Latest Windows 11 Cumulative Update Preview Breaks AMD Software Application

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

At least in the SE classes we always classified any type of release candidate that would be sent out and tested for final bugs/issues, similar to our work we internally called our in house codes betas (despite them being effectively final releases).  If no issues are spotted by the targeted users, we would push it out to everyone (after updating the version number, and nothing else). So I think the MS's preview pretty much fits the definition of what at least many would consider a beta.

Beta and Release Candidate are actually defined and different things, when Windows is officially released in to market it comes out first as RC. As someone that has been part of Microsoft TAM TAP (lol dunno why I put TAM) and other Beta product testing Beta and RC are not the same. Beta specifically means "we know there will be bugs or issues, please give feedback" while RC means "This is release ready and stable unless unforeseen issue".

 

This is no different than calling Alpha and Beta builds the same thing. They all have names for a reason, whether that difference matters to "you", the collective undefined person, is entirely up to them.

 

The only reason it matters, but not really, is that people are leveling the 'Beta' accusation and phrasing because they want to push the narrative that Microsoft is not doing testing of their updates despite the fact that they are, they do a lot of testing. The difference doesn't matter unless someone wants to make it matter by what they mean and accuse. The Windows Insider program came from complaints about new features taking too long to come out or things being behind invite only product testing, now that we have Windows Insider it's being used as some kind of evidence that this group is being used for Windows Update testing instead of XYZ that they supposedly stopped which they didn't 

 

The issue comes down to the complexity of operating systems, people want which is unobtainable. Release issues can always be better but zero issues is simply not possible here, and when issues come from security updates (not this story) you have to weigh up promptness of addressing the security concerns and long testing cycles that put people or systems at risk.

 

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Overall over the years I have gotten the feeling that whoever is overseeing the team meant for desktop windows space since Windows 8 - 11 days is just trying to push projects for the sake of it (instead of thinking about the user). 

Even Microsoft actually agreed with that and moved away from such regular feature updates, lots of issues came from pushing out updates what would have classically been in a Service Pack. This does apply to Windows 10, Windows 8 still was under the old model and a lot of issues came from the introduction of big UI updates that were... not so great heh. At least 8.1 helped make it less bad.

[wanderingfool2]

26 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Beta and Release Candidate are actually defined and different things, when Windows is officially released in to market it comes out first as RC. As someone that has been part of Microsoft TAM and other Beta product testing Beta and RC are not the same. Beta specifically means "we know there will be bugs or issues, please give feedback" while RC means "The is release ready and stable unless unforeseen issue".

A release candidate still overall fits into the category of a beta, it is a special form a beta release which typically signifies the end of the Beta.  It's why in a lot of documentation the people who get the release candidate are still called beta testers.

 

Like I said, its going to depend which specific text you get the information on whether or not something is called a beta...but even at Google; which they define a distinction between a RC and Beta, internally they still refer to people using RC's as beta testers.

 

32 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Even Microsoft actually agreed with that and moved away from such regular feature updates, lots of issues came from pushing out updates what would have classically been in a Service Pack. This does apply to Windows 10, Windows 8 still was under the old model and a lot of issues came from the introduction of big UI updates that were... not so great heh. At least 8.1 helped make it less bad.

When I say pushing projects, I don't just mean feature/service pack stuff.

 

I mean like the general concept of trying to replace control panel, desktop, features that get "removed" because people "don't" use them (taskbar on the left/right).  It seems like the release of incomplete products; like W11 which started was an ergonomic nightmare with some of the features they removed...before waiting so long for it to finally get added.

[Mark Kaine]

4 hours ago, da na said:

Shitty OS + shitty drivers, we're back to the era of Catalyst on Vista again... 

had vista + amd (well, ATi) gpu (the mighty x1950gt) for pretty much a whole decade,  *zero* issues whatsoever  - specifically not with drivers  (and if you think i "updated" my fully working drivers *once* then jokes on you! )

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

This is no different than calling Alpha and Beta builds the same thing. They all have names for a reason, whether that difference matters to "you", the collective undefined person, is entirely up to them.

i don't like these terms, specifically because of how the games industry uses them.

