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Windows 10 Updates Are Now Ruining Pro-Gaming Streams (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader cites a report on The Guardian: Perhaps there's nothing more annoying than going in for the kill to suddenly be "pooped on" by a Windows 10 automatic installation taking out your computer mid-stream to your 130,000 or so followers. After deciding to advertise during the weather by attempting to automatically install midway through a forecast, Windows 10 is starting to wreak havoc with gamers. Ex-professional Counter Strike player turned full-time streamer Erik Flom was rudely interrupted mid-game and live on Twitch by Windows 10 automatically installing on his PC. "What. What!? How did this happen! Fuck you Windows 10!" Flom said. "Oh my God! You had one job PC. We turned off everything. Update faster you fuck!"

48 of 500 comments (clear)

  1. oh crap by ambisinistral · · Score: 5, Funny

    I would post an answer, but my Windows is updating

    --

    deserve's got nothing to do with it...

    1. Re:oh crap by rdelsambuco · · Score: 5, Funny

      I replied to you using my raised middle finger.

      --
      I comment occasionally so that I can mod others -1 overrated or -1 offtopic.
    2. Re:oh crap by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Funny

      You must be using Linux then.

    3. Re:oh crap by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The same (or equivalent) people paying thousands of dollars to watch people run around with a real ball.

    4. Re:oh crap by SpankiMonki · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I feel the same way about golf.

    5. Re:oh crap by lgw · · Score: 4, Informative

      Who the fuck is PAYING these folks to sit and watch them...???

      Last year, more people physically traveled to a stadium to watch the League of Legends finals than did so for the College basketball finals.

      Think about that a bit.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    6. Re:oh crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      No you can't. At least, not as well as the guys getting paid to do it. If you could, you would either be getting paid to do it, or at least know enough to not argue that pro video gaming is any different than pro sports.

    7. Re:oh crap by bev_tech_rob · · Score: 4, Informative

      Most streamers use a separate streaming PC that captures the video output from the gaming PC as well as receiving audio and displaying the overlays onscreen. Probably the case here.

      After looking at the video, it appeared to me that the streamer ALREADY had Windows 10. This was just an update (note the screen said "Installing updates FOR Windows 10).

      In my experience, the update doesn't kick off automatically unless you have hit the "snooze" button (told Windows to wait) a few times over several days. Windows then just says "Fuck it" and installs anyway. Usually right when you are in the middle of something.

      I'm not defending the practice. It sucks in my book, but that has been my experience.

      --
      You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
    8. Re:oh crap by cfalcon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > I mean seriously...people are paying people to do this?

      I watch a little more professional video games in a year than I do other professional sports, though neither uses up too much of my time. Football is fun to watch, but so are pro streamers.

    9. Re:oh crap by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Last year, more people physically traveled to a stadium to watch the League of Legends finals than did so for the College basketball finals.

      That's because League of Legends is at least somewhat interesting.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    10. Re:oh crap by ctishman · · Score: 4, Informative
    11. Re:oh crap by dwywit · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Same for "how do I.....?" questions about almost anything. I now append -youtube for such queries.

      I respond much better to clearly written instructions - blurry screen caps with a 3-pixel mouse DO NOT contribute to my understanding.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    12. Re:oh crap by mea_culpa · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Who the fuck is PAYING these folks to sit and watch them...???

      There's an interesting documentary on Netflix about this called All Work All Play. I had no idea how big this really was. It is really interesting and exciting to see.

    13. Re:oh crap by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I thought that with Windows 10 you no longer had the option of disabling automatic updates.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    14. Re:oh crap by MysteriousPreacher · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yup. People devote their limited time on this planet to watching TV shows where people just sit around in a house and have inane conversations. They pay to watch people chase a small ball from one of the field to the other. Some consider it a week well spent grinding every night for some imaginary item in a game. And some consider it entertaining and worthwhile to go protest for the social justice cause of the week.

      People like different things.

      --
      -- Using the preview button since 2005
  2. Irony!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How long have Windows gamers been making fun of Linux?

    1. Re:Irony!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      YOU have control over cron jobs.

      MICROSOFT has control over your Windows PC. Not you.

    2. Re: Irony!!! by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 4, Informative

      Unless you're doing something retarded, chron shouldn't be interfering with anything you do. Might consume background resources depending on what you've configured, but shouldn't ever pop any surprise windows or prompts, ever.

    3. Re: Irony!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Windows does a terrible job supporting Linux games. Linux runs Linux games perfectly. This is a software problem.

