Any of you folks Windoze 7 users? Judging by the comments on using the GWX app to block Windoze 10, I'm guessing more than a few.
There appears to be somewhat of an epidemic of Windows Update not working. Almost two weeks ago, Mrs. Graybeard noticed that her Win 7 PC (an HP Pavilion) was not applying updates. That prompted looking a little closer only to find out it hadn't updated itself in a couple of months. That, in turn, led to almost two weeks now of chasing down fixes from every Knowledge Base article on Microsoft, every Tech Blogger and every other self-proclaimed Guru that a search engine can turn up and it still isn't working. We even tracked down a rumor in a comment on McThag's blog. A lot of folks are reporting problems with this.
Being a little suspicious and cynical, I thought maybe it's because Microsoft is anxious to kill off Win7 and isn't really assigning, shall we say, the sharpest knives in the drawer to work on 7 and those folks screwed it up. The problem is that this seems to affect all Windows versions. They screwed up something fundamentally ans it's affecting all of their OSes.
My regular desktop (this computer) updates normally, and an older computer in the other room does as well, so 1 out of 3 has the issue. Perhaps 2 of 4; there's another of our dedicated computers I haven't verified, yet. The new refurb was acting strangely, but the "official Microsoft fix" found here has apparently fixed both Mrs. Graybeard's HP and the refurb. Hers has installed something like 15 updates, and the refurb is currently installing 153 updates. That's OK. I figured it would need about 90 million.
I run Win 7 on the radio room PC because I need it for the Flex Radio. I haven't had it on for a couple of months now, so when I fire it up again, if it displays this behavior, I'll try the official fix.
ReplyDeleteI just gave up on funding Bills lifestyle and now I run about eight different flavours of Linux ... but then I'm cheap. Even the very few Microsoft only programmes I 'have' to use (no other option) run fine under Wine now.
ReplyDeleteEven 'professionally' over here now, there aren't many companies that use anything but Linux for exactly the same reasons you're experiencing 'Microsoft hates you cause they think you suck, so just shut up and give them your money' and 'Windows really does suck'! And yes, the rumour is they're trying to kill everything but 10. (The truth is, if I had to use something other than Linux I'd use either IoS or Android, which is becoming an option in a lot of new areas now, no?)
That's another story as long as a blog post. I've run Linux on different computers around here several times since late 2010. I may still turn the new refurb into Debian Wheezy box to run LinuxCNC in the shop.
DeleteI'm sort of stuck with Windoze because of a handful of key pieces of software I run that simply aren't available under Linux. It's the old story: everyone uses Windows because everyone develops for Windows because everyone uses Windows ... It's a self-eating watermelon, to use the engineering term. I could do dual boot, but it makes life inconvenient and more importantly doesn't solve the problem of eliminating Windows. WINE never quite worked out for me - the programs are graphics intensive and didn't play nice.
Last year in December, when I first retired, I was sick of windows, being forced into 10 and all, so I figured I'd switch everything, and started with the ham shack computer. It'll be easiest, I said. Hah! The state of the art in rig control and logging software seemed to be about a decade or two behind what I was using in Windows. In the Windows world, I can pull up a great graphical world map, pick a spot on the globe, double click it, and my antenna outside points to the right heading for it. Or I can enter the prefix of the station I hear and the software will draw the great circle path on the map in Mercator projection (those are complicated curves!). All I have to is hit "go". Automatic control of the antenna rotator. In the stuff I was able to find, I couldn't even "talk" to the rotator. 10 or 15 years ago in the first logging program I used, I could look up a callsign prefix in my logging program, hit B and the antenna would point at them.
The 3D CAD and CAM programs I'm using won't run under Linux. The CAD program (Rhino) has an iOS version but I couldn't trade in my Windows license and get an iOS license.
For web browsing, email, listening to music and stuff that's very popular, Linux is the way to go. I can stay in Linux if I don't want to do any design work, or anything "technical". With the apparent exception of Linux as the machine controller in LinuxCNC. But that seems to be the only exception. I already use Linux world/open source programs for almost everything else.