 

Alpha: god tier - this is what i want! (but outside a short window in time never get)

Beta: this is still good, but i can see where things are going...

Release: bug galore ahoy, doesn't work without a "patch", but that introduces new bugs of course, also the game mechanics got massively altered compared to alpha and beta, due to "fan feedback" and the game now plays like poo poo... -.-

[Eigenvektor]

6 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

i don't like these terms, specifically because of how the games industry uses it.

 

Alpha: god tier - this is what i want! (but outside a short window in time never get)

Beta: this is still good, but i can see where things are going...

Release: bug galore ahoy, doesn't work without a "patch", but that introduces new bugs of course, also the game mechanics got massively altered compared to alpha and beta, due to "fan feedback" and the game now plays like poo poo... -.-

That's the terms the software industry has used for ages.

 

Alpha: a first build that may be missing features and is expected to contain bugs, largely untested. Typically not made available to people outside the company.

Beta: a build that is more or less feature complete but still largely untested

Release Candidate: Feature complete and largely tested, may become a release if no further bugs are found

[Mark Kaine]

1 minute ago, Eigenvektor said:

That's the terms the software industry has used for ages.

 

Alpha: a first build that may be missing features and is expected to contain bugs, largely untested. Typically not made available to people outside the company.

Beta: a build that is more or less feature complete but still largely untested

Release Candidate: Feature complete and largely tested, may become a release if no further bugs are found

i dont feel like you understood what im saying... the games industry uses these terms in reverse,  and alpha , beta are more like marketing tools to deceive you!

 

Heck playstation home was in "beta" for years and it was the best thing ever, and people literally spent 10s of thousands of dollars on this "beta"... (which isnt even all that uncommon nowadays afaik)

[Mark Kaine]

4 hours ago, da na said:

MS had to have had some way of testing before rollout to insiders...

also tbf, that's exactly what insider program is, you get untested shit that you can "test" i mean "experience"... you need to have nerves of steel to sign up for something insane like this (they don't even pay you, that's the whole point)

[Eigenvektor]

15 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

i dont feel like you understood what im saying... the games industry uses these terms in reverse,  and alpha , beta are more like marketing tools to deceive you!

Sure, I get that. But the games industry doesn't get to redefine how technical terms are used. Alpha simply means first. Depending on context that could mean best. But when talking about software it generally refers to a first draft, not the best version.

 

Quote

Heck playstation home was in "beta" for years and it was the best thing ever, and people literally spent 10s of thousands of dollars on this "beta"... (which isnt even all that uncommon nowadays afaik)

Sure, the games industry loves to provide access to betas and pre-releases and "early access". That allows them to get away with all kinds of things like crashes and other instability, while already making money. It also gives them early access to feedback and allows them to change core mechanics without too much of a backlash (hey it's "still in beta"). Still doesn't mean it redefines how technical terms are used in the industry itself. As you said, it's misused as a marketing tool.

[Mark Kaine]

7 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Sure, I get that. But the games industry doesn't get to redefine how technical terms are used. Alpha simply means first. Depending on context that could mean best. But when talking about software it generally refers to a first draft, not the best version.

 

Sure, the games industry loves to provide access to betas and pre-releases and "early access". That allows them to get away with all kinds of things like crashes and other instability, while already making money. It also gives them early access to feedback and allows them to change core mechanics without too much of a backlash (hey it's "still in beta"). Still doesn't mean it redefines how technical terms are used in the industry itself. As you said, it's misused as a marketing tool.

yeah,  that's all i was saying... they don't get to redefine it, they already did. 

Spoiler

for their purposes... so it muddies the waters for everyone in turn 

 

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

now that we have Windows Insider it's being used as some kind of evidence that this group is being used for Windows Update testing instead of XYZ that they supposedly stopped which they didn't 

 

I've been trying to explain this to people for what seems like forever now,  It seems people just want to believe the internet tropes about security updates and flawed windows updates.  

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Like I said, its going to depend which specific text you get the information on whether or not something is called a beta...but even at Google; which they define a distinction between a RC and Beta, internally they still refer to people using RC's as beta testers.

