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Windows 10 Forced Update Resets Default Apps To Microsoft Products (theinquirer.net)
Freshly Exhumed writes: Microsoft has told The Inquirer that it is aware of a bug which has been causing users' default programs to switch to the bundled Microsoft options. After deleting the update, a user discovered the next day that Windows had reinstalled it and reset the default settings again. InfoWorld gives some real world scenarios: "If you have Chrome as the default browser on your Windows 10 computer, you'd better check to make sure Microsoft didn't hijack it last week and set Edge as your new default. The same goes for any PDF viewer: A forced cumulative update also reset PDF viewing to Edge on many PCs. Do you use IrfanView, ACDSee, Photoshop Express, or Photoshop Elements? The default photo app may have been reset to -- you guessed it -- the Windows Photos app. Music? Video? Microsoft may have swooped down and changed you over to Microsoft Party apps, all in the course of last week's forced cumulative update KB3135173."
It seems that accidentally is another English word that is reversing its meaning.
So sorry, it won't happen again until next update.
Never attribute to malice etc etc, but this isn't the first time Microsoft has pulled this sort of crap, and the fact that they still haven't put safeguards in place to prevent these "bugs" is telling.
I usually hate class action lawsuits, but as a Win10 user I'm getting sick of this crap. Between the spying, excuse me, "telemetry", the reboots in the middle of the night with the laptop closed, to resetting all my app associations, it's just a fucking joke. I don't believe for a second the app associate reset is a "bug", or a "glitch". It's something Microsoft is trying to sneak past us hoping that, if they do it enough times, we'll give up and use their app instead of the one we want.
Don't tell me to run Linux. I do run Linux. I also need my laptop for things Linux won't run.
Windows 10 updates have been doing this since it was released to the general public in July 2015, why is it only just making headlines now?
I was prompted to select Microsoft Edge earlier this week and selected Google Chrome instead. Not sure if that was the forced update or gamma radiation.
As an IT support contractor, Microsoft is a JOB SECURITY company that pays my salary. Every month the same Windows issues popped up on different computers that need remediation. I'm 20 years into my IT career with Windows. Woo-hoo!
Microsoft is simply apping apps that app other apps, which is what modern app appers know is the right thing to do!
Apps!
People keep saying MS is changing for the better, but this is the exact kind of shit that earned them so much enmity in the first place.
There's an even more evil bug going around in the Windows 10 fever pit right now, the sudden loss of Start menu functionality. One day you boot up and although there's still a Stafrt button, it no longer brings up its menu, and any program icons you pinned to the Taskbar are gone. As with so many other bugs in a new Windows version, a search reveals that a lot of people are getting this and there is a plethora of suggested workarounds, but none of them will work. You have to reinstall Windows.
With Windows 10 users living in the in the nightmare world of the Panopticon, I'll bet dimes to dollars Microsoft knows exactly how many people are not using Microsoft's own programs to open their software. Some manager somewhere saw the numbers weren't good enough to ensure her bonuses, so MS pushes out an update to reset the preferences which users have clearly chosen. I bet it works, too, after 3 months the numbers are will still be above where they were before the update. Evil like this has the unfortunate tendency to work.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I tried to use Corel VideoStudio X5 yesterday, but it crashed on startup. Did some searching and discovered Micrososoft security updates KB3134814, KB3126587 and KB3126593, installed on Feb. 9, 2016 were the culprits. After removing them Corel worked fine again.
Windows 10 upgrade only resets the defaults if you go with the "recommended settings" option. If you select "customize" then it prompts you whether to update your default programs or keep the existing.
If you take Microsoft's "recommended settings"; is it any surprise that they set you up on Edge for your browser, the new windows 10 photo viewer, etc, and a few other application defaults?
It's nuts. There is a REAL problem with Microsofts telemetry situation; but too many of you get side tracked by every little irrelevant detail; and then run around like chicken little foaming at the mouth; and it takes all your credibility away.
- "Oh no! Windows 10 has waaay too much telemetry ... "
o "Oh, that sounds a little disturbing, tell me more?"
- "Oh no! Windows 10 sets your default browser to edge if you select 'recommend settings'.
- "Oh no! Windows 10 tries to connect to the internet so that it can update the icon that says whether or not you are connected to the internet!"
- "Oh no! Windows 10 connects to the internet a thousand times in the first 24 hours"
o "er...I see you left Windows update service turned on!"
- "OMG Micro$$$oft evil! Bing sounds stupid. They made it easier to get to device manager and control panels... by changing somehting. EVIL!!"
o "Yeah, I've forgotten why I was listening to you."
