New Study Shows Windows 10 Home Edition Users Are Baffled By Updates (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Since the initial release of Windows 10 nearly four years ago, Microsoft has been tweaking its approach to automatic updates, adding Active Hours settings to ensure that mandatory restarts are less likely to be intrusive. Recent feature updates have also made notifications of pending updates more obvious. Are those changes enough to ease the pain? A new study from a group of UK-based researchers suggests Microsoft has more work to do. The study, titled "In Control with No Control: Perceptions and Reality of Windows 10 Home Edition Update Features," was presented this week at the Workshop on Usable Security (USEC) 2019 in San Diego, California. Researchers Jason Morris, Ingolf Becker, and Simon Parkin of University College London, built a detailed model of Microsoft's update process as of Windows 10 version 1803 and then surveyed a group of 93 Windows 10 Home users.

The overall conclusions were a mixed bag. In general, the survey respondents think that the Windows 10 update approach is an improvement over that found in previous Windows versions. Among participants who had experience with earlier Windows versions 53 percent reported they felt updating Windows 10 is easier, versus only 8 percent who found the process more difficult. Similarly, a majority of respondents agreed that the Windows 10 update process causes fewer interruptions than in previous versions (43 percent agreed, 21 percent disagreed). Where Microsoft has fallen down, the researchers argue, is in building an update system that is "dependent on a complex range of user and system properties." That system, illustrated by the flowchart shown here, is simply too complicated for the average home user to understand.

Comments

My computer restarts randomly at night

[olsmeister]

A lot of the time, I have open files and it just nukes everything. I've never figured out how that's OK.

I have them disabled

[Evangelion]

There's some dark magic you can do to disable the automatic reboot. I did it months ago when I built my new workstation -- there's a folder buried deep under System32 that contains the 'Reboot' script. If you remove that and replace it with a folder named 'Reboot', then it will always fail to run the reboot-after-update phase of the update cycle.

Re:I have them disabled

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-prevent-windows-10-rebooting-after-installing-updates - Task scheduler

Re:I have them disabled

[Solandri]

The problem with that is some of the updates dismantle some essential services (like the network), to prepare them to be updated upon reboot. Then you end up with mysterious "the network doesn't work" call from a client, who lies when you ask them "Have you tried rebooting?" (Dunno why, maybe they don't want to do anything that requires more work on their part.) So I drive over, spend a half hour tinkering with network settings and stuff under the assumption that the computer was rebooted. Then when I happen to reboot for a different reason, I see the update progress bar, and everything works correctly after.

Microsoft has designed the entire update process under the assumption that it can reboot the computer at will, so strange things can happen when you intentionally delay that reboot. It's gotten to where I just start the troubleshooting process with a reboot.

Re:Error Messages

[Zuriel]

It's not just that they're cryptic, they're the magic combination of cryptic and useless. Linux errors are cryptic, but they're at least extremely detailed and helpful to developers if you put them in a bug report.

Windows error codes might as well be replaced with a frown emoji.