Windows 10 is driving me cray-cray!

You are quite right. I tend to take varying degrees of offense when people inform me that I am "obviously not" something that I know full well I am. My comment was in no way directed toward the non technical users who visit CNET's great Forums for help, advice or general knowledge. A sincere post becomes easier to identify with experience and I am always glad to help if I can. Unfortunately many threads quickly deteriorate into anti MSFT and anti Apple diatribes. Both systems have their uses. Neither system (nor any operating system for that matter) is perfect.

I have also been using voidtools for years and frankly get frustrated really quickly when at a user machine without it. You quickly realize how limited in scope windows search capabilities are out-of-box when you see other search utilities in action. One caveat though voidtools will text search only by words in the file title, not content. Although that initially appears to be a drawback, voidtools allows for location specific searching so even if you don't know the name of the file you can find it in sections.

Too much to go into here but all users ever frustrated by the resource allocation or inability to locate files with Windows searching should try out voidtools. Oh, and it's FREE.

Just downloaded it - seems to work great. Practically instant!

Thanks!

I love it.

Interesting that so many people do not realise that the Cortana "box" whether you use Cortana and voice recognition or don't use Cortana, the box is there FOR SEARCH
We don't have to hit WIN+F to find anything
Click in the box and start typing '-}

...is "Click"

I don't want to click. I don't want to take my hands off the keyboard if I don't have to...

I have never-- not even once-- had the search built into Windows find what I was looking for unless it was a built-in Windows app. If it was easy to find, I'd find it myself. I think that Windows search (from the Cortana box or in any form) is a joke.

Other than finding simple file names, Cortana is essentially useless.

If she were a person we would say she cannot find her as* using both hands....

Everything would be great if it worked with Outlook folders... Alas, I must rely on Windows/Outlook search...

Thanks anyway!

You could use Windows search for Outlook and then use Everything for the rest. I don't use Outlook. I use EverDesk, and Everything finds what I am looking for. Every person has different needs.

I'll just leave it at that. Recently my Windows 7 rebooted itself while I was out of the room. I don't remember if it was a Windows Update or some other program that had updated (possibly AVG, or a similar add-on), but after being out of the room for roughly an hour I came back to see it waiting for my password to start up.

Scheduling updates is supposed to be different in terms of control between the different editions. Are you using the Home or Pro edition?

Well said!

Well.. perhaps I didn't explain it well enough.
1. You say you can set it -- yes, you can set it to reboot. I want to NOT reboot. I want to be notified and then MANUALLY reboot. I know how to do that myself, thankyouverymuch. I don't need MSFT losing my work for me...
2. I'm pretty sure it's the Outlook portion. I have 16GB of RAM on a fast, new computer with a solid state drive. So, unless they write a threaded 64-bit index engine, it's going to kill my performance.
3. True - but why do I have to navigate around OneDrive all the time in Excel and Word? Pain in the ***.

I think it's great you love Win10 so much. Me - it drives me cray-cray.

I suspect you're reading the PR flack rather than checking user experiences. I'll use a trivial example that is indicative of Windows 10 and Microsoft in general. On XP & Win7 I could set systems sounds to 15 volume and music and videos at 70. I'd get a gentle ping when e-mail arrived. Thanks to Win 10, that's no longer possible. Needless to say, Microsoft support was totally useless. Someone did suggest that I could edit the sound volume in a sound editing program. I did that and then found I didn't have permission even though I was logged in as an administrator. If this was the only problem, I wouldn't be that annoyed, but it seems constant. Or I fix something and Microsoft breaks it again. And again. The search function has that Microsoft untrustworthiness. Numerous times I've had zero results and several times I've manually found the file, pasted the file name in the search box, then ran a search in that directory and MS still finds nothing. That is Windows 10 in a nutshell.

Make a copy of the sound file. Edit that copy. Once you've done that, see if you can force Windows to replace the old file with the new one. You usually can, if you keep at it and try different methods. I know it can be frustrating.