That's really not fair. This is nothing like the house that Gates built. Microsoft of the 1990s and early 2000s went to extraordinary lengths to ensure stability and backward compatibility on the Windows platform, far beyond what most in the industry have ever done before or since. They did start to shift their stance on that a few years ago, with for example less effort to support other people's software and devices/drivers that relied on undocumented features, but that should never really have been their responsibility in the first place so personally I don't hold that against them.
However, this "update any time we feel like it and break whatever" attitude is relatively recent and seems to be squarely on Nadella and his senior management team, who can't get the boot fast enough as far as I'm concerned. Microsoft of 2016 is actively customer-hostile in numerous ways, and as both a private individual and a business person I want the old MS back so I can get on with using computers to help me do interesting and useful things instead of fighting with them.
I was in a meeting just this past week with a bunch of other local consultants and freelancers, and at lunch time this subject happened to come up because someone had been looking for a new PC and checking out the latest status with Windows 10. It turned out that nearly half the people in the room -- and these were all clued-up people when it comes to IT, who would not make decisions about infrastructure or security policy lightly -- no longer install any Windows updates on their Win7/8 machines by default now, even security updates unless a specific threat was identified. Literally no-one there was installing more than security updates as standard policy any more. Also literally no-one was using Windows 10, nor had worked with any customer or client who was using Windows 10 outside of evaluation/lab settings yet. The general sentiment seemed to be that a lot of places are deferring major purchasing decisions until at least the dust has settled, or in a few cases actively switching to alternatives (almost invariably Linux on the server side and Apple for laptops).
For an organisation that famously had "Developers, developers, developers!" as its battle cry under previous management, that is a potentially catastrophic shift in attitude from a group that would almost certainly have favoured a Microsoft platform for a wide range of projects just a few years ago.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
With virtualisation and web-based services, the OS barely matters any more. This is part of the reason that MS are suffering - they can't tie you into their application format, or even their browser, and neither can they stop you running Windows only where necessary for compatibility and in isolated VM's.
Look at Chromebooks - the browser is the OS nowadays. And any service supplier that doesn't realise that is going to be ousted as soon as their competitors do. Hell, with Node.js, emscripten, etc. you can run traditional programs in the browser almost as if they were native (go have a look at the emscripten example 3D games on their website).
The tie-downs for my uses are actually hardware-based. Where you have to have a USB dongle, or a Smartcard reader (e.g. banking, etc.) in order to do a task. Though USB passthrough exists, it ties you to particular computers and locations, and it also means that it's harder to setup and maintain.
I can't move our banking software because it relies on a USB smartcard that ties itself to the machine's Windows installation.
But, pretty much, if I was in charge of a company in my industry or any of the others that I could conceivably work in, I could easily justify and manage without any particular OS or proprietary software at all. There's not much nowadays that relies on such things, and those that do seem very limiting and old-fashioned.
Hell, a few years back, there was a boiler in the place I worked - a serious thing that covered a huge site from one location. The software was the most locked-down thing I've ever seen. But I was still able to virtualise it by tricking the installers into thinking the machine they were in front of was just a physical machine. They installed all the software, set it up, activated and registered the MAC interfaces, etc. And when they were gone, I took the VM image they'd actually been working on and moved it to the servers, and turned the workstation back into just-another-client.
I've had to deal with quite a few manufacturers who just don't like you VM'ing things but can't justify exactly why. For at least three of them, I've tricked them like that or just virtualised it and then fixed the software. The manufacturers who get my custom easier are those who go "Oh, yes, well we have an image for VMWare or HyperV if you want one, we just don't advertise it".
Hell, the firewall where I work is actually a VM nowadays, and our VM's are 40:60 Linux and Windows. Even then, it's usually only because we separate by task and are licensed on Server Datacenter (so we can run unlimited VM copies of Windows on them), so we're running many more copies of Windows than strictly necessary. If costs changed, we could easily go 90:10.
It's not really people, though. Not in the traditional sense of the word: if you follow their posting patterns you'll discover that those saying things like "Microsoft has changed into a friendly, modern company" or whatever nonsense like that, are actually some kind of shills/sockpuppets. Their posting patterns don't resemble those of an actual person - they seem to be "activated" at strategic times, either to support some Microsoft action, or to spread FUD about an incriminating news regarding Microsoft. I fully expect that such accounts are farmed by PR companies, and that tens, perhaps hundreds, are controlled by a single employee.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I like the free version of PDF-Xchange viewer. I found it outperforms Adobe and FOXit in performance, and included annotation features.
