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Patch reliability is unclear, but widespread attacks make patching prudent. Go ahead and patch, but watch out for potential problems. |
My infamous Acer 32 gig max hard drive got 1903 offered up to it. I did not attach an external USB hard drive, rather I left the internal drive and t
[See the full post at: Patch Lady – for those keeping track]
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
March of 2018 to be exact. It was shipped with 10, not upgraded to 10.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
Less than 18 months ago.
That doesn’t bode well for current cheap Windows machines, either.
Microsoft has, on occasion, made some pitiful decisions after OEM’s came a cryin’, begging them to lower their already low hardware standards. Of course, they complied. Vista on a single core CPU with only 512-MB of RAM was an abomination. Putting Windows on a 32-GB drive is absolute insanity, and shows no forward thinking put into the original decision at all. Microsoft should pay to have 64-GB drive installed to replace the 32-GB one.
GreatAndPowerfulTech
32GB SSD should not be allowed as the only internal drive. The hardware vendor should be required to put a warning label prominently on the laptop which states 32GB is barely enough to crawl through normal operation. A similar, but not so severe, warning should be affixed to 64GB SSD machines. A Windows machine should have a minimum of a 128GB SSD in order not to have to affix a warning label.
The one saving grace with a 64GB SSD machine is that you can plug in an SD card to provide more space. Not a great solution, but at least it will make the machine usable.
Microsoft should pay to have 64-GB drive installed to replace the 32-GB one
64GB is not enough as Windows OS requires ~20GB, Windows.OLD another 20-30GB, sleep+hibernation ~10GB, Microsoft’s new temp folder ~7GB… Minimum space required should be 128GB.
…plus any installed software.
You could turn off sleep/hibernation – I always do. That should provide just enough space for usability with a 64GB drive (if you aren’t planning on installing very much software). You could delete the Windows.OLD folders. And you could use a big SD card as the overflow drive for Windows updates.
It’s ridiculous to have to do all of that just because they were unethical enough to sell you a computer with such a small internal drive. A regular user won’t know about all of the hoops they have to jump through to make it work. You shouldn’t have to be an IT professional to be able to use Windows 10 on your laptop.
Microsoft should pay to have 64-GB drive installed to replace the 32-GB one
64GB is not enough as Windows OS requires ~20GB, Windows.OLD another 20-30GB, sleep+hibernation ~10GB, Microsoft’s new temp folder ~7GB… Minimum space required should be 128GB.
~120-GB would be ideal. However, since Microsoft is unlikely to even admit their mistake, I doubt they’ll pay for any drive capacity upgrade.
GreatAndPowerfulTech
Maybe if Windows wasn’t such a bloated beast, 32 GB would be fine. It’s getting bigger and bigger every year. My Windows 10 install takes 23 GB with updates not including installers and package cache. If you include all things MS on my system it’s around 35 GB. Compare that with my Debian xfce install of 4.8 GB that can do all the same office tasks and more.
The problem is mainly from Microsoft’s policy on backward compatibility and updates. It’s great that I can run almost any Windows application from the past 20+ years but it’s also causing all the update headaches and bloat.
The NT kernels life span(1993-now) is longer than that of MS-DOS(1981-2000). MS has stagnated on creating a newer New Technology(NT) but something needs to be done to bring PC computing into the present. They could have the best of both worlds, borrowing from Linux, Chrome OS and OSX to create a fast stable and secure system while leveraging virtualization technology to have backwards compatibility for those who need it. Who knows how many dedicated Windows users they would alienate in the process though.
We seem to be in the middle of the Windows dark ages and I’m looking forward to a time when we can say goodbye to all the headaches that surround our computers.
If Microsoft gets rid of backward compatibility, you will have riots in the streets. Anytime they plug one of these compatibility “holes” in order to make Windows more secure, everybody screams that the latest version of Windows 10 broke someone’s ancient application.
A recent example: SMB v.1 is an old and supposedly insecure protocol for accessing a network drive. It is turned off by default in Windows 10-1809. (It is very easy to turn it back on – go to Windows Features and check the box.) Everybody was screaming that 1809 broke network access! The only reason it broke network access was because so many networks are still running the ancient and insecure SMB v.1! The thanks Microsoft got for trying to plug that hole was all manner of accusations of wrongdoing.
We are truly spoiled by the huge amount of resources Microsoft has invested in keeping Windows as backward-compatible as possible. When they eliminate one aspect of the backward-compatibility in order to make a needed improvement, it forces people to move forward, and that’s what people don’t like.
My only fault with Microsoft is that perhaps they don’t do enough to make these things well-known; if they would do more along those lines, more people would know what to do to deal with these things when they happen.
Still want to run that ancient program? I have a friend who uses an old Greek and Hebrew program for studying the Bible. He didn’t want to have to buy a newer version, so I installed Oracle VirtualBox on his Windows 8.1 computer, installed Windows 2000 in a virtual machine, and like magic his ancient software works as good as new on his brand new Windows 8.1 computer. In other words, there are usually ways to keep using the old stuff, if you really want or need to.
