Evil Windows Updates

I've recently learned to hate these things for two reasons:

-First and foremost, it's very annoying that they release billions of updates at the same time. We do automatic online updates for a reason, which is that Critical Security Fixes get delivered as soon as they're done; not once they've done some other fix for a completely different program. Clearly they're putting publicity before functionality. Microsoft must plan these things around having reminders all over the interweb telling people that "Windows has been updated! Oh, Microsoft is so nice, always caring for us and solving our problems". Any good Linux distro will give me updates as soon as they are done unless it happens to be a disastrous kernel update which kills my wireless connection. (The IDIOTS!)

-Secondly (the one that CAN be fixed), in the recent typhoon of updates there were 3 updates that gave me the following error: "The following updates could not be installed". That was all it told me. I downloaded them a 2nd time (actually, they were already downloaded, which tells me that my hard drive space is being wasted by unworking updates) and tried again. Still no go. I normally wouldn't care, but these are security updates for programs that I use.
Anyway, this time I told them to go away, but it's still annoying.


So, does anybody use a replacement Windows Updater that isn't ridiculous?

Sadly that's the way it is, and probably the way it will always be. Just think of the positive stuff, all those nice games and programs you can run on it.

I tend to loathe the popup which states "Your computer needs to restart"

[Restart Now] ----- [Restart Later]

Clicking [Restart Later] only results in the popup returning in about 10 minutes time. My definition of later is a couple of hours.

I also despise updates which are specifically designed to make sure I'm not a crook. Windows Genuine Advantage springs to mind here. If I *WAS* a pirate that would be that LAST update I would ever install.

I just dislike having to restart my computer for an update period.

Also what Jim stated.....

i turned auto update off... and just update when i think there's something worth the aggravation...

be sure though that you can reset back to the previous state... just in case...

... if possible

--Mike

Seing your complaints, you maybe should seriously consider switching to Linux. I have and I'm a very happy user. Mind you! it does take some time to be able to do this. Mainly because you start with an alien system, so once you get it working, you have this "now what?" feeling. The programs are called something different, you don't know what they are for or how to use them, the shell command lines horrify you etc.

But once you stop being a total newbie, and there is a lot of help around, you start realizing thet the PC is yours and behaves the way you want it to.

It's a good idea to be able to dual-boot, this way you can still go back to windows, and you will, many times.

Mind you the last time I booted into windows was four months ago to install the drivers for my new DVD burner (strangely enough, it doesn't work very well in windows, I'm sure there must be some solution. But as it works very well in Linux I haven't really bothered).

Ah Bmax works very nicely here.

Windows Updates has been great for me. I always have it on auto, because I think it's important to have security fixes ASAP. Never had a single one fail to install so far ( knock on wood! ) but I must admit, the "restart now or wait a couple of minutes at which point I will remind you again" thing that JimB mentioned really gets on my last nerve.

MadMax:
I dual boot Dapper and Windows on my 500 mHz junk box... can't on this one because hard drive space is sparse and I need the other HD for backups.

I agree that it gives a much nicer feeling, though :)
Especially when I have a 5 year old 500 mHz computer pulling off a UI that has the same blurry and transparent title bars as Vista! (While also a look of its own; it's sort of a cross between Vista and Mac OS with a bit of other customization).

The only problem I've had with it is yesterday's update which killed wireless for loads of people including myself, and cannot yet be fixed because the linux-headers package is not yet available for the new kernel and they didn't give a recompiled ndiswrapper with the update, which they should have done. (I believe a good rule of thumb is to take all necessary precautions to ensure that the internet connection is not broken so that people can still fix other problems).
Anyway, running with the old kernel still works so it's not a complete disaster.



I agree about that "remind me later thing". Really irritating, and I can't imagine why they haven't added a "I'll restart on my own!" button like every other updater out there.
Especially annoying that it actually minimizes fullscreen applications. (Err... games :P)

I've got 64 bit Ubuntu on a spare 20G drive. I still can't get used to it over Windows.

Opera 'looks funny' with crappy non-aliased fonts (in most cases).

BlitzMax IDE doesn't work properly.

You have to much about with a text config file to get 1920x1200 resolution working (only once, fair enough).

I'm not sure if the nvidia drivers are the latest (using the Automatix script).

I just had to reinstall it because part of the automatix script failed (installing the flash-nonfree plugin) which caused it to go into a loop every time I used synaptic.

Installing a LAMP system (on top of the workstation) is harder than it should be.

If I ditch Windows, I'm going to have to go hunting for a really good binary usenet client (after I have paid out for NewsBin). I also paid out for FlashFXP, but fair enough there's a good Gnome FTP client which will serve as a replacement.

Open Office really is not quite as fluid and integrated as some aspects of MS Office.

I could install Wine, but would imagine this uses a fair amount of RAM. I 'only' have 1G.

I can't play F.E.A.R.

