Security updates for Windows 7 ostensibly end tomorrow, but also officially continue until 2023

[Arika]

53 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Shutting down is rarely time sensitive, very rarely. We have the ability to sleep devices for a reason i.e. going between lectures.

i cannot think of a situation where you must absolutely 100% have the computer shut down on the spot

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

2 hours ago, Arika S said:

i cannot think of a situation where you must absolutely 100% have the computer shut down on the spot

That is the thing; with a proper business/corporate structure, the amount of times when you would need to update at a mission-critical time is absolute zero. Blaming the update mechanism is really easy, until the inefficient management of time and money becomes starkly obvious.

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

That is the thing; with a proper business/corporate structure, the amount of times when you would need to update at a mission-critical time is absolute zero. Blaming the update mechanism is really easy, until the inefficient management of time and money becomes starkly obvious.

I haven't been following the conversation but I just want to point out that pretty much no company in existence has "proper business/corporate structure" everywhere.

Best practice is rarely implemented fully. It's not the businesses fault either most of the time. The problem is old stuff having carried over, or a lack of time and money.

For example last week I replaced a few switches in a factory that had been running since the late 90's. Why had it taken so long to get these switches replaced? Because the documentation for how they were connected and configured were long gone, and the factory lost around 100,000 dollars for every hour of downtime (metal factory and the metal starts hardening if the machines stop). Even though those switches were very critical to the operation, there was a massive risk associated with touching them, so they had been left untouched for as long as possible.

Up until very recently, the risk and cost associated with replacing it outweighed the risk and cost of just leaving it in place.

 

 

So while we can all throw out "if X and Y then Z isn't a problem" the reality doesn't look like that.

 

 

Edit:

Some ranting about that network job I mentioned earlier. 

The fiber patch panels were not labeled (so old the marking had faded /worn off). It was damn near impossible to figure out the physical layout of the network. It's not like I could find maps of the physical topology either (people who handled it before were all gone), and even if I could find it there were several patch panels at each cross-connection cabinet. Not to mention it would have been 30 years old and maybe incorrect. 

 

So how about documentation or clues in the switch config? Well just finding documentation for for the password was one challenge. Luckily for me console standards haven't changed in 30 years so my new equipment could access it at least, once I had login details. 

But that's when I noticed that some of the interface descriptions were outdated. So that couldn't be trusted. 

But the switches supported not only lldp but also cdp! That's nice right? Well turns out the switches are so memory constrained (hardware wise) that they only support SENDING lldp and cdp. It doesn't have the memory to save any cdp or lldp info it receives. 

It was a total shit show. 

[jagdtigger]

14 hours ago, Colonel_Gerdauf said:

Have you never heard of hibernation?

It wont fix that wu will eat up the cpu and ram while it installs stuff ;n the background.....

[TechyBen]

14 hours ago, leadeater said:

Thing is it is user friendly, like I said it's only the obsessive tweakers that get impacted and they are the ones with enough knowledge to not be. If you never shutdown and never reboot your computer, if you never bother to set working hours if you are the former just mentioned, if you never set days to delay updates you are very likely to be impacted. The settings to avoid this are all within 5 clicks and easily found, or just reboot once in a while/manually install the updates when you want them to.

 

It's extremely user friendly, you have to go out of your way to make it not so.

I'm an obsessive tweaker? Then what do names do you call my friends who wifi/internet/printers work/don't every other red moon tuesday?

[TechyBen]

10 hours ago, Arika S said:

i cannot think of a situation where you must absolutely 100% have the computer shut down on the spot

 

Laptop. Battery power. PC, power cut/UPS. ETC. I trust being able to force windows to NOT trash my file system over it "automatically detecting ups/battery power".

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I haven't been following the conversation but I just want to point out that pretty much no company in existence has "proper business/corporate structure" everywhere.

Best practice is rarely implemented fully. It's not the businesses fault either most of the time. The problem is old stuff having carried over, or a lack of time and money.

For example last week I replaced a few switches in a factory that had been running since the late 90's. Why had it taken so long to get these switches replaced? Because the documentation for how they were connected and configured were long gone, and the factory lost around 100,000 dollars for every hour of downtime (metal factory and the metal starts hardening if the machines stop). Even though those switches were very critical to the operation, there was a massive risk associated with touching them, so they had been left untouched for as long as possible.

Up until very recently, the risk and cost associated with replacing it outweighed the risk and cost of just leaving it in place.

 

 

So while we can all throw out "if X and Y then Z isn't a problem" the reality doesn't look like that.

 

 

Edit:

Some ranting about that network job I mentioned earlier. 

