I’d like to meet the person at windows who decided that mandatory updates was a good idea. I’d like to meet that person, get up real close to him, right up in his personal space, and whisper in his ear, “You know how windows 8 forces you to drop everything and update?” Then shout, as lout as I can, spittle flecking his stupid horn-rimmed glasses as I shake him back and forth, “THAT WAS A FUCKING TERRIBLE FUCKING IDEA YOU FUCKING DOUCHEFUCK”.
I don’t care how important the update is. I don’t care if there’s a new exploit going around that absolutely demands my immediate attention, and which windows needs to patch right fucking now. Not giving me the choice to delay it is never the right idea. And if it’s so important that my computer will just stop fucking working without it in the next half an hour, then your OS is bullshit. I know for a fact that these updates take my laptop upwards of 20 minutes to complete. I also know for a fact that I need my laptop in the immediate future for class you colossal clod. Turning it off for the better part of half an hour is not something I’d like to do! What, you couldn’t wait until I have the chance to restart it? This process is made all the more piss-garglingly obnoxious by the fact that it just keeps happening. Like, more than once a week.
On my old windows 7 PC, it tells me “Windows will restart in 15 minutes to update.” And then it has this amazing, life-saving feature that’s somehow missing from Windows 8: a delay button. If I’m say, in the middle of something that I need more than 15 minutes to finish, I can tell windows “Bugger off for a while, I’m notdone here”. Somehow, this got axed in Windows 8. Whoever was responsible for that decision ought to go fuck themselves.
There’s an option for both “Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them” and “Never check for updates”. Takes 5 seconds to change the default.
Once updates are installed, Windows will tell me it wants to restart and warns me it will restart after one (or was it two?) days. Your Windows 8 laptop is mysteriously missing this option?
And it updates once a month, occasionally twice. Continuous updates suggest something else is wrong, as does an update that renders your laptop unusable for better part of half an hour.
Weak rant. Not convinced Windows is at fault (for once!)
Solving this problem would have been so much quicker than typing the OP.
I’ve yet to see a tech-related rant in the Pit that can’t be summarized as “I don’t know how to use this thing and it can’t possibly be my own failing”. I cannot understand people who have problems like this and see it as an impossible hurdle to overcome that’s all someone else’s fault, rather than a gap in their own knowledge that ought to be filled.
I’d say that the OP’s rant may still be justified.
The thing is, you shouldn’t have to go change a setting so that your computer won’t randomly be unavailable for an unspecified period. If the default is to install updates whenever the hell Microsoft feels like issuing them, that’s stupid and terrible.
The default should be to ask the user and give them that 15 or 20 minute window, with an option to “delay until <time>”, then do it at that time.
And then, because software doesn’t have to be stupid, remember what time the user delayed to, and the next time there’s an update, try to install it then.
I don’t use Windows 8, so I don’t know if this is actually the default behavior.
Even if the rant points out some failing in the OP it also points a finger at Microsoft.
Under what scenario would one choose an option for the computer to update automatically and with little or no warning make itself unavailable? Is this the default option for this op system? If so, is it clearly explained during initial setup that this system will freeze you out at random unpredictable times?
Default is to check for updates and install them if any are found. I think the default is to check for updates on a daily basis. (it won’t do so automatically if on a metered connection. A message box pops up when done saying it needs to restart. IIRC, you can tell choose a time to restart but it will restart automatically in two days if you have not restarted by then.
Like OP, I run Windows 8 (well, 8.1 if that makes a difference) on a laptop. What he is describing isn’t typical.
So, I have a related issue, which may very well be me missing a setting somewhere.
I did find the “Don’t install and reboot without me ordering it” option, however, on previous Windows versions there would be a notification in the bottom tray that updates are available and waiting. I can’t seem to find an option to do that with Win8. Options that look like it might be the one end up just giving me warnings that I don’t have automatic updates turned on (presumably an attempt to warn you that malware or something else messed with system settings).
Now, if I reboot, it does tell me on the login screen when I have updates pending, but about the only time I reboot is either after an update or if I lose power or something.
Additionally, and possibly more annoying, is that I’ve generally been happy enough with Microsoft Security Essentials in previous versions–and it would happily update itself with new definitions without manual interventions. With Win8, that’s all integrated as part of Defender, and so when I tell it not to update patches automatically, it doesn’t update those definition files either–it’s now just part of Windows update. So it sits there and waits until I manually give the go-ahead (well, after several days pass, it will pop up and whine about being out of date, so there is that, I guess)
Microsoft Security Essentials is no longer a good choice for essential security - cite.
