Windows 8.1 Update Crippling PCs With BSOD, Microsoft Suggests You Roll Back

MojoKid writes Right on schedule, Microsoft rolled-out an onslaught of patches for its "Patch Tuesday" last week, and despite the fact that it wasn't the true "Update 2" for Windows 8.1 many of us were hoping for, updates are generally worth snatching up. Since the patch rollout, it's been discovered that four individual updates are causing random BSoD issues for its users, with KB2982791, a kernel-mode related driver, being the biggest culprit. Because of the bug's severity, Microsoft is recommending that anyone who updated go and uninstall a couple of the specific updates, or rollback using Windows Restore. You can uninstall these updates in much the same way you uninstall any app; the difference is that once you're in the "Programs and Features" section, you'll need to click on "View installed updates" on the left. While it's mostly recommended that you uninstall 2982791, you may wish to uninstall the others as well, just in case.

Comments

For some it was just a plain black screen

[yakumo.unr]

For some it was just a plain black screen with no errors displayed (win 8.1 x64) , same fixes though:

http://answers.microsoft.com/e...

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[innerweb]

Windows is my gaming system, from which I browse when I have been gaming (as I just finished a bit ago).

Linux is actually where I do most of my work already.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Boot into safe mode and restore. Windows automatically creates a restore point before updates are applied. If the boot process is too quick to hit F8 or shift-F8, hard power your PC on and off a few times and Windows 8 will automatically go into a recovery mode where you can choose to reboot into safe mode.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux would have to start working on the Desktop.

With Android and ChromeOS added to traditional Linux DEs, it's already there.

Windows is only useful for about 1% of business use-cases now.

Thing is, it's so maintenance-heavy, it costs way more to provision and admin than just about everything else around. With that sort of $ savings available, it's only a matter of time before smart companies transition.

Re: For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Foresooth. I tried Linux again when I got my first Vista laptop and have never looked back. Gnome on OpenSuse has worked way better than friends' Windows machines.

Re: For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

It can't electronically file my taxes using e-tax (Australia). I'm pretty sure casual computer users still need to pay tax.

Re: For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Uu, the classic desktop environment flame wars. I like it!

Re: For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? You can't file taxes either by hand or in a browser? If so, that's an epic fail by the Australian government. Can't blame linux for that stupidity.

Re: For some it was just a plain black screen

[ozmanjusri]

I'm pretty sure casual computer users still need to pay tax.

Then use MyTax. That'll work for Android as well as Linux computers. E-Tax is a dinosaur.

https://www.ato.gov.au/Individ...

Re: For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Balmer knew this - which is why he tried to use Windows 8 to shepherd everyone into the Windows Store.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Thing is, it's so maintenance-heavy, it costs way more to provision and admin than just about everything else around.

Nonsense. On the desktop (and ONLY on the desktop), Windows consistently has lowest TCO. Apple systems have some very decent software in certain markets, and should be chosen where this platform makes the worker more productive, but base costs are slightly higher and (more importantly) administrative tools are severely lacking. A competent admin may be needed to automate deployment, but once that's done, you have everyone else in the building being more productive than with some half-assed Open Source offering or inefficient, insecure joke of a cloud offering.

It is an utterly false economy to regard the cost of an Office license or the time taken to install it as significant compared to the continual productivity loss from second rate solutions. Anyway, even if you're paying minimum wage with no benefits and no overheads (i.e. imagination), the "software licensing and maintenance" cost is still a teeny part of overall monthly expenditure associated with each employee.

Re: For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Eeh. You could say "can't blame Linux for that stupidity" for any application. Sure, it's quite stupid situation if he can't do it in browser, but the cold fact is that under Windows he can run the damn tax app.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux would have to start working on the Desktop.

With Android and ChromeOS added to traditional Linux DEs, it's already there.

Windows is only useful for about 1% of business use-cases now.

Thing is, it's so maintenance-heavy, it costs way more to provision and admin than just about everything else around. With that sort of $ savings available, it's only a matter of time before smart companies transition.

It's already happening.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/latest/woolworths-ditches-microsoft-for-googles-chrome-os/story-e6frg90f-1226951344090

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[robsku]

Linux has worked fine for most peoples needs on desktop for ages. I dont see much additional benefit for it from android, which is really for mobile devices, or Chrome OS, which is mostly good for lightweight netbooks.

People just need to get over whatever it is keeping them for believing it don't work on desktops. Please, no quoting ones special needs cases as rebbutals.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is only useful for about 1% of business use-cases now.

Right. Because only 1% of businesses rely on Office. Love it or hate it, Office is the primary reason to keep Windows on the desktop for the foreseeable future. And don't tell me that Libre/Open Office are equal substitutes - they aren't.

Re: For some it was just a plain black screen

[robsku]

I can haz games fine on linux too - especially as there's a well knows FOSS software to provide Windows API for, and run large set of Windows applications. Sure, I can't get every/any game to work, but I consider myself a hardcore gamer and yet don' need to have all of them. There's way more good games that work on it for me to ever play all of them. And I've run linux almost extensively since 02 - when I switched I first thought I'd keep windows as dual boot for games, but after 2 weeks in linhx I never went back.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[gfxguy]

Yeah... but Woolworth's is still in business? That's what's newsworthy... every Woolworths store I've ever known has been shutdown for ages.

I work for television production, and luckily those creative types keep Macs persistent in our computer inventory, but most desktops are still Windows; we still use Maya on Windows, and even those lucky enough to get MacBooks get Windows installed (one of our VPs called his MacBook the best Windows computer he ever had).

It's not happening enough to matter. I'm glad I can choose what to work on... yes, I dual boot and select Linux most of the time, but I do have to use Windows for some things, still, and yes, even at home we have Windows boxes (and out of four people, I'm the only one who dual boots).

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[Espectr0]

Huh? F8 doesn't exist anymore on Windows 8.x

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[richy freeway]

It's not by default, but can be re-enabled easily enough.

I know, it's a bit late for that once the machine doesn't boot, but for future reference : http://www.bleepingcomputer.co...

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[Zero__Kelvin]

Did I mention that for 99% of the business use cases Libre Office is actually a better tool than Office? For the few who absolutely need Office, and they are few indeed, there is Crossover.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[Bacon Bits]

Actually, it does. It just boots too fast for you to press the key.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? F8 doesn't exist anymore on Windows 8.x

Shift-F8 can work, but it boots so quickly past checking for it that you need to be very lucky on the timing (hold shift and hammer on the F8). Just hard-power off mid startup (before win logo) a few times (3?) also trigger the recovery environment that gets you to startup options.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[udippel]

No astroturfing, please! ;-)

For me the free wine is doing just fine. sudo apt-get install wine; that is. For MS Office 2007, at least. And who needs newer?

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[Zero__Kelvin]

I agree that WINE is great, but I mentioned Crossover since it comes with support. This will hopefully quell the cries of ... but you haz ta be da expert geek, and rely on da forumz where da peoplez is meanz!.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it does. The boot process is just so quick now that it can be very difficult to get to work. I have been able to catch it, but usually have to either revert Windows 8 back to legacy boot mode or power cycle three times to get into recovery.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is only useful for about 1% of business use-cases now.

Whoa... Somebody isn't taking enough Thorazine. All that seething underdog hate is poisoning your grip on reality my friend.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[hawkinspeter]

He's referring to Australian Woolworths which is a big supermarket chain. Over here in the UK, Woolworths as a general/department store has been out of business for a few years. I believe the companies are unrelated, but I haven't looked into it.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[david_thornley]

My son said that, the more he uses his Windows 8 laptop, the more he likes Linux. I'm proud of him.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[david_thornley]

That depends entirely on what you're doing. Depending on what you're doing with Office, you may or may not find LibreOffice or OpenOffice suitable. Depending on what else you're doing, you may find Windows, Linux, or MacOSX as best on the desktop.

Now, the safe thing to do for typical office workers is to give them a MS Windows box with MS Office, but that does come with some problems, such as retraining every time MS has a "bright" idea.

Re: For some it was just a plain black screen

[david_thornley]

If a vendor doesn't think it's worth producing a Linux version of some software you need, I'm happy with calling that Linux's fault. If a place you have to deal with requires Windows, I'm blaming it on the place that requires proprietary software. Governments in particular have no business mandating the purchase of particular proprietary products.

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[demonrob]

Different woolworths. This is the australian one. There's even a seperate South Aftican one too I believe,

Re:For some it was just a plain black screen

[Espectr0]

thank you, i knew about the legacy bootloader but i didn't know it enabled F8

It isn't only Windows 8

[cosmin_c]

I'm using Windows 7 and I was affected by this. I can't fathom the depths of ineptitude required to release such an update, to be perfectly honest.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[fustakrakich]

Don't try to "fathom" anything. Just turn off automatic updates, and you'll be a bit safer.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was just one update I might agree with you, but deciding to release four different bad updates at the same time is just ridiculous. All of my friends that worked in QA there have been laid-off, but even that doesn't justify the decision to release known bad updates.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because linux updates never breaks the system. /s

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[BarbaraHudson]

I can't fathom how slashdot fall to the point where people with ignorance on your level get modded up instead of into oblivion. Whats better is that you're claiming that Windows 8 drivers that don't work on Windows 7 caused the same problem for you. This is an ID10T or PBKAC error I think.

Before jumping on the previous poster for mentioning Windows 7, you might have wanted to read the linked article, or better yet Microsoft's own description of one of the updates that states it affects a LOT more than just Win8x, and it has nothing to do with drivers

Update to support the new currency symbol for the Russian ruble in Windows

... Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8, Windows RT, Windows Server 2012, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Buffer overflow in a character set table?

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[exomondo]

I'm using Windows 7 and I was affected by this. I can't fathom the depths of ineptitude required to release such an update, to be perfectly honest.

Maybe something to do with the millions of configurations of software and hardware that they have to support? Every now and then something is bound to go wrong.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[jones_supa]

The scary thing about Linux is that they can do sometimes platform updates which suddenly break fundamental things like keyboard or ACPI fan control.

But then again, the bleeding-edge development process also allows to get all the new cool features quickly into the kernel.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

In 5 years, I never had a Linux update break anything, no BSOD's or lockups either. The "other" PC, we'll call that "Windows" locks up at least once per day, BSOD's, nags about everything, loses its LAN connection configuration, won't do this or that, etc. Two identical PC's, one Linux, one Windows, only one is stable and trusted.

Re: It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

More like there are millions of extra dollars to be made if they cut back on testing a bit. MS chooses to be mediocre because it makes them more money in the short term.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Ol Olsoc]

Don't try to "fathom" anything. Just turn off automatic updates, and you'll be a bit safer.

