Windows Update borks PowerShell – Microsoft won't fix it for a week You'd be forgiven for thinking Microsoft is actively trying to stop people using Windows 10 Anniversary Edition. A patch this week broke one of the key features of the OS: PowerShell. KB 3176934, released on Tuesday as an automatic update, addresses a good number of bugs and other oddities in the operating system, including …
They busted up the Trusted Computing group because an audit that uncovered a glitch. Apparently they had been let go in the 90's for getting in the way of a product launch, but due to an accounting glitch they were still getting paid. They were still in the org chart, but even the building they worked in had been torn down. Nobody has seen them since the launch of W98 SE and some may have passed. So they fixed the glitch.
"Supposedly, an organization learns from its mistakes."
Supposedly. In real life, often not. Too many organisations seem to have a top layer that doesn't even recognise the existence of mistakes. Others iterate through top management so that any learning that does reach the top is regularly wiped out. And as the big mistakes are those that percolate down they get repeated.
Funny... I left right after XP SP2 and so did a lot of other quality people.. It was sickening having people over you who could barely turn their PC on... Program Managers ruined so many features with fantasy requests, it's no wonder Win 10 is a huge fuster cluck...
And not only did they release the STEs, they made SDETs write AND run the automation which I found is IMPOSSIBLE...
Seriously. No hint of irony expressed or intended, or requested in reply.
How does something like this not get caught in their automatic testing? They have to have this, right?
If you really know enough about MS's QA process to comment, please do.
Thank you.
-Confused in NY.
They fired all the testers 10 years ago... I used to be one... Now CONSUMERS are beta testers... They do have automated testing but you can't catch everything with automation...
I won't be using it unless they fix that acid trip UI... I tried a Start Menu replacement but the Windows till looked like popups and the "high" contrast colors give me headaches... No way I can look at that 11 hours a day...
Load of rubbish.
Hmmmm now let me see.
Noupdate.reg Contains:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]
"NoAutoUpdate"=dword:00000001
Fixed, no updates and the crappy torrenting function knackered as well.
If you turn off the auto update have you not then violated the EULA? Re.:
6. Updates. The software periodically checks for system and app updates, and downloads and installs them for you. You may obtain updates only from Microsoft or authorized sources, and Microsoft may need to update your system to provide you with those updates. By accepting this agreement, you agree to receive these types of automatic updates without any additional notice.
Source:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Useterms/Retail/Windows/10/UseTerms_Retail_Windows_10_English.htm
Or is this not in the EULA of the "free" version?
This post has been deleted by its author
As an ex windows developer, I have always has a healthy hatred & distrust of Microsoft due to their proprietary extensions, terrible documentation, abysmal support, disgusting marketing team and willingness to evangelistic promotion of their own technology, which they then drop like a stone within a year or two.
It was bloody horrific, but at least they still managed to produce some reasonable tools and I always had the impression that there was some competent developers at the heart of MS, just hampered by management & marketing.
These days it looks like marketing are actually doing the coding and testing as well.
I have been trying for several years to disentangle myself from any reliance on Microsoft and am now at the point where the only thing I rely on a Microsoft OS is for games. Even then I also have steam on linux and increasing look for linux compatible games to purchase.
The many people who ask my advice or request my assistance usually end up with a Mint installation for general use with only one person experience any issues (frequent WiFi disconnects on a Dell Latitude, but the house is all hardwired anyway & she doesn't take it anywhere)
I deleted my only Windows 10 installation just yesterday - it was too late to roll back so it was nuked from orbit.
You got an up vote. Good to see a considered response regarding Microsoft. I like Linux, have used it on and off for more than 2 decades, it's progress over that time is amazing. Of all my kit I have 1 vista partition for SQL Server and when it's released for Linux I'll prob dump that as well.
But I would not inflict Linux on an ordinary user, either family/friends or in a business, would be a support nightmare. OSX has its own perculiarities as well as higher initial capex cost but would be a better option provided your application list is suitable.
Don't get me wrong, Microsofts continual face palm clusterfuck is a tragicomedy that equally makes you laugh and despair and I only use it with a barge pole taped to another one and holding my nose.