You can kill that by stopping wuauserv. My problem with it is that it pops up with "Restart Now.." as the defualt value, so if you just happen to have hit return (say if you where programming in BlitzMAX), your computer will restart on you, and you'll lose eveything you where working on.

Tell me about it. I had to pop out once leaving to PC on with Blitz project underway. By the time I got back I caught the tail end of the popup counting down for restart. Sods law though. I was a couple of seconds too late and the damn PC restarted. Who thinks these things up?

You realise you don't have to use automatic updates right? You can do it manually if you want to.

You can always choose which updates to install if you want to.

Windows Update, means that there are FAR less Windows machines around that arn't up to date, this is generally a good thing.

This is just another Microsoft bashing thread, making a big deal out of very little (again).

Darkheart

If your computer is telling you that it needs to restart after an update, and I realise this is possibly a silly question... but, why don't you restart your computer?

As others have said, you can set Windows so it only tells you that updates are available. You can even set it so that it downloads updates for you, and lets you choose when to install them. So really there's no excuse for saying "it does it when it feels like it".

And I do find it slightly odd how in one thread we've got people whinging about Blitz3D not getting updated, yet here we are, slagging off Microsoft (again) for doing the exact opposite.

There's no pleasing some people.

Any update that 'needs' a restart should do it's thing next time the computer is booted up, or during the shutdown process. There is simply no excuse.


I have solved that problem by queueing up 2000 or so downloads in my P2P program of choice (Shareaza) - which takes a good 5 mins to quit out of cleanly, meanwhile the restart process waits patiently in the background. Gives me ample time to save, finish up and anything else that I may need to do =]

Whats the problem if the update does not work:

1. You did not quit all apps (browser is one that often needs to be closed, no mather if IE or FF as often multimedia components are involved in updating)

2. Your installation did not pass the legally check. That does not mean that it must be an illegal one. But if you've got one of the OEM Windows installation to which you got no WinXP cd but only recovery from hidden partition, then you might be out as well (until you phone MS, at least in some cases they give you a key).

>>Anyway, running with the old kernel still works so it's not a complete disaster.<<

Yeah, this is a nice feature, you can go back to your old kernell, until you or someone else fixes problems.

>>This is just another Microsoft bashing thread, making a big deal out of very little (again).<<

Microsoft doesn't need anyone bashing it. I certainly don't, I spend quite a bit of my time fixing it for people.

If have auto off but regularly check the MS update site. On any PCs I supply to customers, I leave it on. It's a bit crap if they only have a modem as everything slows to a crawl as Windows tries to auto-update. There was a really bad phase a while ago where auto-update was trying to download SP2 on tons of modem only machines.

Actually I got soooo mad at XPPro that I shut it down entirely.

Windows lost some nuisnace lawsuit about activeX controls and released an UPDATE that intentionally BROKE this functionality in IE. Now I have to spend more time clicking to use activeX (which I agree is a sneaky program and can be used to do malicious things to your CPU!)

But the office software suite we use (Newest version of Clearview... kind of like Great Plains Software(which was bought by Microsoft)) uses OCX and ASP so all offices are linked across the InfoBhan.

Terrible bother and very frustrating. If I didn't havee to link Microsoft SOAP toolkit and a few other custome IE librarys to run this crud I would switch to FFox ASAP!!!

Even if you have turned auto updates=off.

Windows will at least once a day "call home".
That's part of the nice WGA tool.

And don't worry. you are not asked before it does that nor does any firewall protect you from it. So show MS all you've got on your PC.

You PC might crash sometimes due to the fact that the tool is still buggy. Also you will offer a nice whole for anyone out there paying your PC a visit.

And SP3 will be out END of 2007 with new buggy IE7 and WMP11 with the best DRM a user can dream of.

We can ask for nothing more. Thank you MS!

*whoever finds sarcasm here can keep it.

Yeah. I'm not usually in favour of the death penalty, but the guy who put that in will be first against the wall come the revolution.

As a matter of fact, this thread was intended to be about alternative update managers since I can't be bothered to do the things manually and I'm sure there are many people other than me that dislike the Microsoft one.

Dreamora:
I suppose it may have been something running using the same resources as the update wants. Would be nice if it told me that, though, instead of 'Update No Work!!!'
I will keep that in mind if I use the program again.


Rook:
I never heard about this lawsuit... Do you think there's any chance that they'll now go back to NPAPI like before?
Wishful thinking, I know... would be nice though, because such a thing would be of great help.

CNET used to do an update service, which would alert you to MS patches along with updates on other CNET software, but they shut it down some years ago. It's a shame, I always used it. And I don't know of anything (free) that has ever replaced it or MS Update...

This error will happen with many updates if the user doesn't have full administrative rights to the machine when logged-in to the current domain. It could be lock-downs put in place by the network admins of your domain, not allowing users to perform updates to the core OS. If I remember correctly from seeing this problem before, more info can be gleaned by looking at the Event Viewer.