Microsoft doesn't pay attention to that any more. Before I nuked 8.1 and replaced it with Mint, they had at least 5 forced updates that wrecked my wife's laptop.

Re: It isn't only Windows 8

[exomondo]

No it doesn't seem "more like that" at all, testing the millions of configurations is objectively impossible with the different types, brands and revisions of hardware all mixed and matched as well as the myriad of different versions of drivers for that hardware.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[mvdw]

I like linux, I run linux exclusively at home, but I don't believe that this could be purely Windows' fault. If the computers truly are identical, swap hard drives and see if the 'good' computer now suddenly develops faults while running windows, or if it's a hardware problem.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

What a load of unmitigated horseshit. When I was younger and didn't understand the value of my time and ran ubuntu linux, the damn thing broke itself so deftly and completely any time I ran the package updater that I wouldn't install any updates. It was faster just to install new versions of the distro and all my applications than play russian roulette with the updates. I've found this to be true with pretty much all major linux distributions. Meanwhile, windows keeps on puttering along, even with the awful interface in 8.1 (still not as bad as unity, though).

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[EvilJoker]

You've apparently never had to deal with buggy Linux drivers. I've been fighting with a buggy nVidia implementation ever since I switched it to be my Linux server. It has never quite worked right on Linux (Fedora, Ubuntu), but since it's a server, it's not a big deal.

I DID find out the hard way when they changed mdadm to HALT BOOT when *ANY* array is degraded, and then not give a useful error message.

If your Windows PC is getting BSODs, either it's hardware fault, or it's a bad driver. (Or possibly a driver-level virus). If the hardware is actually supported by that version of Windows, you should investigate further. There may not be a good driver, but you should be able to at least identify the issue I would start with the NIC driver. I had a D-Link DUB-E100 USB NIC. The Win7 x64 driver would cause the same issues you're having now.

Re: It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

MS has 370 billion dollars in market cap. They are truly well funded with plenty in the bank. I'm pretty sure if they made security and testing of their products a priority, they could do a *lot* better than they have been doing. They aren't even trying.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also run a great util called BlueScreenView which will show you the culprit driver causing the BSOD.

Re: It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is precisely the fucking problem!

If you promise to be able to be all things for all people on all platforms, you had better fucking deliver, or you should decide to cut back and focus your resources on configurations you can support.

There are no bonus points awarded because you prove the Peter Principle in such a massive and public display

Re: It isn't only Windows 8

[exomondo]

It isn't really a question of money, you simply cannot test anything even close to that many configurations. No other vendor supports anywhere near that many. The could leave it up to the OEM to test but that would probably end up like the state of Android updates.

OS X is supported on a relatively small amount of configurations and they bundle driver updates for the core hardware so it is generally much more stable across its available hardware platforms.
iOS is a comparatively very narrow set of configurations.
We all know the story with the disparate availability of Android updates and even custom distros like Cyanogen only support a handful of handsets and they don't have customizable internals or various driver versions for those internals unlike desktops/laptops.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Tiz true, however, both the kernel must fail to boot and the NIC has to die or I can usually
(never been a time when I couldn't) fix Linux in place without a nuke. Nice if init comes up too.
Screw X, don't need it, fix it later. I do generally stay behind the update curve by a couple of
weeks or a little longer though. Serious breakage like this is rare. I always dual or triple boot
which a wifey laptop user might find a bit confusing. Great for maintenence though. Windows
does not lend itself well to this arrangement. Linux does. OTOH, the way MS is (dis)organized
they seem to do a pretty decent job under the circumstances. After all, they do have a lot of
users to "update", lot of interaction with 3rd party apps they don't control, etc... I feel for the
Win crowd but hey, I'm not a gamer?

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[bigfinger76]

I don't believe you.

Re: It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

If you promise to be able to be all things for all people on all platforms, you had better fucking deliver

or what? you end up with a dozen or so geeks who run linux anyway whining about it on slashdot? whether you like it or not people arent exactly switching to mac or linux in droves.

or you should decide to cut back and focus your resources on configurations you can support.

oh right so they should actively prevent any configurations that use non-WHQL drivers or hardware that doesnt have WHQL drivers at all.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Me thinks that you're either using a pirated copy, or just have shitty hardware. Sorry, but my Windows 7 experience has been next to flawless. I've had one BSOD caused by a driver failure in the last year.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, I turned mine off and have never had to update. 7 at least. I learned the hard way that the new default behavior of Winblows is now to force an automatic reboot regardless of what programs are running.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you didn't disable updates. I always set Windows to manual update only and have never had any patches force installed.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[ozmanjusri]

The scary thing about Linux

There's more than one Linux, and it's very easy to choose a stable distro that doesn't live on the bleeding edge.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[jones_supa]

Are you aware that the fan bug slipped right into the main kernel of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. It was finally fixed in July in Ubuntu kernel 3.13.0-31.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

In 5 years, I never had a Linux update break anything, no BSOD's or lockups either. The "other" PC, we'll call that "Windows" locks up at least once per day, BSOD's, nags about everything, loses its LAN connection configuration, won't do this or that, etc. Two identical PC's, one Linux, one Windows, only one is stable and trusted.

If you have Win7 or Win8 locking up once a day or BSODs etc, then the problem is you.
Seriously, it's you.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[jenningsthecat]

There's more than one Linux, and it's very easy to choose a stable distro that doesn't live on the bleeding edge.

Do you mean like Debian Testing, (Jessie), that broke both my sound and my ability to suspend during the last dist-upgrade? Or do you mean like Debian Stable, (Wheezy), which won't work with my wired network hardware so I can't even install it in my new machine without a bunch of CD's and a few prayers? Or perhaps you mean Ubuntu, (I moved to Xubuntu when I got fed up with trying to get Debian working), which prompts me to reboot after updates a couple of times a week like some crappy Windows box?

I don't think I could ever really go back to Windows, (especially given my recent experiences with 8.1 on my GF's new laplet), but recently there have been days when I've toyed with the idea...

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[_merlin]

I had persistent bluescreens that I tracked down to an overheating SAS controller. It was not a pleasant experience. It's been pretty stable since then, though.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using Windows 7 and I was affected by this. I can't fathom the depths of ineptitude required to release such an update, to be perfectly honest.

My Windows XP computer is still working fine.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[techno-vampire]

Or perhaps you mean Ubuntu...

...which is based on Debian. Maybe you might consider trying a distro that's based on something else, such as Fedora, based on RedHat. Right now, I'm running Fedora 20 on my laptop and 19 on my desktop because I just haven't had time to upgrade it. Normally, my desktop runs 24/7, only rebooting for kernel updates. Current uptime is a little over 9.25 days and I can't remember the last time an update broke anything. Of course, I'm not foolish to run anything that's as bloated as Gnome, preferring Xfce with Compiz, but It Just Works.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[phantomfive]

Isn't it sad that in 2014, font processing on Windows still happens in the kernel? Wouldn't it be nice if, instead of shifting around their UI, Microsoft spent time moving font processing out of the kernel?

Here is Microsoft's workaround. Notice how it involves fonts and the registry. The registry: another 'gift' that keeps on giving.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[LesFerg]

I can usually find some way to boot into a repair mode and get things running again in Linux (I usually go with Debian) without having to follow the Microsoft approach of restoring my whole O/S from the install disk - which some people have been forced to do with these recent update bugs as they can't even get a boot into Windows safe mode.

I have never had an update hose my Linux system so badly that I cannot get in there and replace or remove the offending driver or whatever.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[chipschap]

I've never, ever had the severe kinds of problems you mention, and I've been on Ubuntu or its derivatives (most recently Mint) for years and years. And this is across maybe a dozen machines of all descriptions, and with all sorts of graphics cards, including the dreaded nvidia, which works just fine and only required a little patience.

That is not to say I take the position that Linux is completely golden and Windows is purely trash. There are always bugs and problems. However, given what I paid for my Linux distros, I think I got a really good deal which far exceeds expectations.

The problem is that some vocal Windows people will jump on Linux bugs as "proof" that Linux is not "ready" and so on. But Microsoft's latest antic convinces me that Windows, after how many years, is less ready.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Use stable Debian. You are the idiot that insist on Ubuntu. Deal with your own choice.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[LesFerg]

Even with a non-functional kernel, you can boot from a rescue disk and add other kernel versions in there, can't you?
My Debian install usually has a couple of kernels to choose from in the boot menu.
Graphics driver problems shouldn't stop you from getting a working command prompt, allowing you to fix or replace the driver.

Re: It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Fedora? You have to be joking. That's one of the more bleeding edge distros out there. Don't get me wrong, it's good at what it does, but you're replying to a thread which talks about picking a distro that avoids the bleeding edge.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[LesFerg]

In 5 years, I never had a Linux update break anything, no BSOD's or lockups either. The "other" PC, we'll call that "Windows" locks up at least once per day, BSOD's, nags about everything, loses its LAN connection configuration, won't do this or that, etc. Two identical PC's, one Linux, one Windows, only one is stable and trusted.

If you have Win7 or Win8 locking up once a day or BSODs etc, then the problem is you.
Seriously, it's you.

Have to agree with that sentiment. I have not had any major problems with win7 since replacing old outdated hardware. The last big problem I had was the AMD software which kept prompting me to update to the latest drivers, advice which I stupidly accepted; the AMD driver developers dropped support for 'old' chipsets but never modified the updaters to advise against installing drivers that were no longer compatible.

At the time I believed I was doing the right thing by keeping up with the suggested updates, this is not necessarily true all of the time. Sometimes you are trying to be too cheap instead of updating your old hardware. Also you should usually be able to track the cause of the BSOD and work out what hardware, driver etc. is being reported. Thats why the BSOD has all those scary numbers on it. So you can fix it. Instead of complaining about your daily BSOD.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[jones_supa]

GP's claim was that it is "very easy to choose a stable distro that doesn't live on the bleeding edge". For many people Ubuntu LTS is an obvious choice. If there suddenly comes a rule that Ubuntu cannot be used, then the choice is obviously not very easy.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

The scary thing about Linux is that they can do sometimes platform updates which suddenly break fundamental things ....

And the great thing about Linux is that 90% of the time those "fundamental things" can have n different versions installed so you can revert the changes simply by rebooting and choosing an extant old version or simply choosing the old version of the program to run instead of crossing one's fingers that a restore point captured the right version of a critical system library/program. The bad part is the other 10% of the time where there's the "one true way" and you're in the same boat as Windows--a make or break update which requires a "safe mode" reinstall of an old version (which may be quite hard if the GUI wifi manager has all your settings and the old version was flushed out of the package install cache). I'd certainly like to see Linux further improve in this area especially given that symlinks make 99% of that 10% unnecessary and reduce the problem to (still a safe mode) update-alternatives with virtually no mess, but even the current situation is still much better than some mostly hidden automagic that you have near zero control over except in a very binary, unreversable way.

