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.

Re: My computer restarts randomly at night

[sexconker]

That's what he said.

Re:My computer restarts randomly at night

[Enigma2175]

Taking all that away just to serve the public relations/"security" interests of Microsoft in fixing their security issues seems an intense, giant waste of human annoyance and time, along with other rational ownership issues..

I would be fine with the updates if they were just for security issues. I'm sick of having to remove all the new Microsoft crapware every time a computer installs its gigabytes of updates. Why the hell does Win10 Enterprise have software for XBox anyway? Fortunately I only have to deal with it at work and at home I can use a reasonable OS where I control the updates but it's still maddening.

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

[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:I have them disabled

[Excelcia]

Better than disabling the reboots is disabling the forced updates altogether.

Remember the whole travesty with the Windows 10 upgrade to begin with? The progression of "optional" updates that Microsoft sent out that did nothing for months then suddenly started popping up "Hey, wouldn't you like to upgrade your OS" notices, then "Hey, you need to upgrade your OS", then "We're going to upgrade your OS for you unless you cancel" and then "Hey we're now just going to do it whether you want to or not". I avoided that because I simply didn't install the update that did that. But now that I have a computer I was forced to accept Windows 10 on, I have to use a combination of Windows Update Blocker to disable a whole series of otherwise un-disableable services, and Windows Update MiniTool to give me back manual control of the update process. Thank heavens for those.

I own my computer and it will do what I tell it to do.

I find it troubling that people like the new system better. I suppose, in the narrowly worded "is Windows 10 update easier" it is true. Subservience is easier. Just give over control to someone else and let them decide what's good for me is easier. But I remember when just the suggestion of that sort of centralized control over the desktop would have gotten Microsoft crucified. We need to go back to that mentality.

Elderly don't get Win10

[Iwastheone]

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..

Re: Elderly don't get Win10

[Zuriel]

A lot of people don't think in terms of concepts like shortcuts. They click Start and click Programs and click the thing they want. If Programs becomes "Applications" but everything else remains the same, they get lost. They don't understand, they memorise steps.

These people need to re-learn workflows when you move the contents of "Programs" onto the base Start menu and make it a different color. Many people don't have decent computer skills. Unfortunately it's not just the elderly, either.

Error Messages

[CohibaVancouver]

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.

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.

Re:Error Messages

[dwywit]

That's something that I hate: "Updates failed; error 0x00062007" message.

Googling that error number provides mostly generic answers like "this error can be produced when the moon is in the seventh house, try the update troubleshooter"

Or the totally useless "experts" on answers.microsoft.com who tell you to reboot and then run the update troubleshooter.

Re:Error Messages

[sgage]

And another thing - that cryptic error message is presented in a graphical dialog box, and you can't cut and paste it to look it up. You have to write it down, and then type it into browser search. What a useless aggravation!

Stop calling it Windows 10 already

[DickBreath]

Dear Microsoft: start calling Windows OS X.

Update reboots aren't the only problem

[Solandri]

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.

PIck 1

[DarkRookie2]

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.