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The recent 1803 upgrading issue whereby you end up with a black screen and a big headache has now been acknowledged by Microsoft: https://answers.micr
[See the full post at: Patch Lady – Black screen issue acknowledged]
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
In the original article, Patch Lady Susan wrote:
1. You should be on Pro not Home to defer feature updates
Having just experienced buying a computer with Windows 10 Home on it, which gave me an opportunity to play around with 10 and watch it do its thing, this made me think. Of course, the citation from Ms. Bradley is correct… but why should I have to pay money to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro just to get a degree of control over whether my own PC is going to be broken by MS by a never-ending parade of poorly-tested updates I don’t want in the first place?
It would still be objectionable on a philosophical level to lack even the most basic control over my own PC’s updates even if those updates worked flawlessly every time, but the reality is much worse than that. Every person who has any understanding at all about what an update is needs that level of control just to be more sure the PC is going to work the next time they need it, but even then, you never know with 10.
If I were to use Windows 10 at all, it would be kind of a “hold my nose and do it” kind of thing, but I am supposed to pay even more than what I did (built into the purchase price) for a product I don’t even like to get more control, but still less than I would have had on any other Windows version before, Home or otherwise?
It’s a bad deal, and it never really occurred to me that MS fouling the Home edition of 10 might be yet another monetizing strategy (with the understanding that most consumer PCs come as boxed products with Home already on them; you can’t customize it when it’s already on a shelf waiting to be bought). Use the home users as cannon fodder for untested updates, making their computers less usable than they should be, then if the users object to being used as unwilling beta testers (that form of monetizing Windows was one I did know about), charge ’em through the nose for a version that’s better, but still offers less control over the PC than it should.
The people who should be the natural users of “Home” are forced to upgrade to “Pro,” while those who are natural users of “Pro” (small businesses, supposedly) end up having to upgrade to Enterprise to get the control they need. Quite a sales technique… effective, probably, if incredibly cynical (as is the norm when talking about Windows these days).
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
Susan, I have to tell you that staying on Defender isn’t a foolproof solution either.
The day 1803 was released/pushed onto “seekers'” computers, I reported that I allowed an old netbook and an HP Stream 7 tablet to update to see what would happen.Both were running 1709 Home with Defender and yet the HP tablet experienced the same black screen situation that’s causing concern for so many.
The netbook did update without crashing, but was noticeably slower than before with many of my preferences reset to Microsoft’s defaults and many deleted apps reinstalled.
I’ve had enough of fighting with Windows 10’s idiotic update schedule, especially on hardware that probably shouldn’t be running it anyway except that MS still seems desperate to push it onto every device it can.
I fixed the tablet by restoring its original Windows 8.1 image and installing Classic Shell for the UI. The netbook is now running CloudReady and I must admit I’m enjoying the Chromebook-like experience much more than I thought I would.
Neither device will ever see Windows 10 again.
Now if only we can get MS to follow that advice!
I agree that machines that were sold on a specific OS should stay on that OS, but it is hard to do when support stops after 18 months for your specific OS… 😉
Could not disagree more with the idea that a PC should stick with the OS that came preinstalled. In my way of thinking, I’m buying the hardware; the software is, for the most part, just fluff that is on there to sweeten the deal for “regular” users.
I’d prefer to buy PCs without any OS, and while the ones I build from components come that way by necessity, it’s rather unlikely to get a laptop in that configuration. It can be done, but it severely limits one’s choices.
I’ve owned a number of laptops over the years, and only one has retained its preinstalled OS.
The first, a Compaq with an AMD Duron CPU, came with WinME and a Windows XP CD hastily shoved into the box by Compaq (without them having to actually unbox it and install it on the PC themselves). I used the CD.
The second, a HP with an AMD Athlon CPU, came with XP Home, but it was stolen, and I regretted deeply that my personal data was unencrypted. Its replacement, the same model (which I count as still being the second laptop for that reason), was upgraded to XP Pro for its ability to use EFS. That may count as the same OS in your book, since it was still XP.