So, yea, I'd love to hear of more work to improve Linux.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with Ubuntu is that it is never stable. I fell for that myself and in hindsight it should have been obvious - even the supposedly "stable" versions of Ubuntu used cutting edge packages and stable just meant that a bug fix took ages.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

I can...it's Microsoft, after all.

They basically jumped the shark at Vista, salvaged it quite a bit with Win7- and then burned all but a smidgen of their goodwill with 8.0, having really jumped the shark with that and RT (Seriously, Microsoft? Didn't you learn that lesson with CE in it's early days?).

There's not really anybody at the helm. I daresay a symptom that's prevalent throughout the industry these days. It's all about placating the Sharesellers long enough to bumble and stumble to the next set of profits to keep the farce rolling forward.

Just try not to be the bagholder when they are forced to turn the lights off there.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you aware that while Ubuntu strives for stability in an LTS, all versions of Ubuntu lean towards that bleeding edge? They've always been a spiffed up version of Sid in many cases. That alone should be a key hint for you, if you know anything about distributions. It should be noted at the time it was being considered for the LTS in question, 3.13, while a stable branch version, was just released, basically bleeding edge, on January of this year. We went with 3.14 because of problems with ConfigFS and Gadget support. I can imagine that 3.13,while it worked for many, wasn't so hot overall.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

slashdot aspies at your service!

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome and systemd already brought the registry to Linux, perhaps they will soon replace the kernel panics with BSOD.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Luckily, neither Gnome nor systemd run in kernel space. What's even better, you can have a fully functional syste without either of those as well.

Typing this on Linux with Gnome, and no systemd. Imagine that!

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Cutterman]

Confirm Windows 7 affected. System fonts wouldn't display resulting in illegible system.
Did a restore and then cautiously installed update one by one, with reboots in between each.
Running OK now
Seems the problem was Windows installing all those updates in one big bunch.

The Cutter

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, on my windows 7 machine the update didn't break anything... so there you go!

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

In 5 years, I never had a Linux update break anything, no BSOD's or lockups either. The "other" PC, we'll call that "Windows" locks up at least once per day, BSOD's, nags about everything, loses its LAN connection configuration, won't do this or that, etc. Two identical PC's, one Linux, one Windows, only one is stable and trusted.

I like Linux, and I prefer it over Windows, but there's a lot of Linux/Windows fanboy-ism involved in this thread.

I have been using Ubuntu at home for more than 6-7 years now, and although I have to say things have improved a lot since 8.04, there have been A LOT of times when updating would break the system (requiring the user to try to fix things on the console, for example). Not to talk about upgrading: every time a new release came out, upgrading would fail, either leaving me with a useless system or a buggy distribution (the old one). I don't even want to go into graphic card drivers.

Windows is not perfect, it's far from perfect. Since Windows XP started with automatic updates, the process has always been a pain in the ***, specially when you're in a hurry and suddenly your OS starts installing 30 updates, which can be solved by disabling them and do it manually. I have never had my Windows broken from a software update, although I used to have more crashes and BSODs than when using Linux. HOWEVER, freezing and BSODing has decreased significantly since Windows 7 came out (at least in my case).

If I had to choose, I prefer Linux, and I consider it more stable. But don't underestimate competition: Windows is a BIG, stable and mature OS. It might not be as stable, cheap (both licensing/maintenance) and 'powerful' as your Linux distribution, but it's not a little piece of trashy software either. Things like this might happen, but I've had 0 broken OSs when updating on Windows, plenty of them with Linux.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[SuperTechnoNerd]

As an additional measure I block micro$oft in my firewall so im not "forced" to do anything..

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[simplypeachy]

Yesterday I had mod points :-(

Guess I'll join you down here at 0 Troll for discussion of a sensible, unprejudiced manner. Shall we start with Heartbleed?

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[simplypeachy]

I'm taking collections for a Karma Self-Destruction Fund, to support people who accidentally held up logic and sane discussion towards a Microsoft subject, and get themselves mutilated by the prejudicial horde. Care to donate?

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[AmiMoJo]

Windows doesn't do font processing in the kernel. This update changes the way the kernel handles the Russian code page, which Russian versions of Windows use instead of ASCII since the American Standard Code for Information Interchange doesn't support Cyrillic characters.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[AmiMoJo]

It isn't hard to imagine at all. Consider how many versions of Windows there are and how many different hardware configurations it runs on.

Windows 8 Home and Pro
x86, x64 and ARM versions of both
50+ languages for each

I'm sure there are more variations than that. It's the same with IE. Every time they release an update it has to be testing on a few hundred configurations minimum, and even then there will be cases they didn't test.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[TheDarkMaster]

Welcome to the new world where using a computer became so easy that any ignorant can use. But do not worry, someday - maybe - he will learn that problems can happen however much you try to avoid them.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[TheDarkMaster]

Maybe because do it in the kernel is much faster than doing it in user space, and being a function where performance is critical? Do not take hasty conclusions without knowing why the original decision was made.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[ruir]

Cant compute what you are saying nVidia bug and "server"? You are not supposed to run a graphical environment in a server...

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Ol Olsoc]

As an additional measure I block micro$oft in my firewall so im not "forced" to do anything..

That's quite the indictment when you have to do that. Sorta like taking out a PFA against your parents.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't "have" to do that. He chooses to. I turn off auto updates and don't have a problem.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[c]

I've never, ever had the severe kinds of problems you mention, and I've been on Ubuntu or its derivatives (most recently Mint) for years and years.

I've seen all sorts of similar stuff. Mind you, it's not as bad as the GP suggests. If you're running Debian testing, you *will* get bit on the ass inevitably. And Ubuntu prompts you to boot more than any other distro largely because the others don't really prompt you to boot at the GUI layer after a kernel update.

I've seen some updates that render a system unbootable (the one that comes to mind was that /dev/hd* to /dev/sd* migration a while back), and there's been some pretty boneheaded small glitches too (Ubuntu recently updated to show a pretty background image at boot rather than the far more useful prompt for my whole-disk decryption password). And things like drivers can be a pain (nvidia graphics and anything involving the name "Broadcom" in particular).

The main difference from Windows, though, is that I've never, *ever* had to solve a Linux distro issue by reformatting. I've had to boot into rescue to edit files, sure, but in over 20 years of running Linux, I've never had to completely nuke a system in order to "save it" from a broken update. In fact, I think the only time I've had to do so was way back when I had to tweak my own storage drivers.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

And I've had exactly the reverse experience. It's been literally years since my last BSOD, and that one was due to failing RAM. I've never had Windows completely hose wireless networking, but Ubuntu's done it several times when updating versions.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have any proof of this? I actually run Windows 8.1 Update 2 (x64) with Windows Update set to only notify me of updates. No updates from Microsoft have been installed without me explicitly installing them.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows doesn't use ASCII natively. It uses Windows-1252. Russian uses Windows-1251.

If the bug is in the handling of 1251, then don't use 1251 and you should be OK. And if you need 1251, just do what Microsoft says and roll back that patch.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

It happens. This was a JB exploit on i devices a little while ago.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

If you install all the same desktop software you would have needed to install on a new computer, I really don't get people's complaints about Windows 8.1.

Everything is exactly the same - I use it almost exclusively in desktop mode and see virtually no difference than Windows XP in terms of muscle memory.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody that had to boot into safe mode to uninstall this patch from Windows was doing it wrong. Windows 8 changed the ways you can get to the Advanced Startup Options screen, but it's still there. F8 is no longer the preferred key, F11 seems to have replaced it. And two consecutive failed boots will get you there without any input. The installation media can get you there, too, but there's no need to full-on reinstall the OS.

Once you're on the ASO screen, just use the Recover Windows option, which rolls you back to the last system restore point, which was created automatically by Windows Update before those patches were applied.

If you get to be an uppity Linux user that looks down his nose on anybody that doesn't know all the tricks, I get to be an uppity Windows user that does the same. Put your sword away before it cuts you.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't get a black or blue screen of death from these Microsoft updates on any of my 3 machines running Win8.1, but my Linux file server got a black screen of death just from installing the OS and doing the 1st reboot. Nothing more fun than needing to edit Linux boot command lines just to get to a usable desktop. The only thing Linux has going for it is price.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's why most distros still can't auto update without say breaking the xorg server. Congrats; this is why you will never be on the desktop.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

I had been using Debian testing/sid for years too without any major problems. But since they started to integrate systemd, the system gets broken at least once a week. Eg. currently the power manager is broken in XFCE, one does not get updates or warnings to laptop battery power levels until system shuts down itself. If only there was a Debian based distribution which did not force the systemd into their users.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[phantomfive]

That may have been a consideration in the 80s, but it's not a good reason to do so now.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[phantomfive]

Windows doesn't do font processing in the kernel

then where did this come from?

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you just suck. I've never had an issue with Ubuntu updates and I've been using it as my main desktop OS at work for 8 years now.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Ol Olsoc]

Do you have any proof of this? I actually run Windows 8.1 Update 2 (x64) with Windows Update set to only notify me of updates. No updates from Microsoft have been installed without me explicitly installing them.

Well, only that I had updates turned completely off, and on several occasions my wife told me the computer was sluggish and acting weird. I shut it down, and lo, an update. The only update I ever purposely allowed was to 8.1.

I'm not the only one, and this link was regarding Windows 7:

http://superuser.com/questions...

It certainly isn't a new phenomenon, here's one from 2007

http://blog.seattlepi.com/micr...

Hey - maybe we're all just kooks? http://answers.microsoft.com/e...

Install an update when you have them turned off? No Problem Microsoft turns them back on.I've had this happen several times. Apparently Microsoft doesn't do this - it's always the customers fault:

http://social.technet.microsof...

Windows 7 users have noted:

http://www.sevenforums.com/win...

Windows 7 users have been having a big problem with some sotfware I regularly ue. They have an update that breaks the software, and they roll it back, and turn the auto update feature off, but next black tuesday, it reinstalls the offending update.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you have Win7 or Win8 locking up once a day or BSODs etc, then the problem is you.
Seriously, it's you."

"Have to agree with that sentiment.....The last big problem I had was the AMD software which kept prompting me to update to the latest drivers, advice which I stupidly accepted; the AMD driver developers dropped support for 'old' chipsets but never modified the updaters to advise against installing drivers that were no longer compatible."

So windows 7 and 8 are stable enough that it's your fault if they crash - i.e. if you do something stupid like using a manufacturer-supplied and suggested driver update for hardware that came with a 'works with windows 8' sticker on it.