Thank you. Backward compatibility is needed, as you stated. For example if I migrated some PCs manually from 1709 to 1809 with SMB v1 enabled, Windows update kept my setting. On the other hand, new machines distributed with 1809 have SMB v1 disabled as default. Also I have one machine with W10 32bit for running 16bit app from 1999 🙂 It was quite complicated to install 32 bit Win on system with UEFI… Argh.
But.. At least litlle experienced user should be able to “repair this issue”.
I find the biggest problem with stability and driver issues. There is lot of going on in the background, that you have absolutely no control of. Fresh install is more than 20 GB. I think W10 is heading towards uncertain future. Please notice when reinstalling driver, that there is still default location A:\ Why?
There are ancient parts of OS. It is most unwise to have nice graphical interface instead of stable system. Foolish move and no responsibility. Greed, greed, greed.. more money please!
Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise
HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29
PRUSA i3 MK3S+
They could have the best of both worlds, borrowing from Linux, Chrome OS and OSX to create a fast stable and secure system while leveraging virtualization technology to have backwards compatibility for those who need it.
When I hear talk of Microsoft (or Google or Amazon) “borrowing” from open-source, I cringe. Remember the Three E’s of Microsoft “borrowing”:
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish!
“Embrace, extend, and extinguish”,[1] (EEE) also known as “embrace, extend, and exterminate”,[2] is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice found[3] was used internally by Microsoft[4] to describe its strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to strongly disadvantage its competitors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
-- rc primak
My infamous Acer 32 gig max hard drive got 1903 offered up to it. I did not attach an external USB hard drive, rather I left the internal drive and t
[See the full post at: Patch Lady – for those keeping track]
ehhh, message is “clear”: All consumers must buy new hardware every 12 months.
+1. Yes indeed. I converted an under-powered Win10 machine (originally a Win7) to Linux Mint Cinnamon with Wine, and it’s great.
And it runs 16-bit Windows applications straight off (which Win7 would only do if pushed — installing XPM — and Win10 apparently wouldn’t do at all).
One of my very old 16-bit apps is a (home-brew) emulator to run CPM2.2 applications in 16-bit MS-DOS. So just as a demo (there is no real need for this gadget nowadays) I did once produce a screenshot of Wordstar 8-bit, thinking it is running on an 8080 processor in CPM, actually running in an emulator within what the emulator thinks is MS-DOS 3.1, but is actually Linux Mint 64-bit. Yee-hah.
+1 HMcF. Linux Mint Cinnamon 18, with Wine. (DosBox may be involved there somewhere as well.)
So I let it go for it… and….. and…. and…
Once again once it kicked a reboot it gave the message that it couldn’t find the mounted drive and would not finish the upgrade to 1903.
Dear Microsoft, you should have trained your AI to check for free space, compatible HW drivers… use installed drivers instead of replacing drivers…
It HAS a SD card in there. It still barfs.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
Literally the only way I can get the machine to complete an update is by attaching an external USB hard drive. SD cards do not work even though Windows 10 senses the SD card and acts like it should use it when it reboots it fails to remount the SD card and thus fails the upgrade process.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
A laptop should never require the user to attach an external drive in order to get it to work.
Susan, you know a lot more about this stuff than most, and if it’s a hassle for you, it is unconscionably difficult for most. Perhaps a class-action lawsuit would end this unethical practice. I’m not sure what else would alert the regular folks not to buy this junk thinking that it will work.
Microsoft didn’t force the OEMs to put Windows 10 on such an under-equipped device. The blame for this should go to the hardware OEMs, not to Microsoft. Granted, Windows is a massive OS as far as hard drive space is concerned, and if it were more space-efficient (like Linux), it could work, but it’s not. That’s something that the OEMs know, and they decide to put Windows 10 on 32GB drives anyway.
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 would have to put part of the blame on Microsoft, too, for publishing unreasonably small system requirementts for Win10:
That’s not realistic.
what is the model number of that Acer computer w/ the 32Gb drive, Susan Bradley?
It’s not only Microsoft’s fault but also Acer’s fault for making such a machine with paltry storage space.
perhaps take up or mention the storage problem in the Acer community forums:
https://community.acer.com/en/
(1) This Security-Only patch, as I read it, is not offered by Windows Update, only through the Microsoft Update Catalog.
This has always been the case. The Security only Update and the IE11 CU are Catalog only (or you can download them from AKB2000003 on this site for both Win7 and Win8.1.
(2) Both of the two NET Framework patches looked like a can of worms to this untutored eye.
Yes, the Rollup is a bundle that contains separate patches )each with its own KB number) for each of the versions of .NET. Best to get .NET through Windows Update b/c the mechanism knows which versions you have installed and takes care of the installation accordingly.
