[Mongoose]

First there was the revelation that Solitaire, the game that’s come free with pretty much every version of Windows ever, now has ads. That you need to pay a monthly fee of $1.49 to remove.

Well that tears it.  Not touching this ****.

(And yes, apparently it was like that in 8 too, but I didn't touch that **** either so I didn't know.)

[Klaustrophobia]

I have yet to find solitare (or any other built-in game) in windows 8.  If it involves the store, then that explains it because I absolutely REFUSE to have a microsoft account and so far I have yet to find a way to make the store work without one.  Including updating existing apps.

[Fury]

I'm also still wondering what happens if a year and a half from now I need to reinstall the OS.

Windows 8 and newer have two reset options. The first reinstalls the operating system, but leaves your stuff alone. You don't need to reinstall any software and your files are safe. The second option option has three sub-options.
1) Securely erase everything and reinstall operating system.
2) Same as the first option, but without secure erase.
3) Erase system drive only and reinstall operating system. Other partitions are left alone. Meaning you should copy your stuff from C: to another drive if you want to keep them.

[jr2]

I tried burning an ISO. Failed with the "Something Happened" error. **** that ****, if it's ****ing up on even making the ISO, I'm not allowing it anywhere near my PC.

@MP - I agree with you. If it will let me make my own ISO for use on other PCs, why the **** haven't they just put the ISOs up for download?

That's... odd.  I just created A Pro x86 and x64 (both) ISO with no problems.  Server load, maybe?  (And I assume that is why they have the 'media creation tool' -- this way, they can download a ~2GB compressed ESD file and convert it into a ~6GB ISO, instead of using the bandwidth for a straight ISO download.)

[karajorma]

Thing is, I don't particularly care why it happened. It's an indication of poor programming and quality control. Any programmer who wrote "Something Happened" as an error message should be shot on principle.

And anyone in the entire design team who let it pass and thought it okay should be waterboarded.

[jr2]

It's probably so that the general population will quit freaking out about "illegal operations", "fatal exceptions", and alien-sounding hex codes.

Speaking of hex codes, did you happen to catch which one was thrown?

[karajorma]

Nope. Doesn't matter, it worked the second time I tried.

[Dragon]

I suspect it might be something akin to FSO's INT3() errors (notice that it tells you about as much). A default failure mode that is, by design, impossible to reach. Funny things tend to happen if you do. That it worked a second time without fixing anything indicates some freak situation that nobody would've thought could happen.

[Mars]

Decided to experiment on my own machine, setup got to 50% and then froze for a day. Finally manually powered off. Boot manager was wiped out, gonna stick with 8.1 once I can reinstall it unless Microsoft fixes the **** out of this.

Edit: Also, "something has happened" just sounds super annoying in my head when tackling an issue like this.

[karajorma]

I suspect it might be something akin to FSO's INT3() errors (notice that it tells you about as much). A default failure mode that is, by design, impossible to reach. Funny things tend to happen if you do. That it worked a second time without fixing anything indicates some freak situation that nobody would've thought could happen.

The difference is that Int3() basically crashes the program with no message. Most people recognise that as being a sign something happened. In this case, someone has gone to the effort of making it spit out a useless and pointless error message and a hex code identifying it. Which means that something useful could have been printed instead but they couldn't be arsed.

You may have noticed that the SCP team have basically stopped putting Int3() calls into the code in favour of something more useful. Does that mean we are more professional than Microsoft? Actually it probably does.

[The E]

You may have noticed that the SCP team have basically stopped putting Int3() calls into the code in favour of something more useful. Does that mean we are more professional than Microsoft? Actually it probably does.

I have strong feelings about application developers who think they're being customer friendly by making error messages (or status messages in general) "friendly to read". That whole bull**** Win 8 and 10 go through after the first login (You know, "We're setting up a few things" etc) makes me very angry indeed. Especially since one of those messages is "Things are taking longer than expected", which in a neat little nutshell shows everything wrong with the approach. That message pops up on slower computers like my Laptop; it's completely stupid because a) it's vaguely worrying and b) it doesn't actually tell me anything.