Except.....bullshit. This is the ONLY method for getting even vaguely up-to-date drivers in windows (at least it was when I switched - and presumably it's still the case).

"Sometimes you are trying to be too cheap instead of updating your old hardware"

Even if it's not broken? You've done nothing wrong but update the driver for your hardware - maybe you thought it would fix some rare edge case that you hadn't hit that would cause a massive problem, maybe you thought it might fix minor issues that you knew you had encountered, maybe you thought you'd get slightly better performance out of it - but for most people probably didn't know what they would get other than a slightly higher driver version number. Should they really? Isn't that the point of manufacturer-supplied helper software and all the other cruft - keeping you up-to-date and hence safer, more secure and speedier than you would be otherwise? Except of course when something like this happens.

Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad thing if microsoft stepped up and started hosting a central repository of driver software - drivers that are somewhat current, not for graphics cards that came out three years ago and printers the most recent of which you can barely still buy cartridges for.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Espectr0]

I only reboot windows once a month after patch tuesday.
Crappy experiences are mostly gone since 7 (and in my case, since Vista as well. I experienced only one major bug in vista, slow file copying which was fixed in SP1)

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had many computers. TRS-80 (No Problems) DOS 4 to 8 (No Problems) Linux (No Problems). Now we get to Windows. Win95, Win98, Win98SE, WinXP Pro, Win7, Win8 all on different hardware and legal. All of them freeze up, BSOD's, hardware/driver problems, generally a peace of $hit. Friends and family report the same problems. Anyone that says that they don't have problems with windows must be working for M$. When you get tired of paying for malware, try Linux.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Ravaldy]

I honestly haven't found a Linux distro outside Ubuntu that is easy to install on just about any hardware. So for 99% of users with Windows systems, they will just have to deal with this rare failed update scenario. It's really not the end of the world as some may picture it to be.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Easiest way to fix sound in any Linux distribution is to remove the pulseaudio. At least on my Debian the keyboard shortcuts for mute&volume started working and random at-this-boot-the-master-volume-is-set-to-0% -bugs also dissapeared at same time as PA.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Zero__Kelvin]

"Then you know absolutely nothing about software development ... Whats better is that you're claiming that Windows 8 drivers that don't work on Windows 7 caused the same problem for you.

Perhaps the OP doesn't know about software development, but unlike you, he can actually read.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Zero__Kelvin]

"which Russian versions of Windows use instead of ASCII since the American Standard Code for Information Interchange doesn't support Cyrillic characters"

Holy Shit! How do people from England use Windows if it only works in America!!!?? Code pages are based on another American standard, the American National Standards Institute. But fear not my antiquated friend, for even in America we've heard of other countries! That's why the ANSI committee did the unthinkable and created code pages for all kinds of languages including the ruskies! There's even this new-fangled thing called UTF now!

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you have Win7 or Win8 locking up once a day or BSODs etc, then the problem is you.
Seriously, it's you."

"Have to agree with that sentiment.....The last big problem I had was the AMD software which kept prompting me to update to the latest drivers, advice which I stupidly accepted; the AMD driver developers dropped support for 'old' chipsets but never modified the updaters to advise against installing drivers that were no longer compatible."

So windows 7 and 8 are stable enough that it's your fault if they crash - i.e. if you do something stupid like using a manufacturer-supplied and suggested driver update for hardware that came with a 'works with windows 8' sticker on it.

They are stable enough so that if it crashes every freaking day, then you have a hardware issue or you've done something wrong.

If a manufacturer supplied driver is causing crashing, that's the manufacturers issue, not Microsoft.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Algae_94]

I've had many computers. TRS-80 (No Problems) DOS 4 to 8 (No Problems) Linux (No Problems). Now we get to Windows. Win95, Win98, Win98SE, WinXP Pro, Win7, Win8 all on different hardware and legal. All of them freeze up, BSOD's, hardware/driver problems, generally a peace of $hit. Friends and family report the same problems. Anyone that says that they don't have problems with windows must be working for M$. When you get tired of paying for malware, try Linux.

Well, then I expect my check any day now. I've had problems with XP, but everything I've used with 7 or 8 have not had any BSODs, or other major problems. I skipped Vista so I can't say where that compared.

That's not to say everything is perfect with Windows, but these regular and common freeze ups and BSODs do not occur for me anymore.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[SuperTechnoNerd]

Windows is always talking to MS. For example, do a local file search, it opens a connection to microsoft servers. I haven't looked deep into what it sends, but why connect at all?

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Next, while the language in Windows Vista and Windows XP is different, there are four basic settings for Automatic Updates, as explained in Clinton’s post: “1) Install updates automatically, 2) Download updates but let me choose whether to install them, 3) Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them, and 4) Never check for updates.”

In the Windows Secrets story, Dunn writes that Microsoft is silently downloading and installing the fixes even when people have “turned off auto-updates.” The use of the phrase “turned off” might suggest that Microsoft was downloading and installing these updates even when people had chosen No. 4, “never check for updates.”

However, I spoke with Dunn on the phone, and he said that’s not what he meant to imply. Instead, he was referring to option Nos. 2 and 3.

Those people were not disabling updates (ie. option #4).

Are you also sure that your wife didn't inadvertently reenable them? When updates are disabled, the Windows action centre will pop-up a security notification from time to time from the system tray unless you explicitly tell it to ignore the status of the auto update mechanism.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

It's people like you and responses like this that keep people away from desktop Linux.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow file handling (copy/move/delete) came back in Windows 7, especially when dealing with thousands of small files. It was fixed again in Windows 8.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Ol Olsoc]

Those people were not disabling updates (ie. option #4).

One universal truth in all of Microsoft's updates or any problem. It is the users fault no exceptions, Microsoft has never been at fault ever.

Are you also sure that your wife didn't inadvertently reenable them?

Very unlikely, unless you can re-enable Windows update from Firefox, Thunderbird, or solitaire.

When updates are disabled, the Windows action centre will pop-up a security notification from time to time from the system tray unless you explicitly tell it to ignore the status of the auto update mechanism.

She's been told to ignore popups of any sort. And does

And it of course continues.

Some of us have our limits though. I am a fucking idiot, and all the problems I've ever had with Microsoft are of my own doing, I am responsible, not them.

Which is exactly why I switched to OS's where I am not an idiot.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what the tell you then. I do all of my updates manually and have never experienced such an issue with any version of Windows.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian is not very friendly for average users but it's more stable than Ubuntu as even Ubuntu's LTS is based on the testing version of Debian...
Linux Mint is talking about doing their user friendliness tweaks to Debian stable which in IMO will likely make a great system, but that probably a little ways off.
You can still use the 12.04 release which in theory should be pretty stable by now.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[jones_supa]

It is serious bug. It makes big amount of laptops overheat.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[sjames]

Missing a driver for new hardware is hardly limited to Linux. In fact, I have run into that problem FAR more often with Windows even though I've done far fewer Windows installs. Unlike Windows, in Linux I can generally get around the problem by loading the relevant non-distro driver onto a flash drive (or my phone) and manually insmoding it at the start of an advanced install. An alternative approach is to use a well supported USB network adapter to complete the install, then load an out of tree driver for the network hardware.

As for Jessie, it's called testing for a reason :-)

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu is like buying a General Motors product in that it started from unstable and didn't get very far. It is like buying a Mercedes or a Break My Wallet in that there are gadgets galore all ready to break at a moments notice. Debian Stable is like buying a Honda: no one is going to look and say wow (unless you have the new NSX of course!) and it doesn't have every gadget imaginable. However, it is customizable and reliable and no one will be surprised when you are driving it ten years later and it still looks brand new. You may want a Toyota or Subaru but the point is the same.

Why the car comparison? because Ubuntu is what the average person on the street has heard about from all the blah blah blah the news media put out a few years back. If they've heard of another distro or come in contact with one, it is often Red Hat which is not the example of user friendly (as an example, try recompiling the kernel in Mepis and then try Red Hat) What the open source community needs to do is be more clear as to what is the purpose of a distro (most people don't even know what a distro is!) is and how stable it is in relation to some sort of benchmark. Much like Consumer Reports does with cars and car companies. The choice isn't simple but then, the choice of Windows is only simple because for most people "it came with my computer" is all they know.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[Ravaldy]

I wasn't talking about Ubuntu. I was saying that people can deal with the one time occurrence of a Windows Update bug. It's much less trouble than to get onboard with any Linux distro.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[dotwhynot]

That may have been a consideration in the 80s, but it's not a good reason to do so now.

NT3.x was on the right path as a fairly well implemented micro-kernel OS, with graphic subsystem completely in user space. This was changed with NT4 for performance and compatibility reasons. (or, what we asked for, where we=market). There was a reason a lot of us clinged to our NT3.51 and refused to "update", like others cling to Win7 now.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[beastofburdon]

Do you know what site it connects to and the protocol? If they are different from the update site or a different protocol it could be easily blocked while still allowing you to update. I would really like to know if you can find out.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[jenningsthecat]

I had already long-ago banished Pulse from my system - I've never liked it and always had problems with it. (Not surprising that systemd and pulseaudio are from the same developer). Anyway, I actually got desperate enough to ADD pulseaudio to try to fix the audio. It restored functionality in some programs but not others, and I was unable to sort out the 'default device' problems. (Not that I was too motivated - having broken two critical functions with one update had soured me on Jessie).

And now I'm on Xubuntu, which comes with Pulse installed by default. I don,t love it, but sound works now so I'm inclined not to dick with it.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[jenningsthecat]

Missing a driver for new hardware is hardly limited to Linux... An alternative approach is to use a well supported USB network adapter to complete the install, then load an out of tree driver for the network hardware.

I considered doing that so I could install Wheezy, but I didn't really want to jump through hoops to install an older version that would have required me to try backporting for the newer versions of Kicad. And in Wheezy, Suspend functionality didn't even work on my old box, so I wasn't keen to try it on a new one.

As for Jessie, it's called testing for a reason :-)

I know, I know... But I ran what became Squeeze and Wheezy when they had only spent a few months in Testing, and I only ever had minor issues, so I came to think of Testing as being pretty solid. I guess I got complacent...

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[jenningsthecat]

...If only there was a Debian based distribution which did not force the systemd into their users.

Ubuntu doesn't use systemd. Yes, I know it might be a stretch these days to call it "Debian based", but at least it still uses Debian packages, and I've even pulled stuff in from Debian repos with no trouble so far. I've uninstalled the cutesy 'Software Center', and I either use apt/aptitude from the command line, or Synaptic, depending on what I'm doing. My Xubuntu setup 'feels' very 'Debian' to me, without the downside of systemd.

Re:It isn't only Windows 8

[sjames]

It is easy to get complacent about that since even testing is usually quite stable, it's just not promised to be.