True RC can or is part of Beta testing programs however when a company like Microsoft or Google or whoever put something out to the public as an RC it is the last RC and is actually versioned and called a Stable Release.

 

Quote

Stable release[edit]

Also called production release, the stable release is the last release candidate (RC) which has passed all stages of verification and tests. Any known remaining bugs are considered acceptable. This release goes to production.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle

 

Where as when I was part of the Windows Longhorn testing it got up to RC2 before it went public, the public release was just RC (RTM back then but from Windows 7 RC terminology was used), no number on the end.

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, da na said:

MS had to have had some way of testing before rollout to insiders...

 

1 hour ago, Mark Kaine said:

also tbf, that's exactly what insider program is, you get untested shit that you can "test" i mean "experience"... you need to have nerves of steel to sign up for something insane like this (they don't even pay you, that's the whole point)

 

Quote

AMD's graphics drivers still work fine, and the Adrenalin control panel is functional, save for the part where custom user settings get reset at every reboot.

With what the bug/issue is I'd say the above is very likely to go unnoticed through automated testing on hardware platforms. Automated testing suffers from the concept known as "too clinical", where you control so many variables that make it not equivalent to end user testing. But even then the above bug would also easily go unnoticed through human testing too. You're testing the Windows Update not AMD's software and it would/did pass functionality testing.

 

For Windows Update issues this is pretty darn small fry, we've had soooo much worse lol.

[Mark Kaine]

48 minutes ago, leadeater said:

AMD's graphics drivers still work fine, and the Adrenalin control panel is functional, save for the part where custom user settings get reset at every reboot.

wait... thats all that it is?? that's inconvenient but nothing big really lol 

 

"breaks" i thought it'd be a bit more dramatic. : D

 

 

ps: the thing about letting users test for bugs like this is still true of course,  that's the whole point,  ms could test this themselves, but that would be very costly, why do that when users happily do that for them in the "insider" program...

 

(i get that they also think they have a say in how windows changes over time with their suggestions,  but tbh i don't think that part is working very well, haha)

[LAwLz]

19 hours ago, leadeater said:

It's not Beta, it's the actual Windows Update every will get, full production ready, unless there is an issue. That's why it's called preview.

I feel like you're arguing semantics here.

If you don't like me calling a software version not pushed out to general users because they want to test it for bugs a "beta" then you can mentally substitute the word for "preview" if you want.

 

 

19 hours ago, leadeater said:

Because here's the issue, if you don't push it to some subset of users you'll not find issues and more people will get effected and limiting it to Insider users actually is not sufficient and neither is Microsoft internal testing either.

Why not limit it to Insiders? The entire point of the insider program is to test it.

What Microsoft is doing is basically tricking people into testing software they don't want to test for them.

 

If they don't have enough people in the insider program then they should make it more attractive to be in that program. Maybe stop doing all the A/B testing (if I sign up for the Insider program then I want to test new features, I don't want to have the chance to maybe test a new feature), stop keeping features hidden (like pretty much everything announced at the September event) and stop messing with it every couple of months changing the rules.

 

 

The entire point of the insider program is to let people test software before general availability. Pushing out prerelease software to people outside of the insider program is a big fuck you to people. Microsoft is the only company that does this, so please let's not pretend like it is normal behavior and totally fine or necessary. I am not aware of any other OS vendor, or even software vendor, who will push out prerelease software to users who click "check for updates", because in their mind it's "someone who really wants a version before everyone else". To me, someone who clicks "check for updates" is someone who wants to check for updates, nothing more. It should be a manual trigger for the same process that happens automatically if "automatic updates" is enabled.

 

The fact that you can't in a reliable and predictable way manually make sure you got the latest stable version of Windows is weird. And no, preview versions should not be called "stable versions" because as you said, they exist to try and catch unknown bugs. What Microsoft is doing could be called pushing a release candidate out to regular users who happened to push the check for update button, but an RC is not a stable release. This is indisputable since even Microsoft separates the two. General availability updates and preview updates.

The fact that the "check for updates" button behaves very differently in Windows than in most if not all other software is also weird.

