Win10 is just getting worse and worse

[AZgl1800]

My daughter is locked into MS Office ACCESS,
lordy I wish I could find something in Linux that would 100% work with ACCESS files.

her laptop just got another one of those damned Security Updates, and now, everything that is sent to the printer is reduced in size by 80%

I just tested the same printer from 19.3 Cinnamon and LO Writer and it works flawlessly.

I am going to try and back out her last update, hope the expiration for that has not expired yet.

[Portreve]

At some point, she is going to have to ask if she wants to continue on in her present circumstances, or move on with her life and skills so she doesn't remain trapped by Microsoft's products.

Or, I guess, just learn to deal with the problems.

OTOH, I've been actively running my Win 10 installation for a while, I've gone through a number of updates including a couple OS updates, and I've had no problems. Perhaps there's something that's otherwise jacked up on her computer.

[Schultz]

Win10 is just getting worse and worse

Is that even possible?

[Portreve]

Meaning no disrespect to anyone...

So, I've been at this in the capacity of highly interested and highly knowledgeable technology enthusiast since 1986 (well, I didn't start out highly knowledgeable) and in that time I've either played with or become a master of something like 6 or 7 (depending on how you want to divide up Windows) operating systems. In those 35 years, somewhere between 5% - 10% of instances of issues have been legitimate OS bugginess problems. The rest of the time, the problems have invariably been the way the user has configured, tweaked, or otherwise modified their OS install, or the user installing software which makes changes itself to the OS (adds system components, replaces versions of shipped OS components, makes changes to configuration files, etc., or some combination thereof, or the user has allowed stuff to get onto their system which then caused problems (viruses, malware, trojan horses).

By no means am I trying to defend Microsoft here. Anyone who knows me knows there's no love lost between myself and the folks from Redmond. Heck, I've said plenty of times to others (whether or not on LMF) that I wouldn't shed a tear if every single Microsoft campus burned to the ground. However, I start getting really suspicious when I hear about how their OS is just too unstable or jacked up to successfully take an upgrade or an update... like, ever. In my experience (which, to be honest, is the only sort of thing any of us really has to go on when it comes right down to it) either the system's gotten jacked up by the user somehow, or some program that's been installed is the culprit, and it is doing something which then makes things go sideways. And if there's ANY vertical market software on the box, then that's high on my list of possible culprits, because frankly I don't trust that sort of software.

[Pierre]

YEP - that MS Office ACCESS is always an problem,
as most other areas of that MS Office can be solved with another Office Suite.
- - in most cases, anyway.


but, is Win-10 actually getting any worse ? or just getting fatter ?
not that it really matters, as it's still those "updates" that will still aggravate most folks.

[AZgl1800]

after she goes to bed in a bit,
I am going to try and back the last update out.

that has fixed it twice before.

there are a LOT of complaints in the AskWoody Windows threads about Microsoft screwing up the fonts with their updates.... some computers are more susceptible to this than others....
apparently hers is one of the ones that gets screwed up with updates.

she does not add in a lot of crap from the after world, just paid stuff like PhotoShop, etc.

[AZgl1800]

1st:
SUCCESS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2nd, her SSD was so full, there was not enough room for Win10 Updates to download, and then create the backup files if something went wrong.....

3rd, I had installed a 1TB SSD a couple years ago, but she got out of the habit of using it, I copied all of her /Downloads to that, and deleted the c:\downloads files.

4th, forced the latest Win10 update to download, and got things updated.

5th, double checked her printouts, and wallah! every thing is now working right, the printouts are beautiful once again, full page graphics.... wish I had uploaded a couple to Imgur... but all works, no need to.

a happy female, makes for a happy home

[Tolayon]

So with Windows, you should always make sure to have enough disk space (but that also applies to Linux, especially Mint when you want to upgrade between major versions).
But somehow even up to this day some ultra cheap tablets with Windows 10 on them and just 32 GB storage (maybe 64) are still floating around. Well, maybe the 32 Bit version may not be quite that ressource-heavy, but even then 32 GB for Windows 10 are just ridiculous.