No, random error codes are not good feedback. I want as many details as I can possibly get so that I know what to look for to get the answers I need; while an error code would in theory suffice for that, MS's knowledge base is borderline unusable.

[karajorma]

The really dumb thing is that this happened when I was in the process of creating a .iso file for clean installs. That's not something you do if you are computer literate anyway. In order to be able to do it I had to follow multiple steps to find and download the "MediaCreationTool" but most importantly, I had to know what the **** to do with an .iso file. Maybe I'm over-rating people but I believe that if you know what to do with an .iso file you are capable of understanding an error message a bit more useful than "Something Happened"

What really sticks in my craw is I later realised what might have happened. I was doing several things with my computer at the time and I suspect I ran out of hard drive space on C: (even though I was writing the .iso to D:). By the time I noticed the error, I had already cleaned up and had over 20 gigs free. But at one point I might have actually used them up.

As far as I'm concerned, running out of HD space absolutely should be a foreseeable error when you're dealing with downloading the necessary files to make a 6GB .iso file. Assuming that it was actually that which caused the problem, a simple "You have run out of space on C:" error message would tell me to make sure I was careful how much space I was using on C when I ran the installer the second time. As it was, I simply had to cross my fingers and hope. 

[Mika]

Yup, it sure sounds like Windows 10 is going to be a skip for me. Things haven't gone the way I'd have appreciated, so my money's gonna be in Linux when Windows 7 runs out of steam.

And on top of it, operating system level cloud and Microsoft store integration in a corporate environment computer? What is Microsoft smoking? From the point of view of a corporate client, this direction does not exactly inspire me with confidence over my data security or anything really. I suspect a lot of companies are going to skip Windows 10 as well.

Hmm, I got a blue screen from Windows 7 yesterday which suspiciously happened after a windows update. So is it THAT time again, Microsoft? ( = breaking former products to sell newer ones)

[MP-Ryan]

Did any of you get the Windows 10 update download in the background through the reservation system?  I had - wrongly - assumed that once it decided it was "ready" it would give me the option of whether or not to download, not queue it into Windows Update and prevent me from updating Win7 on its own.

Just want to make sure that once this downloads it isn't going to do it's own upgrade without my say-so.

[Dragon]

Well, it'll ask you, but the options I've seen are only "now" and "later". I left it in the background for a while, then installed, so I don't know if you can just tell it to go away, but there likely is a way.

The difference is that Int3() basically crashes the program with no message. Most people recognise that as being a sign something happened. In this case, someone has gone to the effort of making it spit out a useless and pointless error message and a hex code identifying it. Which means that something useful could have been printed instead but they couldn't be arsed.

Maybe the way Windows is written means that every crash gets a message and a code (and that would be the generic values)? That said, if that's really what you suspect (out of HD space), then it really is a case of idiot programming.

As for the SCP team, it's a project much smaller than Windows, not to mention it's made by people who actually like it and find making it fun, as opposed to a bunch of corporate code monkeys under the boot of a clueless manager. It's a lot easier to be professional when you actually care about what you're doing.

I have strong feelings about application developers who think they're being customer friendly by making error messages (or status messages in general) "friendly to read". That whole bull**** Win 8 and 10 go through after the first login (You know, "We're setting up a few things" etc) makes me very angry indeed. Especially since one of those messages is "Things are taking longer than expected", which in a neat little nutshell shows everything wrong with the approach. That message pops up on slower computers like my Laptop; it's completely stupid because a) it's vaguely worrying and b) it doesn't actually tell me anything.

I also hate those "user friendly". Idiot friendly more like. Not only are they not very informative, they actually get condescending in few places. I disabled automatic restarts in Windows 7 partially because I was annoyed by the "I know better than you what's good for this computer" attitude in the Windows Update messages.

[jr2]

What really sticks in my craw is I later realised what might have happened. I was doing several things with my computer at the time and I suspect I ran out of hard drive space on C: (even though I was writing the .iso to D:). By the time I noticed the error, I had already cleaned up and had over 20 gigs free. But at one point I might have actually used them up.

