Major Windows 10 flaw

[Betty LaRue]

In case this hasn’t been posted....

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/nsa-found-a-dangerous-microsoft-software-flaw-and-alerted-the-firm--rather-than-weaponize-it/2020/01/14/f024c926-3679-11ea-bb7b-265f4554af6d_story.html

 

Betty

[John Mitchell]

Uh-oh. Keeping up with the hackers has become a full-time job for a lot of people, sort of like cyber cops and robbers. Thanks for the link.

[Bryan]

Gives me the opportunity to grumble about Win 10. My system dies if I allow it to time out and requires a hard reset to get it started again, which takes ages. I've tried reloading drivers to no avail, and have given up on finding a fix. Then there are the crashes that continue to randomly occur when using Chrome.

 

However, and hopefully I'm not tempting fate, but no known viruses or the like have troubled my system since installing 10.

[John Mitchell]

58 minutes ago, Bryan said:

Gives me the opportunity to grumble about Win 10. My system dies if I allow it to time out and requires a hard reset to get it started again, which takes ages. I've tried reloading drivers to no avail, and have given up on finding a fix. Then there are the crashes that continue to randomly occur when using Chrome.

 

However, and hopefully I'm not tempting fate, but no known viruses or the like have troubled my system since installing 10.

 

Could it be that people who download W10 as an upgrade experience more problems with it than those who buy new computers with W10 already installed? I'm hoping that the answer is "yes."

[wiskerke]

3 hours ago, Bryan said:

Gives me the opportunity to grumble about Win 10. My system dies if I allow it to time out and requires a hard reset to get it started again, which takes ages. I've tried reloading drivers to no avail, and have given up on finding a fix. Then there are the crashes that continue to randomly occur when using Chrome.

 

However, and hopefully I'm not tempting fate, but no known viruses or the like have troubled my system since installing 10.

 

Maybe try something like userbenchmark to see if there's a hardware bottleneck or flaw somewhere in your system.

 

wim

[Bryan]

6 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

Maybe try something like userbenchmark to see if there's a hardware bottleneck or flaw somewhere in your system.

 

wim

 

Thanks Win, I'll give ir a try.

[Inchiquin]

11 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Could it be that people who download W10 as an upgrade experience more problems with it than those who buy new computers with W10 already installed? I'm hoping that the answer is "yes."

 

 

Hmm... interesting! I have two computers running W10 (well, three actually but I rarely use the laptop so can't really use that as a comparison). The one that was installed fresh on a new computer seems to have no problems, while the one that was upgraded from W7 often causes me grief. The grief always occurs after I've left the computer for some time (q.v. Bryan's comment above). Sometimes it appears to go dead, much as Bryan described, and has to be rebooted, other times the display is totally messed up in one of a number of different ways. However, since the two computers share a monitor through a KVM I've always assumed that the problem is down to it not picking up the correct signals when switched, and therefore is more likely to be a quirk of the KVM or the computer graphics system rather than the OS. What you've just said, though, is making me wonder.

 

Alan

[John Mitchell]

37 minutes ago, Inchiquin said:

 

Hmm... interesting! I have two computers running W10 (well, three actually but I rarely use the laptop so can't really use that as a comparison). The one that was installed fresh on a new computer seems to have no problems, while the one that was upgraded from W7 often causes me grief. The grief always occurs after I've left the computer for some time (q.v. Bryan's comment above). Sometimes it appears to go dead, much as Bryan described, and has to be rebooted, other times the display is totally messed up in one of a number of different ways. However, since the two computers share a monitor through a KVM I've always assumed that the problem is down to it not picking up the correct signals when switched, and therefore is more likely to be a quirk of the KVM or the computer graphics system rather than the OS. What you've just said, though, is making me wonder.

 

Alan

 

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Microsoft recommends buying a new computer with W10 rather than upgrading from W7, which I guess isn't surprising...

[spacecadet]

46 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Microsoft recommends buying a new computer with W10 rather than upgrading from W7, which I guess isn't surprising...

That's not going to happen, so I for one will be sticking it out with 7. I ran XP till 2014, after all, and 98SE until 2008.

[Betty LaRue]

As a Mac user, I don’t have a dog in this particular hunt. Yet I’ve read enough about the win10 problems to make me very happy to be a Mac user.