[sparkydave]

My laptop may be 10 years old, but it's still decent. Win 10 just seems to get slower and slower with each new update, so the hard drive has 100% activity for what seems like an hour after I turn it on. A couple of times, the updates have either turned off the wifi radio, or deleted the driver entirely so I was left with "unknown network adapter" in device manager. At work, we have some old DOS-based programming software running in DOSBox for HC11 microcontrollers that talks over a serial port to the programmer. Last week, the update managed to kill it when it fouled up the serial port settings, so we had to dig up the Win 7 machine that was recently retired but still had the functioning software to run it until we could figure out what happened.

[sarge816]

I know it probably isn't a popular option for most folks, but I freeze all of my computers and deny all updates from Microsoft after install. My wife's PC has a mission critical install used for her Real Estate business, and I'm just not interested in unscrewing stuff fubared by a rogue update. I started doing this back in the XP days (after a bad experience before SP2 I believe) and have continued ever since. MS had made things a little more difficult now to keep them out of your life, but it's still possible. Keep your anti-virus updated, don't open email attachments from places you don't know, use a non-MS browser with some type of adblock and privacy extension, and don't go to naughty websites. 15 years and counting and no bad stuff across literally dozens of computers we've used over the years. It also helps to put the kiddos on non-admin user accounts (*hard lesson learned back in the day).

Better yet, just don't use Windows. But, many of us don't have that option, ofcourse. If anyone is interested, I currently use Windows Update Blocker along with O&O Shutup10 to curtail undesirable Windows behaviour. Haven't had an update in a very long time and smooth sailing.

[motoryzen]

My laptop may be 10 years old, but it's still decent. Win 10 just seems to get slower and slower with each new update, so the hard drive has 100% activity for what seems like an hour after I turn it on. A couple of times, the updates have either turned off the wifi radio, or deleted the driver entirely so I was left with "unknown network adapter" in device manager. At work, we have some old DOS-based programming software running in DOSBox for HC11 microcontrollers that talks over a serial port to the programmer. Last week, the update managed to kill it when it fouled up the serial port settings, so we had to dig up the Win 7 machine that was recently retired but still had the functioning software to run it until we could figure out what happened.

so the hard drive has 100% activity for what seems like an hour after I turn it on

What is the percentage of empty space remaining that is usable for that HDD? If it's less than 13%, even if it isn't in the " red", even windows xp back in the 2005 through 2008 era would illustrate a speed drop to some extent for some tasks.

To have a reasonably decent user experience in Windows 10, a sata gen 3 decently sized SSD is a minimum these days and even then..that cpu can play a big role ( celeron? ah...will chug sometimes slowly. Pentium or better? Not bad. core i3 or ryzen mid ranged...-= you're golden)

Spinning rust is Windows' wet dream, no insult meant, just stating some facts ( as far as ..stock..no debloating scripts...done..etc).

Regardless I'm not defending Windows ( left it 100% late July 2020 for Linux Mint and couldn't be happier).

[AZgl1800]

What is the percentage of empty space remaining that is usable for that HDD? If it's less than 13%, even if it isn't in the " red", even windows xp back in the 2005 through 2008 era would illustrate a speed drop to some extent for some tasks.

To have a reasonably decent user experience in Windows 10, a sata gen 3 decently sized SSD is a minimum these days and even then..that cpu can play a big role ( celeron? ah...will chug sometimes slowly. Pentium or better? Not bad. core i3 or ryzen mid ranged...-= you're golden)

Spinning rust is Windows' wet dream, no insult meant, just stating some facts ( as far as ..stock..no debloating scripts...done..etc).

Regardless I'm not defending Windows ( left it 100% late July 2020 for Linux Mint and couldn't be happier).

for safety, the same amount of space as the OS itself consumes.
the leave room for the new downloads, and then the Update utility copies the entire OS to a Temp Folder.
then it installs the updates, and if all is well, at midnight on the 10th day after the update, it deletes the Temp Folder... argh!!!!

for our sanity, I try to copy that folder to a permanent place.