The fiber patch panels were not labeled (so old the marking had faded /worn off). It was damn near impossible to figure out the physical layout of the network. It's not like I could find maps of the physical topology either (people who handled it before were all gone), and even if I could find it there were several patch panels at each cross-connection cabinet. Not to mention it would have been 30 years old and maybe incorrect. 

 

So how about documentation or clues in the switch config? Well just finding documentation for for the password was one challenge. Luckily for me console standards haven't changed in 30 years so my new equipment could access it at least, once I had login details. 

But that's when I noticed that some of the interface descriptions were outdated. So that couldn't be trusted. 

But the switches supported not only lldp but also cdp! That's nice right? Well turns out the switches are so memory constrained (hardware wise) that they only support SENDING lldp and cdp. It doesn't have the memory to save any cdp or lldp info it receives. 

It was a total shit show. 

While you were giving the companies some benefit of the doubt, I personally find that kind of thing unforgivable.

 

A general life lesson here doesn't magically get removed from the scope of a business; the more you procrastinate on making important upgrades, the more costly it will be (in terms of money and manpower) by the time the upgrade happens. Not to mention, keeping outdated equipment is also going to raise maintenance costs over time.

[mr moose]

10 hours ago, TechyBen said:

 

Laptop. Battery power. PC, power cut/UPS. ETC. I trust being able to force windows to NOT trash my file system over it "automatically detecting ups/battery power".

 

The question was who needs their PC to shut down immediately without delay (every time), not what happens to your updtate in a power failure.   IF you are updating a laptop you should have it plugged in, if you need to use your laptop when updates are due then you haven't scheduled them right. 

[leadeater]

12 hours ago, TechyBen said:

I'm an obsessive tweaker? Then what do names do you call my friends who wifi/internet/printers work/don't every other red moon tuesday?

No obsessive tweakers are the people against all advice and common knowledge try and butcher a product through non supported non official means when there are actually proper methods to achieve what they are looking for.

 

They get in to problems because of that, self inflicted. Their systems get broken because they already broke them themselves then complain about issues that happen due to their own actions.

 

If you cut your springs on a car to lower it then go over a bump that bottoms out your suspension and causes damage to the sub frame of your car or suspension/diff mounts that is YOUR fault, not the car or it's design and construction.

[leadeater]

12 hours ago, TechyBen said:

I trust being able to force windows to NOT trash my file system over it "automatically detecting ups/battery power".

That is why Windows now takes a system restore point before starting to install updates and VSS prevents damage to actual files themselves. This should have been done long ago to be honest and on top of that Volume Shadow Copy should be on by default scheduled once per day for 3-7 days so you have revisions and recovery of all files. Microsoft has invested so much in to creating some excellent technology and features but do a very poor job of informing users of them or better utilizing them so they for the most part go unused.

 

There is one thing Microsoft does need to do, every update they tag with a maximum install time so Windows Updates just needs to check if on battery then check both percentage charge and expected run time and not install if below 20% or run time is less than maximum install time for the update.

 

Windows Updates with the install time has actually been a thing for a very long time and I use those with SCCM (Microsoft product) and Maintenance Windows to make sure an update will not be attempted to install if it is possible to run past the agreed upon maintenance window. The maximum is much higher than actual like as an example the monthly cumulative security updates have 60 minutes but take around 20 minutes on fairly low spec VMs (2 vCores 4GB ram Server 2016) with hundreds all doing the update at the same time sharing the physical resources of the host, a high spec desktop will do it faster.

 

It's such an obvious thing and they can do it, it's more likely that it's not so much of an issue to drive Microsoft to do it or make people ask for it.

[TechyBen]

18 hours ago, leadeater said:

That is why Windows now takes a system restore point before starting to install updates and VSS prevents damage to actual files themselves. This should have been done long ago to be honest and on top of that Volume Shadow Copy should be on by default scheduled once per day for 3-7 days so you have revisions and recovery of all files. Microsoft has invested so much in to creating some excellent technology and features but do a very poor job of informing users of them or better utilizing them so they for the most part go unused.

 

There is one thing Microsoft does need to do, every update they tag with a maximum install time so Windows Updates just needs to check if on battery then check both percentage charge and expected run time and not install if below 20% or run time is less than maximum install time for the update.

 

Windows Updates with the install time has actually been a thing for a very long time and I use those with SCCM (Microsoft product) and Maintenance Windows to make sure an update will not be attempted to install if it is possible to run past the agreed upon maintenance window. The maximum is much higher than actual like as an example the monthly cumulative security updates have 60 minutes but take around 20 minutes on fairly low spec VMs (2 vCores 4GB ram Server 2016) with hundreds all doing the update at the same time sharing the physical resources of the host, a high spec desktop will do it faster.

