Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.
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@slapout1 Holy crap where are these people coming from!
Maybe they expected you to mail a request for someone to send you a floppy?!?Also... How hard it is to communicate to a modem? Is it not a serial connection, defined merely by what AT commands you send it?
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Also... How hard it is to communicate to a modem? Is it not a serial connection, defined merely by what AT commands you send it?
That level is pretty simple. There's a lot of other levels involved.
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@Tsaukpaetra Maybe it wasn't a driver. It may have been a program to manage dial-up connections.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Is it not a serial connection, defined merely by what AT commands you send it?
Check your modem privilege! Modems that plug onto COM ports are expensive.
When Linux was first starting to be a thing, lots and lots of folks were disappointed to discover that their cheap ISA-card WinModem was not a standard modem chipset behind a serial port, but merely a fairly simple-minded sound card (just a bit of line interface hardware, and an A/D and D/A with a shortish FIFO on each); the modem itself was implemented using digital signal processing run on the main CPU inside the Windows driver, which was naturally a closed binary blob. Furthermore, WinModem chipset manufacturers (Rockwell was one of them if I recall correctly) would not release any hardware documentation to device driver writers without a substantial fee and NDA.
A Linux driver for these things did eventually appear, also featuring a closed binary blob that you had to pay for. I don't think the guy whose driver it was ever made much off it - he was basically just trying to cover his licensing costs from Rockwell. I remember being quite pleased when I got it working on my old Red Hat 9 laptop.
This same softmodem architecture is pretty much ubititous nowadays; such dial-up modem support as you'll find built into a modern mobo is almost always subsumed into the audio drivers. All the modem DSP is still done on the CPU, though modern CPUs barely even notice the load - a vast improvement on the original WinModems that chewed up about 50% of CPU and fell over at the slightest hint of CPU latency.
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@Lorne-Kates So since then I have replaced Win8.1 with Win10, but not through the broken update process.
I am satisfied because it boots and runs faster than 8.1 - which is important because i reboot to switch OSes often.
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@Adynathos said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@Lorne-Kates So since then I have replaced Win8.1 with Win10, but not through the broken update process.
I am satisfied because it boots and runs faster than 8.1 - which is important because i reboot to switch OSes often.So first you upgraded to 8.1: Idiot
And then even having experienced 8.1, you willingly took a hot load of Win10 right up the old "usb" port: Idiot
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@Lorne-Kates said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
So first you upgraded to 8.1: Idiot
No, 8.1 was the first windows I installed on this computer, because I had it available.
@Lorne-Kates said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
willingly took a hot load of Win10
Not willingly - if I could, I would not install windows at all.
Unfortunately some software / hardware that I wanted to use runs much better on windows (I was doing a project with Kinect2), thus I reluctantly installed windows.
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@flabdablet said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
WinModem
Oh yeah. I totally had that information dereferenced in my local memory libraries. Thanks for bringing that sense of dread back...
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@TimeBandit said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
, you can avoid being harmed by dodging them.
Neo..... is that you?
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@accalia said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Neo..... is that you?
Yes, and I totally managed to dodge the Win10 trap up to now
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@flabdablet said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Check your modem privilege! Modems that plug onto COM ports are expensive.
Indeed. I still cherish the first and only proper serial modem that I bought, for just in case.
Speaking of which - my cell phone provider has some kind of master 'customer password' that you need, for example, if you have forgotten your user name for the online portal. Of course this 'customer password' is even more obscure and more quickly forgotten than the normal login credentials. And if you want to reset it, you need to fill in and sign a form and send it in, with a copy of your id, either by mail or by fax (for quick processing). When I needed to do this quite recently, I was really happy that I still had a modem on the attic, and an old PC with a COM port, and that it didn't need obscure software before I was ready to send the first (and probably / hopefully last) fax in my life!
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But if someone does not want windows update, can't they just block all windows/microsoft domains on the firewall?
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@Adynathos said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
can't they just block all windows/microsoft domains on the firewall?
With this newfangled distributed distribution service, I would be inclined to believe it would bounce off other computers already infected with the Windows 10 virus and replicate from them.
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@flabdablet said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@Tsaukpaetra said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Is it not a serial connection, defined merely by what AT commands you send it?
Check your modem privilege! Modems that plug onto COM ports are expensive.
You almost made me regret having chopped up an old model a few months ago for a bunch of solid-state relays and a beeper.
Just until I realized that I simply have no local ISP left to call to.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Also... How hard it is to communicate to a modem? Is it not a serial connection, defined merely by what AT commands you send it?
Well, considering that significantly later than this you still needed a specific driver to get Windows to talk to generic USB mass storage devices...
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@TimeBandit said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Even Fanboy Paul Thurrott is fed up
That's a pretty epic rant.