It is worth considering though that it is nice that installing stable and backporting is even an option. For an individual perhaps it's not worth it, but in a corporate environment it might work out to be reasonable.

Resistance is futile

[onproton]

you will be assimilated into Windows 8.

some 19 years on...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Windows 95 will get rid of all Unrecoverable Application Errors"

Re:some 19 years on...

[BitZtream]

Chicago pretty much did (ignoring driver flaws) ... until they added backwards compatibility.

Misleading article

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a new feature they're introducing.

LOL windows restore

[Anonymous Coward]

good luck with restore as you cant boot into "safe" mode, so if you didnt create a rescue disc or bootable usb (nobody does and you fucknig know it) you are up shit creek (moreso if you have a software RAID)

The state of engineering in PC recovery is awful, shame on software devs

Re:LOL windows restore

[Anonymous Coward]

The state of engineering in PC recovery is awful, shame on software devs

Very true. It indeed is funny to think how much updating software is still just "pour in some new files and cross your fingers".

Re:LOL windows restore

[bill_mcgonigle]

The state of engineering in PC recovery is awful, shame on software devs

What? You just power off your vm, roll back the storage to the appropriate snapshot, and turn it on again.

Wait - you let Windows touch your hardware? Oh, my.

Re:LOL windows restore

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait - you let Windows touch your hardware? Oh, my.

And here we have proof of how out-of-touch some basement dwellers really are.

Re:LOL windows restore

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up!

LOL @ Captcha: unstable

Re:LOL windows restore

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you enjoy buggy open source garbage.

And here we have proof of how out-of-touch some basement dwellers really are.

In other news...

[djupedal]

Microsoft announced they will change from calling their software 'software' to 'cute puppy' in bid to distance themselves from their reputation as they have now run out of feet to shoot and stick in their mouth.

Re:In other news...

[SeaFox]

I wonder if Microsoft has considered changing their name to distance themselves from their reputation for the software they produce.

Re:In other news...

[Tablizer]

This latest puppy is shittin' all over the carpet.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good decision, at least it'd be on the path to becoming fast and stable.

http://puppylinux.org/main/Ove...

This update deleted my "All Programs" list

[PilotKnob]

I'm going to have to reinstall Windows 7, and I can't tell you how excited I am about this.

Re:This update deleted my "All Programs" list

[ElderKorean]

I'm going to have to reinstall Windows 7, and I can't tell you how excited I am about this.

What about your backup, restore to that.

Re:This update deleted my "All Programs" list

[Anonymous Coward]

Use System Restore in Windows 7. Start up the pc and when you see the first text on the screen, press the F8 button and then choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt. Type: rstrui.exe

For XP users:
%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

Now you can use your mouse and choose a date to go back to before the problem.

Re:This update deleted my "All Programs" list

[Cutterman]

Unfortunately rstrui.exe is a GUI rather than a console app so if your GUI fonts are messed up it is unusable.
rstrui needs to be a console app

The Cutter

 

Re:This update deleted my "All Programs" list

[Nimey]

Heh. Back in the day there was a certain group of users who'd disable System Restore out of concern that all it did was back up viruses.

Easy fix for the bug

[Anonymous Coward]

My machine crashed 4 times over the weekend, so I just removed Windows completely, and went with Mint.

Re:Easy fix for the bug

[Anonymous Coward]

So the fix for your computer crashing was to render it completely useless instead?

Forget TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the better workaround for the problem from Microsoft: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2982791

Re:Forget TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

You posted the wrong link, here's the cure... http://www.kde.org/

Re:Forget TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that say that the article doesn't?

Re:Forget TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the better workaround for the problem from Microsoft: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2982791

Thanks, because the article says to go where you uninstall any app. What the fuck is an app? Is that Apple software?

Re:Forget TFA

[Bite The Pillow]

That says to restart in Safe Mode, and many of the replies specifically say that does not work. If you have installation media, that's no problem. Otherwise, you've posted horseshit nonsense that helps no one.

Re:Forget TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

But can you just uninstall the updates? Or do I need to do the whole safemode thing too?

Re:Forget TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks, because the article says to go where you uninstall any app. What the fuck is an app? Is that Apple software?

I know right? Im still trying to find the "any key"!

Re:Forget TFA

[sa1lnr]

"If you do not have media, you should use the power button to restart your computer during the startup process three times. This should start the Windows Recovery Environment. "

In fact not so much horse shit as you assumed.

Re:Forget TFA

[David_W]

"If you do not have media, you should use the power button to restart your computer during the startup process three times. This should start the Windows Recovery Environment. "

Oh yeah, THAT's gotta be good for the hardware. Definite improvement over F8. Thanks Microsoft...

Re:Forget TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

If your hardware can't handle pressing the reset button 3 times (not the power button), you probably should buy something better than your $50 Dill / Lanovo / knockoff brand laptop.

People power cycle their hardware daily and nothing is wrong with it.

Re:Forget TFA

[benjymouse]

"If you do not have media, you should use the power button to restart your computer during the startup process three times. This should start the Windows Recovery Environment. "

Oh yeah, THAT's gotta be good for the hardware. Definite improvement over F8. Thanks Microsoft...

It is actually quite clever: If the system barks 3 times in a row when trying to start, the operating system *should* infer that something is preventing an orderly startup. In that case, dropping into the recovery console is a perfectly good choice.

NTFS has volume shadow copy on by default for the system drive. It records changes to the *system* (Windows/** and Program Files/**) and lets you roll back those changes without rolling back any user/data files.

So even if you f***** up so royally as to make the system unbootable (e.g. a bad disk driver), the system will boot into the recovery console with a minimal number of known "basic" drivers.

Re:Forget TFA

[robsku]

And who the hell is this General Failure anyway, and why is he reading my floppy drive!?

Re:Forget TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't find the F8 key on my tablet.

Wait until SP1/SP2 before buying ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Always wait until SP1/2 before buying a Windows version.
This should be update as wait until Windows goes out of support and then buy it.
At least Microsoft won't be able to fuck it anymore.

Re:Wait until SP1/SP2 before buying ?

[DingerX]

They don't do SPs any more. Calling them "Mandatory Updates" allows them to get around any promises they made regarding SPs. Oh yeah, and this update? I'm not affected, since my machine is still unable to install the mandatory update.
WTG Microsoft. You should be glad that platforms are not part of your core mission.

their new motto

[slashmydots]

Microsoft: "Where we don't really give a shit until Windows 9 comes out"

Re: their new motto

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 9 "You have no choice but to upgrade".

Solid marketing move there.

Re: their new motto

[Anonymous Coward]

It's what they did with Windows 7. Fix all the problems of Vista, but call it something else to avoid the negative stigma and make more money selling it.

Re: their new motto

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 9 "You have no choice but to upgrade".

Solid marketing move there.

Perfect marketing for Linux: Windows keeps crashing and Microsoft says the only fix is to upgrrade, so I upgraded to Linux and now everything works perfectly and is far faster then it was on Windows and I can keep right on gaming as Steam, GOG, Desura and Humble are all providing the latest titles!

Re: their new motto

[Anonymous Coward]

so I upgraded to Linux and now everything works perfectly and is far faster then it was on Windows

Until they realize that everything does not actually work perfectly and the desktop is much more laggy than in Windows.

Re: their new motto

[robsku]

FUD Reichmeister strikes again. Nothing works perfectly for every(one|thing) when it comes to OS's, so your partly right, although when the comparison is with MS Bullshit...

I've learned the hard way

[msobkow]

I've learned the hard way over the years. Never let Windows Update install a driver of any kind. Ever.

I've had them blow out network cards, video cards, sound cards, and low level on-board devices. I've had them completely bork systems to the point where they were unbootable.

Go to the vendor and get the official updates.

I don't know how they do it, but Windows Update perpetually mis-identifies hardware and installs the wrong drivers, delivers broken drivers, and otherwise screws up when it comes to drivers. Yet the official vendor's drivers (such as Intel) work just fine.

Go figure. One would think Microsoft is just redeploying those same drivers, but years of being burned have taught me that's not the case.

Re:I've learned the hard way

[kesuki]

"I've learned the hard way over the years. Never let Windows Update install a driver of any kind. Ever.

I've had them blow out network cards, video cards, sound cards, and low level on-board devices. I've had them completely bork systems to the point where they were unbootable. "

thats not a bug, thats a feature... you've heard of vendor lockin and planned obsolescence...

Re:I've learned the hard way

[jones_supa]

The nice thing about Windows Update drivers is that they sometimes allow you to install the the sole driver instead of the 300MB garbage pack from the vendor. :)

Re:I've learned the hard way

[Anonymous Coward]

Strange, I worked at a University support dept for a couple of years, supporting about 200 pcs. I've never seen a device "blow out" with a bad driver, be it a windows update installation or a manual one. At most, the device would not work, but removing the offending driver would be enough - in safe mode at some extreme cases. But never an un-bootable system due to a bad driver. I am talking about the Win 2k/XP/7 etc era. Windows 95/98 etc was a different thing.

Re:I've learned the hard way

[mrprogrammerman]

I generally avoid driver updates unless I know there is a specific problem I am experiencing that is fixed. Got burned too many times.

Re:I've learned the hard way

[jones_supa]

It's a bit amateurish to dismiss the parent with the classic "it works for me, there must no problem". For example, maybe your university machines were mostly the same brand of conservative desktop machines which had quite basic hardware with well-tested interoperability with Windows Update? I mean, if you have a bunch of HP or Dell machines with Intel integrated graphics, the chances of things exploding are probably lower than with some more hot rod hardware.

Re:I've learned the hard way

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that's interesting. Does the new guy see the light and intend to just gouge windows users for their last dollar before a major
rewrite of the UI to put it on top of some *NIX? Apple's in trouble if that's so. Shit, I might even try it if it has *NIX plumbing. Bet
it takes two seconds to port apps, if they're not already ported.

Re:I've learned the hard way

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF. I've had the opposite experience. Never install an manufacturer driver ever, except exactly one exception: Nvidia.

Re:I've learned the hard way

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, I find this wholly unacceptable from Microsoft.

Look, I know though I'm ultimately a user, and despite my supporting MS Windows environments for my livelihood, I don't know what happens behind the scenes. That said, I'm not new to IT and the requisites of support in general, and have grown up with Windows since DOS, and a C64 before it. But, ror the life of me, I just can't understand how MS can produce these kind of results. I honestly don't see how this much failure, can get past their Q/A for release. Can someone explain it to me? Does it really come down to, Microsoft doesn't truly understand how their product works? Has it gotten so big and cumbersome, that they're spitballing it, though with pretty good documentation? I'm just really trying to understand how the bohemoth that MS is, how they can't properly manage their flagship product,

Re:I've learned the hard way

[phantomfive]

I've learned the hard way over the years. Never let Windows Update install a driver of any kind. Ever.

