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Ask Slashdot: Share Your Experiences With Windows 10
Long-time Slashdot reader shanen writes: The Start button is broken on one of my Windows 10 machines. Left click is dead. Fairly well known problem, but none of the solutions from non-Microsoft web pages has fixed it... My little meta-problem of the day is being locked out of Microsoft's so-called support. The email part (on outlook.live.com) works as usual, but every attempt to access the support part returns "Something went wrong and we can't sign you in right now. Please try again later." It's a black hole page with no links or options or suggestions. Once you get there, you are dead to Microsoft. Whenever I try to go to Microsoft support, that's all I've seen for several weeks now. ..
In general, Windows 10 seems to be a good thing -- but I don't really know how much it is abusing my personal information and privacy. The abusive relationship with Microsoft support is clearly the same, bad as it ever was.
The original submission has more thoughts on the market for consumer operating systems, and asks for suggestions about these two previously-known issues -- a start button that ignores left clicks, and an ongoing lock-out from Microsoft support. But there's obviously much more to talk about -- so share your thoughts in the comments. Have you had any interesting recent experiences with Windows 10?
In general, Windows 10 seems to be a good thing -- but I don't really know how much it is abusing my personal information and privacy. The abusive relationship with Microsoft support is clearly the same, bad as it ever was.
The original submission has more thoughts on the market for consumer operating systems, and asks for suggestions about these two previously-known issues -- a start button that ignores left clicks, and an ongoing lock-out from Microsoft support. But there's obviously much more to talk about -- so share your thoughts in the comments. Have you had any interesting recent experiences with Windows 10?
When it came out I thought hey lets see what the hub bub was about. Loaded up a VM with Windows 7. Proceeded to upgrade. End of upgrade.... failed, os unusable. Luckily it was only a VM on my Debian machine. Reinstalled 7 and said F 10. Although, it's been good $ of people willing to pay to reinstall 7 instead of 10.
I keep a Windows laptop around, to both keep up to date with how recent updates are coming along, as well as to play old games.
Windows is approaching the point where it might be workable for day to day use.
For work purposes, I don't need much, A bunch of terminal windows, a ssh client that can handle private keys stored on a Yubikey, and a web browser.
While the terminal emulation of the Bash prompt in the Ubuntu subsystem is still very poor, I could probably manage most of what I need for work from a windows box.
For my most common hobby, I need a few more things. Good NFS performance, a working automounter, an Xserver that supports hardware accelleration, and for the OS to not intercept any function keys for its own use.
The NFS performance of Windows 10 is decent, but alas if you install autofs into the Linux subsystem, it is unable to mount files. The few attempts I've made at mounting a NFS server from inside of the Linux subsystem have all failed. It appears that all mounts need to be done from Windows itself.
There are decent Xserver options for windows, but they (along with most other programs) suffer from Windows intercepting any press of F1 and using it to pop up a useless help screen, rather than passing it to the underlying application.
As far as I can tell, any program that doesn't make the right system call to indicate that it intends to use F1, will never see those keypresses as windows will intercept them.
If the automounter was working, and if there was a way to disable Window's interception of F1, I might actually be able to use it for hobby use as well.
Until then, I mainly use it for old games, and keep any productive work on Linux, BSD, and OSX.
Twice now I've had updates kill minor programs such as the built in photo editor. But a couple of weeks later, another update brings it back to life. Perhaps this is an artifact of the faster release cycle. Fortunately this computer isn't use for any actual work. I can understand why my employer is still just barely finished rolling out 7 to all company laptops.
Remember, MS has no QA left anywhere in the company. They were all cut in the first round of layoffs a couple years ago.
*You*, the public, are their QA department now, the same way FOSS works.
I installed Windows 10 on multiple machines and upgraded a Windows 8 on one. Disabled that stupid search bar. Don't use that windows store. Turned off the advertising and tracking options.
My experience: Zero. It's an operating system. It works. My software works just like it did on Windows 7, the Settings panel took a bit of figuring out on day 1, but then I haven't opened settings or control panel since.
Oh I did have the girlfriend's computer inexplicably suicide on day one where no startup repair options worked anymore, but then reinstalled Windows 10 and haven't had an issue on that machine since either.
To fix the dead start button if you did no bork your PC more with the fixes proposed on the net, all you need to do is take the MediaCreationTool and Upgrade (even if it's the same version it will go ahead and install). This will repair all broken links to the UI from Windows Store and the famous Start button.
This fix has not been posted anywhere but is well known among PC techs. I don't know why, it's not like it's a state secret.
Too many problems with the upgrade on my Windows 7 system and as I built (and upgraded a couple of times) it in 2008, I went ahead and built a new system.
