Holding post
For all the Linux bores, just downvote this, then reply. Makes it easier to read the other, relevant comments.
If you're fed up with Windows 10 downloading updates, installing them, and rebooting at awkward times all by itself, you're not alone. Reg readers have been complaining ever since Microsoft tweaked its operating system in August: that change, introduced in the Anniversary Update, instructed the software to apply patches …
'Holding post' is quite apt,
Considering Microsoft can't even issue patch updates for Windows 10, because the Clunky Windows Update can of worms, is exactly that, a can of worms of Patch over 'retracted Patch' dependencies that no MS employee no one can fathom.
Creators Edition? There is no other OS product that has done more to stifle my own creativity/time, faffing with failed drivers, quirks, failed updates, activation issues. This list is fcuking endless.
How much time have intelligent people on this forum alone, wasted just trying to get Windows update to function, for a new install of Windows 7 SP1, and figure out the workaround to kick start it into action - the endless hours upon hours - 'Checking for Updates', hey Microsoft?
Re new Windows 7 SP1 installation:
1 Install W7 without any internet connection enabled
2 Set the Windows Update option to 'Never download automatically'
3 Install the following updates manually, in this order (download them on another PC)
• KB3020369
• KB3177467
• KB3172605
• KB3207752
4 Connect to the internet
5 Search for updates - shouldn't take more than 10 minutes
6 Give thanks to http://wu.krelay.de/en/ from whom this advice springs
Have a nice day.
I'm confused.
I was told one of the supposed benefits of win 10 was that updates meant less rebooting. Seems not to be the case. Glad I stayed on 7...
MS are being pretty disingenuous I think. The article quotes some MS flunky who seems to be trying to describe the upcoming change as somehow overturning centuries of accepted practice, instead of addressing a terrible cock up introduced last autumn. Which is bollocks; MS screwed it up and is now trying to find a way forward that still results in updated being installed behind the user's back. If they actually addressed the core issue, that updates need a reboot, then none of this world be a problem.
When of when will they learn to listen again to their users instead of their marketing 'experts', advertising executives and UI theoreticians?
In one of my cases it was a nearly a really bad thing.
It seems able to reboot a suspended laptop. I'd left my closed suspend laptop on the spare bed. I came back the next morning to find it was running and the laptop was red hot, the bottom was way too hot to touch. The stupid update shit had rebooted the laptop only it's got disk encryption (so the updates keep failing but still reboot) while the laptop is sitting at the screen waiting to be unlocked it doesn't timeout and the OS features for throttling back the power don't kick in. So it was heating up. Leaving it on a bed meant the vents were blocked. Hopefully the FW would have switched off before the thing caught fire.
"MS screwed it up and is now trying to find a way forward that still results in updated being installed behind the user's back."
Well, one small advantage: all of this is made available free of charge. Which may sound logical, but don't underestimate the kind of idiocy which Microsoft can provide. Visual Studio? They even once ruined the whole interface in a commercial version, (its license costs around E 800,-), somewhat patched it and in the next release revoked the whole thing and started spouting off how much they listened to their customers. ... of course while still requiring another E 800,- for a new Visual Studio license.
I honestly think that some of Microsofts products are actually quite good, for example I'm quite a fan of their Office series (especially all the stuff you can do with the VBA backend) and really enjoy using it. But they're really horrible when it comes to listening (and respecting!) to what their customers might want or need.
"Yes, I understand updates need to be installed for security reasons, but no, I don't understand why the damn thing can't wait until I approve it."
The answer is simple, People don't reboot. It takes about an entire quarter for every device at work to be rebooted if we leave it to the end user.
That brings other issues , when the user finally reboots and has an issue you've three months of patches to deal with as you try and diagnose the problem not one months, as well as that some other software may or may not install if the installer thinks there is a required reboot pending.
Surely that's a user problem, not something an OS should be randomly rebooting to enforce?
If this is a large corporate problem, and the PCs involved are just office desktop type machines, why not enforce a policy of turning machines off over the weekend?