In the early days of Windows, using a PC, nothing made me more excited than for a new version to come out. That last I used was XP, and assumed crashes was just part of normal behavior.  Then I went to an iMac. That is until I bought my husband a new computer that had win 8 on it a few years ago. It took me forever to barely figure out how to use a few things so that I could attempt to teach my husband how to review his photos after his brain disease was advancing. Didn’t work.

I’m disappointed in the path Microsoft has taken. People who have stuck with PCs and Microsoft probably can figure out upgrades. When you try to go from XP to any of the later versions, it’s like suddenly skipping a whole grade in school and trying to figure out what to do with no foundation. I know...I was promoted by skipping a whole grade and expected to know how to do what that class was working on. I think that’s why I have school nightmares to this day!😆 Lots of chewed fingernails, hair locks twisted and chewed lips until I caught up.

Betty

[John Mitchell]

2 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

As a Mac user, I don’t have a dog in this particular hunt. Yet I’ve read enough about the win10 problems to make me very happy to be a Mac user.

In the early days of Windows, using a PC, nothing made me more excited than for a new version to come out. That last I used was XP, and assumed crashes was just part of normal behavior.  Then I went to an iMac. That is until I bought my husband a new computer that had win 8 on it a few years ago. It took me forever to barely figure out how to use a few things so that I could attempt to teach my husband how to review his photos after his brain disease was advancing. Didn’t work.

I’m disappointed in the path Microsoft has taken. People who have stuck with PCs and Microsoft probably can figure out upgrades. When you try to go from XP to any of the later versions, it’s like suddenly skipping a whole grade in school and trying to figure out what to do with no foundation. I know...I was promoted by skipping a whole grade and expected to know how to do what that class was working on. I think that’s why I have school nightmares to this day!😆 Lots of chewed fingernails, hair locks twisted and chewed lips until I caught up.

Betty

 

Actually, I found the transition from XP to Windows 7 to be relatively painless and never had any issues with either OS. Hopefully, the move to W10 won't be too problematic. I'll find out soon enough. It's all the fiddly stuff of reinstalling software, downloading and setting up browsers, etc. that I don't like. If Mac didn't charge so darn much for their computers, I might become a convert. As it is, PC's are dirt cheap in comparison and much easier to expand.

[John Mitchell]

2 hours ago, spacecadet said:

That's not going to happen, so I for one will be sticking it out with 7. I ran XP till 2014, after all, and 98SE until 2008.

 

If I didn't need a more powerful computer (my current one dates back to 2010) at this juncture, I'd probably stick with W7 as well.

[Betty LaRue]

3 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Actually, I found the transition from XP to Windows 7 to be relatively painless and never had any issues with either OS. Hopefully, the move to W10 won't be too problematic. I'll find out soon enough. It's all the fiddly stuff of reinstalling software, downloading and setting up browsers, etc. that I don't like. If Mac didn't charge so darn much for their computers, I might become a convert. As it is, PC's are dirt cheap in comparison and much easier to expand.

I know nothing about win 7, but many people who post seem to prefer it. Possibly if that’s what I’d tried, the road would have been easier. I know I hated 8.

Yeah, reinstalling and getting everything set up isn’t for children.  Another thought, children would probably be better at it than us! 😁

[Colin Woods]

5 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

If Mac didn't charge so darn much for their computers, I might become a convert.

Please lets not turn this into a Mac vs PC flame war. I too whimpered at the price when mu old PC gave up. The Leader of the Opposition gave me the budget so I closed my eyes and clicked on the "Order" button. That was mid 2013 and since then I have had zero crashes, bugs, glitches, udpate issues, etc. It just works. Nor has it slowed down one iota. I personally would not go back and when the time comes I will readily pay the premium for a hassle free computer.

[John Mitchell]

1 minute ago, Betty LaRue said:

I know nothing about win 7, but many people who post seem to prefer it. Possibly if that’s what I’d tried, the road would have been easier. I know I hated 8.

Yeah, reinstalling and getting everything set up isn’t for children.  Another thought, children would probably be better at it than us! 😁

 

You're probably correct. I don't have any children, but perhaps I can rent some with the money I'm saving by not switching to Mac. ☺️

[Phil]

50 minutes ago, Colin Woods said:

Please lets not turn this into a Mac vs PC flame war. I too whimpered at the price when mu old PC gave up. The Leader of the Opposition gave me the budget so I closed my eyes and clicked on the "Order" button. That was mid 2013 and since then I have had zero crashes, bugs, glitches, udpate issues, etc. It just works. Nor has it slowed down one iota. I personally would not go back and when the time comes I will readily pay the premium for a hassle free computer.