As for the Windows update issue, it updates on a regular cycle - same day, roughly the same time - and has done for many years now. It defaults to (eventually) forcing an update because otherwise too many people would never update, then complain if they were hit by a security issue. It’s not hard to find some point in a 48 hour timeframe to reboot, or to click one option in the control panel if you don’t want to do that.
Windows default settings won’t be for everyone, they’re not intended to be. They are mostly done to make you aware of things that are happening, so you can then make a decision about how you want it to work.
Solution 1: Reboot more often. It only takes a minute. Just do it next time you go to get coffee.
Solution 2: Set your computer to display the lockscreen after you’ve been powered down. It’s better anyway to have a password on your machine and you’ll see the notice about rebooting.
Solution 3: Set aside time each week to manually download and install updates and reboot your machine. Wednesday is a good day to do that. Look - if you’re not going to do the auto updates, then you need to ride herd on it personally.
But really, there’s no need to handhold the update process Win 8. Just set it to auto, practice good computing habits, and forget about it.
Solution 4 (for Windows or any other operating system): have a button on the bottom of the screen that says “End” or “Finish”*. Invite the user to agree to automatic installation of updates; then by pressing that button when they are done with their computing/online session, updates will be installed, the system rebooted and then turned off until the next time it needs to be used.
User convenience should automatically trump the nanny tendencies of computer/software designers.
*It has been said (and I agree) that years from now people will be giggling over the primitiveness of a system that required one to press a “start” button to shut down or log off.
There may be a way to avoid it, but I was left with a bad taste in my mouth when, while in a hurry to finish a big project for work before the end of the day, my computer said, “restarting in 10 mins” (or 15, don’t remember the increment), and I could not find either on the computer or online, instructions on how to delay until I was ready to leave at the end of the day. 1/2 hour of deadline time down the drain. I find that pretty unacceptable.
Your cite explicitly says that it’s fine if you generally know what you’re doing. This is a gaming rig, I’m barely even opening a browser, not doing something as blatantly risky as browsing the SDMB without an ad-blocker on.
It’s not hard, but I don’t understand the justification for the regression. It used to tell you in the systray when you had updates pending, now it doesn’t.
Is it a big, “OMG, Microsoft programmers need to die in a fire!” issue? No. It’s probably just a side effect of Win8’s attempt to marginalize the desktop. I can deal with it. I have been dealing with it. That doesn’t make it any less of a stupid decision if they did, in fact, remove it and I’m not just missing an option somewhere.
If this was a work computer, are you sure it was Windows Updates? The patching software that we have enforces a deadline after which it will reboot (you get a few chances to extend it, but your company may configure theirs differently).
I never get a pop-up 2-day warning. I used to get NO warning at all. When I did some update or another, it started requiring me to log in with a password, so now I see something on the log in screen about it, so at least that’s something. I want to change it to having no password requirement, but that would mean going back to no warning for updates.
Regardless - if so many people are having the same problem, there’s a flaw in the way the thing is set up. Saying “well, you can go in and change this or that setting” is helpful, but it does not change the fact that there is an inherent problem with the system.
There should never ever be a situation where they force you into an update without any way to abort the process. Even if you agree to the automatic forced updates, there should still be an option to postpone if you really need to. There are sometimes extenuating circumstances.
As far as keeping track of when Microsoft does the monthly updates or putting ourselves on a schedule of manual updates, fuck that. They’re the ones that have to keep creating patches for things, so the onus is on them to notify me when I have to do an update. I agree that re-booting fairly frequently is a good idea, however.
I think the idea is that this way, the average level of user convenience is higher as bugs are automatically fixed and security flaws corrected. I’m not saying they definitely got the balance right, but I assume that’s the idea.
Windows Security Essentials doesn’t work with Windows 8 or 8.1 anyway.
I have Windows 8.1 and it has never done what the OP describes and I’ve never changed any settings for it. It pops up a screen that says it needs to restart and has buttons for ‘Restart’ and ‘Later’. If you click ‘Later’, it gives you one day.
I’ve also never had Windows Defender bitch about updates.
The one thing I hate is that it seems every time it does updates, I have to turn the One Drive off.