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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.
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.
A lot of the time, I have open files and it just nukes everything. I've never figured out how that's OK.
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.
Try explaining to an elderly person who's used to 95/XP/7 how to get around Win10. Everything's hidden, icons that are confusing, and the modern desktop UI just baffles them to the point where they just give up..
Wouldn't it be nice if you would have the option when turning computer off your computer to: "Install updates AND restart as many times as needed to finish the process".
When I'm done with my computer, I'm done watching Netflix and go to bed.
The next morning I go to work.
When I come home from work I go quickly check my email...........well..........that's when windows is not telling me "configuring new updates please don't turn off your computer."
Really really annoying.
In my opinion, the biggest issue with Windows Update is the cryptic error messages when the update fails, for whatever reason or another. I'm quite computer literate, and I struggle mightily trying to search out "Error Code 0x80072ee7" (or whatever) - Takes me down a rat hole of incomprehensibly useless knowledge base articles and general gibberish.
Fixing *that* should be a top priority for Microsoft.
Dear Microsoft: start calling Windows OS X.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Seriously why doesn't it do that now??
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Microsoft keeps rearranging settings and stuff. It's gotten to where about a quarter of the online tutorials and guides don't work anymore because Microsoft has rearranged things since the guide was written. The one that stands out in my mind is the setting to disable driver updates. There used to be a setting in the updates page of the control panel which allowed you to disable driver updates. Then it got removed from the control panel and moved to the Metro UI settings. Then it got split into a separate setting for each driver. Then they completely removed the setting for several months (which screwed over my gaming laptop since the video drivers Win 10 kept installing didn't work). And now they seem to have finalized on using the "Roll back driver" button in the driver's properties. If you click that, it rolls back the driver and disables automatic updates for that driver.
So I can have something worse?
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
Task scheduler, new task, set it to run on boot with admin privileges. /r /t 3600
shutdown
If you're actually sitting down to use your PC, just run shutdown /a or make a shortcut that does it.
Alternatively, setup another scheduled task that does that on user login.
Either focus on consumers, and remove the enterprise stuff
Or focus on enterprise, and remove the consumer stuff.
This one size for all OS pisses everyone off.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
and they think that an hyper-v server can just reboot.
Now if they can get to work in cluster mode with auto live migration and rolling reboots then do it but on server needs to have active hours (With no can't be bigger then X hour gap and can set to say one day a week) Also have server updates full control *with out needing to set GPO's for both 2019 and 2016
They figure anyone using Hyper-V is a masochist so they probably want it reboot randomly.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Why buy new hardware, just install Linux.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I agree, I have found the prompts/options confusing. It has end up rebooting on me in the middle of a session. I had thought it would prompt me first if I asked for "install at a later time". Not so. Other systems give you a count-down clock, such as "Starting installation plus a restart in 120 seconds. Click here to cancel install..."
How about a menu such as:
Windows updates are ready, which will require a restart. Estimated install time is 7 minutes. Your options are as follows:
- Install now
- Remind me later* [brings up dialog to select reminder period]
- Install upon shut-down
- Install upon next start-up
- Install at a specific time*
- Specialized options* [for throttled networks etc.]
- Help with install timing
I often want "remind me later" because I'm yan... uh, doing something. Therefore, a nice touch would be to have a menu option which echos my prior delay time or selection. Example:
- Install now
- Remind me in 24 hours
- Remind me at a later time [changes default]
- etc...
In this case, it echos my prior delay period selection, "24 hours". People tend to use the same options over again. (If I don't use the PC longer than 24 hours, then it should remind me upon next login.)
Comments?
* Results in additional dialogs or sub-menus
Table-ized A.I.
Did you just lose the main issue of MS shift to Win 10? They run it. They decide. Why would you think the "cryptic error message" needs to be understood by the user of someone else's OS?
What is cryptic here, is the reason you think you deserve to understand something you pay other people to manage for you. You may have paid, but is has only started to cost you. There was no purchase.
Windows 10 is what made 2016 my Year of Linux on the Desktop. I have one legacy Windows 7 device for some Steam stuff (and a tool that converts assets to a format usable on my Linux sytem), and the rest Devuan and Fedora GNU/Linux. Microsoft made me a Linux [desktop] user.
What's wrong with making two versions like they used to? How hard is that? One for most people who just watch videos and play games. Another for people who need to get work done on their computers. It isn't rocket science, or particularly complicated to have TWO versions instead of ONE.
I don't respond to AC's.
97 persons is a rather small data set. I am doubtful it can yield relevant statistics results.
I chuckle a bit when people talk about letting the user choose what time to shutdown the entire machine for 30 minutes while Windows updates whatever - the color picker dialog and the wifi UI or whatever.
Twenty years ago, tou used to have to rebuild Linux if you updated the KERNEL. Only the kernel ever needed a reboot. Anything else, the update just saves the new version of the file to disk. If it's a running service you.want to update, restart that service. Updating the file sharing service means you restart file sharing, which takes three seconds. Why in the world do Microsoft programmers find it necessary to shut down the machine, and then extract the new version of the file? Do they really not know how to save a file on a system that is running?