That's a good strategy, but one of the offending patches was a change to include the new symbol for ruble. It wasn't a driver update.

Re:I've learned the hard way

[symbolset]

No, it has always been this way. And their internal documentation is also crap.

Re:I've learned the hard way

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been building my own for years, generally with non-"hot-rod" parts, but still way better than boring homogenized corporate hardware. I've never had anything "blow out". Ever. I attribute this to buying "good" parts from "good" manufacturers, and a bit of luck. I can fully believe that sketchy shit might actually go out of tolerance because of bad drivers. So don't buy sketchy shit.

I've had bad drivers that caused instability. They always came from the driver disk in the package with the hardware. They also tended to run from an installer that wanted to load my system full of crapware and "utilities" that never work right and suck down system resources like a crackwhore gettin' a fix. Mostly these were for ATI (pre-AMD) video cards, and "gaming" motherboards with all kinds of stupid overclocker utilities. (I don't overclock. There's a reason the parts I buy were binned how they were sold. I don't buy on the "sweet spot" where it might be low-binned for marketing reasons, because I don't gamble.)

Nowadays, I load the bare minimum motherboard drivers to get network connectivity and basic functionality, point it at Windows Update (or an apt repository, if it's a Linux build), and let 'er rip. Then I go download the bloated-pig Nvidia installer, because you should never use graphics card drivers from Windows Update because they're many months out of date by the time WHQL testing is completed.

Re:I've learned the hard way

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't misidentify hardware, it because you downloaded driver updates from Microsoft, didn't reboot for the updates to be applied and then installed drivers from the manufacturers of the hardware. When you finally did reboot, the drivers from Microsoft that were sitting in the cache get applied and end up breaking the drivers you manually installed by mixing different versions of the files. That's when you get the black screen on boot.

When you download updates from Microsoft, you should ALWAYS reboot immediately upon completion so that the changed get applied right away, THEN you can go ahead and install your OEM drivers.

Re:I've learned the hard way

[Ravaldy]

I bet you also believe those self proclaimed scientist that swear the pyramids were made by aliens.

Those conspiracies are as true as those stories of me having big dick The H/W manufacturers have had it figured out for a long time by simply not releasing drivers for the next OS that comes out. The last thing H/W manufacturers want is your call to support or a RMA request.

Re:I've learned the hard way

[Ravaldy]

I have supported Microsoft workstations for over 10 years and have never experienced a hardware failure due to an automatic update. Heck, I had maybe 3-5 problems related to auto updates that were caused by security enhancements and they didn't actually break anything, rather they defaulted values that I just wouldn't have set for my environment.

I suspect you are an isolated case because if that's how poor MS products were, they would not be trusted by any IT department.

Re:I've learned the hard way

[X0563511]

I've never seen that happen, even when accidentally installing the wrong drivers back in Windows 98, when shit could actually catch fire instead of just crashing!

Re:I've learned the hard way

[Anonymous Coward]

OT: but your sig is wrong (wherever it was quoted from). Go play around in, say, Solaris 10 with your Slackware knowledge. Have fun.

Re:I've learned the hard way

[phantomfive]

Um, I have?

Re:I've learned the hard way

[Anonymous Coward]

The single most common piece of hardware I install is printers --for others or personally. It follows the rule too --never go to WU when you have the brand new printer's disk and can just ignore autoplay and do a driver search. Point Windows at the disk and let it start installing. This is how I dodge HP bullets personally, but for those who can't manage their own PC I do plunk down the 300MB motherlode. Because the printer-scanner-fax machine combos try to do everything under the sun, despite how the users will really employ them. They'll just end up taking several times the desk space. Sucks to live in small new york city appartments. You can almost never buy an unbundled printer at stores, and when you can it costs like a pro.

is this BETA?

[the_fat_kid]

I thought for sure that I had missed the [Satire] tag

Connected to mass layoff of Windows SDETs? Maybe?

[xeno]

One of the bits of logic used for recent layoff and reorgs has been something like 'component/security/etc testing had become so mature at Microsoft (!) and ingrained into normal dev processes, that such a large population of SDETs (testers) across OS and key office products is unecessary.' Just chew on that for a second, and ponder how intensely stupid that seems.

But nevermind my opinion; I guess we're getting some at-scale empirical testing of whether getting rid of testers en masse was a good idea.

rubbing my chest with lion sperm

[Anonymous Coward]

000000000000h yeah!
bow wow!

It's pretty hard to roll back automated updates

[Brulath]

I hadn't realised it was an update which caused the error, so when I finally resorted to system restore it just auto-updated immediately and broke again. At which point a second System Restore decided it would fail to modify a file and thus refused to work. Four hours later, I had to format to get Windows back.

One thing I learned: Disable fast boot, if it's enabled, on your Windows machine (powercfg -h off will disable hibernation entirely). Apparently a Ubuntu boot dvd cannot mount an NTFS partition with write enabled if a hiberfile.sys is present (apparently windows leaves its mounts active and stored in said file, so modifying the file system would cause problems). You can mount it as read-only and get your data, but if you run into a problem that could be fixed by modifying or deleting files then you're out of luck if fast boot is enabled and the action required cannot be performed from the windows boot environment (you can't disable fast boot from it, the required services aren't loaded).

Your startup time will be a little slower, but you might just save that time if something ever goes wrong with your Windows install and system restore fails.

Re:It's pretty hard to roll back automated updates

[danknight48]

I hadn't realised it was an update which caused the error, so when I finally resorted to system restore it just auto-updated immediately and broke again.

Rule number 1 = Dont use system restore
Rule number 2 = Dont use system restore
Rule number 3 = Google "Stop 0x0000000e" error code on your BSOD.
Rule number 4 = Remember the last thing you did before the BSOD started happening, reverse the process. Job fixed.

One thing I learned: Disable fast boot, if it's enabled, on your Windows machine. Your startup time will be a little slower, but you might just save that time if something ever goes wrong with your Windows install and system restore fails.

All fastboot does is skip a few bios checks (eg: fast memory scan instead of full). It will not effect anything else, unless you have a hardware fault which can be detected at BIOS post.

Apparently a Ubuntu boot dvd cannot mount an NTFS partition with write enabled if a hiberfile.sys is present (apparently windows leaves its mounts active and stored in said file, so modifying the file system would cause problems).

Sounds like the Ubuntu DVD doesnt include NTFS-3G which is required for NTFS write ability on linux. Or simply its a safey feature to prevent you deleting the hibernation file.
The only time you need to keep this file is if your machine is in hibernation and powered off. Only then will it contain possible data your working on that isnt technically saved. If you wernt in hibernation when you powered the machine off, the file is just a placeholder for the next hibernation.

Re:It's pretty hard to roll back automated updates

[Anonymous Coward]

There was never a good reason to have "fast boot" enabled. It's a hidden feature designed for tech illiterates who don't understand anything except ON and OFF.
You should use either sleep, hibernate or the regular shut down.

Also don't use System Restore, another half-assed feature for tech illiterates.
You should make system backups (with 3rd party software), which are much more reliable.

Re:It's pretty hard to roll back automated updates

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he's referring to the *WIndows* fastboot - not setting fast boot in BIOS.

Re:It's pretty hard to roll back automated updates

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu does have NTFS-3G on the live disk. It's possible that it checks for hyberfile.sys tho.

Re:It's pretty hard to roll back automated updates

[benjymouse]

All fastboot does is skip a few bios checks (eg: fast memory scan instead of full). It will not effect anything else, unless you have a hardware fault which can be detected at BIOS post.

Wrong. Fastboot hibernates the kernel but not the userland processes. It depends on drivers being capable of quickly re-initializing hw devices, but what it does is it brings up the kernel from a hibernated image and skips most of the usual hardware detection and device initialization.

Rule number 1 = Dont use system restore
Rule number 2 = Dont use system restore
Rule number 3 = Google "Stop 0x0000000e" error code on your BSOD.
Rule number 4 = Remember the last thing you did before the BSOD started happening, reverse the process. Job fixed.

Really, really stupid advice. System restore has N previous versions of your driver setup. You can reliably go back in time for the operating system but retain any changes to user files. It is stupid to NOT use system restore. Whenever you install a new driver, the system *will* retain the old files, registry settings etc as shadow copies. It is a well-tested and stable way to go back in time with your os.

Re:It's pretty hard to roll back automated updates

[Anonymous Coward]

... until System Restore borks the backed up files, which has happened to roughly every Windows user I know who has used it at least once. It is a regular occurrence, and why I've never worked for a company that has ever used it.

Re:It's pretty hard to roll back automated updates

[danknight48]

System restore has N previous versions of your driver setup. You can reliably go back in time for the operating system but retain any changes to user files. It is stupid to NOT use system restore. Whenever you install a new driver, the system *will* retain the old files, registry settings etc as shadow copies. It is a well-tested and stable way to go back in time with your os.

I love how even you had to highlight "reliably". Its a known issue with windows system restore, hence why you should never use it.

If you want reliable system restore:
- Ghost or DD your HDD.
Ideally a fresh install on your system, to ensure you get a clean OS to start with.
If you image the drive without installed drivers, you can quickly install fresh/updated ones if you restore. Preventing any old drivers causing issues (cough AMD+CCC)

- When shit hits the fan, or, you cant be bothered to fix it, or, you just want a fresh install,
simply restore the backed up image. Boot with a USB linux disk to recover any files before hand if required.

Thats the method i used for many many years, at home and at work.
Not only does it improve windows performance (by disabling system restore), its alot quicker and reliable method of restoring your system.

Re:It's pretty hard to roll back automated updates

[Trogre]

For a FLOSS alternative to Ghost I now use and highly recommend Clonezilla.

How about win 7?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything went belly up for me friday, simple operations in cad software (that always worked before) just completely freeze the machine. Old school lock up.

Re:How about win 7?

[50000BTU_barbecue]

Yes I can confirm that on my Windows 7 Home Premium SP1, the 2982791 update was present and it's removable.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Meet the new boss...

Same as the old boss...

Pending Restart..

[craznar]

So - my system has installed KB2982791 and is pending a restart.

How on earth do I remove it now, before restarting a system that may never restart ?

Re:Pending Restart..

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to Control Panel > Windows Updates > See Installed Updates...

click on KB2982791 and select uninstall update.

Re:Pending Restart..

[djdanlib]

You can't always, but you can prepare a recovery disk and also burn a copy of HBCD before your inevitable power cycle or reboot.

Re:Pending Restart..

[dwywit]

There were some posts in one of the microsoft support forums that indicated removing %system%\FNTCACHE.DAT resolved the problem. That led to discussions that it might have been systems with a large number of installed fonts that were vulnerable.

Windows will automatically replace FNTCACHE.DAT, so removing it won't hurt.

Re:Pending Restart..

[craznar]

I suspect you don't understand what 'pending restart' means in the context of updates.

For some it was just a plain black screen

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows not working at all. It seems like the right time for Linux on the Desktop to make some headway.

never update windows on patch day, wait a week

[Nyder]

One thing I have learned over the course of MS OS's lives, is to NEVER update the computer at within a week of the updates being released. MS had a nice reputation for putting out crappy patches every now and then.

You are the product tester and you get to pay for it. So be smart, let the stupid people get the BSOD's so you don't have to.

Re:never update windows on patch day, wait a week

[E-Rock]

Or, there's a lot of different windows configurations and they can't test them all. We updated a few hundred machines last week, zero problems. Sounds like we got lucky, but it's not as if these problems nuke every machine.

Re:never update windows on patch day, wait a week

[Anonymous Coward]

Variation between those machines being?

If they were all custom built with different settings and software installed, that means something.

If it was X hundred * Dell XYZ100 model machines with exactly the same hardware and drive images ghosted from the same master, with barely any differences outside the user directories, that means something a little different.

Re:never update windows on patch day, wait a week

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I have learned over the course of MS OS's lives, is to NEVER update the computer at within a week of the updates being released. MS had a nice reputation for putting out crappy patches every now and then.

You are the product tester and you get to pay for it. So be smart, let the stupid people get the BSOD's so you don't have to.

Or, keep Windows in a VM if you can. Rollback and restore become MUCH easier! But, yeah, anyone that deploys updates the week their released from Microshaft is either a noob or a boob!

Reference?

[jamesl]

This post and the linked article say, "Because of the bug's severity, Microsoft is recommending that anyone who updated go and uninstall a couple of the specific updates, or rollback using Windows Restore."

I note that neither this post nor the linked article reference or link to a specific instruction from Microsoft. Is this a joke?

Re:Reference?

[pslytely psycho]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2982791

Reference Known issue number 3.

The linked report is rather dull, lacking all of the OMG DEAD COMPUTERS EVERYWHERE, aspect.
It does confirm the problem, and states downloads were removed, followed by what appears to be (only glanced at and did not actually read) detailed instructions for 7/8 to remove the updates if you were negatively affected.

This is why I always wait one week and do my updates manually on the advice of a wizened old computer guru I knew years ago.

Do I need to delete fntcache.dat in Safemode too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or do I just uninstall the updates in Programs and Features?

Field day for hackers.

[whoever57]

Since some of the updates were for security fixes, this gives hackers time to analyze and reverse engineer the original fault, then use it against systems before there is a fix available.

Do I need to delete fntcache.dat in safe mode too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or do I just uninstall the updates in Programs and Features???

10 LET M$ = "Microsoft"

[tepples]

It's been M$ since the 1970s, back when Microsoft was a publisher of BASIC interpreters and names of string variables in BASIC ended with $.

Re:10 LET M$ = "Microsoft"

[phantomfive]

Well you got downmodded for that one. I guess people around here don't remember BASIC anymore.

Killer apps

[tepples]

"App" has been short for "application" before the introduction of OS X, let alone iOS. The definition of "killer app", for instance, came up during the Microsoft antitrust trial.

Developers remix

[tepples]

But the old boss is BOSS.

Its not just Windows, this affects Linux users too

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux users will be affected by this too. They will have to uninstall KB2982791 just like windows users. They are equally affected. They think they are so clever with their 'unbreakable' system, but it gets affected by this bug and all the viruses too. So there!

They fired 30% of their testers

[Anonymous Coward]

The Windows Serviceability team (dealing with updates) was decimated in the middle of last month, losing about 30% of their testers. This outcome is not surprising at all. Expect things to get much worse soon.

Re:They fired 30% of their testers

[slashmydots]

The remaining 70% are testing how much screwing with people it takes to convince them all to buy Windows 9.

Re:They fired 30% of their testers

[symbolset]

I suppose if you wanted a font of information about disastrous bugs marked "ship anyway" and unreported faults, you could do worse than a suddenly terminated tester.

Re:They fired 30% of their testers

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, they had to achieve the standard level of quality in the industry somehow to appease the investors.

Re:They fired 30% of their testers

[Anonymous Coward]

They should fire the whole OS division as well.

Bloody college students could make a better OS with their eyes closed. And no hands. Or a face. Or even being a person.
I'd love to see an OS made by dogs.

Re:They fired 30% of their testers

[Anonymous Coward]

And MS could lose 3%+ of their users. Some people won't be able to recover. Unix, MacOS and others seem to avoid this.

I must use Win7, but it is not allowed to be on the Internet once it is installed and initially updated. Internet work is handled by my Mac partition. I must say, I have NEVER had a Mac Update "brick a Mac" in the last 10 years, though I do admit I don't update on day one.

Re:They fired 30% of their testers

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but I'm going to have to dispute your statement. "decimated" is the past tense of "decimate", referring to applying capitol punishment to one out of ten men in a legion. With them losing 30% of their testers they went well beyond decimating.

Re:They fired 30% of their testers

[david_thornley]

Of the remaining 70%, the competent ones are updating their resumes and checking out other employment, although it's a bit early to do so after the layoffs. Remember, Nadella said layoffs would continue for about a year, in one of the stupidest moves I've seen a CEO not named Elop make recently (assuming Elop was acting out of incompetence rather than malice).

How many people will do this?

[tsa]

Since most people on this planet are not tech-savvy and don't read sites like /., I wonder what percentage of Windows 8 users will actually do the things Microsoft recommends.

Re:How many people will do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what percentage of users have been hit by this problem. I had no problem with the patches and would be curious to know why to avoid any problems in the future.

Re:How many people will do this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its alright the 3 people using Windows 8 probably reverted to Windows 7 long ago. But Microsoft still counts them as a successful sale.

Re: Even M$ intelligentsia Within M$ Condem MSW 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you shills hate that appellation so much? You ALWAYS have to respond with a vitriolic comment.

Is there some playbook or flowchart that says you're in trouble if you don't?

No problems here

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 8.1 fully updated, not a single problem.

delete fntcache.dat fixed some people

[clovis]

It appears that booting into recovery, or using a standalone Linux distro, and deleting C:\windows\system32\fntcache.dat solved the problem for some people, if not all of the ones who tried it.
There are other problems with the patches regarding fonts, but at least you'll be able to boot.

a case of the Mondays

[slashmydots]

One of the Window 7/8 glitches basically went like this. I changed the kernel mode drivers and now I'm going to reboot. Hey, it looks like a glorified temp file called fntcache.dat that's a cache for font-related stuff is corrupt. Should I keep loading the OS? OH HELL NO! Fuck everything! I quit! *blue screens*
Mega case of the Mondays. Seriously, who coded it to crash the entire OS if a font cache seems to be a bit off instead of regenerating or renaming it?

Re:a case of the Mondays

[phantomfive]

Seriously, who coded it to crash the entire OS if a font cache seems to be a bit off instead of regenerating or renaming it?

The same people who decided font processing in the kernel is a good idea.

Re:a case of the Mondays

[gtall]

You cannot just move font processing out of the kernel. To do remove kernel stuff piecemeal is asking for a system slower than Steve Ballmer's thought processes. The thing has to be designed from the get-go to be a lightweight kernel or else the machine spends all its time process swapping.

Re:a case of the Mondays

[Anonymous Coward]

>You cannot just move font processing out of the kernel?
Is that why Unix is so slow?

Re:a case of the Mondays

[Anonymous Coward]

All major OSes? There was a JB for i devices that was based on a privilege escalation bug I believe late last year or early this year.

Seeing as that's based on FreeBSD, I expect FreeBSD also has this problem.

Re:a case of the Mondays

[phantomfive]

You cannot just move font processing out of the kernel.

Yes, yes you can.

Re:a case of the Mondays

[robsku]

windows: where only way to make font processing fast was to do it in kernel spacen. What a crappy OS.

Upcoming fix?

[Animats]

Will this be fixed on the next Patch Tuesday? I haven't been using the Windows macines much lately, but one is powered up, idle, and accepting updates. Will it fix itself?

Re:Upcoming fix?

[symbolset]

If it machine checks its performance as a space heater will be slightly reduced, as the lack of spam zombie workload will leave it in an idle state.

Re:Upcoming fix?

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ, for fonts to crash the machine, this bug cannot be trivial. Band-Aid patches may be catching up with them.

For Win9, MS should go back to Service Packs...

[BUL2294]

This is a perfect example of why Microsoft should go back to doing Service Packs and not these seemingly random "feature updates" that have become the norm with Windows 8.x and Office 2013 (non-MSI / "click to install"). There's no standard codebase anymore and feature updates are just being installed willy-nilly, with no real support window for delayed installations. (At least with a SP, you had a year to test & work around a problem before MS pulled the support plug). This is another reason why companies don't want Win8.x--kernel-level updates with only a few days warning. (Articles were still talking about "Windows 8.1 Update 2" as recently as 2 weeks prior to August's Patch Tuesday). I'd hate to be an NT administrator fretting over all my 2012R2 installations right now.

Instead of getting a SP for Windows 8, we now have 8.1. Instead of getting SPs for Windows 8.1, we now have 8.1 Update 1 and 8.1 August Update. We have updates that come through the "Store" app. This is one of the reasons (granted, not the primary one) why the uptake of Windows 8.x is now slower than Vista's uptake some ~2 years post-RTM, and why Windows 7 is gaining market share, at the expense of XP and Vista. Companies don't want this model and the headaches that go along with it.

So, for Win9, just go back to a Service Pack model and make everybody happy. Yes, SPs cost a lot of money to put out, and yes MS ends up looking old-school, but the rigor with testing is (presumed to be) significantly higher than some rushed, "little" update. Windows 8.x is broken, and Microsoft keeps pitching a newer, faster cycle of feature updates, but this just proves they are incapable of properly handling such a model... Microsoft: you are not Apple, and you don't have to try to emulate them.

As for myself, so far my two Win8.1 installations (one x86, one x64) and one of 2012R2 in a VM are not showing problems from these updates... But I have only myself to blame for not waiting a few extra days. Of course, now MS will have to come up with an out-of-band fix (with even less testing) within the next ~3 weeks or will have to have 2 sets of patches for September's Patch Tuesday--one for those who haven't uninstalled these updates and one for those who have. Pure stupidity...

Re:For Win9, MS should go back to Service Packs...