I’ll fix thank you! Security only patches are indeed only the catalog or WSUS. Even for Windows 7 they do not come down on Microsoft update. Only the rollup updates come down on Microsoft update. It’s been this way for a while.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
I know someone who has a similar (but older) device – a 32 GB eMMC Acer Cloudbook that came with 1507. It’s a cheap laptop that he wanted to use simply to browse the Internet. He used it with 1507 until November 2018 when he had me fix it for him. I managed to use the the Media Creation Tool and two USB flash drives to get it to upgrade to 1803 at the time. I’m still waiting for him to return it to me so that he can get 1903 installed on it.
Some folks who purchase these devices think they are getting a bargain. Little do they know that they basically purchased a ‘throw-away’ device. Hopefully they have some IT savvy friends who can fix it for them twice a year. I tell those that I know that there is no such thing as a cheap new Windows 10 laptop or tablet. If their budget is $250 or less, they’re better off with something else, such as an Android tablet.
If all he needs is to browse the internet:
32GB is plenty of space to run Linux, and you can pick any browser you wish to use. You might be able to avoid that twice-a-year appointment to fix the laptop!
It seems like setting up Linux for a non-techie would be asking for trouble, but while I have never tried this personally, I’ve read a lot of testimonials about people doing this and having the friends/family support calls drop to near zero. You’ve already got problems with Windows 10, and unless it goes on a diet, each new build is going to be a problem.
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 can’t see buying a Windows PC with anything less then 128Gb storage and 8 Gb RAM. I hope you got a good deal on that laptop Susan because more then likely it will be impossible to upgrade anything on it. I would rather buy a cheap notebook with a slow spin drive and then upgrade it to a SSD. It seems PC makers are rather stingy with these Chromebook killers which are really not that useful.
I just upgraded my Lenovo Ideapad 100s from 1803 to 1903 using Windows Update. I had to run disk cleanup first, which freed about 9.97 GB of space, before I could kick off the in-place upgrade. It took awhile on the eMMC SSD in this thing, but I’m happily typing this message along on 1903 in Firefox.
I don’t know why I had success and you had failure; my system is a similar spec to a Stream (Intel Atom CPU, 32GB eMMC SSD drive, 2GB RAM, microSD slot). I’m counting my blessings that I didn’t have the sorts of issues that you have had with yours.
And if I may (on the Linux suggestion) – the issue I’ve had with that is, these systems (or at least my Ideapad 100s) comes with a 64-bit CPU and a 32-bit UEFI BIOS. After using a 64-bit Ubuntu ISO along with a 32-bit UEFI bios file, I was able to get Ubuntu installed, however sound does not work because the sound drivers are supposedly somehow tied to the CPU and there are no sound drivers that work under Linux. Been there, done that.
don’t have enough room.. cleaned up the C drive… C drive and the SSD drive
couldn’t find the mounted drive
Mounted?
Ok, later in the thread we learn about an SD card,
which presents a mixture of space and mounting issues, which I would like to tease apart.
If someone’s C + SSD were to amount to enough room, would the installation still choke on the presence of an SD card?
Hi, Susan. I’ve had problems with a woefully underprovisioned computer, too.
My granddaughter was given an HP Stream Notebook a few years ago which came with Windows 8 installed. The Stream has a 32GB SSD as its C: drive, two USB ports, and a memory card reader. Quite some time ago I slipped in a 64GB memory card and relocated to it the folders named Pictures, Downloads, Videos, etc.
Over the years I have upgraded it (first to 8.1, then to each version of Windows 10 in turn) until version 1903 came out.
Each time I contemplated upgrading her Notebook I first made sure that I had all the drivers from HP.
Each time I created an image of the current operating system (so I could always restore the image in case anything went “pear shaped”).
Each time I upgraded the system it required more storage than the paltry little 32GB SSD (Windows would ask for extra storage indicating that it needed at least another 10GB). So I would plug in a newly formatted 32GB flash drive each time (and that satisfied its need).
Each attempted upgrade worked but a few times I had to reinstall the Touchpad driver afterward. (When the touchpad didn’t work after upgrading, I simply plugged in a mouse or trackball and managed to reinstall the Notebook’s touchpad driver.)
Then a few months ago I began trying to upgrade the system from version 1809 to 1903. Those attempts failed repeatedly until this week.
Monday night the 1903 upgrade worked! (It worked even though I did nothing differently than the five times it failed over the last two months.)
Her Notebook is now running Windows 10 Home version 1903 (OS Build 18362.267).
Here’s hoping that perhaps you, too, will have success next time you attempt to upgrade to 1903.
Image or Clone often! Backup, backup, backup, backup......
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Home Built: Windows 10 Home 64-bit, AMD Athlon II X3 435 CPU, 16GB RAM, ASUSTeK M4A89GTD-PRO/USB3 (AM3) motherboard, 512GB SanDisk SSD, 3 TB WD HDD, 1024MB ATI AMD RADEON HD 6450 video, ASUS VE278 (1920x1080) display, ATAPI iHAS224 Optical Drive, integrated Realtek HD Audio
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