No affiliation, just a user - but you might want to try running the Crossover program put out by Codeweavers. Not free, but not that expensive either.
DeleteIt seems to run most Windows programs just fine under Linux Mint.
It's 'not my area' but have you tried Antennavis in the Debian Hamradios package (or the UbuntuHamsPackage – anything that hits Ubuntu packages tends to be aimed more at the 'dabbler' types too so bugs and convenience 'issues' tend to have been worked out)? radio.linux.org.au also has 'quite a selection' of offerings. But being honest this has always been the 'difficulty' with Linux versus Windows offerings (let alone IoS), not that they are necessarily less capable but that they require a degree more 'involvement' (Oh alright, hours/days of 'playing', and reams of 'correspondence' on the forums followed usually by the downloading of obscure, seemingly irrelevant additional packages, plus the 'jiggling' of even more obscure settings to set-up as you want). Windows offerings are generally aimed down the all-singing-all-dancing-bells-and-whistles but 'made pretty' and sometimes even 'easy/convenient/plug-and-play' route whilst many Linux offerings seem 'deliberately' obscure and limited (for the 'in' crowd). I suspect it's mainly due to the 'personalised' nature of much Linux software (it tends to become more 'broad-ranging' when larger companies, and the mainstream, become involved).
DeleteSo? I suspect you'll never (bar either writing it yourself, or finding someone else who wants exactly the same capabilities) find a similarly all-encompassing Linux option, but by mixing-and-matching you may even get more capability (Yeh, I know 'preaching to the choir and choir-master' yet again).
I'll be honest, I 'do' occasionally miss the 'convenience' of Windows but after the steep command-line learning curve Linux still offers just a little bit more 'specificity' 'for me'. (Plus, of course, I 'can' go through twenty-even options to find the one/ones that work for me, instead of relying on the one I can afford – I 'did' mention I was 'cheap' didn't I?).
As to CAD/CAM? Yeh, another area where open-source is going to fail (not enough interest and costs involved). LinuxCNC is 'Meh' and Blender does have a module allowing 'some' limited control of CAM, but …
My comment that Microsucks has been doing this to force everyone onto 10 was just deleted from your blog comments. Guess Microturd is displeased. All support for ALL non windows 10 users stopped as of July 29 2016.--Ray
ReplyDeleteNo, that's the weird SPAM filters on Google. Every so often, it shoves a comment into that folder and I have to go get it. Of course, I have no idea what makes it decide something is or isn't junk mail.
DeleteNot quite.
DeleteThey still supporting XP because it's in use for so many point-of-sale terminals.
There's even a registry hack you can do that will allow desktop versions of XP to get the POS security updates.
Mentioning an MS OS by name and including a date is prolly why it spam-trapped.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that link SiGgraybeard! Got the game side of my old Mac updated now!
Glad you dropped by, Angus. I was meaning to go drop that link in the comment thread on your blog, but got busied.
DeleteMy wife is acting like a thousand pound weight got lifted off her shoulders. She had been agonizing over how to fix that problem for almost two weeks (tomorrow will be two weeks), and now her PC is acting like normal again.
Microsoft has changed their entire patching process for pre-Windows 10 systems. My wife has been bugging me to download Win7 patches for her IT guy to load in her vault at work. No go on their .iso incremental patches , and it's nearly impossible to do individual patches.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, look into wsusoffline (http://www.wsusoffline.net/) if you have to update offline/disconnected systems. One portion downloads patches you want from Micro$oft based on Windows and Office version, and the other portion will install the patches on the destination system.
Cheers and good luck...
Many thanks for this post. Both machines had issues. One is all updated and the other is downloading 79 updates now.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this, SiG!
ReplyDeleteI installed the patches on one of the laoptops I'm rebuilding for the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro, and it's now downloading and installing 288 updates.
Prior to this it had sat running Windows Update all night without success.