I also get annoyed when Chrome and Firefox keep showing PDFs in their shitty built in viewers.
You are assuming that there was something wrong with the updates rather than something wrong with the way Corel had programmed VideoStudio. The More Information section of at least one of the knowledge base articles mentions VideoStudio (X8 and X9) and suggests that you install the updates from Corel to fix the crashing issues.
I have no idea if that actually fixes the problem or just puts the onus to fix it back onto Corel, but it does indicate that this might not be a mistake on Microsoft's part.
Those guys are behind the curve and will soon be scrambling to make sure everything is up to date.
It's the same situation we had with every major revision of Windows in the past. Hordes of people insisting on keeping their outdated, but working and mission critical, systems up and running. Hordes of people slowly finding that they're having to pass on using the most up to date tools for their jobs because they decided to stick with end of life platforms. Hordes of people getting increasingly frustrated as their old infrastructure begins to fail and they're stubbornly insisting they keep on the old and 'working' while it falls apart.
I understand. I didn't want to let go of Windows 2000, what benefit did Windows XP give me beyond a pretty face? But you know, I was wrong then, and they're wrong now. Let's hope they wise up and start taking the steps to migrate successfully instead of waiting until the infrastructure is 15 years old and crumbling at the slightest touch. Those XP guys who come into my repair shop are a sorry bunch, y'know. But the Vista guys are too, and recently the 7 guys are looking pretty down themselves. It will be far too soon that 8 is on the chopping block, but we'll have the same problems with the same people who don't want to ride the curve and prefer to prop up failing systems with bubblegum and toothpicks.
It's just the same old story. It's not Nadella's Microsoft, it's start working on your migration plans and get ready because this happens every five years and it's not going to stop. It comes with the territory. Keep your tools maintained and replaced them as needed, don't hold onto that rusty hatchet that's going to crumble when it hits the wood, that you've already duct taped together. Be better than that at what you're doing.
Foxit Reader is also available for Linux. It's fairly light and stable. I don't do much more than read PDFs or sometimes save files as a PDF.
Evince is also a suitable reader. Oddly, it's named "Document Reader" on my distro. No, I don't actually know why.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The thing is, the earliest these guys are really going to be in trouble is Win7 EOL, and that's not for almost 4 more years. Win8 is even later.
Until that time, Microsoft have committed to supporting these platforms, which means if there really are essential security fixes then they ought to be provided. Even if they aren't, most of the customers and clients these guys work with have sensible defence in depth arrangements and don't rely primarily on OS updates for security anyway.
As for compatibility, Win7 is still the most popular OS on the planet and Win10 adoption in business seems almost non-existent so far. No-one in that group was even slightly concerned about any software or hardware they rely on stopping working in the near future. If anything, there was more concern about whether essential software and hardware might stop working in the future with Win10 than whether it would continue to be supported on Win7 or Win8.
Obviously everyone was also wondering how long current platforms would really remain viable for, particularly for Win7 machines, but the consensus was that Microsoft would almost certainly have made significant changes and could well be under new management by the time any real pressure was mounting. No-one expected OS-as-a-service to become standard practice in business environments, whatever Microsoft might like to happen. A few did think it might become established with home users unless a significant competitor appears, and there were some comparisons made with Apple's mobile devices and the iOS upgrade treadmill as a possible indicator of how much consumer markets will tolerate things changing/breaking in ways they don't like.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Since that update (KB3135173), I keep getting told that PDF is reset to Edge, JPG is reset to Photos, and MP3 is reset to Groove Music, but nothing actually happens to my file preferences. Windows 10 just keeps announcing that it made the changes, on a daily, or slightly less often, basis. It doesn't seem to be associated with any task in the Task Scheduler, either. I checked the logs at the time of the message. It just keeps telling me that "an app caused a problem" so it's resetting my preferences in those three file types. All three announcements come at the same time.
But nothing actually happens other than the announcement.
I'm running in a Limited User Account. Could that have anything to do with it? Why wouldn't the OS be able to make the changes? I'm glad it can't seem to do what it's threatening to do, but it's weird.
I feel just like a beta tester. Windows 10 is flaky.
The More Information section of at least one of the knowledge base articles mention...
So I went to the linked article which pointed me for further information to a MS security bulletin which said I needed to refer to a KB article which sent me back to the security bulletin. I think I saw a white rabbit with a wristwatch at some point too. In any case I think what MS is trying to tell us is that they have a problem with too many levels of indirection through pointers.
I highly recommend Sumatra PDF as an alternative to Foxit, and qBittorrent as an alternative to uTorrent.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC