What's the verdict on Windows 10 April 2018 Update?

I will write that after recovering some hundred plus machines last year that it's "always something." Microsoft does not know about all the various setups folk have so to think Microsoft "should have known" is only stated by those new to PCs.

All PCs are essentially time bombs. At some point they will fail. Now that you can quote me and I won't disagree.

I meant things users install, not knowing if and when it will cause a problem with a MS update in the future. So it's another good idea not to install "non-mainstream" programs/apps.
I can understand why MS can't be responsible for the compatibility of their system updates with.... everything out there.
I'd still be interesting if people with bricked computers mentioned some of the apps they've installed.

That's the only way to really ensure that changes to OS and such can happen.

Apple has such a system and folk either love or hate it.

Just be smarter about how we use our computers and what we install. I've never used an Apple product, and don't care to. I've also never bricked a computer or had a serious malware infection.
I'm working here on a 2011 Dell XPS desktop with original Windows 7 installation, never a problem. I have 2 laptops that I upgraded from W7 to W10 that I'll bet anything will take this update without a hiccup, but I'll still wait.

My two laptops that are only two years old bricked after the latest Windows update. That time bomb had a short fuse! And, it is solely the fault of Microsoft and the Windows team, who didn't properly test the new update before inflicting its damage on so many of us. My hardware on those two machines still works just fine, but their unusable now, at least they won't boot up with Windows. My next attempt to fix them will be to install Linux OS on them and convert them to that operating system.

I'd say it's your fault to allow Windows to install those upgrades on 7 PC's so soon. It's very easy to postpone it for at least a month, that you can only blame yourself for not doing that.

... I don't kow why we are accepting MS's challenge here: "Run Win10 and thou shalt upgrade and if you don't jump though a bunch of hoops that we, the merry men of Redmont forest, put in front of you, then thou shalt run the upgrades when we think they are ready for you - and we haven't really tested them on real users' computers before we put them put there, because ..." - Yes, why, actually? Why are they pushing those upgrades out there where all but the (I like this word) cognoscenti are trapped into these upgrades? To stick with my foreign wave: Cui bono? What good is it to anyone, Redmont or not, to create grief for these users, regardless of whether they can "only blame themselves" or not?

(as you can see, I am reluctantly, slowly being pushed onto a soap box here at Hyde Park Corner

You're right, and I don't think they are happy with it themselves.

On the other side, there are a lot of "insiders" testing for Microsoft: 10 million Windows fans, enthusiasts, and professionals. Many of them will run in a virtual environment, but many will be installing it on real hardware.

And this poster - you can check all his posts via his profile - only seems to rant. I doubt if he even is interested in a solution, since I have never seen him answering to any reply. If he is in trouble for 2 weeks already (we're 14 May now), it's likely he actively downloaded these upgrades which were officially scheduled to start on May 8. It seems they came earlier if you searched for Windows updates yourself. Then you're really inviting troubles if it goes wrong with the first of your 7 Windows PC/laptops and you continue with the other 6.

I am slowly coming around (actually, returning) to the position where I question the whole move towards these continuous improvement programs. It isn't just MS doing this - but they seem to be the only ones to forcefeed the updates, especially to users that can't defend themselves. But worse, there seem to be far too many incidents - also seemingly affecting lots more inexperienced users than experts - where updates not only fail but destroy environments. I am pretty confident that, when I get hit, I'll be able to handle it.

Maybe we have reached the point where MS, having found other sources of revenue, could turn Windows over to the public domain and an open source community. And I am also pretty confident that IBM would follow suit and add their OS/2 - bless its withered old soul ... that could become an interesting situation. (I have, on a number of occasions in my career, taken over extremely unstable software products and fixed the core problems, which then enabled me and my teams to add improvements that others had thought impossible without a complete rewrite - those were the days ...)

We've yet to lose a single machine. But we run a tight ship and all the Netbooks and Atom machines were moved out years ago.

Another plus is SSD. Now I may upset someone here but our heavy users were moved to SSD since the updates were taking far too long on HDDs.

Some fault MSFT on that. I do too. Updates need to be fast too.

tsk, tsk!

You're right: It's my fault for trusting Microsoft, a giant company with lots of money that has a pretty good past reputation, and for trusting Microsoft's products. I won't have that problem again, as I'm switching to Linux OS. I also plan on selling all of my Microsoft company stock (MSFT.) Any company that releases such inferior products is not likely to produce good returns for its stockholders in the future. I think that I can find more promising investment opportunities.

Double dare you to watch this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8&feature=youtu.be

We're doomed it seems.