Allowing MS to do it instead, at their discretion not yours or your users', seems like a crazy way forward.
If this is a large corporate problem, and the PCs involved are just office desktop type machines, why not enforce a policy of turning machines off over the weekend?
Yes is a user problem. Desktops are not such an issue, the problem for us is its down to a culture of having to be nice to the end user (so we can't force them to reboot) , a relatively mobile workforce on laptops, and most people hibernate not shutdown.
My point was not so much about us per se, only that given a choice users generally don't reboot.
Laptop/desktops hardware is made for being turned off every 8 hour or so. Actually, most desktop disks are rated for 8h/day, not 24h/day (the latter are usually more expensive NAS/server disks).
We routinely turn off our desktops (that's also my office policy - for security and energy saving reasons) every evening - and we never saw failures spikes. Nor I've seen it in my home systems which again are not left running when not needed.
Actually, systems on when electric spikes strikes (i.e. thunderstorms) unless they are behind a good UPS, are more at risk to fail.
There are also thermal issues in the hot season, usually AC is reduced when the offices are closed (server rooms are under a different system) - and I've seen more laptop/desktop system fails due to thermal issues (i.e. dust inside...) than because they've been turned off daily.
It's also a way to ensure people save files and have them in the proper repositories - remote backups and patches can use wake-on-lan to turn on systems when needed. Then there are good reason to keep a system running, but in my experience it's usually an exception, not the rule.
"Allowing MS to do it instead, at their discretion not yours or your users', seems like a crazy way forward."
So you're saying it's crazy for the owner of an OS to do what they like with it? That's the crazy talk!
Read the EULA sometime. It states that WIN10 is the property of Microsoft INC., and they're only letting you use, not own, it for their financial gain and all the user info they can download.
Our VDI sessions need to be rebooted once in a while. We get a notification that it's gonna happen, and a choice to deffer it for a day, or do it now. To avoid people permanently deferring, it has a time limit. Eventually, if you ignore it enough, it'll just restart. Aware that there is no perfect solution to this, but if you accept that restarts are occasionally inevitable, then perhaps some kind of enhanced communication, followed by threat, followed by compulsion would be the best compromise.
"People don't reboot."
One thing I've noticed on Linux is that after a kernel replacement the machine won't hibernate, it has to be shut down. Perhaps if reboots weren't built into the Windows update the same thing would happen. That would mean users would be forced to reboot but only at a natural break in their work - other than those who'd simply leave the thing running overnight.
What I find even worse is having NOT had the laptop on for a few days can result in a long wait to actually be able to do anything ... as MrBlack says ... usually after you have had an emergency call to a client site and need to fix something quickly :(
I'm glad the desktop machine here are all Linux, updates are never a problem.
Who's "we"? And why are you chatting away to me like that?
Are people really unable to understand "Install operating system update? The computer will reboot while installing meaning you will lose unsaved work. [Now] [Ask again later] [Schedule time]"?
I also say dialog box but of course there is none, it's just plastered across the screen and it's modal. It's as if Xerox PARC never happened.
"you aren't supposed to do stuff with your PC overnight, you are just supposed to consume content."
yeah, for those farmer-types who keep daylight hours because they LIKE it, maybe that's true. Then there are the night-owl HACKER types (like me) who do work at random times during the day and night. MY schedule is _NOT_ Micro-shaft's business, nor should they be ASSUMING and SCREWING WITH IT.
Then again, update schedules are designed to correspond to "the least convenient time" anyway, which (as others have stated) are as likely to be "at a customer site" forcing you to WAIT to fix a high priority problem.
Solution: do NOT use Win-10-nic. If possible, do NOT use a Micro-shaft OS.
So this fixes one of the major issues, hopefully without introducing too many new ones. In another 5 years or so, we finally might have something as usable as Windows 7 was before the telemetry updates.
Sorry, but I can't wait this long. I still have a WX computer in the office, used to run a single application (to my ever-lasting shame, powerpoint). I also still have one Windows 7 computer at home, used for gaming. Both systems will continue until they either die or go out of support. Neither will be replaced with a WX computer: at this point, I would rather take my chances with wine and a steam machine.