Windows (since XP? VIsta?) has this extremely annoying habit of putting everything into the temp directory first, and only then moving it to its destination.  I'm sure it's a case of dumb users trying to open half-downloaded / moved files, but it's still annoying because everything gets handled twice and you'd best have gobs of hard disk space.

[deathspeed]

I ran the upgrade today, and thought i'd share my experience here.

1.  I actually did not mean to run the whole upgrade today.  I thought I would get a prompt to either upgrade this PC now, or to create upgrade media, and I was going to download the .iso first and burn it to DVD.  I guess there is some other sort of download tool I should have used for that, though.  It said it was preparing my PC, so I thought maybe it was installing some final compatibility updates or something.  But once I saw "windows is updating; do not turn off your PC" I decided to let it run its course.

2.  The upgrade process itself went fairly smoothly and was hands-off.  At one point I saw that after a restart it was "attempting to recover the installation", which it did successfully.  I didn't time it, but the whole process took aver half an hour.

3.  When it was all done, the screen asked me if I was Michael (I am), and I clicked yes.  I did not sign in with my Microsoft account.  Windows 10 desktop appeared, but it was not my old desktop background or theme, and most of my desktop icons were missing.  Going through the personalization menu, I could not find any of my themes I had created before.  I tried opening something (I don't remember what), and UAC popped up asking for an administrator password.  Oh, hail, no!  Not on my account.  Wait, is this my account?  No, it had booted into my daughter's password-restricted account!  It took me a few minutes to figure out how to log out of that and log into my account.  There were my icons, background, etc.!  UAC was still enabled so I shut that nonsense off again.

4.  Edge did not automatically import my favorites, settings, and homepage tabs from IE.  Yes, I prefer IE to other bowsers; don't hate.  I found the option to import favorites from IE or Chrome, but it did not list Firefox, which is also installed. 

5.  IE11 is also installed under Windows 10, but it seems to run very slowly. 

6.  The only program I have had to reinstall do far was my Logitech Gaming Software for my G700s mouse.  Oh, and I had to uninstall Trend Micro's RUBotted beta software before I could upgrade.

6a.  I had no sound but did not realize it until several hours later.  Device manager showed all OK, nothing was muted, and all wires connected.  But the Realtek software said I had no speakers, and the windows sound configuration would not play test tones because the device was unsupported.  I reinstalled the driver using the one form Realtek's site.  It uninstalled the old one, but said the new install failed.  I tried anyway, and the sound is working now, but I no longer have the realtek software that I rarely used anyway.  I'll investigate further in the morning.

7.  I have tried only one game so far - a quick skirmish on C&C3: Kane's Wrath expansion.  It ran flawlessly.

I plan on posting further updates as I discover new issues, etc.  I just wanted to get down some initial thoughts while they were fresh in my mind. 

I also plan on doing a clean install soon-ish, on a formatted SSD.  I'm just dreading reinstalling all my programs, but windows 7 was starting to flake out on me even before the upgrade, and I am not sure if it was an issue with windows, drivers, undetected malware, some other software, or hardware.  I know my SSD has  "dirty bit" set, but it would always hang when I ran diskcheck, so I disabled diskcheck for that drive.  I'm hoping a reformat will clear that up.  My PC has been randomly hibernating (even while I am typing) and locking up (but no BSOD), so I wonder if it related to the dirty bit.

EDIT: Added 6a.

[Wobble73]

I also hate those "user friendly". Idiot friendly more like. Not only are they not very informative, they actually get condescending in few places. I disabled automatic restarts in Windows 7 partially because I was annoyed by the "I know better than you what's good for this computer" attitude in the Windows Update messages.

I love this, it reminds me of Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory, "My new laptop has Windows 7. Windows 7 is more user friendly than Windows Vista................................... I don't like that!"

 

[-Sara-]

I'll wait until people say it's satisfactory. There's a lot of whining going on about how it monitors things unless disabled, including keylogging apparently to make it easy for support to see what you did wrong when you ask for help. It might be a bunch of hogwash but I'll wait until people say it's fine.

[Klaustrophobia]

Thing is, those parts are NEVER going away.  Their "it's free!!!" play seems to have worked and they've got enough oblivious or apathetic users on it to force it through.