Question: If you like your Win 7 computer and do not want to update to Win 10, I think you may need to turn off All MS updates. I just did a security update that popped up a screen that warned that the end of Win 7 Support was coming in Jan 2020.
From here on in updates will be solely to "prepare Win 7" for Win 10 upgrade. Which in simple terms means "to destroy your Win 7 operating system so you have to upgrade." Just like they did to Windows XP.
Does anyone have any insight on this subject.

I ran Windows XP on an old PC until last year.
And just this week it's in the newspapers here that an essential system of the agency that handles driving licenses (in the Netherlands) still runs on XP, mainly because the new system they started to build 5 years ago has been cancelled this week (because of being more expensive and taking longer to build than initially expected).

So how do you mean "they [Microsoft] destroyed your Win [XP] operating system"?

HP had very specific hardware related printer drivers for my old printer. There is no designation on the printer panel when a cartridge runs dry, which one it is. The drivers told me. Under Printing Preferences, there was a tab that allowed me to "service" my printer including a nice picture of what my ink levels were. HP came out with a "General" driver, not specifically for this printer that did not contain that tab for servicing the printer. So, that was the one that MS pushes out. Can't get the hardware specific driver to run on Win 10. So, when the generalized driver tells me I'm low on ink and/or the display panel tells me that I'm low on ink, I have to crank up XP to find out which of the two cartridges I need to replace. Would be nice if I could afford to replace everything; not easily do-able on Social Security.

I'm not running LINUX, but thanks for pointing me at that. Hope it differentiates among the different cartridges.

You could set up a VirtualBox just for that task. Kind of ridiculous overkill. But, assuming you have better luck than I did with my printer, your printer driver might install easily, and the whole thing won't be too terribly difficult to set up.

I hadn't thought of that. Good point. Probably by the time my XP netbook dies, I'll have a new printer anyway.

Just install all the HPLIP programs from Synaptic Program Manager and you can monitor ink levels just fine. Works on my old D-100 printer and on a Photosmart 4700 just fine.

I had my copy of MS Word 2003 (from my original discs) on Win XP. It started with the interactivity of Office. MS decided to discontinue support for Word 2003. So I said fine.
I only use it to vies a clients DOCX file once in a while. And I had one customer who used Publisher. So I had no need for a latest version. Well, MS sent down something that discombablulated Office. All of a sudden it kept looking for and not finding some intallation files for not only Office programs but for Adobe programs and other programs that Office had nothing to do with. They would load up eventually after you clicked cancel for about 5 or 6 pop up boxes. Then I made the mistake for re-installing Office 2003.
That was the end of MS office on my computer. Even tho I owned the discs. They weren't going to let me install MY Office any more. MS really hates their users. As proof, an old laptop that is not online still has Office 2003 on it and it still works because MS never had a chance to send in their poison update pills. But to this day when I go on that XP computer (It still runs some printers for me) it sometimes goes thru the MS trying to load something routine, for NON-MS programs, EVEN THO I Wiped Out everything related to Microsoft Office. Even in the registry.
So, I have duplicates of my Win 7computer and I'm turning off any further updates
and MS Office has been replaced with Libre and Open Office. As I try to avoid MS poison pill updates. I just want to be able to do my work. I'm not interested in what MS or any other company wants me to do.

I have two computers that won't work with WIN 7 least of all 8 or Win 10. Old Pentium chips. But it doesn't matter. If the issue is keeping on old tech, here is what you will see. You won't be able to run newer software on it. My main reason for a new PC was that, while my A/V software was still supporting XP, the tax software (all of them,apparently), refused to work. Updates for apps and other software caused the software to stop working with some message about the version of the OS. From long IT history, once the OS is no longer supported, other software refuses to test on old OSes and hardware so they just ban it. For example, I have a netbook. It ran on XP ONLY. Not even VISTA. There was a WIN 7 "sampler" version that would run but, after that, there were NO DRIVERS for the internal hardware for any other OS. No, you can't keep old drivers. MS keeps changing interfaces or something that they don't work. So, it's NOT just "INACTION". In fact, its the opposite. You'll have to stop MS updates. And, you'll have to stop updates for ALL of your apps and hardware drivers too. And, if you have to buy new apps? Forget that. I can't do my taxes on my old systems. I can't even run Quicken 2016.

Some of the "common" issues I see are driver-related. Some got things working by upgrading their drivers. Even though Microsoft seems interested in handing out drivers for other than Intel chip issues, at least some of them are old and don't work. What I do, before a feature/major upgrade (not saying anyone else should do this) is to go to my computer manufacturer's support website (like Dell or HP) and get the latest drivers and install them. I keep them handy in case MS overlays those drivers with old stuff. (I'm just cautious). Did you know that laptops have MORE non-standard drivers than regular desktops? It has to do with devices you don't normally see on a desktop such as built-in keyboards, pointing devices, track pads and different motherboards. Over the years, I've noticed that laptops are a bit more sensitive to driver issues.