[AZgl1800]

I know it probably isn't a popular option for most folks, but I freeze all of my computers and deny all updates from Microsoft after install. My wife's PC has a mission critical install used for her Real Estate business, and I'm just not interested in unscrewing stuff fubared by a rogue update. I started doing this back in the XP days (after a bad experience before SP2 I believe) and have continued ever since. MS had made things a little more difficult now to keep them out of your life, but it's still possible. Keep your anti-virus updated, don't open email attachments from places you don't know, use a non-MS browser with some type of adblock and privacy extension, and don't go to naughty websites. 15 years and counting and no bad stuff across literally dozens of computers we've used over the years. It also helps to put the kiddos on non-admin user accounts (*hard lesson learned back in the day).

You and me both:
when WinXP hit SP2, I turned off the Update manager, deleted it off the PC entirely.
I keep Images of the HDD/SSD on an extUSB drive so that is something rouge occurs from someone else messing things up, I just lay the old image back on the HDD and reboot.

My Win7 SP2 PC has been running 24/7/365 since SP2 was installed.
It has never, ever, received a new update after that.
Why? all of the software matches what I have, most of the apps are not even available to match my external scanners, etc anymore.

Office 2003 still works perfectly, I hate those new Ruler things across the top, I want the Real Tool Bars so I can find a menu to change things. ( now after 3 years of Linux Mint, I am more familiar with LibreOffice than MS Office!! gasp!

In the case of my daughter's Win10, now that it has the latest update, all is running smooth, it will have a new Image saved for posterity, and the Update Manager will be blocked from ever working again.

She knows better than to follow links from emails or social media that are untrust worthy.

She just finished spending two hours fine tuning the printer settings, so now is the time to make that new Image.

===========
I do PC support for a few friends....
I keep trying to use Linux tools to fix their Windows stuff....
Had to install GIMP just so I had something useful to massage images for them

[Santacuck j5005]

In Windows 7 at least you could turn off updates. That's what I did. Every two years or so, I did a full reinstall with the latest updates (found on the high seas), then turned off updates. It could run two to three years like that before slowing down to the point where it needed a full re-install. (Note that I did update third party software manually when needed)

But with Linux Mint I don't have that problem. I see no loss in performance over time.

I moved away from Windows when it became clear that the new line of processors would not support Windows 7. Tried Windows 10... it would make my laptop fan run at max all the time. I had problems doing basic things like playing a YouTube video. I have no explanation for it. Then installed Linux Mint and it has run perfectly since then. No regrets!

[Pepi]

MS's big magnet is their Office software. So many companies just want to use it so your stuck with MS OS

[AZgl1800]

MS's big magnet is their Office software. So many companies just want to use it so your stuck with MS OS

that is exactly why I stuck with Win7 up until about 3 years ago, when TurboTax refused to allow me to use it.

if it weren't for some sticky wicket crap in my tax situation, and TurboTax being involved in continuing to pick up last year's info and carry it forward, I would be done with Windows permanently.

as it is, this laptop has two SSDs in it, the OEM with Win10 and a 1TB SSD with LM 19.3

[Pepi]

I still prefer Photoshop over GIMP is a big reason I have a dual boot. Photoshop on WINE is the dogs

[Samarian Sunset]

I still prefer Photoshop over GIMP is a big reason I have a dual boot. Photoshop on WINE is the dogs

I'm curious as to what the problem with Photoshop on WINE was for you?

[AZgl1800]

I still prefer Photoshop over GIMP is a big reason I have a dual boot. Photoshop on WINE is the dogs

I'm curious as to what the problem with Photoshop on WINE was for you?

I have never tried to use Wine or PlayonLinux but once, that was 3 years ago, and the experience was not pleasant, decided to just stick with Native Linux apps.

VirtualBox is a better solution anyway. Once are thru with it, it disappears and does not clog up the OS with junk.

[JeffF73]

You think that's bad. Now MS Win 10 forces you to have internet if you sign in with a MS account. You can't even get to your desktop to do your own thing's offline. Also forcing those using a MS account to create a pin code.