That HP ended up going back to HP in trade for the third PC, a Compaq (HP owned by then) with AMD Turion CPU. It came with XP Home, and it also got XP Pro for the EFS.
Next was my Core 2 Duo laptop, which I still own. It came with Vista, which I soon removed and replaced with… you guessed it, XP Pro. I used that on there for a lot of years, but eventually upgraded it to Windows 7 x64, then 8.1 x64, as well as Linux Mint x64. It works perfectly with both; no reason not to have upgraded it to OSes it didn’t come with, but a couple of good ones not to stick with Vista x86 (it’s out of support, and it doesn’t see all of my memory).
After that was my Dell Braswell “it’s a Chromebook but it came with Windows” PC. Before I bought it, I saw in the reviews section of the site from which I bought it that it was trying in vain to update to one or the other new versions of Windows 10, but that it didn’t work because of insufficient room on the small 32GB eMMC internal storage device. You wrote about that problem too, and it’s far from rare, as these Chromebook-spec Windows PCs are available from many vendors.
That would have prevented the sale had I intended to use Win 10 on the thing, but the goal from the start was to put Linux on it, making it my first exclusively Linux PC that isn’t in a dual-boot configuration. It works great, and gets its updates without a single problem, which it couldn’t do with its preconfigured OS. I now have two thirds of the internal eMMC storage available, even though Mint comes with the full OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, and a number of other things, and to that I’ve added Waterfox, Pinta, several Solitaire-type games, a Linux version of InSSIDer, and some other stuff, and it still has only a third of the storage space used. Admittedly, /home is on my external microSD card, but there’s not a lot there at present, so even if that was on the internal eMMC, the situation would still be about the same regarding available space.
Finally, the Dell gaming PC I bought and unfortunately had to return. Linux went on and worked great (even working with the keyboard backlight without any effort on my part), but Windows 8.1 was another story. I was able to clear the hurdles of Microsoft sabotaging my PC by blocking updates on a perfectly working Windows installation and of Intel not offering a driver for the integrated GPU on a Kaby Lake CPU for Windows 8.1, but the non-working Synaptics touchpad driver was too much. No Windows 8.1, no sale!
That may be what you’re talking about when you say a PC should stay with its original OS, but it’s one failure among many successes. Installing and configuring a new OS is pretty technical and isn’t the best choice for beginning users (this includes attempting an in-place upgrade to 10, Microsoft), but for the technically proficient, I say go for it– you might like it a lot better afterwards. In the modern era, it is necessary for those of us for whom Windows 10 is not acceptable if we’re going to use any modern hardware. Thanks, Microsoft, for all the extra effort and expense!
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
The leading theory right now is that third party antivirus is to blame but the Register has spoken with Avast and they are saying it’s not the root cause.
Too many third-party users are reporting no problems, so it’s hard not to agree that it can’t be the root case…
Bottom line we’re still in the dark as to the true root cause at this time.
A wild stab in the dark, I know… but it could be 1803?
You should be on Pro not Home to defer feature updates
It is good that you are telling people how to exercise more control over updating… and it reflects the current situation…
Microsoft should be taking care that Home users receive updates that are fully tested… and that shouldn’t apply just to their own hardware… Home users are the least technical and should receive the safest, least disruptive updating. Their OS should be the most stable, and there should be easy settings to adjust users preferences… they shouldn’t have to make registry adjustments, and there shouldn’t be reasons to need to do so…. they shouldn’t be exposed to updates that disrupt the end user experience, because they are the least able to recover…
I thought the “Insider Rings” were a good idea… but obviously it isn’t enough if the end product is unsatisfactory and leading to not just unwanted and annoying updating, but catastrophic failures on the consumer end of things. W10 started causing problems with Home users (my friends and family members) since it was first pushed out. They were perfectly happy Windows 7 and 8.1 users. Why force them to an operating system that has continuing stability problems?
