Seems rather unlikely if you don’t selectively quote the post. They specifically said they lost all their passwords. That’s not going to be something a single program will do.
It’s far more likely that the program depended on saving data in Microsoft’s password store, and that the update borking that is what caused the program to no longer have its authentication token. Putting it in there, a more secure location, is actually the sort of thing Microsoft recommends, and is how it works on other OSes.
As pointed out, the issue where you lose account data is a known bug. There’s one where you get a temporary account due to a race condition, and have restart several times to get back to your account. Another one not mentioned is that you can lose data from certain storage options.
What I don’t get is why people still feel the need to reflexively defend Microsoft. Their updates since the switchover to Windows 10 have been notoriously lower quality than before. They churn out two whole new versions a year, and got rid of their entire testing department in favor of using “Insiders.”
Microsoft is even aware–version 1909 was specifically made to be more like a Service Pack instead of a full new version. And then there’s version 2004, released officially in May, which most computers still do not have, because even Microsoft has realized updating causes too many problems. It’s not even available on their own Microsoft branded Surface products.
There’s just no reason to assume that Microsoft is not at fault. It’s better to inform users about how they can avoid/mitigate issues, which I will do in a subsequent post.
First off, if it’s a POS system, then surely you have at leat Windows 10 Pro. So make sure updates are at least deferred. Or set group policy where you need to approve updates (option 2 “Tell me when they’re ready to install” is good.)
From there, make sure you have a backup copy of your partition before you allow the update. Not a system restore point, as you shouldn’t trust Microsoft with that, but a proper backup, ideally on an external drive. Updates are fraught with difficulty, and this is the only way to make sure you can fix any screwup.
Finally, keep up to date on the issues with updates, when they get resolved, and workaround for any which remain. I don’t want to spam, but there is a site I found that’s really good for this. The simple part is to just use his “MS-DEFCON” system to know when updates are okay.
(The site recommends deferring quality updates [the small ones] for 28 days and feature updates [4GB+ new versions] for 365 days. And make sure you have access to wushowhide to hide updates that cause problems.)
https://www.askwoody.com/
News, tips, advice, support for Windows, Office, PCs & more. Tech help. No bull. We’re community supported by donations from our Plus Members, and proud of it
(No clue why it doesn’t get a proper card. Or why Discourse apparently doesn’t include an indent feature that isn’t a quote box.)
To get a card you need the URL to be on a line by itself. By embedding it in a blockquote (your > at paragraph start) you buggered that opportunity.
Further, you’ll only get a card for pages that contain enough magic markup that Discourse recognizes. It appears that askwoody doesn’t have that. So no card for them; Bad Woody!
For indent without a gray blockquote background try this
lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah.
lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah lorem ipsum blah blah.
That is:
<ul>
Paragraph(s) of text go here.
</ul>
Using “ol” in place of “ul” gives the same outcome. Note that is NOT using the typical <li>…</li> tags on the interior paragraphs. If you did use those interior tags you’d get bulleted or numbered paragraphs.
Windows is up there with Google in terms of its creeping creepiness. I still have Windows 7 (laugh all you want, works fine for me). I will eventually get a new PC, and I would love to get a Mac. Problem is Mac isn’t apparently compatible with some of the online work (or potential work) that I might do in the future. So looks like I’m stuck with the Windows cult.
I initially put Linux on my newest computer, but since I’m still working for a living I just didn’t have the time to learn everything I needed to know to really make the system work for me.
I did have Windows 7 on the old laptop (still do, in fact) but have no idea where the software key is (that was on the husband’s chore list and he’s no longer around to ask). So I actually went out and bought a new copy of Windows 10. So far I haven’t had the problems others have described but I figure it’s only a matter of time (and updates).
My current Windows issue is that I’ve disabled the wifi on the Windows 7 machine (I have this theory that if it isn’t connected to the internet it can’t pick up and computer cooties) and it seems to be… upset at this. Periodically it tells me that it can’t phone home, connect to the internet, etc. Which is what I want, I’m just dreading that at some point it’s going to stamp its feet and refuse to work if it can’t go out to play in cyberspace.
Well, that half worked. I wouldn’t have thought of abusing the unordered list HTML tag that way, and none of the various Discourse forums I found while Googling suggested it. Good find!
Still, poor Woody (and the former Windows Secrets crew) doesn’t get a card. I tried what you did. Best guess is that it has to do with his robots.txt not letting Discourse crawl his site. Since this would affect the site many places, I’ll ask if he’ll allow specific bots to read at least the one appropriate file. I do suspect they disabled it due to a DDoS attack a couple years ago.
You could just do regular maintenance updates on your own time instead, the way that every single IT professional does. If this is business critical and you’ve been deferring updates you have no one to blame but yourself.