Also, I think some fall into the category of users trying to do strange things like stopping updates by pulling the power cord. Think of an update bringing in new files (100's of them) and an impatient user hits the power button (hard) in the middle. Good chance something is half-in and half-out. Updates don't "revert" themselves when this happens too well. Under older OS versions, my boss insisted that updates take too much disk space so he deleted the install files manually. Not only could you not revert to a previous state, but Microsoft Update wants to use the uninstaller to remove earlier updates (at times) and found the files missing and crashed. I'm not saying that users cause the issues but, rather, some people just don't know the inner workings of things. Some get impatient not understanding that Win 10 updates (unlike earlier versions) take a LOT longer. Reportedly HOURS -- yes, I noticed that at the last major update.

So, in my own opinion, it is probably just a few causes, but I don't think you'll find a single cause.

After trying less severe fixes that didn't work, I tried a clean install of Windows 10 from a USB drive, following Microsoft's directions for this, and it acted like it was going to install, but ultimately failed, giving some message about how it was unable to do this. So, I have two Cherry Trail Z8300 Windows 10 laptops that are only 2 years old that have now been turned into bricks. Thanks a lot, Microsoft. Linux OS, here I come!

You must be stuck in some kind of terrible time loop or something to have this Keep happening to you

I would say that you should keep your day job and let others do the computer work for you.

I managed a restore using my Dell laptop BIOS and from info here, I have delayed all downloads from Microsoft for 30 days using Window settings. Hope this helps as it seems to be the easiest solution.
30 days to sort Linux!

The topic of Linux comes up time and again in Windows 10 discussions - and now rumour has it it even does so in Redmont ...

One thing I learned about recently is "Puppy Linux" and especially "Xenialpup" - as you probably know, Linux comes in a variety of flavours, too - just like Windows. This particular flavour was discussed on Germany's "Der Spiegel" magazine's online appearance - http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/apps/linux-puppy-der-turbo-fuer-uralt-computer-a-1194437.html - in case you undestand the language or find it amusing to browse through something that is not completely in your comfort zone (in blatant contradiction to Google's obsession with "one user - one language" - "browse only for results in English (or German, but only the one or the other!)")

I needed to try something that wouldn't work under Windows, so I checked this out. And if you would like a feel for Linux in closer to 30 minutes than 30 days, this is probably the way to go. Now, you see, I am not from teh crowd that engages in wars of ideology - where the one will accuse the other of being a "xyz Fanboy" - and of course, we don't just have Windows and Linux, but when the battle rages in comes the Apple crowd, too. And the same threesome goes into battle formation again, when it comes to phones.

I am from the "fit for purpose" camp. And if something other than my daily tool might be a better fit, then I'll check it out. And since this one is said to be easy I went and tried it.

So, for example, download an ISO boot image either here foe 32 bit systemss or there for 64 bit systems:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-xenial/32/xenialpup-7.5-uefi.iso

http://distro.ibiblio.org/puppylinux/puppy-xenial/64/xenialpup64-7.5-uefi.iso

Now you either burn your ISO image of choice onto a DVD (CD would probably also do) or you go downloading again for this little gem of a toy:

https://unetbootin.github.io/

which can build a bootable USB stick from your ISO image - make sure that stick is empty (or you backed up whatever was on there before you got started with this procedure

I tried the USB stick for the first time, booted from the stick and with an absolute minimum of fuss was faced with a Linux desktop I could - mostly - understand. Now, on there somewhere is a button to click - which I didn't click yet - that will put this puppy Linux on your boot drive and thus make your PC an - at least part time - Linux PC. And apparently a very responsive one, even if it seemed a bit anaemic when it tried to cope with Windows. Now you have 30 days minus 30 minutes to check out if Linux could make you happier.

What I haven't checked out yet is whether this procedure will make a happy dual boot PC out of your current Windows based doorstop or if you would be better off designating a separate boot drive. But I can confirm that my regular drives were all accessible from the "Linux-on-a-stick."

(My project had to do with rescuing information from a drive that Windows wants me to format before it says it can access it. That didn't quite work. So I may need to boot DOS from a CD and get good old Norton disk editor out - as well as my recollection of what a FAT32 drive is supposed to look like - okay, now I am heading to off topic land ...)

Speaking of which - I am afraid, the way the discussion went in this thread, looking into Linux as an alternative is decidedly on topic - as long as it is not done with an ideological slant (which I always find unprofessional and thus inappropriate, anyway.)

So, in hopes that this is useful to some in their current plight, here it is.