 

It's such an obvious thing and they can do it, it's more likely that it's not so much of an issue to drive Microsoft to do it or make people ask for it.

Too little too late IMO, the same company turning off system restores, now turns it on? I'm done already. I'll have 10 at somepoint for gaming, but practically on Linux (laptop) and Android (phone) for daily tasks now.

 

PS. No. No MS. They should not do ANY updates on battery power. Only on plug in. As said, I'm off to Linux land and if need be never game on PC again. I'm done. It's over. I'll send the paperwork, the cat is mine, the Dog you can keep. Bye.

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

1 hour ago, TechyBen said:

Too little too late IMO, the same company turning off system restores, now turns it on? I'm done already. I'll have 10 at somepoint for gaming, but practically on Linux (laptop) and Android (phone) for daily tasks now.

 

PS. No. No MS. They should not do ANY updates on battery power. Only on plug in. As said, I'm off to Linux land and if need be never game on PC again. I'm done. It's over. I'll send the paperwork, the cat is mine, the Dog you can keep. Bye.

Bye, Felicia.

 

Only on plugin is a really stupid system, due to the fact that people can bypass updating altogether by only running laptops on battery, and only plugging them in when they are off/hibernating. That is a fucking massive security hole, and one that I strongly prefer not to exist under any circumstances.

[Curious Pineapple]

20 hours ago, leadeater said:

No obsessive tweakers are the people against all advice and common knowledge try and butcher a product through non supported non official means when there are actually proper methods to achieve what they are looking for.

 

They get in to problems because of that, self inflicted. Their systems get broken because they already broke them themselves then complain about issues that happen due to their own actions.

 

If you cut your springs on a car to lower it then go over a bump that bottoms out your suspension and causes damage to the sub frame of your car or suspension/diff mounts that is YOUR fault, not the car or it's design and construction.

I used to fiddle with crap all the time, had Windows break all the time.

 

Now I just use it and never have any problems, even on this old hardware that will just break when I update according to so many on here.

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, Curious Pineapple said:

 

 

Now I just use it and never have any problems, even on this old hardware that will just break when I update according to so many on here.

You're not allowed to tell people you don't have problems with windows around here,  they'll tell you you do have problems but just don't realize it.

 

Many of us (in fact I think a very large portion of users) who have things set to recommended and shutdown regularly (to allow updates to happen when I am not using the PC) don't have issues.  

[Curious Pineapple]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

You're not allowed to tell people you don't have problems with windows around here,  they'll tell you you do have problems but just don't realize it.

 

Many of us (in fact I think a very large portion of users) who have things set to recommended and shutdown regularly (to allow updates to happen when I am not using the PC) don't have issues.  

I shut down every day, 30 second bootup time is nothing to worry about, not in that much of a rush that I need the extra time.

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, TechyBen said:

Too little too late IMO, the same company turning off system restores, now turns it on?

It was never on by default, it's now used as part of the Windows Update process. Most Windows features have never been on by default. There's so much you can do with Windows and customize it really does take years of IT work experience in the relevant technical areas to know about them and properly understand them and how to best utilize them.

 

Windows has always been first and foremost an operating system designed for businesses and corporate usage that can be used at home, Windows 10 was the first shift away from that. It's why Mac OS does so well because they also target a specific set of users, Mac OS tends to have features on by default because their philosophy appears to me as 'if it exists it should be used else it should not exist', which is actually pretty counter to both Windows and Linux.

 

This is why Windows has such a hold in the corporate networks, there is no direct replacement for that. Each OS has their own area they claim and as long as they focus on that they will do well which is why Windows 10 has been so inferior and problematic compared to Windows 7 due to that shift in focus.

[SpikeSpiegel]

Well I still got 1 Windows 7 Laptop running.  And I use AOMEI Backupper and I just created an image of the hard drive.  If it gets infected I can always go back to the original image off the Ext. Hard Drive

[TechyBen]

 

19 hours ago, mr moose said:

You're not allowed to tell people you don't have problems with windows around here,  they'll tell you you do have problems but just don't realize it.

 

Many of us (in fact I think a very large portion of users) who have things set to recommended and shutdown regularly (to allow updates to happen when I am not using the PC) don't have issues.  

Hahahaha. Again putting words in other people's mouth. No one said *you* don't have problems with windows. They said windows has problem, as it is factually show to do so to them (the fact MS do partial trial updates to certain rings/people only, also shows it's not an imagination, some problems only affect some people).