If you were asked to deploy a Linux desktop across your enterprise, would you run for the hills? I would.
I have a greater faith in my ability to deliver a Linux desktop across an enterprise (to a degree - there's only so much a single person can do), and a far greater belief in my software provider not to screw it up royally. Supporting the system is easy, but I agree that user support would be interesting and require more work (initially, at least).
Why do I say this? Well, the teaching and compute clusters I manage just plain work, even with the overall org's Windows-centric print and file solutions. My users are all pretty bright (being PG students and academics) and able to look after themselves in the main. I'd certainly not offer to extend the service to all academics and the admin staff as they have a College based system that works for them and is supported centrally. SEP.
@ Gr Ninny : I'd suggest college/Unis are a special case, I'm thinking more of supporting Sales dolts across 26 countries not to mention the call centre monkeys/agents. Yes there are solutions out there for many of the problems associated with such a migration, you could do it but the question is whether you would want to. In the end Windows familiarity is a skillset common across the board which essentially subsidises almost all businesses, if you dump that then you are giving all your competitors a leg up. On top of that you need IT staff with the support skillsets to support your estate, there aren't so many who can do that and inevitably they cost more to hire.
As SaaS, PaaS and all that malarkey becomes the standard then a lot of these issues go away, for example tied-down browser based solutions for contact centres or SaaS ERP monstrosities.
"Windows familiarity is a skillset common across the board which essentially subsidises almost all businesses, "
Obviously, I mean Windows hasn't ever changed, has it. Well, apart from maybe the Ribbon? And Vista? And Windows 8? (and others before, but we don't have all day).
"a lot of these issues go away, for example tied-down browser based solutions for contact centres or SaaS ERP monstrosities."
That's more like it. These challenges also go away for Joe and Joanne Public who just want to email and Facebook and such, who are perfectly happy with Android or iPhone.
There was a bloke once who talked about the "squeezed middle". That's where MS's legacy products are headed right now. Little people mostly don't need MS because of Mac and Android. Big companies need less MS because of web-based everything (for the volume business applications - exceptions obviously apply).
"But I would not inflict Linux on an ordinary user, either family/friends or in a business, would be a support nightmare."
I've got news for you, at least as far as family and friends are concerned.
It isn't.
Being retired I've never had to try installing across an enterprise. Back in the old days, however, I used to run stuff on Unix servers for multiple business users.
If you were asked to deploy a Linux desktop across your enterprise, would you run for the hills? I would.
This is certainly the conventional wisdom. But people are more adaptable than you think. During my too-long career in office environments, I've seen the non-technical staff learn to use MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT 3.5, NT 4.0, XP, Windows 7, to say nothing of the disruptive changes to Microsoft Orifice.
> ...a support nightmare.
Last place I looked into had this with user support: if one Windows supporter was assigned X users then a Linux supporter was assigned 5*X users. The Linux supports pretty much had manageable work load, the Windows supporters: not so much. You could see it on their faces.
Caveat: academic environment.
Penguin icon to make it easier for the downvoters.
Well, my 79 year old father is definitely not any form of power user but he used windows for word processing as well as e-mailing and surfing the internet. I used to have to fix his windows installations on a regular basis perhaps every 3 months or so there would be an issue he couldn't resolve.
I moved him to Ubuntu about 6 or 7 years ago and only had two support calls after that;
1) "how do I type foreign characters in e-mail and the word processor"
2) "What the fuck happened?"
number 2 was when Ubuntu automatically updated to the Unity desktop. At which point I installed Mint (Mate) and I haven't had to provide any support since.
My life is much easier.
I am the Original AC poster BTW
"If you were asked to deploy a Linux desktop across your enterprise, would you run for the hills? I would."
Linux desktops have already happened in some few big corps by stealth in the form of Linux powered thin clients replacing desktops connecting to massive Linux servers hosting Windows on VMs.
"If you were asked to deploy a Linux desktop across your enterprise, would you run for the hills? I would."
I wouldn't. I am certain a number of companies have already done this - the big names you already know. And the companies that have already done this are NOT going to stand up and shout about it.
Why? They are saving a shed load of licencing and support costs etc, adding $'s to the bottom line and a competitive advantage over rivals. You can be sure they are not going to spread that around for others to copy.