The violation of trust here is almost indescribable. It’s bad enough that Microsoft has been training Windows 7 and 8.1 users—i.e. most Windows users—to not trust Windows 10 because of this horrible, unstoppable advertisement. But now they will not trust their own sanity because all they’ll remember is that they dismissed the advertisement by clicking the Close windows box. Why on earth did Windows 10 just install on my PC?!?
Why on earth, indeed. Coupled with the growth of clean personal computing platforms like Chromebooks and Macs, and the fact that Microsoft can’t convince its own PC maker partners to not ruin the Windows experience with crapware, one has to wonder: Is this all part of some plan to destroy Windows from within? I mean, seriously. You couldn’t write a dumber story about how to ruin something that is otherwise as wonderful as Windows 10.
My God, Microsoft. Just stop.
Hear hear. Microsoft is its worst enemy.
See also: The disaster that is .NET Core RC 2.
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@cartman82 said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
See also: The disaster that is .NET Core RC 2.
Do you maybe know whats the state of NET Core? It looks promising, because I want to try C# (on Linux).
What problems are they facing?
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@blakeyrat said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
To anybody annoyed at Windows 7's lack of service packs, I have a simple solution: STOP USING IT! IT'S LIKE 3 VERSIONS BEHIND! JUST MOVE ON WITH YOUR LIFE!
I do, at home. At work, it's not up to me. Everyone working here is stuck on Windows 7 until our IT admins roll out Windows 10.
We're not some mom and pop shop. We're on the top 100 of the Fortune 500, with presence in over 50 countries worldwide.
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@Adynathos said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
What problems are they facing?
The biggest problems are probably to do with OS-specific assumptions that nobody's really figured on there being in there before. This sort of stuff sounds easy to deal with, but isn't if the overall system wasn't designed from the outset to be portable. Retrofitting stuff is really quite difficult.
At the trivial end of problems is the assumption that directory separators are
\
instead of/
. That's easy to deal with if you're expecting it and if everyone who's ever worked on the library is expecting it, but all it takes is one less-than-stellar programmer and now the assumption is baked in somewhere obscure. And that's just the most trivial aspect. The difference in security models is (for example) much more difficult to work around.
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Ya know what makes the pressure to upgrade stop 100%? Upgrading.
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@FrostCat said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Ya know what makes the pressure to upgrade stop 100%? Upgrading.
Ya know what makes fascist oppression stop 100%? Utter submission to authority.
Filed under: He loved Big Brother.
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@error said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@FrostCat said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Ya know what makes the pressure to upgrade stop 100%? Upgrading.
Ya know what makes fascist oppression stop 100%? Utter submission to authority.
Filed under: He loved Big Brother.
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@FrostCat uninstalling Windows also does that…
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@error said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
fascist oppression
I take it you have no sense of proportion.
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@FrostCat it's the internet, no one has any sense of proportion.
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Good job Microsoft
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@Adynathos said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@Lorne-Kates So since then I have replaced Win8.1 with Win10, but not through the broken update process.
I am satisfied because it boots and runs faster than 8.1 - which is important because i reboot to switch OSes often.And it also "cures" my brother's problem on "random reboot" on Win7. On Win10 when the display driver crashs, Windows will be able to recover the driver and let you continue working.
The BSOD rate literally goes from once per 2 days down to zero.
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@cheong said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@Adynathos said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@Lorne-Kates So since then I have replaced Win8.1 with Win10, but not through the broken update process.
I am satisfied because it boots and runs faster than 8.1 - which is important because i reboot to switch OSes often.And it also "cures" my brother's problem on "random reboot" on Win7. On Win10 when the display driver crashs, Windows will be able to recover the driver and let you continue working.
The BSOD rate literally goes from once per 2 days down to zero.
I'd run memtest86+ if I were you.
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@drurowin said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
The BSOD rate literally goes from once per 2 days down to zero.
I'd run memtest86+ if I were you.
No use. His computer has been sent to the computer shop (a reputable one that I buy parts from over 20 years) for repair about six times before. For each time, the computer works for a few month and the symtoms reappears. Everything except the harddisk has been replaced and this problem just won't go away.
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@cheong said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Everything except the harddisk
So they swapped the motherboard too?
Question: If you've slowly swapped every PC component over time, is it still the same computer?
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@cheong said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Everything except the harddisk
So they swapped the motherboard too?
Yes.
Question: If you've slowly swapped every PC component over time, is it still the same computer?
Technically no. Just like my current desktop which is an incremental upgrade from PIII 550E. Everything in there including the harddisks are not the same as the original build now.
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@cheong said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Yes
I'm going to assume then it was swapped with the same MB and graphics card then.
If all else has been replaced (and I'm including RAM in this list too, just for giggles), then I'd seek outward further: perhaps the power is dirty somehow and it's slowly damaging the components? Does it happen with just his computer?
Windows 7 also had the ability to recover specifically from graphics card driver failures (as well as certain other driver failures), but obviously something else is clearly going on, we've just moved the goal posts....
