Windows 10 Spring Creators Update: A guide to some of the biggest changes

[captaincranky]

That's when you don't take their word for it, and purchase the upgrade anyway.

Not in this case. M$ was claiming, (correctly, I'm fairly certain), that Vista drivers wouldn't be made available for the machine by Gateway.

(This was, after all, Vista we're talking about, and I wasn't about to hunt down individual drivers from Realtek, etc). Strangely enough, I think the HDDs actually run as SATA, (SATA 1, of course). The floppy SATA pre-drivers may be loaded into the system "restore" image, although I'm not entirely certain.

In any case, this is one of the strangest pre-builts you'll find. It has a genuine Intel 915-GAG board, but the PCI slot socket has been removed. (One supposes to avoid over taxing the stock junk PSU with a video card). The board actually has a full Intel factory manual loaded, in the form of a PDF. For whatever reason, it's called "Augsberg". (IIRC).

The OS is locked at XP SP-2. If you so much as go to SP-3, Windows repair function no longer operates.

Besides Cliff, this is Vista we're talking about.

 

[cliffordcooley]

The eMachine I had was the W3502 with Intel D101GGC motherboard. It ran Windows 7 fine with one exception. The graphics had to be upgraded. The onboard Radeon Xpress 200 graphics had issues running Aero Effect. But other than that Windows 7 ran great.

 

[captaincranky]

@cliffordcooley Actually, this was at the beginning of the Vista era, and I wanted no parts of it. I built 2 more small XP machines in the interim. One was G-31 based, I think with a dual core Pentium E-2200, the other is P-45 based, running an Core 2 Duo E-7300. Obviously the "P(erformance) 45 board turned into a cruel joke, because the 2 core, two thread CPU, which went out of style as soon as the Clarkdale i3's (2 core x 4 thread), came into being. So I built an i3-520 rig, which was the first one to get Windows 7.

Like I said, there's no PCI socket in my 915 GAG rig. I simply couldn't upgrade the Intel IGP. It won't actually run a 720p movie even close to correctly. If I want to watch an "art film", I have to transfer it to another machine.

The original eMachines PSU crapped out, but didn't destroy the board, it was a 300 watter, not the 250 board killer they installed in the Celeron machines. So I put in an Antec 350, which blew up a month or so later. I got an "Earthwatts" 380 to replace it under warranty, and it's still running a dozen years later.

 

[cliffordcooley]

@cliffordcooley Actually, this was at the beginning of the Vista era, and I wanted no parts of it.

I completely understand. I didn't want anything to do with Windows 8 and still don't. As far as I know Windows 10 has been the first of Microsoft's operating systems to be offered as a free upgrade. The upgrade may be free, but it was still paid for with the expense of the previous OS. I certainly felt pissed on with the news of Windows 7 not having SP2 came out. And the only other option was having that trash called Windows 8. I'm not going to say I was entitled to a free upgrade, but I do feel as if I paid for it.

Edit: Lets just say I'm calling it my Windows 7 SP2 I never received. Even though I also feel as if parts of Windows 10 is a downgrade.

 

[captaincranky]

Well, I hate to sound racist, but Indians do business in a different way than Westerners. I worked selling hi-fi, and some Indian engineers came into the mall one night. The haggling over price went on for the better part of an hour, until I finally basically told them to pound sand, and went across the way for a coffee. One of the cashiers ratted me out for "being rude". Two weeks later they showed back up, and bought a system for the price I quoted, and I'm pretty sure they broke every hi-fi salesman's ballz in the area, couldn't find a better price, and bought it from me. It surely wasn't by virtue of my charm and good looks.

In reality I guess that had to haggle over price, since they were putting all the American electronic engineers out of work at RCA in Cherry Hill NJ, by working for half of the prevailing wage.

Culturally, in their home country, nothing sells at the marked price, and haggling is the rule. They don't respect Americans because they think we're stupid, for just walking up and handing them the asking price.

So, corporate officials are being represented more often with people from that ethnicity. They are belligerent, pushy, duplicitous, self serving, and obnoxious. Qualities which make for lousy friends and companions, but corporations apparently think it's good for their bottom line. Consider Satya Nadella, Ajit Pai, among others, and you begin to get my point. Pai managed to kill net neutrality under a conservative regime, and Nadella has managed to steamroll all the hardware suppliers to state, that any of the new hardware will only be fully be compatible with Windows 10, which he rammed down the public's throat, ostensibly "for free", but the costs associated with Windows 10 adoption, are manifold and alarming.

I should add that I think the gaming community got bribed and hoodwinked worst of all, over the bone they were thrown called "DX-12".

In reality, couldn't DX-12 have been part of a real Windows 7, SP-2?

 

[Rich M]

Anytime you are offered something for nothing, you know what the creator of the product or software thought it was worth. Nothing! Free software is ALWAYS a rat-shoot.
I Have been active in IT for 25 years, give or take. M$ has NEVER made anything that worked well for the average Joe. Everything has always been for the office user, businesses and networked systems. If you want to use their stuff, you need to realize that and act accordingly.
First, buy a Professional version of the software. I have always done that. Second, turn off, pull out by the roots and otherwise eliminate as much fluff as possible, both to prevent data-gathering and also to streamline your installation. Disable any auto-updates.Do not send data to M$ for analysis-they usually can'f fix it anyhow.
Keep your actual data on a separate drive under your control. When your system gets too screwed up, reload from as clean a drive as possible. Parallel SCSI used to be the way to get a clean HD. Don't think it's possible anymore!
When the updates take longer than the basic OS to install, it's probably time for the next version.