"We got an update for you". "We" who?? Really hate this kind of informal text as if "you" were friends - or worse, pushers of updates - "hey bro', got an update for you..." - and not a frigging OS.
"Windows is a service etc. etc. " - well, if you're a service start to serve me instead of having me serve you - and avoid frigging marketdroid PR stuff inside messages!
"We need your help"???? C'mon, stop this idiocy, return to a professional, impersonal tone...
Really upset? No, it was more a joke about the language used, but I've spent endless time to teach developers how to develop professional GUI using the right tone to address users - which may not like to be addressed as you do with your friends at the pub, or your children.
False friendliness, paternalistic tone, unneeded explanations, are never a good choice, IMHO. Yet, it shows the attitude of those behind Windows 10, and the paradigm shift in software development, and its business model.
False friendliness, paternalistic tone, unneeded explanations, are never a good choice, IMHO. Yet, it shows the attitude of those behind Windows 10, and the paradigm shift in software development, and its business model.
I think it may also have something to do with the "snowflake" culture that's being spread about. "I want a friend." "I need my hand held." "Is this a safe thing?"... etc. etc.
The best error message I ever saw was on an in-house system used only by engineers. "Fucked up, didn't you? So reboot now and go do penance for your idiocy.". It never would have been sent out of house as too many people would take offence at: a) Some of the language, because "words hurt" and b) the implication of blame. Reality is sometimes a bitch, ya' know.
"Look LDS, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over."
That many downvotes? How could so many people forget? It was only 16 years ago!
>That many downvotes? How could so many people forget? It was only 16 years ago!
I think there are quite a few who have either never heard of a HAL9000 computer* which is shocking for a tech publication (though a somewhat downmarket one) or missed the irony.
Like the irony of your date comment ;)
*The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
I think there are quite a few who have either never heard of a HAL9000 computer* which is shocking for a tech publication (though a somewhat downmarket one) or missed the irony.
Sheesh, at least *someone* recognized the reference.
And it's even worse if you've not had the damned thing switched on for a while. I recently got back from a 12 week business trip, where there wasn't room in the hand luggage for the Surface. It took two days to get the damned thing right. It wouldn't even connect to my home WiFi, initially (fixed by manually configuring the IP settings). The Mac, OTOH (and I hate to write this*) just worked.
* Because everyone who owns a Mac knows they have problems of their own.
I have 5 PCs here all on Windows 10 (home and pro) and not a single one of them has ever rebooted without me wanting it to. What have either I done right, or other people done wrong? I have no additional software installed and haven't done anything to settings. A quick poll of friends and family members using 10 seems to say that there has only been one reboot when not wanted and that was a BSOD. A big fuss over nothing I think.
If you don't leave them (all 5 of them) on 24/7 or if you check up on them all daily you'll never have a problem because you'll notice the prompts.
I have at least 2 PCs in separate locations always on and sometimes it can be days before I log on to either remotely. More often, I log on quickly to do something and I barely notice if there is a system warning.
Now, because I am aware of this "feature", I make sure to check on them relatively often to avoid a nasty surprise. But it's still frustrating when I happen to forget.
And I'm not one of those people who think windows updating is bad. On the contrary I'm quite dilligent and even considered an update zealot by some
"If you don't leave them (all 5 of them) on 24/7 or if you check up on them all daily you'll never have a problem because you'll notice the prompts."
I have one on 24x7. But it does look like you've got some PCs there that should be running a server level OS. Why else would they need to be on round the clock?
"Why else would they need to be on round the clock?"
Convenience? Even if it's not round the clock, if you leave a PC running into the night to finish something (a video transcode, a large download, etc) Microsoft would have you believe you need to set special permission to do this and temporarily tweak the "active hours" settings.
Regardless, it's the usual Microsoft arrogance that it's their PC and they can reboot it whenever they like. As someone else posted higher up, they're trumpeting that it's a brilliant new innovation, when really it's just a nostalgic trip back to the days of XP in the early noughties, when they first figured out they shouldn't reboot a machine without user approval.
