update & it did give me a choice of optional updates, mainly Intel drivers.

Group policy is a wolf in sheep’s clothing as it can override other setting I have made, but doesn’t seem to notify you of any conflict! So go steady, even if Group Policy (Machine Templates) seem at first to be the best solution.

With all the derision MS had with Windows 8 / 8.1, I am still amazed that they didn’t just rebuild but in a Windows 7 friendly vision. But too late for that argument. I will have have to review the Start menu as it looks more like a ‘Toy for kids’ appalling.

The settings in windows 2004 is incredible unhelpful and awkward. Trying to setup the security features is not as strait forward as they would have you think. Setting up scheduled scans, seems to take away the ‘Customised’ choice, which is annoying and left me having to do it manually. I have two backup drives, a 20GB My Book Duo set to raid-1 mirror and a 4GB WD Elements set to duplicate ‘very important’ items. However I find it odd that they are not only shown as ‘Removable’ drives, but also as ‘HDD’ drives. I set the schedule to ignore those two drives, as the Data on them has already been scanned a dozen or more times, and I don’t want the computer constantly reading these drives as it will impair their longevity.

In all the latest version of 2004 is not what I would call user friendly, though they have at least got rid of the bug that highlighted ‘New’ programmes on the start menu, even though I had disabled it.

Having only had a friend’s computer to compare the ‘Before’ I think that only minor changes have happened with the updated version. I think this is going to need more than ‘Kicking The Tyres’ more like a good Shake, Rattle and Roll might do the job.

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To better manage updates you could try a 3rd party utility like WuMgr or WUMT.

cheers, Paul

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