[symbolset]

This is an example of why Microsoft's software ought not even be considered by a serious professional. It ticks all the boxes. Denial of service without user interaction. Security vulnerability with remote root potential. Workaround requires disclosed remote root potential. Recovery requires hands on the device.

It is only going to get worse.

Re:For Win9, MS should go back to Service Packs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft tries to be an Agile-But company since their current "stuff it in the kernel" client architecture seem to be slow to transform.

Re:For Win9, MS should go back to Service Packs...

[simplypeachy]

At least with Service Packs you knew that it was complicated and had a lot of updates to install, and were aware it could hose the machine. I've come to expect Microsoft's monthly updates be trouble-free, because they are almost every single occasion.

Re:For Win9, MS should go back to Service Packs...

[Anonymous Coward]

Has Microsoft actually changed anything with regard to service packs? I'm running Windows 7 Service Pack 1.

A service pack is essentially a snapshot of all hotfixes up to a certain point in time that seems to be stable. They're installed in such a way that all the hotixes with prerequisites don't clash with each other and users don't have to spend hours installing one prereq after another. Windows XP had weekly hotfixes as well, but due to its long life it had three service packs too.

Re:For Win9, MS should go back to Service Packs...

[BUL2294]

Generally speaking, old-school Service Packs were both the bundling of hotfixes and new kernel-level features (e.g. USB 3.0, 4K drive sectors, UEFI support, etc.). In the world of Win7 and lower, Patch Tuesday was generally limited to security fixes and parameter changes (e.g. daylight savings time changes). Microsoft would also make available optional updates to Windows components (Internet Explorer, Media Player, etc.) that you could apply as desired.

This model isn't true with Win8.x. They're putting out kernel/feature updates every few months, trying to appear more Agile. A few months back, there was a mini-furor over Update 1 in that you had 30 days to test & apply it to your systems, or get no new updates. There was no beta of the release code that administrators could test ahead of time, as was customary with Service Packs. Some users flipped--specifically companies. Microsoft backed down a teeny bit, but only offered to create a branch for those who wanted to hold off on Update 1--for one extra Patch Tuesday cycle (4-5 weeks).

Re:For Win9, MS should go back to Service Packs...

[BUL2294]

In addition, the "monthly updates" are generally security fixes that exists to solve a security hole--where proper interaction with the component shouldn't cause problems before or after the applied fix. They generally solve one security problem within the component (e.g. buffer overflow at xxxxxxxxxxxxxx when called by yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy). That's why they've generally been trouble-free. Microsoft has recently gone on-record stating that Patch Tuesday will now be getting more such non-security feature updates, and they won't be optional.

Re:For Win9, MS should go back to Service Packs...

[OfficeSupplySamurai]

I find it ironic that you say Microsoft should not try to be Apple and talk about how old-fashioned it is to release service packs, when in fact that's how Apple does OS updates. Apple tends to release large updates to OS X all together (10.x.y releases) rather than a lot of smaller updates with individual security and bug fixes and so forth.

Re: Its not just Windows, this affects Linux users

[Anonymous Coward]

Errr..ok,.how does this windows update affect linux users?

How about

[Anonymous Coward]

How about answer my question rather than just make a snarky comment about desktop wars?

Why would anyone in this modern age choose gnome over kde? KDE is opensuse's default, if I'm not mistaken, so he had to go out of the way to choose gnome. I'm really curious why.

Re:How about

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Gnome is better than KDE.

Re:How about

[michael_rendier]

I use fluxbox, because both gnome and kde are bloated and eat my processor just to sit there and do nothing...

Re:How about

[beastofburdon]

(readies bucket of gasoline)
You're full of shit! KDE is by far the superior desktop!!!!!

Re:How about

[beastofburdon]

I'll give you that one, but KDE is getting much better about its overhead. It will obviously never get down to the point of fluxbox, but should be entirely useable even on 5 - 10 year old hardware.

Am I the only around here

[Anonymous Coward]

that thinks these days Windows is just a damn good operating system?

I have been on that stupid anti MS train, but from vista it just gets better and better.

And the security is equal if not better then Linux.(Hardened linuxes, and BSD still wins)

Re:Am I the only around here

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. NT6 was the turning point when Windows became more useful than Linux for me.

Re:Am I the only around here

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Yes. NT6 was the turning point when Windows became more useful than Linux for me.

Vista? Really? I mean, if you'd said 6.1 then that would seem more plausible!

Re:Am I the only around here

[robsku]

I have lately ran win 7 on one of my system and still get annoyed of it's lackings. Even though it's best of windows systems so far, that really does not mean much.

Problem analysis

[lskovlund]

A 'softie has posted a reasonable-looking problem analysis here (look for the screenshot) and corroborated later in the thread. So, it's a problem with shortcuts to OpenType font files... which impacts e.g. Photoshop users. Nice.

Best Fix

[Murdoch5]

Upgrade to Linux and don't look back.

Mostly trouble-free

[swb]

Which is kind of the problem, because it is trouble free so it's kind of easy to get complacent about them.

I kind of wish they would create cumulative update bundles that could be installed the old way or to machines with limited online capability. It's just not practical to track individual updates and I've found third party software that creates offline repositories to be kind of hit and miss.

Re:Mostly trouble-free

[Anonymous Coward]

They have already made the monthly updates optional. I think a good model would be that security updates contains a subset of files that are in each monthly update. Companies can choose the entire monthly update or the security updates only.

It's Dead Jim

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows for the PC is dead Jim.

They put the stake in.

Said the rights

Had the wake

Its over

Re:Connected to mass layoff of Windows SDETs? Mayb

[Anonymous Coward]

When I contacted them, they Publically stated, "how are we going to know if a Patch works if you don't test it for us. Testing is expensive, we need our Customers help, please submit Feedback, when we get enough we'll have a meeting and decide whether its a bad patch or not." Seriously, these people are brain challenged.

Who uses auto update?

[gelfling]

Seriously, who? You should be about 90 days behind the curve with updates if you want to have a hope of not getting Satan Fucked.

Re:Who uses auto update?

[robsku]

Some of us prefer getting satan fucked, you insensitive clod!

Windows 8/8.1 alredy cripples PC

[Anonymous Coward]

A computer with Windows 8/8.1 installed is already crippled. It doesn't take a bad upgrade or patch to further cripple it.

Easy to avoid...

[mr_resident]

I only upgrade to versions which end in a even number. Works every time!

But then again, I only upgrade after taking my left shoe off, so that might be a factor too.

Re:Easy to avoid...

[steak]

In the past, for me, it was odd numbered versions of fedora; for what ever fedora core 2, 4, 6, etc. never worked right. 1, 3, 5 perfect. That seems to have changed though as just about every linux distro I have tried recently works right out of the gate.

I post anonymously here for a reason.

[Anonymous Coward]

If my job depended on "always working on it and closer to the perfect solution than I was last week", but never completing it, I don't think I'd ever complete it, unless of course they gave me a lifetime's worth of wages up front.

Or the backlight

[phorm]

My current favourite is laptop backlight support. I haven't figured out if it's an issue with recent kernels or the recent fglrx drivers, but the last update gave me a blank screen after X starts. Several people have reported it, mostly Asus laptops but also some Toshiba I believe.
Or at least it looked blank, until I took it into a room with good light and discovered that - hey - the backlight is just dialed down to zero. So now my choice is no vendor-accelerated driver, or no using the LCD :-(

Ubuntu is based on the UNSTABLE branch of Debian

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who did not know or forgot, Ubuntu is based on the UNSTABLE branch of Debian. Using Ubuntu IS being on the bleeding edge and you get what you deserve for not using the stable branch distros. Among those, Mepis is an excellent and stable distro that is perfect for beginners so none of that Debian is too hard to install nonsense please. Moreover, there are lots of easily customizable interfaces for these distros which is not so easy or clear with Ubuntu (frankly, I do not know if it can be done in the first place).

So the core of my message is this: stop worrying about the latest greatest gadget on your box. If you want to use Linux to the best of its capabilities use a secure and stable distro and for me, there is only one: Debian. No, I do not work for Debian but I have used it since the kernel was 2.5 or there about so I can safely say that the stable branch is stable and secure.

As for the original point of the conversation: Microsoft lost me long ago when they decided that updating the eye candy was more important than a fully journalized file system and a reformed (if indeed we must have one) registry. I am also none too happy of all the stuff that runs in kernel space that I have to ask -is that really necessary? Most of all, I have not installed an update before looking around since SP 2 killed my XP -strange to think of that as way back when! Want to relax? Use some form of UNIX... don't know a lot but want to? OS X is the answer.

Go back to Debian stable...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had problems here and there... like the pcmcia 802.11b adapter that had the same model number (and all packaging etc..) but a different radio (thanks netgear) but I went into the forums and asked around and I wasn't the only one with the problem (again, thanks netgear -yes, sarcasm) and there was a working solution for the problem. Unstable things just give you more problems to worry about and still do not solve your network problems. I have another example that might be helpful: I have a printer that refused to work when connected directly but a bit of checking and a few $ later... printer server parallel to RJ-45 and a switch and printing like it never happened. My point is that there are solutions (and indeed, I do not know all the things that you've tried) that seem insane or weird but work every time. Now, as an added bonus, when my girlfriend comes over and she wants to print I just grab an RJ-45 cable and plug her in.

Debian has a great support community and often, such problems have solutions that you can grab from another distro (a la Microsoft missing DLL) without giving up the stability of the stable branch.

why I haven't addressed your specific issue with networking? I have no idea what it might be and without lots more detail -totally out of the purview of this forum- no one would.

Re:Go back to Debian stable...

[jenningsthecat]

why I haven't addressed your specific issue with networking? I have no idea what it might be and without lots more detail -totally out of the purview of this forum- no one would.

Thanks, but I wasn't looking for that anyway. I used to love doing things TO my computer, but I've gotten to the stage where I'd rather concentrate on doing stuff WITH it, and I no longer have much patience for tracking down this kind of problem. Changing to Xubuntu was simpler, and aside from the Windows-like rebooting after updates, it's been pretty good.

No problem here

[Anonymous Coward]

I gather that, whilst this obviously does affect a reasonable number of people, I haven't had any issues on two machines; neither have my colleagues, of whom at least 4 are well up to date. The rest should be up to date, but who knows... Anyways, so it's a bum patch that affects some people badly and does nothing bad for others. I'd love to know what the common denominator is -- I'm suspecting AMD bridge, since that's the one thing I've noticed with other reporters that I don't have.

Re: Its not just Windows, this affects Linux users

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing how many Linux haters don't even know the first thing about Linux. They must be 30 year olds still living in their parents basement, watching pron on mommy and daddys windows computers while they're at work.

We just can't win...

[iq145]

i doubt we ever will