Computer Case: Thermaltake LEVEL 10 GT, White
Power Supply: EVGA Supernova 850 watt G2 80 Plus Gold
Motherboard: Asus Maximus VIII Hero
CPU: Intel 4 Core i7-6700K
CPU Cooler: Corsair H90 (Hydro 90; Water based cooler)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series DDR4 PC2666 (4x8G: 32GB)
Video: MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G (2x)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO (500GB SSD) (Boot disk)
Storage: Seagate 2TB Internal Desktop Hard Drive- 3.5" Form Factor, SATA III 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache (x2)
Monitor: Wasabi Mango UHD430 Real 4K HDMI 2.0 SE 43 LG AH-IPS Panel UHD 3840×2160 Displayport 1.2 43-Inch 10Bit Monitor
Monitor: Acer G235H (2x)
Keyboard: IBM Model M (1986)
Mouse: Logitech Wireless Trackball M570
WebCam: Logitech WebCam Pro 9000
Speakers: Logitech X-540
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Blu-Ray: LG Black Blu-ray Disc Drive SATA Model UH12NS30
The main issue is the sound buzzes if something plays that is running in shared space such as YouTube, iTunes, or the Windows Video Player. The buzzing coincides with the system pausing as if the issue is taking full control of the system. In games that take over control of the sound, no buzzing.
I checked out the 'net and tried pretty much everything suggested with no success. But everything seemed to point to the Realtec on board sound. My old system had a Soundblaster X-Fi which had problems with the Windows 10 upgrade from Windows 7. Realtec points to the motherboard vendor for drivers and the Republic of Gamers folks seem to keep the system updated pretty often.
I'll also note that the 5.1 sound system doesn't work either. Just two speakers function regardless of the setting.
Finally I sprung for a SoundBlaster X card. I installed it and the drivers and voices sound muted but music is clear. Then I updated to the drivers from last week and it reversed. Voices are clear but music is muted. I even disabled the Realtec on board sound at the BIOS. No change.
Eventually I simply disabled the SoundBlaster card, enabled the Realtec, and at least games work.
With the Windows Anniversary download that just was installed, now there's buzzing and the pause in games which now kills the experience.
I'm going to poke at the drivers a bit more and then maybe roll back and maybe roll all the way back to Windows 7 on the new system.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
I'm still a sucker for OS upgrades, especially free ones, so I upgraded both Windows machines in my home (one laptop, one PC) to Windows 10 soon after it was released. I just recently upgraded the laptop to Anniversary edition. Overall the OS seems functional, and loses the annoying Windows 8/8.1 start screen, but I'm probably not taking full advantage of the features. I was interested in using Cortana, but not so interested that I would tie my local logins to a Windows Live account. Why not let me use the Cortana features with a local login? It's not like I'm lugging my PC everywhere or replacing it like a tablet.
Also one minor comment about the Windows 10-specific options dialogs is that they seem to have a lot fewer options, so 99% of the time I just use the search bar to get to the Windows 7-style options dialog.
Now the main reason I wanted to post was three pretty annoying bugs. One was with vanilla Windows 10 (haven't seen it yet in Anniversary, but the upgrade is young). That is that the start button and widgets on the start bar would sometimes stop working. This ranged from mildly annoying (I can't set the system volume!) to basically dealbreaking (I can't do any work with NO start bar!) Sometimes a reboot would fix this, but sometimes it wouldn't. In the worst case, after trying a bunch of online remedies, I basically had to do an in-place reinstall. That worked, but that shouldn't have to happen for such a basic piece of functionality. Perhaps a more effective repair install that fixes the start bar?
The second annoying bug (again, in vanilla Windows 10, don't know if this was fixed in Anniversary), but my laptop tends to wake up from sleep in tablet mode. It's a Lenovo Yoga, so it can theoretically be used as a tablet. However, I practically never use it as such and never put it in the tablet "position," and yet I have to keep dealing with the initial disorientation of the UI not being what I expect when I open it.
The last annoying bug just started happening with Windows 10 Anniversary on my laptop. It seems like the pointer keeps jiggling nonstop. Now, I don't visually see the cursor move, but if, say, I'm watching Netflix in full screen, the player UI keeps popping up every second as if I'm continuing to move the mouse. Moreover, the screen never sleeps (I assume for the same reason).
I'm willing to put up with this nonsense (and foist it upon my poor wife), because I still have some fun fixing up OS issues (see many hours of toying around with Linux). But for my mother, I made sure that her system did not get the free update, because I thought there was very little gain for her in exchange for a lot of new issues.