    4. Re:Irony!!! by cas2000 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Wesnoth? I suppose I could play that. Or one of the many other free games that are worth playing.

      Or I could play one of the thousands of linux native games available on steam (4321 games according to http://store.steampowered.com/...) or gog or from humble bundles etc.

      Many or most of those 4000+ games are probably crap, but the same is true for Windows games. 90% of everything is crap (according to Ted Sturgeon's famously pollyannaish adage).

      Or I could play one of the thousands more windows games that work in WINE.

      10+ years ago, I used to play games exclusively with WINE on Linux. Several years later, I built a Win7 box to play the games I purchased that wouldn't run (or ran badly) on WINE (most of which run perfectly on wine now).

      In a year or two, I expect I'll be dumping the Win7 box and switching to exclusively playing Linux native games + WINE for the handful of windows-only games that i actually care about. I have more games in my steam account (on both Windows and Linux) than I have time to play...I don't feel that there's any lack of games available.

      I certainly won't be running Windows 10, because my computers belong to me, not to Microsoft. And I have no wish to become Microsoft's product to be sold to advertisers and other spies.

      (and, yes, I have removed/disabled/firewalled their spyware from Win7 - whatever it takes)

  3. English translation? by awkScooby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    After deciding to advertise during the weather by attempting to automatically install midway through a forecast, Windows 10 is starting to wreak havoc with gamers.

    ????

    1. Re:English translation? by QuietLagoon · · Score: 5, Informative

      Windows 10 interrupts a live on-air weather forecast. http://betanews.com/2016/04/27...

    2. Re:English translation? by sbrown7792 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Topical reference with no link. Here's what they were referring to.

  4. most powerful windows yet - by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    That's Windows 10, great new OS with improved abilities, able to annoy users even before it is installed.

  5. windows has the time sense of a three-year old by Pseudonymous+Powers · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Hello, user. Windows here. Listen, I really need to shut down to update myself. Would you like me to do that immediately? Or would you like to be reminded again in four hours?"

    "Remind me again in four hours."

    "Gotcha, see you in four hours."

    [Ten minutes later.]

    "Hello, user. Windows here. Listen, I really need to shut down to update myself. Would you like me to do that immediately? Or would you like to be reminded again in four hours?"

  6. Why are people using animated GIFs?! by roninmagus · · Score: 4, Informative

    if it's a video, use something made for video. Here's a youtube link to the event. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  7. Re:Computer literacy is at all times low by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why would being a gamer mean that you would actually be any good at administering a computer?

    Most people in the office use computers all day, and still had no idea that you can Ctrl-C to copy selected text.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  8. Re:Computer literacy is at all times low by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would being a gamer mean that you would actually be any good at administering a computer?

    Why would being good at administrating a computer mean that you could disable Windows 10 -related updates?

  9. Re:What the hell is 'Pro Gaming'? by hesiod · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why are we allowing Video Gaming to become a spectator sport?

    Why do you think you should have a say in "allowing" something to become a "spectator sport"? It affects you in almost no way whatsoever. If you don't like it, don't watch it. Other people do like watching it, so let them spend their time and money on what they enjoy. I think it's idiotic, but idiots will do what idiots do.

  10. Re:Computer literacy is at all times low by sinij · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why would being a gamer mean that you would actually be any good at administering a computer?

    Kids these days, real gamers used to know how to free 640K better than anyone else.

  11. Re:Computer literacy is at all times low by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The problem is not computer literacy but a lack of control over Windows Update in Windows 10. While earlier versions had options like "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them" and "Download updates but let me chose whether to install them" Windows 10 has no such options. Windows 10 just downloads and installs the updates at a set time (3:00am).

    As for turning off Win 10 crapware, Windows Update isn't really crapware but an essential feature to get security updates. Turning it off would not be a good idea.

    This is the issue with Windows Update in Windows 10, your options are to turn it off entirely and get no security updates, or let it do whatever you want. If you don't want a particular update there's not much you can do. If you uninstall it Windows 10 update will just reinstall it. You can use the tool to defer a particular update (which is a separate download and doesn't come with Windows 10), but the update will still get installed when a newer version comes out.

    You basically have no control.

  12. My favorite dirty Windows 10 trick by pezpunk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    on my wife's laptop, it had been asking her for months if she wanted to upgrade to Windows 10, and she kept clicking no thanks. Well, last week it tried a new tactic -- it said "do you want to upgrade to Windows 10 now, or later?" she picked "later" (meaning never), but the thing dutifully upgraded to Windows 10 once she walked away! i guess it figured it was "later" and had her permission. (and yes of course she fucking hates it, it adds nothing of value!)

    nasty trick, Microsoft!

