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Latest Windows 10 Update Breaks Windows Media Player, Win32 Apps In General (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The important data loss bug that interrupted the rollout of the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, version 1809, may be fixed, but it turns out there are plenty of other weird problems with the release. As spotted by Paul Thurrott, the update also breaks the seek bar in Windows Media Player when playing "specific files." Microsoft does promise to fix the bug, but the timeframe is vaguely open-ended: it will be "in an upcoming release."
Also in the "how did that happen" category comes another bug: some Win32 programs can't be set as the default program for a given file type. So if you want certain files to always open in Notepad, for example, you're currently out of luck. A fix for this is promised by the end of the month. Setting default program associations is something that's been in Windows for 20-something years, so it's a little alarming that it should be broken. On top of this, there continue to be complaints that Windows 10 version 1809 doesn't work with iCloud, and machines with the iCloud client are currently blacklisted to prevent them from receiving the 1809 update. It's not immediately clear whose fault this one is -- it could be Microsoft's, but it's also possible that Apple is to blame.
Also in the "how did that happen" category comes another bug: some Win32 programs can't be set as the default program for a given file type. So if you want certain files to always open in Notepad, for example, you're currently out of luck. A fix for this is promised by the end of the month. Setting default program associations is something that's been in Windows for 20-something years, so it's a little alarming that it should be broken. On top of this, there continue to be complaints that Windows 10 version 1809 doesn't work with iCloud, and machines with the iCloud client are currently blacklisted to prevent them from receiving the 1809 update. It's not immediately clear whose fault this one is -- it could be Microsoft's, but it's also possible that Apple is to blame.
Windows just shouldn't be a service!
Leave it alone and give us big big upgrades every couple of years.... That's fine and acceptable and what we're used to.
This autoupdating crap means that any given morning, my box may be broken in very strange ways, with little if any perceivable benefit.
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
That's cool. I knew that eventually iCloud would be good for SOMETHING.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Joke:
You are apparently thinking of Microsoft as a software company.
That's not correct. Microsoft is an ABUSE company. Software is just a method of delivering abuse.
(Windows ME) "I will remain forever champion as the Worst Microsoft Operating System!"
(Windows 10) "Hold my beer."
The Year of the Linux Desktop; brought to you by Windows Update.
> It's not immediately clear whose fault this one is -- it could be Microsoft's, but it's also possible that Apple is to blame.
Nope. If an operating system breaks any userland program, it's always the operating system which should be blamed.
"I see you're trying to download VLC. Use Microsoft Cloud Player instead, it's more secure."
INSTALL ANYWAY (In light grey type)
USE MCP (default option, in dark text)
It is my opinion that Microsoft's mis-management and abuse is not reported sufficiently. Joking may help people adjust.
Microsoft is damaging customers and itself.
Some of the many, many stories:
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." (Aug. 4, 2015)
Microsoft's Intolerable Windows 10 Aggression (May 27, 2016)
Microsoft is infesting Windows 10 with annoying ads (March 17, 2017)
Microsoft, stop sabotaging Windows 10. (March 21, 2017)
Ironically Windows 8.1? Is a really good OS and is IMHO heads and shoulders above Win 10 as its not constantly being broken by Microshit patches.
Win 8.1 plus Classic Shell? Is Win 7 with better SSD support and faster boot times. I'll stick with 8.1 until it is no longer supported of Linux has full support for gaming thanks to Valve, I've seen enough of Win 10 shitting all over itself to know its not a good OS.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It's not so much that Microsoft doesn't trust users, it's that Windows programs used to go wild and crazy with changing file associations every time they were run, so Microsoft clamped down on it and made it a privileged operation to avoid letting definitely-a-media-player-and-not-spyware.exe grab the associations for every single file extension every time the user started it. (See also, the way default browsers are now set.)
The side effect is that setting file associations is now a complicated pain in the ass that gets reverted at random because Microsoft is trying to prevent untrusted third parties from grabbing every single association. It also helps that their association UI appears to randomly break so you can select a program and it'll just forget it for no reason.
But there's at least a reason it acts like this, and it's thanks to the shitty Windows software of yesteryear.
> Setting default program associations is something that's
> been in Windows for 20-something years
This is... ok, not exactly outright wrong, but at least misleading.
I mean, yes, twenty-some years ago, Windows had the ability to set program associations. But that implementation is not in any way related to the current one, except in the most general "there's a way to set program associations" sense that applies just as well to other operating systems.
Microsoft's first implementation of this in Windows was in winfile.exe, which was deeply deprecated in Windows '95 and does not exist at all in any recent version of Windows. The second iteration, in the first version of Windows Explorer, involved the Windows registry and was somewhat more complicated in its implementation but still conceptually similar to the first version: for any given filename extension, you could specify one program that would be used to open it; and that was it. This got redone when Windows Explorer went through its little identity crisis ("Of course it's integrated with the web browser..." "What? Web browser? No, no, no."), leaving a legacy of associations based on things other than the filename extension (in addition to the ones that are based on extension), and at some point gained the ability for programs to register themselves at install time as _capable_ of handling a given file format, so the "Open With..." context menu could offer multiple options. Then the "set program access/defaults" wizard was added to let people specify which of the options should get the double-click action for certain important formats and tasks. That implementation, or a descendant of it, still exists in Windows 7 (I think; unless it was redone another time that I didn't notice) but was never ported over to Eight/Ten, which have their _own_ implementations of file associations, which have gone through changes repeatedly because, frankly, they're unnecessarily complex and thus buggy.