"Doesn't the pro version of windows allow you to choose when updates are applied?"
You can set "active hours" to a maximum of 12 each day where it won't apply them. Say 8am to 8pm. But walk way from your PC with unsaved work at 9pm for an hour at your peril unless you've remembered to tweak them. And then change them back. Every. Fucking. Time.
You can set "active hours" to a maximum of 12 each day where it won't apply them. Say 8am to 8pm. But walk way from your PC with unsaved work at 9pm for an hour at your peril unless you've remembered to tweak them. And then change them back. Every. Fucking. Time.
The easy solution is to have two PCs: one to be used 08:00 to 20:00, the other for the 20:00 to 08:00 work. For ergonomic reasons, I would also make them different color: say blue or green for the day PC, red or gold for the night one.
Only half jocking, too: I've learned to pick my battles, and never enter a contest I can't possibly win. Fighting with your boss, your bank, your insurance company, and your OS vendor is guaranteed to be a losing propisition: you may win a skirmish or two, but in the end the only real choices are to end over or to walk.
You are not the only one, just look at this graph
http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share#monthly-201301-201701
Windows usage has been on a serious nose dive and 50% drop almost in its usage in just 3 years is quite a scary nose dive.
Clearly a lot of people just don't use their desktop class devices as much anymore, i know i don't, my social media, banking , shopping or researching stuff for a trip is done on my phone or tablet mostly.
How much lower will Windows nose dive over the next few years?
> How much lower will Windows nose dive over the next few years?
Walt Mossberg has written this week that he believes personal computers to change to ARM soon, citing Chromebooks, Windows Universal Apps and Apple. Being Mossberg, he thinks Apple is best placed, given their ARM expertise and range of existing iOS tablet apps.
http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/1/14771328/walt-mossberg-pc-definition-smartphone-tablet-desktop-computers
I think it's sort of telling that Mossberg thinks that iPad apps cover the totality of what is done on computers. There is more to life than word processing/spreadsheets/games, although most "pundits" don't know that.
(Not to mention that ARM really isn't up to the task of those non-word processing/spreadsheets/games uses.)
"Walt Mossberg has written this week that he believes personal computers to change to ARM soon"
He's making Micro-shaft's mistake, believing that EVERYONE is a 4" screen content consumer (i.e. a "4-incher").
You can't use 'new device' sales to determine how people use their computers, especially not NOW when 10 year old machines still seem to do a fine job, especially withOUT Win "ape" or Win-10-nic on them.
But market-droids don't know how to look at an existing user base. They ONLY look at 'new sales', and if market-droids are DESIGNING THE SYSTEMS, we can expect "more of the same" from them. What idiots, yeah.
Based on preliminary analysis from a few OS market share website including statcounter with linear interpretation, in 1 year iOS will over take US Windows market share, in 2 years android will over take worldwide OS share, in 3 years Windows 7 will reach close to 1% market share. Currently, combined mobile share has already over taken Windows market share
It is pretty clear why Microsoft goes that far to maintain market share, except they are clearly not helping it at all. Especially going for stupid features (bugs) like unwanted reboot.
not pitting them at all.
Not pushing one OS or another, but what is the architectural difference between Windows and Linux that gives Windows the need to restart after any (or most) updates? Irrespective of the timing of an update, I have *never* seen a Linux OS require a restart for anything other than a kernel version upgrade - and even then, it installs it and keeps running on the old kernel until such times as I choose to restart the machine.
My normal preference is to keep a machine in standby if at all possible so when I come back to it it is as I left it; that's broken on a regular basis by a Windows restart-after-update strategy. And Windows' 'reset when Windows decides to' approach does not endear it to me.
There are probably other fine points I am not aware of, but one fundamental difference is that Linux (and most UNIX) file systems allow a file to be replaced via a move operation while the file is open/in-use. So with a typical Linux update you unpack the update, then move it over the "live" version, and if possible you restart that process.