 

And the "large portion of us". I'd like to stay polite and calm, but it smacks of the "I'm not allergic/life threatened by my actions/food, so *you* cannot be" danger of mentality and thinking. Yeah, I know an OS or mobile phone is no where near as important or dangerous, but the brushing off of others experiences and needs, is just as dangerous a trend!

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, TechyBen said:

 

Hahahaha. Again putting words in other people's mouth. No one said *you* don't have problems with windows. They said windows has problem, as it is factually show to do so to them (the fact MS do partial trial updates to certain rings/people only, also shows it's not an imagination, some problems only affect some people).

Actually they did. on several occasions people have defiantly said that to me.

 

For example this:

 

Quote

 

Again, I believe you have had more issues or bugs affect you, just that you don't realize it or don't care enough for it to be a big issue to you.

 

For example ~2 years ago an update reset all the default programs (such as PDF viewer) to Microsoft programs. If I recall correctly, that happened to everyone and not just a handful of unlucky people.

The reason why you say you didn't have that issue might have been because:

1) You hadn't changed the default programs, so nothing got reset for you.

2) You might have forgotten about it.

3) You brushed it off as a minor inconvenience that you had to set the default program again. Something that takes like 10 seconds.

 

What I'm trying to say is that I honestly don't believe that you have dodged every single issue with Windows 10, especially not since some of them have been affecting everyone and not just a handful of people

What I do believe however is that your particular use case, as well as mentality, means that you are not personally inconvenienced or even notices the issues others are noticing. For example if you haven't changed default PDF reader then you won't notice that it got reset. The "bug" still happened on your computer, but you didn't notice it.

 

 

Apparently I am not inconvenienced enough to as others are to acknowledge there are bugs.   EDIT: just so you know this specific post was resolved after we both considered the context of the thread and other claims.  However it stands as proof these things get said and I have had them told to me by others also.

 

 

Quote

And the "large portion of us". I'd like to stay polite and calm, but it smacks of the "I'm not allergic/life threatened by my actions/food, so *you* cannot be" danger of mentality and thinking. Yeah, I know an OS or mobile phone is no where near as important or dangerous, but the brushing off of others experiences and needs, is just as dangerous a trend!

 

No one is brushing of anything that is serious.  Unless you have failed to comprehend what some of us have been repeatedly saying over the last 5 years, you should understand that we aren't experiencing problems with windows because we have a decent upgrade process in place.  Either the PC is on all recommended settings so windows can do what it is designed to or we delay updates for a few days and have updates set to occur during specific times. 

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, mr moose said:

Either the PC is on all recommended settings so windows can do what it is designed to or we delay updates for a few days and have updates set to occur during specific times. 

That doesnt always work. Windows 10 never liked my Ivybridge system. I did the inital in place upgrade and it was broke. OK, my fuck up there. When I finally did do a full reinstall I noticed some of the same bugs present. Updating drivers didnt help. Finally with 1903 my NIC drivers started acting up. Mind you I did a full reinstall to ensure that Windows was clean at this point. At first I noticed my NIC would sometimes not wakeup from sleep. Then it started happening all the time. I uninstalled the drivers and reinstalled them, nothing worked. I know it was not a hardware issue because the same intergrated NIC works fine in Ubuntu. Oh and then there was the graphical glitch of my mouse cursor, where it would distort at random times. Still worked but it was deffinatly something wrong, that bug lingered over at lest 4 full reinstalls. The issue here is WIndows 10 is not consistant. And yes, I was running stock. The only settings I changed were the privacy ones included in the Windows settings. 

 

Should I go over the time an update took out my moms Lenovo desktop? People on this fourm blame Lenovo, but the fact is if Microsoft cant guarentee updates working with OEM machines, then maybe dont force the fucking things on to people. I dont know how many comments on see on Facebook post concering new Windows 10 updates. Always see more negative comments then positive. Windows 10 kinda reminds me of the descripiton my buddy gave on Windows ME. How things would just randomly stop working and eventually start working. 

 

No one can deny the lack luster QA going on with Microsoft and its updates. They are not testing them properly before release and Ive even read that they dont always listen to the Windows Insiders. Sorry to tell you this but community testing of software really doesnt work well when its close source. It only works in Linux due to its open source nature. The fact is ever time I see Microsofts Market share it seems to be less and less. I remember when it was 96% not its like in the 70% range the last time I checked. So it seems like "The few" who have issues are not nessarily too few. 