I recently built a new home machine and bit the bullet and used 10. My user base (the family) are just that - users. They don't care what they are running as long as it's running and safe. That said, running on a gen 4 i5 processor with 8 GB of RAM and an SSD (which is probably the true magic) it runs amazingly well. I shut off everything (Cortana etc) during the install - was easy to do. I'm sure I missed some things, but I'll get back to those at some point. Getting back to my subject line, my main work computer runs OS X; been using Apple products for 8 years now and used to be a major fan, but am getting sick of the OS. The walled garden was fine several iterations of ago of OS X - it provided a nice stable work environment (still is stable), had easy access to Unix-like functionality when needed (love my grep), and the laptop hardware could not be beat - still using a 6 year old Macbook pro and it's still a great piece of gear. That said the walls of the garden started to collapse a few years ago, and the patches they've been putting up are ugly and poorly functioning. Things like iTunes (which is forbidden on the home Windows machines) and the Photos app are insanely painful to use and seem to go out of their way to keep you from your own media. The Windows 10 hook - as one example, it was trivial to set up a decent file structure that is accessible in many ways to the owner of those files, and it organized in a way that makes sense. It may be that I grew up in a DOS world and that impacted my thinking - most likely reason. That said 10 provides a solid user experience, similar to what I used to like about OS X. It was pretty easy to configure to look like a classic Win interface, I've had no complaints from my user community (the fam). Why not Linux? I don't have the time to play Linux admin for the house, and no one else is inclined to do so. My nerd cred runs deep (optical communications systems development), but the computer is a tool, not a task for me and this is doubly true with my Win 10 users.
- I've seen it running on my collegues machines. It looks good. The last few releases of windows look way less shitty than WinXP and all that. Win 10 seems to build on that. That's nice, I like it.
- I like some of the ms powershell stuff of recent years - I've done some stunts already with that and it was cool.
- I like the Ubuntu / Linux layer they are working on. Looks intriguing - especially for those who need to use Windows at work but rather would use a *nix.
- I heard it's for free or something like that. I like that MS is somewhat following Google Suit in that it at least gives you their OS for free for spying on you. In my opinion though Google still has a headstart with Chrome OS and Android in that area. All computer n00bs that ask me I recommend the Google ecosystem. Price-performance of chromebooks is very hard to beat.
- MS seems to have the professional tablet thing pretty much squared away. More than a decade of work in that field seems to finally pay of. However, their Hardware is very expensive if you want to use it with a stylus and high-power specs.
- Win 10 and other Windows Systems seem to be the only ones that can run "Homeworld - Deserts of Kharak" - a nice bonus.
- I don't like that MS has been spying on it's users since Win XP. That's why I don't use it. Same goes for Win 10 - that's a shame. Google does this too, that's a given, but at least their stuff has always been "for free" and will continue to be. And Chrome OS boots fast. Really fast.
Other than this I can't say much about Windows because the last time I actually used it for everyday work was back in 2002 or something. Win2K it was.
Here are the systems I recommend - in order of recommendation:
- Refurbished SSD'd Corprorate Lenovo Thinkpad (or something like that) with added RAM running x86 Linux (Xubuntu LTS, Evolution, Mint or something ...).
- Chromebook (price/performance very interesting, downside: spyware)
- Remix OS Tablet or Desktop system
- High-Power Android Tablet (Lenovo yoga pro 3 or something) with HMI & Keyboard adapter. Mobile leads in ubiquity and it's hard to beat USB power/charging, 15+ hours of battery time and the ubiquity of HDMI screens.
- Apple MB Air (Price performance still OK/bearable)
- Windows Tablets/Laptops/Machines
Generally speaking today I would only recomment Apple or MS in cases where software is needed that only runs on one of those systems. For clueles endusers I recommend the Google stuff and for regular users wo don't cry of confusion when they see a context menu or for actual computer professionals I recommend Linux. For instance, I'm pretty certain that my next computer will not be an Apple. They are nice, but I just don't need it for my work anymore - although I will miss Kaleidoskope Diff - that's for sure.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
This isn't just another 'technology website.' It's Slashdot. I use to come here because it was frequented by like-minded individuals that loved Linux, open source and occasionally bash MS. Now it seems to be the opposite.
But I guess you're right. Slashdot did become 'just another technology website' and not even a good one at that. Thank you for making me realize that I may have to move on now. The Slashdot that I enjoyed years ago is gone.
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
It's not better than 8.1 with Classic Start Menu.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
A small percentage (very small) do suffer issues like broken start menus or broken metro apps that tools like SFC and DISM or ACL mods will not repair, requiring reload. Again this has been VERY few. There have been times that Windows 7 updates hammered a much larger proportion of users.