Ten or fifteen years ago, Linux got live kernel updates. No need to reboot to activate the new kernel. Most people probably reboot into a new kernel out of habit and inertia, but that's the only time you'd reboot a Linux box related to an update. I had a machine up for eight years until I moved. It stayed updated.
Windows got multi-user security (DAC) 10-20 years after Unix and Linux. Windows got modern security, MAC (or at least a watered down simulation of it) about 10 years after Linux. Windows gets a lot of things 10-20 years after Linux does. Maybe it'll get the ability to update a file without shutting down the entire machine, in a few years.
"oneanted reboot"
Duh, everyone knows you need two ants to reboot.
I absolutely must have one program on Win 10. Updates to either the program or OS that disrupt my work is not acceptable under any circumstances.
The final solution for me is drastic, but works: Once the OS is installed & updated once, my key program is loaded and then the Win machine NEVER goes back on a network again.
Data goes in & out via USB key over to a Mac. If I actually needed Win10 to run on that machine on a network it would be on a separate boot drive, but I hate the thought. High security military development runs similarly, ... well sort of.
Win downtime = zero minutes per year.
I have no time left for BS.
I have no problem with updates. sudo apt update && apt upgrade -y If I want to have a closer look at everything then I remove the -y and if I am lazy and don't run the command, my computer will do it for me - because I told it to that if I am lazy. In many years that command has not worked for me twice and both were shitty nvidia driver issues. Windows makes a cute vm if you like to poke a stick at monkeys in a cage but I don't want Candy Crush Soda installed against my will every time my computer "updates". FFS people, there are alternatives. How can you expect a greedy and ruthless company to act in any other interest than it's own. 2019 - Year of the Linux desktop!
I still remember back when Windows was an operating system. Now, the friendly popup informs me, Windows is a "service", graciously provided by Microsoft, at its discretion, and to susceptible be updated with whatever code they choose to push at me, with or without my approval. All for my greater comfort and convinience, of course.
Might makes right irrelevant.
You can disable Windows updates now, if you have an older build of Windows 10. Specifically, version 1703 which is build number 15063.1387 for me. With this version u can permanently disabled windows updates within Services. When the c:\Windows10Upgrade\ folder is inevitably created, remove ALL permissions so nothing can add files to it. Install Process Blocker and have it block C:\Windows10Upgrade\Windows10UpgraderApp.exe C:\windows\softwaredistribution\Download\randomcharacters\WindowsUpdateBox.exe C:\Windows\UpdateAssistantV2\Windows10Upgrade.exe C:\Windows\UpdateAssistant\Windows10Upgrade.exe There u go. Windows update permanently disabled and won't upgrade itself. Should work on the latest build of Windows 10 as well to block major upgrades,though patches will still install.
New study shows Windows 10 Home Edition users are baffled by light switches.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
You might need a holiday soon....
Linux is used in far more roles professionally than Windows is, and is far, far more reliable. By orders of magnitude. Windows is designed for desktop use by people who need to see their options displayed in a graphical menu because otherwise they wouldn't know how to use their computer - they wouldn't know which command to type. It serves pretty well in that limited role.
> You're asking for a crash or some unexpected interaction if another piece of software expects a different version
True, if you OS programmers are utter morons and change the foo() function to return a completely different data type. The first month you start playing with programming, you might have a function getShape() which returns a shape object. A month later you might change it to return a coloredShape object, and break things. My four-year-old might do that. Professional programmers would ADD the new getColoredShape() function. Are you saying it's necessary because Microsoft's programmers are preschoolers?
....hey that is what my girlfriend says. LOL
A terminal is a really difficult interface for beginners, especially if you sit them down with no instruction. If the user has no clue, the interface better provide some clues. That's absolutely true.
For efficient use by people who do it every day, clicking through six levels of menus is a terrible interface. That's why efficient computer users regularly use even the worst of keyboard interfaces, like ctrl-v, (what does "v" have to do with "paste?") in preference to clicking, even though you've made keyboard use more difficult by designing the application strictly for the first-time user who needs to discover things for the first time. Watch someone clicking at on on-screen keyboard to enter their email address, then watch someone who can type do their email address from the keyboard. Without looking at the keyboard, they'll type it a thousand times faster than they can click it. Of course keyboard entry is only very good if you've used a keyboard before.
Discoverability is really important - once. If you design all of your applications, applications somebody has to use all day everyday, as if each use is their first use, you're doing it wrong. The requirements for use by someone who has done it before are totally different than what's needed if you measure only sitting someone down who has never seen the application before and tell them to figure it out, with no instruction.
Having said all of that, desktops and laptops are less than 5% of the computer market. Everytime you sit down and Google something, when you click at one computer, 30 other computers work to get you the results. For 30 out of 31 computers involved, what matters I that they work quickly and reliably - nobody is clicking at them.