Now not all processes can be restarted while live, most obvious is the kernel (and related in-use drivers like file systems, etc) and the user log-on system for the desktop, active SSH sessions, etc. In these cases you have a patched machine but the previously running process are not yet updated. So if you start another instance of such a process (OK, not the kernel!) such as a new SSH log-in then you get the patched version.
So to finally apply ALL updated you need a reboot, but at that point in time everything is already done, so you don't get another couple of minutes of "applying updated ... configuring computer" or whatever you see when restarting Windows after it said it was done.
There are also a couple of options for patching the Linux kernel while in-use, but they are not universally in use yet and probably have some limits on how big a change can be done (e.g. basic changes to structures, etc, on major updates) without a reboot.
Both Windows and Linux use Memory Mapping to load executables into memory, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory-mapped_file.
The fundamental difference is how the VFS and the underlying file systems work. On Windows, applications require an exclusive lock on the file for some writing directory operations (like move, delete and truncate, if memory serves correctly), because they are *immediate* operations.
On Linux/Unix, some of those are scheduled operations. In case of move or delete, the files fall out of the visible directory immediately, but the block are only freed *after* all filehandles are closed. Although applications CAN request exclusive locks, for example having multiple SQLite programms changing the same database file at the same time would be a Bad Thing(tm).
First, many files are actually copied to the final destination when the system is rebooted. At this stage, the OS is not still fully initialized, thus some operations are slower.
Then the msi technology in inherently heavier - it records actions so it can roll them back, for example, if needed, you don't usually (i.e no custom actions) need to write proper pre/post package scripts to handle errors.
Even in Linux, unless you restart the running processes that are using a patched file, they will keep on using the previous version. So beware of thinking you patched a system when you're still running the unpatched code. Sure, you have the new code on disk, but the old one in memory. When one of the basic user mode libraries are patched, it may not be easy to restart each and every running process using it separately...
Windows designers made a deliberate choice of not allowing to replace files in use. On Raymond Chan's "The Old New Thing" blog you can find the rationale for that choice. One of the reasons IIRC was the risk of exchanging data structures that have changed across processes using different versions of a library. It may happen without any need of modifying the calling code, i.e. opaque handles to structures may point to different internal structures in different versions. That's one of the issues also to solve to allow for a kernel live patching system.
Then they designed a mechanism to allow files to be replaced at reboot - before they got loaded again. That allows Windows to keep on running using the old files after a patch has been installed, until a reboot. Of course, if you never reboot, those files will be never updated - and if some users never reboot, than bad ideas come into the mind of OS developers...
"Even in Linux, unless you restart the running processes that are using a patched file, they will keep on using the previous version."
In general processes running services will be individually restarted during the update without a reboot. Processes running a shared library will continue to run the old in-memory library. In general there's an assumption that such processes won't be long-lived and the new library will then be used next time they're run; in the interim there may be two versions of the library, both memory resident, one not yet finished with and one in use by processes started after the update.
What always amazes me is the relative speed of doing all this. One factor may be the fact that the greater number of Windows boxes puts a greater load on the servers and their networks so that they throttle the bitrates. Another might be that as Linux updates are much less disruptive they're pushed out as a available so that each is smaller; this, of course, has the additional advantage that a fix gets pushed out Right Now rather than waiting until the next big patch release.
@LDS, frankly this smacks a bit too much of post-hoc rationalisation of the side of Windows developers.
From the very first DOS version, FAT was not a inode-based system and you couldn't have a file without it having a file name. (This also complicates Linux (V)FAT support). In MS DOS 3.3, file locking was introduced, and from then on, any change to this model to make it more Unix-like would have broken too many applications.
So the Windows developers can claim they are happy with how it works today but realistically they never were in a position to change it.
"what is the architectural difference between Windows and Linux that gives Windows the need to restart after any (or most) updates?"
It is, primarily, the file system and the way Micro-shaft uses "paranoia" with respect to files [it seems their philosophy is one that assume disk contents can change behind the OS's back, or something...]
In winders, if a DLL is in use, it cannot be updated without first shutting down everything that is using it. In Linux, files are 'inodes' and directories simply point to the inode. In Windows, the file is the name, not the node (though with NTFS this shouldn't HAVE to be the case, as I understand it).
Windows doesn't allow you to delete a file and still have it "exist" until all references close it. Linux does. And so, with a Linux system, if you have a bunch of daemons running that are referencing a shared lib, they CAN continue to use "the old lib" until you restart them, which means you can take your time to update shared libs, then just restart the daemons and you're done. It's also the same with executable files.
In Winders, it's all 'paranoid'. A DLL (or EXE for that matter) is *locked* and cannot be updated until ALL references to it are closed. This forces the updaters to a) write temporary copies of the new DLL, and b) rename them on reboot.
Back in the win '9x days, this was an easier process, and of course there's an API function available that installers can use to leverage this. But it _DOES_ require that REBOOT.
And over time, the process has become more and more complicated, with replication of system DLLs and things of THAT nature.
And don't EVEN get me started on updates to "the registry". Linux does JUST FINE with config files ('systemd' nonsense notwithstanding) stored in 'well known' directory trees such as '/etc' '/usr/share' and '/usr/local'. And running daemons often have a 'reload' option to update them with the changed files, letting you edit them at your leisure, then tell the daemon to re-read it, etc..
Suffice it to say that the SIMPLE and ELEGANT architecture of Linux, being VASTLY SUPERIOR to the kludgy and paranoid architecture of Windows, means that updates [other than major kernel updates] do NOT require a reboot... JUST a re-start of the affected systems.
[but it never hurts to boot Linux after a massive upgrade - sometimes things just don't work right until you do]
"when I used Fedora for about 6 months it had updates and needed rebooting pretty much every week"
It's a long time since I used Fedora but AIUI it might not be a bleeding edge distro but it does follow a faster release cycle than others so I'm not surprised. If you want stability you go with a distro with a slower cycle such as Debian stable and accept you might be running older versions of applications.
How about making it easier to download the fucking patches individually to get round MS's fucked up update process?
Never mind rebooting the damn thing just stop it from sitting running the installer service at 75% of the processor load forever unless I kill it. Update service says nothing, can't find out what is causing it because MS now hides everything.
Bastards.
The anniversary update process is beyond retarded. In the start of February, I found out the installation of the anniversary update failed. Windows logs revealed it had been trying to download the multiple GB's of W10 anniversary update everyday again and again for a month, spoiling my online gaming experience. Manual download: Failed with the same error, which appears in many forums since September 2016 but never has been fixed. Summit of retardism in nowadays MS: a failed update removes the 3.5GB update blob, so the happy user can wait another 30+ minutes for the next try. Another weird thing: Windows 10 manages to wake up a laptop from sleep for updates. During the failed anniversary updates it often was on every morning.
Setting the ethernet to metered fixed this anniversary update issue for now :).
"Windows 10 made most of the decisions for you..."
I was pretty much a Windows fan, once.
But it's the endless loss of control of my own machines that is making me more and more anti.
*Hiding controls away in lots of different places.
*Making the Start menu a dog's breakfast by allowing software to install entire folders into it wherever they want, but making it difficult for users to rearrange or remove them. And having the word "new" appearing next to all the unwanted bits.
*Silly "apps" that can't be removed without tech level tinkering ( or not at all).
*Making their own programmes defaults ( like Edge with the pretty useless Bing), and then making it messy and complicated to set your own programmes as the "open with" choice.
And so on.
...I haven't had the 'unexpected restarts'. Mine only installs when I go to shut down or manually restart.
The only issue I have with Windows updates is the time it takes to install them (almost as long as re-installing the OS) and the fact they don't fully install on the shutdown phase. Most annoying when you take your laptop somewhere, open up, power on and then find you have to wait for 10 minutes looking at "Updates are 100% complete".
MS needs to find a faster and slicker solution. It looks lumpy when my Chromebook can do a version update in a 6 second reboot.
If you disable and stop the Windows Update service then no windows updates will occur until you reenable the service.