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@cheong said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Everything except the harddisk has been replaced and this problem just won't go away.
Even the case components? There's not that many, but they might include something important.
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@cheong said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Everything except the harddisk
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth........
IOW I think your HDD is bad...
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@sloosecannon said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@cheong said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Everything except the harddisk
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth........
IOW I think your HDD is bad...
Also clean reinstall of Windows?
What graphics card? Maybe the drivers are just crappy?
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@sloosecannon said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@sloosecannon said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
What graphics card? Maybe the drivers are just crappy?
It could also be that the graphic card overheats, I've had a few times that the graphics driver became unstable when some of the fan's bearings got worn out.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@cheong said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Yes
I'm going to assume then it was swapped with the same MB and graphics card then.
Not exactly. Since the problem continues over 3 years and the motherboard model has been discontinued, the motherboard was changed once. And naturally he also upgraded the display card once during the interval, changing from NVidia card to ATI card.
It does not seems to help, though. The computer still begin to restart randomly after roughly half year.
If all else has been replaced (and I'm including RAM in this list too, just for giggles), then I'd seek outward further: perhaps the power is dirty somehow and it's slowly damaging the components? Does it happen with just his computer?
Yes, everything, including the case itself.
My computer connects with the same "extension plug sockets" but does not suffer from the same problem. So unless the "power is dirty" problem only happens on those sockets...
If anything, my computer is turned off only when I'm sleeping, but his computer is only up about 3 hours per day, usually after he go home from work.
Windows 7 also had the ability to recover specifically from graphics card driver failures (as well as certain other driver failures), but obviously something else is clearly going on, we've just moved the goal posts....
I don't know. After Win10 is installed, his problem automagically goes away.
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@JBert said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@sloosecannon said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@sloosecannon said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
What graphics card? Maybe the drivers are just crappy?
It could also be that the graphic card overheats, I've had a few times that the graphics driver became unstable when some of the fan's bearings got worn out.
Maybe, my home still does not have air conditioning. But the problem did happen on winter too.
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@sloosecannon said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Maybe the drivers are just crappy?
@cheong said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
ATI card.
HL3Crappy drivers confirmed!
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Despite all the pressure form Microsoft pushing out the Win10 upgrade against users even against their will, I'm in the opposite situation that I simply can't get my (not that) old laptop - which I basically only use to VPN/RDP into work when I'm working from home - to upgrade even after trying every trick in
the bookgoogle to get the upgrade to pop. All I get is that little icon in the tray, telling me when I click it that my copy of Win10 is reserved and that'll get a notification to install it whenever it's ready - which so far it apparently isn't.
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@Anonymouse You can just grab it directly: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
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@coldandtired said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@Anonymouse You can just grab it directly: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
I always wonder though how such an install generates a machine license. Do you simply start an upgrade from USB?
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@JBert I did it that way with two PCs. The upgrade changes your key but you can find tools to read it. You can just run the installer from the hard drive if you want.
When I clean installed a few months' later I don't remember needing to enter the key again, just logging on with my Live account was enough.
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What's the best way to obtain a copy of Windows 10 for a machine that's "of questionable license status"?
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@Anonymouse said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
old laptop - which I basically only use to VPN/RDP into work when I'm working from home
Humm... from the description of your usage pattern, I think you need not upgrade at all. Btw, you may want to check and see if that popup's little compatibility check has item that's not ready?
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@Onyx said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@sloosecannon said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Maybe the drivers are just crappy?
@cheong said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
ATI card.
HL3Crappy drivers confirmed!I think NVidia drivers after some time in 2012 is crappy, and ATI drivers since last year had become bloatware infested. If they try to add more crapware to the update bundle, I may decide to move to NVidia camp again at the next time I need a new display card.
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@cheong said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
I think NVidia drivers after some time in 2012 is crappy,
the NVidia drivers themselves are actually fairly nice. Geforce experience is craptacular. fortunately you don't need to install it at all.
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@anotherusername Even today. Plug a USB key, Windows is looking for a driver.... wait...wait...done.
Unplug the key, plug it into another USB port and it starts all over again !
Same device==same driver
you stupid-piece-of-broken-shit !And it doesn't matter if it's a keyboard, a mouse or whatever.
DeviceID+portID == DriverID
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@TimeBandit the best part was installing Win7 off USB on some machines:
- insert USB
- installer starts
- ERROR: cannot access install disk - no driver for somethingorother LIGHTSCRIBE thiggamabob
Ummm... dude... for one, the installer is on the USB drive you booted off. Also, the fuck do you care about lightscribe, you should read the hypothetical disk, not practice your drawing skills.
Of course, the stupidest workaround helps: cancel back to welcome screen, plug the drive into a different port, PRESTO!
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@error said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
Ya know what makes fascist oppression stop 100%? Utter submission to authority.
Correct. Windows 10 is exactly like fascism. Mussolini designed it personally. From beyond the grave.