Just in the over-all picture of things… if a company is unable to support a product without consumer end problems occurring over and over again, why would anyone follow it into the Cloud? Their end customer experience is terrible, documentation is terrible, their ethics of forced telemetry is terrible, their ethos of removing choices and forcing their selections is terrible, and they do not acknowledge and fix problems of their own making… this is a company/business model that I want nothing to do with… and I was a very happy Home user for many years. Wouldn’t Microsoft want Home users happy? Why work so hard to destroy that happiness?
When I see people that cater only to money and power (Enterprise users) and treat those with less with disdain and disrespect, their true character is revealed. I was uncomfortable with how W10 was offered and pushed… it seemed more bait to catch people, than a product to be useful to me. I love my Windows 7, but face a corporate message that it is somehow less safe than a product that is causing black screens on their own hardware? Microsoft is lying. The good, stable, useful parts of Windows are still there… unfortunately Microsoft doesn’t value them as much as their end users do… and instead of improving on them, is dumping them in favor of creating a data-mining cloud monster that is in service only to Microsoft. The real people I know don’t need or want anything to do with that monster… they are working to avoid and protect themselves from that monster… no one, other than computer nerds, wants to spend time figuring out how to make that monster happy…
I am steadfastly against buying a product that is being developed on a model that I don’t agree with and support. I love my Windows 7 Home… and I will never use W10 of any flavor… or knowingly buy any Microsoft product again. They have gone too far in the direction of demonstrating bad ethics, not just bad updates. I appreciate that Susan is showing them a better direction in asking for stable updating… but it takes someone with her standing within the community to be ignored for some people to clearly get how well Microsoft has insulated itself from feedback from its user base. WaaS (Windows as a Service) is not providing a service to end users… it is corralling end users to be of service for its ravenous AI monster… and it really doesn’t matter how we feel about it, does it?
Microsoft should not be pushing out updates that bring premature end of life to our hardware, in their rush to meet an artificial business model that disregards customer privacy, choice, and productivity. But we knew that when GWX was being pushed… and they are only pushing harder now… and my grandkids are learning coding and how to take charge of their own computing experience… My grandkids are not going to be wasting time pleading with corporate bullies to let them use their computers they way they want… they are busy learning and doing what they want with the hardware available to them, right now… and they are having fun at it… Anybody having fun with Windows Updates, lately?
Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter
no one, other than computer nerds, wants to spend time figuring out how to make that monster happy…
If I may speak for a subset of the computer nerd population… we don’t want to do that either. It’s fun to configure and get things set up just right, but once that’s done, I expect the changes I made to stay put. People like me have very specific expectations about how our computers should behave, and while taking a fresh installation of Windows/Linux and changing it bit by bit until it meets our requirements can be enjoyable, it’s decidedly not so to have to do so when the maker of the OS is actively and continuously trying to wrest control from the user and take it for themselves.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
I guess I was wistfully thinking that computer nerds would be able to stop unwanted changes from the outset…
I’m really hoping my grandkids will grow up into being computer proficient… wouldn’t mind a computer nerd or two to be found among them!
Been really appreciating your thoughtful responses regarding modifying computer OS to suit your needs… as that is exactly what I want to be doing. Knowing it is possible keeps me trying to find solutions that will work for me…
Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter
Well thats the Second “Update nag Message” this week, new tactic by the Redmond crew? Still no downloading according to my little network thinggy a hangover from “Good Ole Dial up” days.
Still just that bit leary about going looking for details, “Thar be update Traps out there” 🙂
Well curiosity got the better of me so I went digging, ever mindful not “click” anything in the process. Should just mention this is a Win10 1709 Home machine not my usual Win10 Pro, and is set on “Metered Ethernet” and Telemetry is disabled by WinAero tweaker. Featuring WUMT, wushowhide, and the most visited Web page round here after Woody’s Lounge the M$ Catalogue.
Hmmm well I have known WUMT show a few discrepencies in size with updates, but a 189GB? and of course either some one at Redmond made a mistake or there’s more than, shall we say, a little obviscation going on.
WUMT reporting wrong information is sad and depressing, could it be possible that Winaero Tweaker disabling Telemetry may be interfering with WUMT getting correct information?
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