Another way of preventing windows updates is to change the properties of each of the network connections to "metered" as windows should not now attempt to download updates over an expensive connection.
Using either of the above methods gives you control of when updates occur.
Microsoft seem happy to throw in more and more new features with every release of Windows.
But they REFUSE to fix the bugs in the existing features.
e.g.: Windows File Explorer STILL, for over a decade, cannot handle Long File Paths that it ITSELF creates !
They added a flag to allow programs to handle Long File Paths.
But Microsoft's File Explorer does NOT USE IT !
I had been running Dapper Drake as a bit of a toe-dip, and Edge was released. For some reason it borked my soundcard.
I called my brother (linux guru) and he said: "Don't worry, I'll SSH in." Great I said. Let me know when you're done.
"Oh, no need for that" he said "just carry on doing whatever".
I did, a a few minutes later the webpage I was on started playing. My brother had manged to recompile the driver, and load it without me even logging out, let alone reboot.
Try THAT on Windows !!!!!!!
Ahh, the usual friendly way to install drivers under Linux.... :-D No need to try that under Windows, especially since you can't recompile drivers (and the signature requirement is a good one).
You didn't notice that most driver installs doesn't required a reboot under Windows - even video card drivers can be installed without a reboot.
I'd be happier if my work machine didn't require me to reboot when I want to install something. It's maddening. I've spent time trying to debug MSIExec (and that has nothing to recommend it) and just can't get to the bottom of it. It's just that after a while my machine becomes unable to accept any installation until I reboot. At that point it will install multiple things.
File changes aside the Linux kernel gets updated (in the average distribution) EVERY FEW DAYS.
The fact that it doesn't automatically reboot just means you _might_ be running an insecure kernel from that point on if the kernel update concerned security.
(In practice few kernel updates concern security in any meaningful way but finding out is not trivial. Yes I acknowledge that version 4 may have the ability to hot patch. Like Netware had in the 90s.)
"File changes aside the Linux kernel gets updated (in the average distribution) EVERY FEW DAYS."
Citation needed.
My experience (Debian LTS): there may be updates of some sort every few days but very few of these are of the kernel.
If you get kernel updates every few days you must be running a bleeding edge distro. If you're using it for production then you have more problems than needing to reboot.
Every time I sleep my computer.
Got SICK AND TIRED of waking up to find it switched on and humming, having restarted itself to install updates at 2/3/4am, but not having the sense to even power off again.
Not to mention closing all my documents and windows: thank heavens for "Restore previous session" in Firefox.
This is one of the reasons I left M$ os's and went to linux. I am a life long windows user and have not agreed with the OS moves since windows 7. I had 2 VMs runnung on my Win 10 box when M$ decided to reboot, these VMs did not come back, corrupted much processing data lost. This combined with M$ efforts into Linux made me jump ship. Why run Linux on windows, just get the real thing so thats what i did. Linux Mint since the 1st of the year it just works, and no more M$ dysfunctional thinking for me.
I recently bought a little Acer netpad... just for a bit of websurfing and email while I kicked about at home/ laid about on the sofa... the kind of stuff I used to do on my mobey basically.
It runs windows 10 and it has configuration options for when to download and install updates. Is there something I'm missing? The machine asks me if I want to install updates, if I say No it goes away for while. There's no automatically downloading/installing and rebooting going on at all.
I know, I don't see most of the niggles that folks complain all the while about. I have no idea what the hell they are doing with their kit. I work in IT support and it does stagger me how skewed some peoples perception of how IT works is.
It's like when they call you with a problem, they tell you and its almost fantastical or magic what is happening. You get them to be less 'fantastical' and state what's really going on. Okay you then get an idea. You then go and see the problem...it's totally different to what they stated an hour before. But to them it's the same problem.
And in most cases...it isn't a problem.
"Err that's how it's meant to work...and has done for the past 20 years!"
The article says the options for scheduling reboots were removed from Windows 10 Home (not Pro) with the Anniversary Update last August. So have you checked if your netpad has installed the Anniversary Update? See the 'Most Helpful Reply' ...
