Author Topic: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!  (Read 11225 times)

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Online Kleinstein

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #25 on: November 11, 2021, 10:52:14 am »
I am still to figure why people use and pay such a crock of shit product ...


In most cases Windwows comes with the hardware. So most users don't directly pay for it. You rarely get the same PC without windows for less.

We still use it because some software needs it - for many things there are alternatives, buit not for everything.
 

Offline madires

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #26 on: November 11, 2021, 11:06:19 am »
... and don't forget to install also a tool for managing the privacy settings (e.g. O&O ShutUp10++) . As usual, Tuesday's update enabled telemetry without my consent. :--
 

Offline Berni

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #27 on: November 11, 2021, 12:52:22 pm »
Yep it happened to me before too.  >:(

I left some unsaved work open at the end of my shift, put my PC into sleep mode, came to work the next morning to find an empty desktop. I went to investigate trough the logs what happened in case it somehow had a bluescreen or something. Nothing to be found, but i did find that it installed updates on that day.

So it turns out that updates will install themselves without warning, on purpose choosing a time when you are not at your computer to perform a reboot. If any application shows a "Do you want to save?" prompt the process will not stop, but instead windows will kill the apps that refuse to close and perform the reboot anyway. So this is functionally the same as if you had your PC bluescreen at random times, since you loose all unsaved work in just the same way. I also had times where i would get a major update that would render my PC unusable for nearly 1 hour when i arrived to work.

Even tho i have a Pro version of Windows 10 i still could not find a setting to turn off this behavior. I had to google tricks how to set all sorts of complicated policies buried deep in the guts in order to actually stop it. Also since Win 10 seams to randomly and secretly turn things on i decided to completely kill all updating functionality. As an alternative i manually run an update about once a year when i know its safe to do. Then undo any stuff the update messes up, since it always messes up something. I had my color theme randomly changed by an update, my default image viewer overridden, i had Edge browser randomly get installed and set as default...etc Fuck off Microsoft, i just want to use my computer.
 

Offline VK3DRB

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #28 on: November 11, 2021, 12:56:42 pm »
It's pretty easy to disable if you know where to look.

Unless Microsoft secretly re-enables it again.

I disabled updates a few years ago on a work machine. Sometime after that, I did a manual Windows update and unbeknown to me, the update overwrote the setting to halt automatic updates. A few weeks later, after I went to a 20 minute meeting, I found an automatic update had rebooted my PC. I lost six hours of work. I could have punched Bill Gates in the head, even if he had nothing to do with it.

Lesson learnt: Save your work regularly.
 

Online NiHaoMike

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #29 on: November 11, 2021, 01:18:45 pm »
In most cases Windwows comes with the hardware. So most users don't directly pay for it. You rarely get the same PC without windows for less.

We still use it because some software needs it - for many things there are alternatives, buit not for everything.
Perhaps the solution would be to move Windows into a VM like Xen?
... and don't forget to install also a tool for managing the privacy settings (e.g. O&O ShutUp10++) . As usual, Tuesday's update enabled telemetry without my consent. :--
What we need is some way to send fake telemetry as a protest.
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Offline nigelwright7557

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #30 on: November 11, 2021, 01:21:09 pm »
Microsoft have a habit of messing things up.

I spent months writing some software using C++ and Win forms.
The next revision of visual studio came out and they had removed it ! FFS
I along with many others complained about it until they put it back in.

They then came out with WPF and C#. Great language but screen driver is very slow so a backward step from C++.

I then go into website design which went fine.
Then one day after a upgrade in visual studio I found I could no longer right click on files to publish them to the website, I had to upload the lot which took 10 minutes.
I complained about it and they eventually fixed it.
Since then they have removed twice ! and each time I had to complain to get it fixed.
 

Offline Berni

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #31 on: November 11, 2021, 02:03:17 pm »
Unless Microsoft secretly re-enables it again.

Yep, this is why i killed updates all together rather than just fix the "don't randomly reboot my machine" problem. That way i have to set things back only after my yearly update adventure.

Microsoft have a habit of messing things up.

I spent months writing some software using C++ and Win forms.
The next revision of visual studio came out and they had removed it ! FFS
I along with many others complained about it until they put it back in.

They then came out with WPF and C#. Great language but screen driver is very slow so a backward step from C++.

I then go into website design which went fine.
Then one day after a upgrade in visual studio I found I could no longer right click on files to publish them to the website, I had to upload the lot which took 10 minutes.
I complained about it and they eventually fixed it.
Since then they have removed twice ! and each time I had to complain to get it fixed.

I also hate how scattered they are with the direction of developing Windows apps. They keep inventing new fancy ways to write them, removing support for old ways, then noticing they really needed the old way and putting it back in. Yet i still think WinForms are the way to write Windows apps, it works perfectly well, so there is no need to replace it with something 'better'.