    --
    i could live a little longer in this prison
    1. Re:My favorite dirty Windows 10 trick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      GWX Control Panel FTW.

      http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

      You know your product sucks when other people create and distribute code to prevent your product from succeeding. Tobacco vendors get more love.

  13. Re:What the hell is 'Pro Gaming'? by Scarred+Intellect · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Aside from the whole problem of 'Pro Gaming' in general: what the heck? Why are we allowing Video Gaming to become a spectator sport? Personally I don't care about somebody's spot on a leaderboard. I go into games like World of Warcraft to immerse myself in a virtual world. Once you accept that there are 'winners' in such endeavors, you automatically become a loser.

    Aside from the whole problem of "Pro Sports" in general: what the heck? Why are we allowing football to become a spectator sport? Personally I don't care about somebody's spot on a line of scrimmage. I go into games like football to immerse myself in the physical sport. Once you accept that there are 'winners' in such endeavors, you automatically become a loser.

    What's with all the negative "I don't care, surely no one else does! Why is this on Slashdot?!" comments lately? Go moderate the firehose.

    To respond directly to your comment, most IT professionals aren't even professionals, so it's no wonder that video game professionals don't have the necessary expertise to tune their systems properly.

  14. Re:Simple question by mrchaotica · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why isn't there more mainstream backlash against Windows 10?

    It's gonna have to wait at least until Windows 10 kills somebody (say, by shutting down their hospital life support to install updates) for that to happen, and probably not even then.

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  15. Re:So is there a way to disable it? by ITRambo · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can install GWX Control Panel and set it to remove all Windows 10 items. Then turn on monitoring, in the program, so that when Microsoft tries to get around your wishes, you'll get a notification of it.

  16. Re: Incorrect hit piece by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, depending on your windows update settings, windows 10 can fully automatically install without any user intervention, and in fact does so. What happens though is it upgrades you're machine to 10, boots to it, and then shows you an EULA, which if you decline, then it downgrades back to 7.

    This is really not a nice thing to do to your customers, and even automatically uninstalls software that it deems incompatible with 10.

  17. Re:Even worse! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    PC: "Hi, Windows here, I'm so glad you decided to shut down your laptop, because now I can install those updates that I downloaded and didn't feel were worth the trouble of asking you about earlier! It'll only take about 15-20 minutes!"

    My friend: "But I want to put my laptop away so I can leave now?"

    Me: (Really, he should at least use Hibernate instead of insisting on shut down every time.)

  18. Re:So is there a way to disable it? by markzip · · Score: 5, Informative

    Steve Gibson (grc.com) has written a tiny freeware program called "Never10" https://www.grc.com/never10.ht... (Warning: GRC has always been an ugly website). It's basically a simple user interface to the Windows GPE and other tools that Microsoft provided but made difficult to find.

  19. Re:So is there a way to disable it? by richy+freeway · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes.

    Import this into your registry.

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Gwx]
    "DisableGwx"=dword:00000001

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
    "DisableOSUpgrade"=dword:00000001

    I've done this on 4 or 5 machines at work that we have to keep on 7 and any sign of Windows 10 has completely vanished.

    Hope this helps.

  20. Re:Computer literacy is at all times low by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 3, Informative

    So far it should be sufficient to limit Windows Update to "important" updates but don't let it collect "recommended" updates. KB3035583 is only "recommended", not "important".

    If you don't trust Microsoft even that far, you could switch off Windows Update and use a third-party tool like WSUS Offline Update instead (http://www.wsusoffline.net/) which will do essentially the same, with some extra blacklisting by the maker of WSUS Offline Update.
    Obviously this means trusting some guy on the internet more than Microsoft, but WSUS Offline Update has a good reputation so far and my own experience with it is positive.

    --
    C - the footgun of programming languages
  21. One Yorkshireman by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Funny

    You were lucky t'have 640K. Real gamers used t'have t'wait for games t'load off scratchy cassette recordings which often had to be rewound multiple times and even then most of the 32K of memory was tak'n up by the display so parts of the 8-bit OS were overwritten for the game to run.

    But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.

    [Cue ZX81 owner...]

  22. Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Finally this is getting mainstream attention. Windows automatically updating with a big "fuck you" while you're doing work - and not even saving your fucking work - is one of the biggest most blatant lack of regard for their users I've ever seen. I shudder at how many man-years of work have been lost by this process.