But yeah, sure, just say this is a feature that's been there for twenty years and just suddenly broke unexpectedly. Reality is overrated.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
It's Media Player. The SEEK bar is missing on "specific files" - Or, rather, specific files triggered this "feature"
Now Media player is like F(*^(& YouTube, where you can't do anything but Pause and Play as your rights as a consumer are eroded. The ONLY reason to have flags in the media player so you can't seek through it is to ensure that you have to watch the full video, which is something that content creators want over us.
I never thought they'd push this crap all the way to our desktop though.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
8.1 / Server 2012R2 suffered from an OS with an identity crisis:
Good kernel improvements under the hood, good improvements to some of the utilities (task manager, added Win+x / Right click start button menu)
But completely fucked up others: Start "menu" designed for tablets even though the OS was only used on desktops/laptops, half the control panel functionality designed for a phone, the rest for Windows 95; random notifications on your SERVER OPERATING SYSTEM saying "Tap here to change your settings".
But it was ok. Classic Shell dealt with the worst of the worst, and the rest of the quirkiness could be dealt with because it was stable.
Then came Windows 10.
First came the forced upgrades from 7/8.1 Then came the circlejerk in the community "ZOMG it's so much better than Windows 8.1 because startmenu". Even though the start menu is worse than a freeware addon that pretends to be a previous version (classic shell). It has random ads and animations, lacks organizations, and has an "assistant" I keep trying to disable. And it still has an identity crisis in the settings. Half are still for a phone, the other half for Windows 95. And for some reason it wants to send all my data to www.microsoft.com
Then come the forced updates.
Oh you have an important render/compile going on overnight? An important meeting to go to today? Too bad, time for a new upgrade! Not just a 5 minute security update you used to curse when you shutdown your old XP laptop with a dead battery. No this is an upgrade, please wait 65 minutes and three reboots. Will your drivers still run? Programs still be there? Operating system still be activated? Built in basic programs like Paint still be there? Data still be there? Who knows!? This is the fun of Agile!
As in they have managed to make it complex enough and have sacked or driven away enough good engineers that they really cannot make work well anymore. Sure, windows never worked very well, but this is a new quality of bad.
Now, what do you do when you stupidly have let one OS maker get a quasi-monopoly and that maker loses it?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Maybe it's time to port Wine to Windows, so WIndows 10 users can run Win32 applications...
I have a hard time believing that this is accidental. Their semi-annual Win 10 releases would reset your major programs associations back to the default (i.e. to Microsoft apps). I guess enough people complained about that because the last update left the associations alone. But the first time I tried to open up a file associated with a non-Microsoft program, I got a pop-up asking "are you sure you really don't want to try the Microsoft app to open up this type of file instead?"
A friend of mine uses Office 2003 because she paid for it, and it does everything she needs. She called me up last month saying Word and Excel kept saying they were expiring. When I investigated, a Windows 10 semi-annual update had installed the Office 365 trial, and changed the Office file associations from her permanently licensed Office 2003 to the subscription-based trial.
Clue to Microsoft: The OS is supposed to be a productivity tool for me, not an advertising platform for you.
Ya know I was one of the first to LMAO at that God Awful "supersized smart phone UI" that was Win Mist8ke Edition but its really damn solid under the hood, right up there with XP X64 AKA Win2K3 Workstation for being really damn reliable and trouble free which I would have never found out about if I wouldn't have had a customer with a system that lacked stable drivers for Win 7 and said "Please fix this damn thing!". But once I found and tried Classic Shell on her system I was like "Heeey, this is pretty damn nice. Boots fast, better task manager, better response times, this is actually pretty sweet!" so I broke out my Win 8 Pro disc I had sitting in a drawer, installed and upgraded to 8.1 on my system...and never went back.
So I gotta agree with you 110%, IDK how anybody deals with the damn tablet UI of Win 8 but you just swap that out with Classic Shell? Its the best damn workstation OS I've run in over a decade and kicks the snot out of Win 7, especially for heavy lifting like video editing. Its memory management is soooo much better than Win 7 as it quickly learned my routine so now all my programs are cached in memory when I need them so are super responsive, everything "just works" and thanks to Classic Shell it just gets out of my way and lets me work, no stupid Candy Crush or ads being bitchslapped in my face, no Cliptana bugging me, its just a super fast responsive OS...ahhh like a breath of fresh air!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Begin the transition now so that you will have enough time to be made aware of any snags and find potential solutions. If you wait until the last minute you may end up frustrated and feel forced to either have a rough transition and be frustrated, or to upgrade and deal with the hassles you wish to avoid.
Try running Windows 7 and something else side by side, and see how well you get along in your alternative, booting to Windows 7 when you feel forced to and taking note of the circumstances to try and find a potential solution and path forward.
Twinstiq, game news