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-windows_install/how-would-i-know-if-the-anniversary-update-has/a348e554-b777-457b-ac5e-3d798ea66a66
If your build is less than 1607 then you are still running the original Windows 10. Follow the first answer if you are sure you want to "upgrade".
There are far better tools to write Windows installers than deb packages. Or you can use InnoSetup and don't use msi. Deb packages are easy to write for simple tasks, are a nightmare for complex ones, especially since the documentation is truly badly written. It's not uncommon to see deprecated features still widely used because package maintainers can't keep up...
For those interested in preventing Windows 10 reboots this way, keep in mind that Windows may decide all of a sudden to reenable the Reboot function. I do not know what exactly causes this to happen but it does happen. The way to prevent *that* from happening is to go to security settings of Reboot and remove all permissions it has.
If Windows 10 gets too many updates, what about Windows 10 Mobile?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_version_history#Mobile_version_history
If they only release major updates to non fast-ring users, does that mean Windows 10 Mobile is open to all the recent exploits which have been patched in it's bigger brother?
People still buy Windows phones? What a waste of time and money.
Forget the top-rated games, Windows Mobile is not even getting the apps for newspapers, banks and travel convenience.
Windows 10 Mobile is irrelevant, not even with Continuum or other desperate attempts by Microsoft to blur the boundaries between a PC (their desktop monopoly) and a mobile device.
Not even the 'Facehugger' manoeuvre of latching onto Nokia could save Windows phones.
Steve Ballmer dropped the ball, and SatNad squashed it. Game over.
(if you don't already know how, download WinAeroTweaker and look under the Network Options)
From then on, Windows may inform you that updates exist but that it won't download them until you're NOT on a metered connection. When you're ready (after running wushowhide.diagcab and "hiding" any updates you don't want, like I mentioned last week) you do NOT have to unset the metered connection. Just press the download button and it will proceed as normal.
And I've just checked on a W10 Home machine which stupidly allowed itself to update to the anniversary edition, and that hack still works
If you have to jump through so many hoops to get the basic functions up to par... then the Microsoft devs have definitely dropped the ball.
A classic case of the Microsoft devs (or the marketing zombie overlords pulling their strings) being too clever by half.
It's not windows rebooting when left alone that winds me up, it's windows installing updates when I reboot with ZERO warning.
If windows is going to update when you reboot, it needs to explicitly state it - ie the restart option should be renamed to "Reboot and update" and it should offer you a "Reboot and don't update".
We had an evening utterly ruined by this while on holiday the other week - 4 of us in our holiday apartment, using the laptop for entertainment - we rebooted after installing an app, then it installed a massive update which took all night with no warning whatsoever.
I get why people are annoyed but honesty, does PC's being left "running processes over night" sound like a very "home" workload to you?
Sound more like something a pro would do and Microsoft might have argued if you're a pro you buy the pro licence.
(I'm the guy with access to a volume licence and enterprise edition so I'm just laughing at your guys really)
I’m a Linux/Unix/OSX user, so I’ll probably be persona non-grata here, but I’m truly sorry to see what MS is doing to it’s customers these days. Sure, I could tell you to start using something else, but let’s face it, if you could, you’d already be doing that. Sometimes, you’re just stuck.
Regardless, I think it’s truly wrong the way you’re being treated, and I hope that you can somehow make MS think it’s in their best interest to treat you better. This is intolerable, and the nonsensical redefinition of customer purchases from products to services doesn’t help. Just because you're not in my camp of users doesn't mean that I want to see you treated badly. You deserve as much as we do to have full control over the things that you purchase.
That said, even with a EULA, you are obligated to get just consideration for every sacrifice MS causes you to make, so I’d say you have several lawsuit basis if you have the means to fight this.
I have made all the setting changes you suggested and have the Creators update. Last night my computer rebooted for an update. When I checked the settings you suggested I found under "Triggers" there was an entry to update last night. So, no matter what you change Windows will write its own code to override you. Now I once again have to restart all my programs and see if anything was lost.