  23. Dear Microsoft, by marked · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a somewhat hardened veteran of software installation, and the unbounded stupidity that arises from boneheaded mistakes that occur, I would like to point out the following:

    Windows 10 Update installation does not follow the guidelines for updating as explicitly laid out in your software, that is "we will update when you are not using the computer". To help matters further, we will specifically exclude during the following hours "8am to 5:30pm".

    So WHY THE FUCK WAS THERE AN UNCONTROLLED INSTALLATION OF AN OS UPDATE AT 4PM TODAY DURING THE TIME I WAS ACTIVELY USING THE SYSTEM? And when I say uncontrolled, it was not "oh click later to install, it was "we are rebooting now to install, OK". No deferral, no postponement, just instant notice.

    Not to mention that the reboot occurred during a very intense multiplayer fight that I was the host of, which effectively drop-kicked several players out into the ether without me being able to contact them to let them know what was going on.

    Did you mean 8am - to 5:30pm my local time, or that of the Microsoft HQ, in sunny whereever? It is bad enough that games developers can't actually remember how many days there are in April, yet to fuck up simple time management for updating has to be some fairly serious mismanagement on the part of senior design leads.

    Or could it be that it completely ignores it like the boneheaded mechanism that only allows 10hour "active" windows slot, because there is no possible reason why people at home could not be using it from 7 in the morning until midnight? or am I completely in the dark about usability that requires a 14 hour window to update on a daily basis?

    Of course to further the boneheaded-ness it completely fucked the graphics drivers, where it greenscreened just at idle on the desktop - to the point I had to continuously reboot until I could get to the stage where I could get a CMD prompt up and manage to type "shutdown /o /r /t 1" to get a relatively swift reboot into a mode where I say yes, I want to run a troubleshooting step, and reboot, and then select safe mode, and then reboot into it.

    Not to mention that it has been a known problem with the graphics drivers since the last update, and putting it down to "it is the responsibility of the driver manufacturers (Microsoft Engineer)" is disingenuous at best, as MS is supposed to have WHQL'd the drivers, which means that MS should have caught this problem much earlier in testing during the automated build and test phase.

    To top that then off, I can't run Microsoft EDGE because the "built in administrator account can't run it".... I can't run explorer because you've managed to switch of the command searching in the cortana interface, which means that I can't run taskmanager, command, etc. What stupidity of a design decision managed to get authorised to create this situation?

    The insider fast ring is supposed to be a way to bring light problems that exist in interaction with components. Fucking with AMD graphics drivers in this way isn't an acceptable manner of implementing software best practices.

    Now I have to spend an hour fucking around with Device driver uninstaller, because in the infinite wisdom, you've managed to disable any ability of the driver software to recognise that there is an installed device, so of course the programs bomb out with a "no recognised device" so we won't do anything remotely sensible like uninstall the graphics drivers. Then I have to spend an hour waiting whilst I roll back the installation, then reinstall drivers, then reboot, reset up profiles, and ... then reboot again. That is a considerable amount of unnecessary reboots as you rush to get untested, useless additions out into the population.

    Yours,

    Entirely Hacked Off

  24. still recompiling by DrYak · · Score: 4, Funny

    Nope, he's the BSD user, *I* am the Linux user.
    But I couldn't show up earlier: I was busy recompiling my kernel, sorry for being late.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  25. Re:Computer literacy is at all times low by nukenerd · · Score: 3, Funny

    Obviously this means trusting some guy on the internet more than Microsoft

    No problem then.

  26. Re: Incorrect hit piece by dwywit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've seen two failures to revert to 7. Six hours of troubleshooting and I finally gave up, and started a fresh install of 7.

    It seems that W10 did something to the boot sector of the drive. Recovery fixboot, fixmbr, etc, etc, enable all legacy/UEFI boot in the BIOS - none of it worked. I could see the partitions when the HDD was plugged into another machine, so I was able to rescue the customer's data, but it just wouldn't boot the OS - not even a splash screen. Had to boot to recovery from an installation disc.

    W10 will have to stabilise (and I mean that in the most generous sense) before I'm prepared to recommend it to customers. W7 end-of-life isn't until 2020, it'll do just fine until then.

    --
    They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
  27. Re: Incorrect hit piece by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This gamer should be setting the time to not when he's streaming.

    That's by far the wrong answer, enough to the point that the term 'gross incompetence' comes to mind. No well working software should ever automatically do anything that has a high risk of completely trashing your system without i.e. giving you the opportunity to back up your data. (And worse is that this thing sets you up for two high risk operations, in addition to deleting software you have without asking you.)