 

Hope you have better luck than us.  We've had 3 new iMacs in our household - 2 of them had their hard drives fail prematurely.  The 3rd one had been crashing frequently until I recently replaced it's internal HDD with an external boot SSD in a Thunderbolt dock.  Hopefully I can get a few more years out of it now.     Our little $300 Dell Windows 10 slim desktop tower has been trouble free so far.  

[Betty LaRue]

2 hours ago, John Mitchell said:

 

You're probably correct. I don't have any children, but perhaps I can rent some with the money I'm saving by not switching to Mac. ☺️

[Betty LaRue]

2 hours ago, Colin Woods said:

Please lets not turn this into a Mac vs PC flame war. I too whimpered at the price when mu old PC gave up. The Leader of the Opposition gave me the budget so I closed my eyes and clicked on the "Order" button. That was mid 2013 and since then I have had zero crashes, bugs, glitches, udpate issues, etc. It just works. Nor has it slowed down one iota. I personally would not go back and when the time comes I will readily pay the premium for a hassle free computer.

👍 That’s what I’ve done. It’s just a matter of saving up for it specifically, and that’s what I’ve done in the past. That’s how I get a new camera or lens, too. I’ve actually sold off stuff, or had a garage sale to get it. So far, I’ve found if it’s something I want bad enough, I find a way. I once sold off bits and pieces of gold and silver jewelry...pieces that were slightly broken or I never wore anymore. Just sold them by the ounces at a precious metals place.
My daughter always accuses me of selling off her inheritance.

I’ll be having a garage sale this spring...I might see a new Fuji X-T4 or a new RX100 late series like the one Ed has out of the sale. I have probably 4 or 5 cameras to sell also, besides some tripods and lenses. And an upright freezer! This will be 2 years post moving sale when I now know what I have and what I actually need for this house since I’m alone now.

Betty

Edited January 16, 2020 by Betty LaRue

[MizBrown]

There appears to be a bug iin Mac OS Catalina which causes shutdown to hang up.  Read a bit about the problem and people were getting annoyed that Apple hasn't fixed it yet.  Sometime, when I shut down, the computer restarts, and then I have to shut it down from the log in screen.  When I start it again and log in, it asks me if I want to send the crash report to Apple, which I'm now doing every time this happens.  May be related to external drives, powered USB hubs, or something else. 

 

First time I've had such problems with the iMac other than another time when the Time Machine external drive was failing.  Enough people with new machines are having the problem that I don't think it's the internal HD failing.   Machine runs fine once it's booted up and I've logged in. 

 

[Chuck Nacke]

My desktop was originally a 64bit 7 machine and I upgraded it to 64bit 10 without a problem.  I did talk to Microsoft support once

but is runs fine.  The only real change is that I upgraded the Graphic card.

 

Chuck 

[spacecadet]

8 hours ago, Chuck Nacke said:

My desktop was originally a 64bit 7 machine and I upgraded it to 64bit 10 without a problem.  I did talk to Microsoft support once

but is runs fine.  The only real change is that I upgraded the Graphic card.

 

Chuck 

That's good to know, considering that there is apparently still a free 7-10 upgrade route still available if one looks carefully. But since I have a 10-year-old machine, I'm still wary. It's an all-in-one, but the price point (£0) was very favourable, so there it is.

[Chuck Nacke]

Mark,

 

The desktop I am running is an older DELL and both Dell and Microsoft have been good working with me.

i5 3.10 GHz with 16RAM.  Really at the end of its life.

 

When I upgraded to 64bit 10 I did have some issues, caused by my ISP (comcast) and both DELL and Microsoft

worked with me to get the machine running properly and neither of them asked me for payment.

[dustydingo]

On 16/01/2020 at 18:57, spacecadet said:

That's good to know, considering that there is apparently still a free 7-10 upgrade route still available if one looks carefully. But since I have a 10-year-old machine, I'm still wary. It's an all-in-one, but the price point (£0) was very favourable, so there it is.

 

There is indeed Mark, and it's actually not hard to find . . . it's more to do with ignoring the "do you have a license" (or words to that effect, it was more than a few days ago so I've forgotten . . . ) question and just carrying on with the download 🙂

 

DD