Ooh. That sucks a bit, assuming you didn’t upgrade to Pro or something. Not only are there apps that could find your key, but you don’t need one if you update in place from an activated copy of Windows 7 or 8.1-- Windows 10 would also activate. What’s more, that activation is saved, so, if you want a clean install, you can just reinstall on that computer or “Reset” your installation to get a clean, activated copy.
This is how I activated my new computer, albeit with some extra steps since I’d already installed Windows 10 inactivated. (It involves using a VM.)
I have an HP Stream 11 that has been trying to update for a couple weeks now. After it was upgraded from Win7 to Win10 (home I think) counting just the bloatware Windows and HP installed on it, there was only 3.8 Gb left on the SSD, not enough for the update.
I bought a 32Gb SDHC chip, the largest the box could handle according to a couple sources, and told Win to use that for the updates. There have been three attempts to update and each one failed. The process seems to pretty well complete, then an error pops up, "Install external [drive/memory – I can’t remember] and press OK. Pressing OK or removing and plugging the chip back in then pressing OK just gets back to the same error message.
A separate drive has been created on the chip but Win won’t let me see the contents. It seems to have 6.8Gb of content in it.
Honestly, I only use the thing while traveling to browse the web etc. Before the updates started I had only Open Office installed on it, not even Firefox or Chrome, and I hate Edge. I was waiting for the update to complete before reinstalling Open Office on the chip and installing Firefox, ditto. Since there are Linux versions of OO and Firefox available, I am seriously considering installing that and telling Microsoft to go fuck themselves. I am sure all the auxillary stuff HP needs for the camera, Bluetooth etc. also have Linux equivalents, so I can tell them to go to hell as well.
It’s a 15 year old laptop that I don’t expect to last much longer. Also, the administrator password on that laptop is lost - also along with my deceased spouse who did not write it down anywhere that I could find.
I bought a new desktop/tower and started with a new copy of Windows 10 with a key I know with no need to screw around with key-finding apps, lost passwords, and dealing with shaky hardware.
I don’t feel it was an “ouch” at all but a deliberate choice to start over completely with minimum stress and fuss on my part. Granted, it’s not the choice everyone would make.
In that case, it would depend on whether the laptop came with Windows 7 or was a retail purchase. If the former, then your key wouldn’t have helped. If the latter, then there are several ways that you could have legally activated Windows 10 on your new computer for free, only some of which would require finding the key or admin password (both of which could be done with software).
If you don’t mind the extra $100+ for the convenience (or had only an OEM copy), that’s fine. The reaction was mine, and how I would feel. Plus I posted for anyone else who might find themselves in a similar situation.
Of course - letting people know there are multiple options is a good thing.
I had some additional reasons as well that I didn’t want to get into right now. I’m not sure I’d say I “didn’t mind” the money so much as after weighing my alternatives and options that was on the one I chose. I have no problem with someone else choosing differently.
At the time I bought it, Win7 fit fine and worked fine. Since the upgrade to Win10 I-don’t-know-how-many upgrades have installed just fine. This last upgrade whinged about not enough free space on the SSD so I bought a microSD chip for less than ten bucks to double the storage capacity, something I’d been thinking of doing anyway.
I’m not blaming Microsoft for the extra-large update, I’m blaming Microsoft for being incompetent boobs who can’t handle their update being uploaded onto the auxiliary storage.
For what it’s worth, the same thing happened to me. After an update I discovered that System Restore had been turned off and my restore points were gone.
well, as one who has run various flavors of Linux on his secondary PC for years now, let me temper the notion that it’s some paragon of stability and good design. Just in the last 4 months:
bought a Dell laptop, paved it, and put Ubuntu 19.10 on. Booted from the USB installer, connected to wifi, set it up, and let it finish. Rebooted, no wifi. Didn’t even see a wifi adapter. Went to the Ubuntu support community and was told I needed to get and compile a backported version of the iwlwifi driver. But clearly there already was one since wifi worked from the USB installer environment. I asked them multiple times why it worked with the USB but not with the installed system, and they refused to answer.
Ok, so I said “how about Fedora?” So I grabbed the Fedora 30 image, installed it, and it worked fine, wifi included. ran the software updater to update everything, and when that finished I had no sound. The only sound device listed was “Dummy Output.” Turned out an update broke the Intel HD Audio driver, and it took them quite some time to fix.
then there have been the times when Ubuntu (and derivatives) would no longer be able to update themselves because it was not cleaning up old kernel versions and thus filling up /boot.
I don’t get it. People blame Microsoft for how shitty Windows is because of all of the “legacy cruft,” yet when Microsoft fixes/removes the legacy cruft and shitty software stops working, that’s Microsoft’s fault too.
Don’t ever buy a Mac, then; Apple isn’t shy about breaking/obsoleting shit.