Tho i find that C# was a step in the right direction. Nice blend of modern language features with the syntax of good ol C. The JIT compiler for it is also impressively performant. Sure its still not the lean mean speed of C++ but for most things it is close enough. It also includes a good deal of useful libraries for doing almost everything. The graphics library i find plenty performant enough too, letting you draw quite a lot of stuff to the screen at 60fps. It is my favorite way to create Windows apps now.
 

Offline IanB

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #32 on: November 11, 2021, 03:10:13 pm »
I left some unsaved work open at the end of my shift, put my PC into sleep mode, came to work the next morning to find an empty desktop. I went to investigate trough the logs what happened in case it somehow had a bluescreen or something. Nothing to be found, but i did find that it installed updates on that day.

This is another thing that I find annoying, that recent computers do not power off when you put them in sleep mode like older computers used to do. There is this thing called "modern sleep", which means the computer remains switched on, but in a low power mode, like phones. Because it is switched on, it can still come to life and do things when you are away. I want it so that off means off. Whoever led this change in hardware design was not making things better for users.
 

Offline AntiProtonBoy

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #33 on: November 11, 2021, 04:14:33 pm »
The best thing I did is install Windows 10 LTSC edition. Cuts out all the bullshit and issues op was talking about.
 
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Offline PaulAm

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #34 on: November 11, 2021, 04:33:06 pm »
All I can say to this is that MS made me a lot of money fixing client systems.

For personal systems I always used Unix and then Linux systems.  One of the big benefits of retirement is that I don't have to deal with that crap anymore.
 

Offline Berni

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #35 on: November 11, 2021, 06:34:30 pm »
This is another thing that I find annoying, that recent computers do not power off when you put them in sleep mode like older computers used to do. There is this thing called "modern sleep", which means the computer remains switched on, but in a low power mode, like phones. Because it is switched on, it can still come to life and do things when you are away. I want it so that off means off. Whoever led this change in hardware design was not making things better for users.

It still is the same kind of sleep mode. The PSU switches off while the motherboard uses the 5V standby rail to hold the RAM contents.

The thing is that various hardware also runs from the 5V standby rail and has the ability to wake the computer from sleep using an interrupt line (Much like interrupts are used to wake up a MCU from sleep). The OS configures the interrupt sources appropriately before entering sleep mode to determine what can wake it up (and this is configurable if you dig deep enough). The obvious source of a wake up interrupt is the power button, but typically anything being a keyboard or mouse is configured for wakeup, network cards can wake up a PC upon receiving a wake on lan packet, laptops usually send a wake up signal when the battery is almost empty(typically used to transition into hibernation before it dies). It is also possible to set an alarm in the RTC chip, this can wake it up at any predetermined date and time in the future, this is what windows might use to schedule a surprise secret update during the night. This ability was in the hardware for a long time now, it's just that Microsoft only now started using it for evil purposes.

My solution is still sticking to Win 7 for the time being. So far i have not seen Win 10 do anything nice that Win 7 can't do. That is apart from the artificial walls that are put in to make your life on Win 7 more difficult, like making drivers refuse to install on it (Yet they work perfectly fine once you have a hack that skips the OS check error message) or some new software that uses APIs that are made to be incompatible with Win7 on purpose. So far i have been able to find a way around these walls, but we will see for how long.
 

Offline IanB

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #36 on: November 11, 2021, 06:54:49 pm »
It still is the same kind of sleep mode. The PSU switches off while the motherboard uses the 5V standby rail to hold the RAM contents.

The thing is that various hardware also runs from the 5V standby rail and has the ability to wake the computer from sleep using an interrupt line (Much like interrupts are used to wake up a MCU from sleep).

Traditional sleep mode is as you say, and older computers did this. However, what I read (and have experienced) is that "Modern Standby" is different. The CPU does not switch off, it remains on in a low power state and is still able to execute code. Therefore, it does not need a hardware event to wake the system; the system keeps running in standby mode and the CPU continues to execute background tasks.

With traditional sleep, it was possible to disable all the hardware wake events in the BIOS and the system would remain powered off. With Modern Standby you cannot achieve the same result, as the CPU never powers off completely.

Quote
The complexity of Modern Standby is a result of keeping the system alive to process background tasks, while ensuring that the system stays quiet enough to achieve long battery life.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/modern-standby
 

Offline MadTux

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #37 on: November 11, 2021, 06:55:39 pm »
Good thing I switched over to Linux 20 years ago ;-D
Uptime of 1/2 year or so, no problem, even with a Thinkpad, no server hardware needed....
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #38 on: November 11, 2021, 07:01:39 pm »
Presumably the data wasn't being sent over the Internet and it was being stored locally on the hard drive. If so, then why not simply unplug it from the Internet? That's what I would do, if I needed to run a Winwoe$ PC, without it randomly rebooting.
« Last Edit: November 11, 2021, 07:28:49 pm by Zero999 »
 

Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #39 on: November 11, 2021, 07:03:56 pm »
You can disable this if you have at least a Pro edition of Win 10, but it looks like Win 10 likes to reset those settings back to automatic after some updates. So after updating, you may need to check those settings again. Just in case. Oh yes, this is lovely.