When ALL of this crap gets to be too much of a bother, it's probably time to retire

If you can say that Microsoft makes nothing for home users then you obviously skipped Windows 8 which was totally designed to accommodate phone and tablet users and serve as an enigma to business users!

 

[cliffordcooley]

I don't know who Windows 8 was made for. It damn sure wasn't made for this home user.

 

[Rich M]

Mio

I don't know who Windows 8 was made for. It damn sure wasn't made for this home user.

Microsoft made no attempt to hide they were seeking to win over phone and tablet users and therefore sacrificed everyone's wishes in their attempt to win them over.

 

[captaincranky]

Mio

Microsoft made no attempt to hide they were seeking to win over phone and tablet users and therefore sacrificed everyone's wishes in their attempt to win them over.

And it cost Bill Gates' intellectually challenged friend and sycophant, Steve Ballmer, his job.

 

[Rich M]

On this we sure can agree cranky!

 

[Ascaris]

Here's my 2 cents and I'm sure it will cause a lot of flack. The worst Windows install you will ever get is a free windows upgrade. It has been my experience that if you do a clean install and keep your machine maintained, you will not have any problems.

That is true, but each Windows 10 build is essentially a new OS, upgraded in-place on top of the old one. Do you want to do a clean install every six months? People who cleanly installed the initial Win 10 version (whatever the current build at the time may have been) still report problems upgrading in-place.

 

[Rich M]

No the semi annual builds while technically an upgrade are not the same as an upgrade from a different version of Windows as Windows 7 and 8 upgrades were and the results are quite different and acceptable generally.

 

[captaincranky]

No the semi annual builds while technically an upgrade are not the same as an upgrade from a different version of Windows as Windows 7 and 8 upgrades were and the results are quite different and acceptable generally.

There are semantics in play though, as M$ is claiming "Windows 10 is the last version of Windows ever". One has to assume that five or ten years down the road, when compared to the builds of today, "Windows 10" at that point will be contradicting Shakespeare as, "tomorrow's rose will still be a rose, but in name only".

 

[Rich M]

Yeah we agree again cranky (getting scary here)!

 

[captaincranky]

I honestly don't know which is the better ego massage, someone agreeing with me, or someone admitting that they normally don't.

 

[Rich M]

It has to be winning over the one who doesn't normally agree, though the massage may be at best fleeting but great question!

 

[holdum323]

That is true, but each Windows 10 build is essentially a new OS, upgraded in-place on top of the old one. Do you want to do a clean install every six months? People who cleanly installed the initial Win 10 version (whatever the current build at the time may have been) still report problems upgrading in-place.

Hi. I only know what I read or hear through the grape vine. I personally haven't heard of anone having problems when they performed a clean install. Can you still have problems. Probably so, but a clean install is the best install you can get.
https://pureinfotech.com/clean-install-vs-upgrade-windows-10/

 

[Rich M]

Clean install is always the way to go.

 

[DelJo63]

In an office with 1100 machines with departments requiring a dizzying array of various pieces of software, fresh loads every six months is not a great option.

One way to handle an office with many workstations is devote one machine to be the guinea pig. You install everything anyone needs on the pig and declare that to be the standard image. Clone the pig to every workstation (classically via a restore). All updates, if any, are installed, configured and tested on the pig before distributing to the workstations.

The Domain Controller system should have the Exchange Server so all the Email will be recoverable. You can even distribute the standard pig remotely overnight (to 8-10 stations per night, depending upon your network bandwidth).

Yes, updates to company systems is a real PITA.

 

[DelJo63]

Well I've never had a problem with Windows 10 updates in any of my 3 computers, I guess I've been really lucky, still, this is a welcome update.

Three is not even one order of magnitude (that's powers of 10) close to the 1100 mention.

 

[DelJo63]

I don't know who Windows 8 was made for. It damn sure wasn't made for this home user.

It wasn't for users - - it consolidated the mobile-touch GUI with the Workstation and thus was a massive reduction in Development and Support expense. Hilarious that the phone business died.

 

[avioza]

One way to handle an office with many workstations is devote one machine to be the guinea pig. You install everything anyone needs on the pig and declare that to be the standard image. Clone the pig to every workstation (classically via a restore). All updates, if any, are installed, configured and tested on the pig before distributing to the workstations.

The Domain Controller system should have the Exchange Server so all the Email will be recoverable. You can even distribute the standard pig remotely overnight (to 8-10 stations per night, depending upon your network bandwidth).

Yes, updates to company systems is a real PITA.

Unfortunately not all the software that has been purchased is licensed for imaging purposes so it cannot be installed on all endpoints or in some cases even stored in an image. In a few cases some SID program specific settings generated during an install of some of that software cannot be replicated in an imaging process. ZTE is just not doable for us, LTE is even difficult to achive.

Imaging is another complaint I have with windows 10, even following imaging procedures from up-to-date Windows 10 technet documentation, the imaging process has been breaking between versions. 1703 and 1709 re-introduced bugs I saw in 1607. During the Audit mode set-up and subsequent sysprep capture calling the WSIM answer file was inconsistent with settings suggested by Microsoft. Its been a minefield of what you can and cant modify in Audit mode.

I update our LTE image about every month but refuse to rollout the latest untill at least the first cumulative update patch for the new version.

 

[Rich M]

I am not so sure you all mean "clone the pig" as much as use the "universal installer" as I am assuming the hardware may be different on some of the pcs.

 

[avioza]

I am not so sure you all mean "clone the pig" as much as use the "universal installer" as I am assuming the hardware may be different on some of the pcs.

We have over twenty different hardware versions, PC's AiO, latops and tablets. Audit mode/Generalizing the image works well enough to solve that problem however.

 

[DelJo63]

As noted, workstation variations do matter, and that has to be taken into consideration.