Yes, it snoops. But IMHO it does so no more so than your smartphone. I would wager that most of the people here have a smart phone and do not bitch to the level that they do about MS snooping. Is that level of snooping by OS, devices, or even web pages correct or ethical? Probably not, but it is the society we live in, and it is up to us to change it rather than just bitch. In the interim, if you have data you are concerned about, there are ways to mitigate the risk, although they do take a fair amount of technical skill.
As to defaults resetting on updates. That was another early issue. In my shops experience it has not recurred. Personally I have Win 10 on 5 PCs and it has not happened to them at all, could it again? Of course, but then again systemd could update and stop launching your critical daemons. This could be accidental or intentional. There is no way an OS vendor, even of MS size can test against every use case and hardware layout. As long as the issues are of a fairly low percentage, then I would wager it to be a bug and not an intentional feature.
In case anyone is interested, here are the PCs I run win10 on with no issue:
6 Core AMD Bulldozer, 16GB RAM, nvidia 1070 GPU, multiple SSD and HDD drives. Has VMs for linux mint running 24/7 (one for teamspeak server and other servers, the other for private torrent seeding) ,machine is rock solid
i7-4th gen mobile, 8 GB Ram, nvidia 960m GPU, ssd. Has had occasional blue screens seemingly due to hybrid graphics. This has resolved with newer drivers.
6-core AMD bulldozer, 32GB RAM, elcheapo AMD gpu, dual boot mint and win 10 preview channel. Used as a data recovery box in linux and Win 10 testing. has been very stable
6 core AMD bulldozer, 16GB Ram, 2x mid range AMD gpus (6550 and R5 260 i think), ssd and HDD. Main work desktop with 3 displays (one is qhd) - rock solid
intel core 2 duo mobile, 4GB RAM, intel GPU, SSD. Girlfriends laptop. A bit sluggish due to age of CPU, but stable as you could like. She is terrible about running updates, Win 10 fixed this, and buggy driver issues went away, which she had frequently under win 7.
Silence is a state of mime.
The consistency thing is a problem with Windows generally -- you can see it on Server 2012r2 where you need to use Server Manager to perform certain tasks, but many others are still handled by MMCs that haven't changed much if any since 2003 Server. Many don't even appear to use updated display APIs and look weird when subject to display scaling.
And where they have new features that require Server Manager, the Server Manager GUI can only partially configure them, the more specific configuration details require PowerShell commands, with all of their obscure, multi-syllable options. So the GUI isn't feature complete.
Compounding this is that some new features, like Storage Spaces, are really just disk management features. So Server Manager can do some of those, too, but you end up asking yourself -- how much effort did it take to create an entirely new GUI management system that only partially implements old management tool features, which you still need to do a lot of tasks? Wouldn't it have been simpler to simply add new features to the existing GUI tools?
Personally, I'm fairly cynical -- I think that so much management effort is put into scheming, trying to create lock-in scenarios and creating an illusion of newness that there's little human capital left for *engineering* the product. So you end up with something that may have some worthwhile enhancements from a core technology perspective, but it has so many cosmetic changes that the entire thing feels designed by committees whose leadership doesn't communicate. It's like if you work for a group under Windows, you think of something and submit it to a committee to get included in the next release, but the person who decides what to include is more focused on market share and looks, so there's just no coordination.
Within a week, either OS stops seeing keyboard and mouse upon OS load - they work fine before Windows boots, but once 8 or 10 boots up, they're totally gone. This problem has happened on more than just my system, I have customers come in going "This is a brand-new keyboard and mouse and the computer won't see it! This laptop is brand new and keyboard and mouse don't work!"
It's a fucking clusterfuck. When you update shit, settings that shouldn't get fucked with get fucked with.
Reading through a lot of documentation, the shit's still written for Windows 7.
Video and Sound performance have dropped, as well as file transfers (7 can saturate my SATA3 bus, 10 could not until I installed Win7 drivers for my chipset.)
UVC drivers changed somehow for some fucking reason, so now all of my UVC devices no longer work unless I have them on a 32-bit Windows 7 or XP machine. They won't even work under 32-bit Windows 8 any longer.
Like hell I'm upgrading past 7.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I too, am a retired computer guy, and I also support a fairly large group of retired folks, but I have converted quite a few of these folks over to Linux, namely XUbuntu. When I tell them about the blatant spyware aspects of 10, and the great lengths MS goes to getting 10 on everybodys computer, and MS now veering dangerously into the malware domain with 10, most of these older folks will gladly take the extremely minor "learning curve" of XUbuntu vs the "turd_in_the_punchbowl" Windows 10. On that note, I've had quite a few people who bought new systems from a bigbox store come to me and want to be upgraded to Linux, after hearing about it from others.
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)