 

The fact that they don't warn users or tell them in a very clear manner that "hey, pushing the check for update button means you will be downloading preview updates that aren't available to the general public through automatic updates yet, because we feel like they need more testing" is a very bad thing.

 

 

 

19 hours ago, leadeater said:

The issue is primarily, well 100% in my opinion, the removal of being allowed to select which updates to install after scanning (not scan and install all in one button argh) because that doesn't allow Microsoft to categorize Preview Updates as optional anymore since they would and could never get installed with how it is done now.

I agree that that's a big issue.

I also think it's a big issue that they are pushing out preview updates to people who did not sign up to test preview updates. That is what the insider program is for, testing updates before they reach the general public.

If they have a problem with the insider program (and they do, I can go on and on about howe I think that program is a mismanaged mess) then they should fix that. This whole "let the customers test software for bugs" idea is awful. It's one thing if they do it to people who signed up for it, but it's something completely different if they do it to for example my mom just because I told her "make sure you got the latest version".

 

 

19 hours ago, leadeater said:

And I would argue the situation around updates causing problems has not significantly changed since Windows XP, what has changed is more people being willing and able to be vocal about issues. I remember many frequent and significant issues all the way through every Windows OS generation, especially .Net or heaven forbid Windows Update utterly breaking sometimes to near unfixable degree.

I strongly disagree, and I think even Microsoft would disagree.

Microsoft's entire strategy around updates has drastically changed. I listened to an interview with someone from Microsoft, I can't remember if it was Chris Capossella or Panos Panay, but when Windows 10 launched whoever it was said that they didn't "see the launch as the finish, they saw it as the start", and I think that's a pretty bad way of looking at things. Microsoft today has the mentality that they want to push out things quickly, and then fix them later. Except in many cases the "later" seems to never come.

 

Just take Windows 11 as an example. They pushed it out in a very unfinished state and is now trying to fix it. 

[DANK_AS_gay]

35 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

I feel like you're arguing semantics here.

What do you have against the Jews?

[Dabombinable]

I unfortunately can't lay my issues with Adrenalin on Microsoft...as it doesn't play well with Windows Blinds. Has more issues with Win11 then I remember under XP however...so not surprised.

[Arika]

On 10/7/2023 at 9:41 PM, jagdtigger said:

I wonder if there is an unmarked expenditure in Intel's ledgers....

I hate that people still use this joke... because some idiots are actually starting to believe it.

[jagdtigger]

2 hours ago, Arika said:

I hate that people still use this joke... because some idiots are actually starting to believe it.

Cant do anything about idiots believing everything... But you have to admit ever since AMD turned up the heat under them these "issues" hitting only AMD got a bit more common.

[MadAnt250]

LOL, Windows 11.

 

I'm skipping that.

[Lightwreather]

9 hours ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

What do you have against the Jews?

I uhhh, can't tell if your joking or not?

If you aren't semantics is a branch of linguistics concerned with meaning of words.

If you are, that's on me

[DANK_AS_gay]

7 hours ago, Lightwreather JfromN said:

I uhhh, can't tell if your joking or not?

If you aren't semantics is a branch of linguistics concerned with meaning of words.

If you are, that's on me

Yeah I'm joking lol

[thewelshbrummie]

On 10/3/2023 at 11:58 PM, Eigenvektor said:

My thoughts

Good one Microsoft. As if AMD isn't receiving enough flak for having bad drivers and software. I wonder how many people will blame this on AMD at the end of the day. Guess Microsoft doesn't feel the need to test with AMD hardware, even though we're still talking about roughly 20% of Windows users.

Unfortunately I'm far more likely to think AMD has done something wrong here, especially considering the current issues with Anti-Lag+.

[Eigenvektor]

9 hours ago, thewelshbrummie said:

Unfortunately I'm far more likely to think AMD has done something wrong here, especially considering the current issues with Anti-Lag+.

Is that AMD's fault though, or is it an issue with VAT? To me it looks like Valve's heuristics are simply being too aggressive here.

[ThousandBlade]

It's been 3 years since windows 7 end of life.

 

Still haven't gotten over it.