[Dabombinable]

1 hour ago, Donut417 said:

No one can deny the lack luster QA going on with Microsoft and its updates. They are not testing them properly before release and Ive even read that they dont always listen to the Windows Insiders. Sorry to tell you this but community testing of software really doesnt work well when its close source. It only works in Linux due to its open source nature. The fact is ever time I see Microsofts Market share it seems to be less and less. I remember when it was 96% not its like in the 70% range the last time I checked. So it seems like "The few" who have issues are not nessarily too few. 

MS did seem to fire most of their QA team in preference of using Windows Insiders as their free replacement. So QA is nearly non-existent.

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, Donut417 said:

That doesnt always work. Windows 10 never liked my Ivybridge system. I did the inital in place upgrade and it was broke. OK, my fuck up there. When I finally did do a full reinstall I noticed some of the same bugs present. Updating drivers didnt help. Finally with 1903 my NIC drivers started acting up. Mind you I did a full reinstall to ensure that Windows was clean at this point. At first I noticed my NIC would sometimes not wakeup from sleep. Then it started happening all the time. I uninstalled the drivers and reinstalled them, nothing worked. I know it was not a hardware issue because the same intergrated NIC works fine in Ubuntu. Oh and then there was the graphical glitch of my mouse cursor, where it would distort at random times. Still worked but it was deffinatly something wrong, that bug lingered over at lest 4 full reinstalls. The issue here is WIndows 10 is not consistant. And yes, I was running stock. The only settings I changed were the privacy ones included in the Windows settings. 

 

Should I go over the time an update took out my moms Lenovo desktop? People on this fourm blame Lenovo, but the fact is if Microsoft cant guarentee updates working with OEM machines, then maybe dont force the fucking things on to people. I dont know how many comments on see on Facebook post concering new Windows 10 updates. Always see more negative comments then positive. Windows 10 kinda reminds me of the descripiton my buddy gave on Windows ME. How things would just randomly stop working and eventually start working. 

 

No one can deny the lack luster QA going on with Microsoft and its updates. They are not testing them properly before release and Ive even read that they dont always listen to the Windows Insiders. Sorry to tell you this but community testing of software really doesnt work well when its close source. It only works in Linux due to its open source nature. The fact is ever time I see Microsofts Market share it seems to be less and less. I remember when it was 96% not its like in the 70% range the last time I checked. So it seems like "The few" who have issues are not nessarily too few. 

 

Yep, nothing is 100%, but you can't change my experience or the general trend because you had a bad one.

[Donut417]

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

but you can't change my experience or the general trend because you had a bad one.

Not saying you.

 

But there are people like you who take my concerns and say I did something wrong. When I know I did not. That I did not have issues and its all in my head. Which makes it very frustrating. 

[TechyBen]

15 hours ago, mr moose said:

Actually they did. on several occasions people have defiantly said that to me.

 

For example this:

 

 

Apparently I am not inconvenienced enough to as others are to acknowledge there are bugs.   EDIT: just so you know this specific post was resolved after we both considered the context of the thread and other claims.  However it stands as proof these things get said and I have had them told to me by others also.

 

 

 

No one is brushing of anything that is serious.  Unless you have failed to comprehend what some of us have been repeatedly saying over the last 5 years, you should understand that we aren't experiencing problems with windows because we have a decent upgrade process in place.  Either the PC is on all recommended settings so windows can do what it is designed to or we delay updates for a few days and have updates set to occur during specific times. 

So are you saying you skipped the update that reset default programs then?

Quote

You're not allowed to tell people you don't have problems with windows around here,  they'll tell you you do have problems but just don't realize it.

So either you do, or don't? Why do these discussions always have to jump to extremes? You did not post "you're not allowed to tell people the problems are less", you posted "don't". 

 

I don't find that [less] constructive to discussion. 

 

PS, which brings me back to the "other people deny our experiences" comment. While not as problematic as Win10, my allergies (thankfully not life threatening) are painful. So for 30 years "don't have milk in it" has been "because *I* am fine with milk" the others say and turns out, the things did have milk in it, and I was ill, and it was not in my head. So here, your "don't have problems" is, there are problems, but *I* think it's fine you say, so my problems are of no concern? Yeah... I'll back away from those thought processes towards others.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

10 hours ago, Dabombinable said:

MS did seem to fire most of their QA team in preference of using Windows Insiders as their free replacement. So QA is nearly non-existent.

Actually, MS has admitted that they are using non-insider users as beta testers.

 

https://www.techspot.com/news/77846-microsoft-admits-non-insiders-beta-testing-windows-updates.html