Can't wait to own a car with a Microsoft OS.
 

Offline IanB

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #40 on: November 11, 2021, 07:08:17 pm »
Can't wait to own a car with a Microsoft OS.

You mean, like a Tesla?  >:D
 

Online themadhippy

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #41 on: November 11, 2021, 07:19:51 pm »
Quote
Can't wait to own a car with a Microsoft OS
An oldy,but still rings true

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason.  You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue.For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.

7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off."
 

Offline Berni

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #42 on: November 11, 2021, 08:04:46 pm »
It still is the same kind of sleep mode. The PSU switches off while the motherboard uses the 5V standby rail to hold the RAM contents.

The thing is that various hardware also runs from the 5V standby rail and has the ability to wake the computer from sleep using an interrupt line (Much like interrupts are used to wake up a MCU from sleep).

Traditional sleep mode is as you say, and older computers did this. However, what I read (and have experienced) is that "Modern Standby" is different. The CPU does not switch off, it remains on in a low power state and is still able to execute code. Therefore, it does not need a hardware event to wake the system; the system keeps running in standby mode and the CPU continues to execute background tasks.

With traditional sleep, it was possible to disable all the hardware wake events in the BIOS and the system would remain powered off. With Modern Standby you cannot achieve the same result, as the CPU never powers off completely.

Ah this. Yeah i don't like the sound of it.

So far i have personally not come across a Win 10 machine that actually supports this. Just went and tried the "powercfg /a" command on my Ryzen laptop and Ryzen work desktop and they don't support S0 Idle (And a 4th gen i7 machine is too old for it). All of these also taking the usual second or two delay to actually show something on screen after waking up. Maybe some of the smaller form factor intel laptops/tablets that use it. Yet Win 10 will still do the secret sneaky update during the night even in the regular sleep mode.

I guess the next step with this S0 mode is to now also always listen to the microphone during sleep mode.
 

Offline David Hess

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #43 on: November 11, 2021, 10:21:00 pm »
There are many sites describing ways to disable automatic updates (and subsequent reboots). I have applied such tricks (in my case related to removing execution rights to files MusNotification.exe and MusNotificationUx.exe) with great success, in many computers and for some years now.

I initially tried that also, and invariably an update would reset the changes, or ignore them, and automatic updates would continue.  So I settled on the metered network connection solution which has held so far.
 

Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #44 on: November 12, 2021, 12:35:46 am »
Can't wait to own a car with a Microsoft OS.

You mean, like a Tesla?  >:D

Ahah, not that they don't have their own set of issues, but Tesla uses Linux AFAIK.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #45 on: November 12, 2021, 03:14:37 am »
I'm not a fan of the level of computer integration in Teslas, but as far as I know it won't ever just force you to update at whatever random time it sees fit.
 

Online NiHaoMike

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #46 on: November 12, 2021, 03:22:53 am »
Can't wait to own a car with a Microsoft OS.
Didn't Ford try that like 10 years back, to find it a spectacular failure? Fix Or Repair Daily...
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Online xrunner

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #47 on: November 12, 2021, 03:27:54 am »
Can't wait to own a car with a Microsoft OS.

Hmm this makes me wonder. I know vehicles have computers somewhere ... under the seat perhaps. Does anyone know if it has an "OS" or is it a glorified microcontroller? I can't recall ever having to reboot my Subaru.  :-DD
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Offline IanB

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #48 on: November 12, 2021, 03:34:53 am »
Hmm this makes me wonder. I know vehicles have computers somewhere ... under the seat perhaps. Does anyone know if it has an "OS" or is it a glorified microcontroller? I can't recall ever having to reboot my Subaru.  :-DD

Oh yes, they boot up these days. If you've ever got in a recent model car with a glass console, you will observe that when you turn on the ignition it takes several seconds before the console boots and displays the home menu.
 

Offline BradC

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #49 on: November 12, 2021, 03:35:57 am »
Hmm this makes me wonder. I know vehicles have computers somewhere ... under the seat perhaps.

My 2007 Landrover has 19 CAN BUS accessible ECUs. That doesn't include all the other embedded devices and LIN bus elements. An acknowledged fault rectification strategy is a "hard reset". Basically a turn it off and back on again. Disconnect the battery and short the cables for some magic "Chinese whisper witchcraft old wives tale" period of time.

Most of the ECUs are chatty, and if one stops chatting the car will drop into limp mode. That could be caused by something as simple as a blown tail light bulb or worn brake switch contacts. Funny, pretty much everything that causes issues on this vehicle has "FoMoCo" stamped on it.

On the other hand, my 1988 Volvo has 3 ECUs (Fuel, ignition & ABS). <shrug>
 


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