You're somewhat wrong about Win 10 asking for permission before rebooting. What it asks me is if I would like to reschedule the reboot, and defaults to NO. Then the clocks starts ticking, and if I don't reschedule the reboot in time, BOOM... So if I'm not sitting by my computer, it will reboot and I'll come back to the login screen. Everything that I was working on is lost, and colleagues around the world will no longer have access to my files until I login again. This has happened 4 times already where work was lost simply because I was away from the computer or sleeping. The fact is, my computer needs to be on 24/7 and there is no down time, per se. I can make down time, if i know that they is a necessary update and reboot, but again, it doesn't give me that option. Asking me if i would like to reschedule the reboot and defaulting to NO is not the same thing as asking for permission to reboot.

And this isn't just a matter of being too lazy to save my work before leaving the computer. Some of my statistical modeling, etc, takes 12+ hours to run and there is no way to manually save any work in progress. In fact, one of the unauthorized reboots caused us to lose over a week of work. Not only was the pending model (which had been running for about 16 hours and about 90% completes) lost but the reboot corrupted some related files as well.

This auto-rebooting is moronic because when you manually reboot (i.e. Alt-Ctrl-Del), it'll show a list of active apps and 1) give you the opportunity to save pending work, 2) give you the opportunity to cancel the reboot. Why can't Win 10 updates follow this time-tested policy? I'm fine with daily reminders nagging me to reboot, but I'm not fine with Microsoft taking over my computer.

I get a banner telling me that the Surface Pro 4 will reboot at 4.10 am. I can choose to let it do just that or choose to reboot immediately. I think there's a third option but I'm not sure. The OS is Win 10 Pro.

You can reboot immediately if you are at your computer to see the notice. If you are not, then you are out of luck. Either way, the computer is going to reboot and there is nothing you can do to keep it from doing so. This is the problem.

I don't know what build of Windows 10 you're using but my version (Home with latest updates) does not give an option to just download but not install, or install but not reboot. And yes, I looked in Update Settings. Windows 7 and Windows 8 had these options but my version of Windows 10 does not. It is not in my laptop or Windows 10 tablet. As I described in my other post, once it decides to reboot, I'm given a minute or so to reschedule. If I don't take action, it will simply reboot. And when I'm not by my computer or sleeping, any pending work -- including active statistical modeling which often takes 12+ hours -- will be lost. Absolutely moronic. Why does it default to reboot rather than ask if i want to reboot?

Just a thought: When you are getting ready to run things that will take a long time, you could reboot and then immediately get off of the internet so that they can run safely. It is ridiculous that you might have to do so, but it is better than nothing.

You are not alone!

https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/vista-end-of-the-road/

Running one of the last XP (now SP3) desktops sold by Dell. Keep saying, "I have to buy a Win10 replacement" - Win7 is a non-starter for the same reason I am stuck with XP. Firefox v50 runs good and as long as McAfee protects it (really?) I keep putting replacement off. Also, have a Dell XPS 12 (upgraded to Win10). Win10 complaints:
* Updates, the latest failed to install 3 times. You never know if updates are installing unless the machine slows way down and you look. Wife just shuts the lid.
* Unable to customize jump list size like Win7
* Sounds, back in the old days you could do "fun" things with your puter like customizable sounds, e.g. "Hasta la Vista" on exit, etc. The actions that are customizable in Win10 are pitiful. Some of the short sounds won't play with the default player. Could not find Win Media Player (not installed ?) but when I typed it in the search function it magically appeared. then you have to make it the default for each type of file that you want. This is progress?

I'm sorry, but how on earth did you ever learn to use a computer when you can't even spell properly?

Wow, that was childish. What does English spelling have to do with the ability to use a computer? I do medical research and some of our best programmers, statisticians and data analysts are foreigners, most notably from China. And their English spelling is very poor. THINK about it.