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The Upcoming Windows 8.1 Apocalypse
arglebargle_xiv (2212710) writes "As most people will have heard, Microsoft will end support for anyone who hasn't upgraded to Win8.1 Update 1 on May 8. What fewer people have heard is that large numbers of users can't install the 8.1 Update, with over a thousand messages in this one thread alone, and that's for tech geeks rather than home users who won't find out about this until their PC becomes orphaned on May 8. Check your Windows Update log, if you've got a "Failed" entry next to KB2919355 then your PC will also become orphaned after May 8."
As far as apocalypses go, that's one lame-sounding apocalypse.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Doesn't this happen every time they come out with a major update?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
First you end support for XP, which is a good thing, then you end support for Windows 7 in 2020, now you are ending support for Windows 8 on May 8. Why? the bog standard Windows 8 still has newer software than Windows 7, the only thing holding it back is the retarded Modern UI interface. But this is a pretty lame apocalypse. I am perfectly happy with Windows 7 in a qemu KVM hypervisor running on a Linux laptop. This way I can run Windows in a window and use MS Office for those tasks that require it and still have access to the superior Linux command line tools. I just wish I still had my XP Pro VM. Now that was fun. Why is everything an apocalypse these days?
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
Would you care to read the summary and try again?
It's very interesting what kind of circus the Windows 8 major updates have become. Instead of Service Packs, you now have Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 8.1 Update 1. Now, the support carpet is suddenly pulled for anything before W8.1U1. Along the way, various platform changes in the UI front have been introduced: start button goes away, start button comes back, ability to snap Modern apps, Modern apps get a title bar, Modern apps can appear in the taskbar, start menu is coming back. Also the settings are still wonkily spread across the classic Control Panel and the Modern UI "PC settings" application, not to speak about the "charms bar" which integrates really badly with the paradigms of the normal desktop, which the user is using at the same time.
It's interesting because in the past Microsoft planned these things very carefully beforehand, and after the release of OS was very careful to not change core functionality. Maybe this is the future, then.
No, it's microsoft having a different minimum spec for 8.0 and 8.1. It's a cpu issue. Version n.x software should alway run on the same hardware n.x-1 ran on.
What does Microsoft suggest people do about this? Buy new hardware? Live without the security fixes after just a year or so? Downgrade to 7?
In some countries this would possibly enter consumer protection territory. In the UK possibly the 1979 Sale Of Goods Act.
Are there still people running windows ?
Many more than all other platform combined, at least on the desktop.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Looking at page 100, it looks like this really affects about a dozen people and they just keep posting. Let me know when there's 1000 unique people saying there's a problem.
(and it appears that there's a fix of sorts)
As they say, truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.
It's true. If you are running 8.1, update 1 is mandatory to keep getting support: http://www.infoworld.com/t/mic...
Microsoft said it themselves here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/gla...
Originally they only gave 30 days to install it, but then they upped that to 120 because of all the compatibility and installation problems (and the few companies running Windows 8 screaming).
Bizzarely, Windows 8.0 users aren't affected in the same way. This affects 8.1 users only. As usual, Windows 7 users can ignore this ongoing fiasco and keep doing productive work.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Shill or not, he does has a valid point (I have not looked at the other comments).
As much as I personally hate automatic updates, as I decide when I want to update shit, for the vast unwashed masses, it is not a bad idea. Too many of my friends and family (I no longer play tech support except for direct family.. aka my wife) have had machines with years of missing patches, and they wonder why their machines are up shits creek.
I on the other hand, have a windows 8.1 slate I used for my car (runs vehicle diagnostic software, not the std odb reader crap), I cannot get update 1, I get the failure many others are getting. I cannot go back to Windows 7 because too many missing drivers, and very unreliable touchscreen experience. I have tried the windows 8 drivers on 7 with no luck. So for me, I will no longer have support (I do not need technical support, I would like security updates at least).
Good thing I do not use that for anything other than car diagnostics... At least my car won't give my computer herpes :P
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
I run Windows 8 in a VM on Vista. It's like a layer cake of failure.
Trolling is a art,
I ordered my parents a Windows 8 laptop to replace their old xp laptop, thinking, "Well, windows 8 can't be THAT bad." It was.
The thing would not download updates. It would just say "Downloading updates..." and stall for hours at a time. I searched as much as I could online and only found barely any help. Most of it involved stopping the windows update agent service, and then deleting cached update files. But then it would just freeze again when I started it again. After a whole bunch of attempts, I noticed it was filling up the cache folder again after every time I restarted the update service, and that if I waited a bit, and then rebooted the computer, it would apply a few patches. So... that's ultimately how I ended up getting the thing all patched up. Stop update service, delete all cached patches, start update service, wait a few hours while they download in the background with no fucking mention of what is going on, reboot machine. I guess running the windows update must have been causing some sort of deadlock with the background updater or something... What a fucking mess. How in the world did they ship an OS with a non functioning update manager... And to top it all off, I couldn't just download win 8.1 separately, like how you could download the xp service packs separately. If I could have just done that... it would have been a hell of a lot simpler to get everything working. Instead they want you to download it through the microsoft store in metro... which won't show up unless, you guessed it, you already have fully updated through windows update.
On the plus side, everything works fine now that it is fully updated.