There used to be a time (around 20 years ago) when people would gather to talk about the latest and greatest of both software and hardware and dream what could be done next without worrying about things being broken as much as we see nowadays with people worrying if the next update will make their pcs unusable...
In the old days, one would apply an update happily thinking it would improve security or make programs more stable... 20 years later and instead of having a rock-solid (remember when that was a cliche for windows 2000 or NT?) we endure low quality programming... This has become a trend not only in MS but in a lot of companies like Symantec, Oracle, etc, where they can't keep up with their own developers and rushing unfinished stuff out. I have read how games feel unfinished or needed polishing, but there is the saying, can you polish turds?
The need to release new things in order to stay afloat in the market is what drives companies to release unfinished products, but then, mistakes like forgetting to include a package into the build, really shows how tangled their processes have become, they can't or didn't develop a check program/list of what needs to be included in a patch. That is just amazingly disappointing.
Imagine what companies developing software for MS are building on top of (a terrible and unstable platform, where core functionality just breaks because of an update) and what their products are going to perform.
I read about people just giving up on information technology and losing faith in what can be done, even laughing at MS going down in flames, but it shows how we embraced blindingly the trends and didn't care enough to put a stop on fast development and focus on stuff that works and keeps working from the start.
I agree there has been a distinct reduction in quality not just in software, but in almost every sphere of human endeavour.
When I went to Uni I deliberately chose specifically a Software Engineering degree believing that the industry would inevitably be forced to take up engineering principles and apply decent design methodologies in order to produce quality code. Especially considering how much of our lives were going to be increasingly dominated by software.
Sadly exactly the opposite happened.
People bandy around the term Engineer, without any professional Engineering qualifications
Companies consider design up front to be an expensive luxury they can't afford.
I was employed by a chemical engineering software company whose products were used to design & build huge, safety critical, chemical and petrochemical processing sites. Assuming their engineering principles would extend to the tools they use to build these things. Sadly I was much mistaken.
On my first day I had a 5 minute chat with my manager & we did a bit of white boarding for my first task in his office. What I didn't realise was the two sentences I came out of that meeting with was actually his idea of a design spec for the project which was intended to take 6 months of coding.
Before the end of day he wanted to know why I hadn't written any code yet!
This department used to pretty much rewrite applications from scratch when they wanted to add some functionality. Sometimes because the application had been written in a way that it was impossible to extend and sometimes because the code was so cryptic no-one could untangle it.
Once I was allowed to lead the dev team I would assign 3 of the 6 months for requirements & design. We never rewrote another piece of software, we frequently would implement functionality given 6 months by management, in 6 weeks. Simply because it was designed to be extendible and also because the extensive requirements spec would also give major clues to the next several years of developments.
If it is done correctly engineered software can massively reduce development, time, costs and ongoing maintenance costs.
In the years since I find most developers I have encountered, still don't believe that to be true & management are much, much harder to convince.
These days people seem to forget that there are a number of development methodologies available (if they use any at all). Often though these are just box ticking exercises.
Another thing I encountered more recently was management insisting we use Agile, even in completely inappropriate situations. It really isn't necessary if you \re building an application for which all the functionality is known at the start.
If we built buildings, bridges, cars, planes or chemical plants the same way we build software, civilisation would collapse (and explode, plummet, crumble etc...)
As we rely more and more on software to control our lives we really should be trying to find ways to re-introduce some quality into its production. Sadly I have lost all faith that that will ever happen.
As mistakes go, this is a embarrassing cockup on Microsoft's part should be As mistakes go, this is a embarrassing but hardly unusual cockup on Microsoft's part
FIFY. Let's not leave out important facts here :).
Also corrected:
And Redmond wonders why people are leaving its products for open-source alternatives.
MS users are pretty much permanently on the lookout for alternatives to either fix things MS has borked, return functionality MS has removed in the name of "improvement" (especially in matters UI) or add functionality that MS cannot be bothered with - some are so desperate they are even willing to pay for it (or, I would venture, because these products are typically made by smaller outfits you can actually have a dialogue with and whose solutions are actually worth the money). So it's not just Open Source that comes to the rescue here..
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