Useful electronics programs that work on Win7 but not on Win10

[nctnico]

I don't need updates to test stuff every now and then (except if something broke after a specific update but I'd still need to be able to roll-back). I need the hammer to work right out of the box. And every now and then updates break more than they fix. I rather run an up-to-date malware/virus scanner to keep nasty stuff out than relying on updates to always work (I've lost many days due to updates breaking my computer and bringing my company to a grinding halt).

Either way it still doesn't solve the issue of Windows10 being useless (for me and many others who have the same problem) after not being used for a while.

As has been mentioned a couple of times now, Windows doesn't seem to show the behaviour in every case. Maybe not even in a lot of cases. If the hammer presented to you isn't working for your needs, you may need to swing it differently. There's a saying about a workman blaming his tools. Insisting on hitting your finger because a previous hammer was shaped differently and complaining it keeps hurting is no use. If you require the machine for work, I can't imagine sorting this out not paying.

Spending a day (or more) sorting Windows10 stuff isn't going to pay off. Last time I started the Windows10 VM is 6 months ago (and counting). It is very likely I won't need it for another 6 months or more since I only fire it up if a customer has a problem related to Windows 10 specifically. Unfortunately I can't write the hours on a project. It would appear strange to charge 10 hours to fix a bug which I'd normally fix in half an hour.

[Mr. Scram]

Spending a day (or more) sorting Windows10 stuff isn't going to pay off. Last time I started the Windows10 VM is 6 months ago (and counting). It is very likely I won't need it for another 6 months or more since I only fire it up if a customer has a problem related to Windows 10 specifically. Unfortunately I can't write the hours on a project. It would appear strange to charge 10 hours to fix a bug which I'd normally fix in half an hour.

Even if you're completely unwilling to figure out what's actually going on, setting up the VM being started and shut down in the background every now and then takes less time than what that VM reportedly needs to straighten itself out after a boot. Computers are made for automation. If you need it for your job a professional attitude probably serves you best and that means sorting it out once and for all. Not to mention that your client is likely to have an updated copy of Windows 10 too, which means your testing will be more representative if you ensure the VM is updated.

[nctnico]

I'm not unwilling to figure out what is wrong, it is just a complete waste of time. If I let the VM run for one hour or so and do something else useful instead it isn't a showstopping nuisance. It just requires planning, slows my computer down and wastes electricity. There just isn't an ROI on getting Windows10 going especially since I can't use it due to Astigmatism; I need to be able to turn font anti-aliasing off in order to be able to read the text on a screen. For me the Windows world ends at version 7.

[james_s]

It seems Windows 10 is written for the way Microsoft thinks people use computers, or the way they wish people used computers, or perhaps the way a portion of people use computers. Unfortunately it lacks the flexibility older versions had to be suitable for the way I and many others use computers. It's no longer fit for purpose, and telling customers they're doing it wrong or implying that they're idiots is not the way to win anyone over. Especially when there are other operating systems on the market that work much better. It is only legacy software and momentum that keeps many of us using any form of Windows.

[Mr. Scram]

I'm not unwilling to figure out what is wrong, it is just a complete waste of time. If I let the VM run for one hour or so and do something else useful instead it isn't a showstopping nuisance. It just requires planning, slows my computer down and wastes electricity. There just isn't an ROI on getting Windows10 going especially since I can't use it due to Astigmatism; I need to be able to turn font anti-aliasing off in order to be able to read the text on a screen. For me the Windows world ends at version 7.

You're not unwilling to figure out what's wrong, you're just not willing to actually do it. Splendid.

[nctnico]

No, there is no monetary gain for me to figure out what is wrong. That was your question a few posts ago: according to you it should pay off to figure out what is wrong with Windows 10. Well, it doesn't pay off. Just bang the hammer on a piece of steel for one hour prior to use because that takes less time than fixing the hammer (-if it can be fixed at all-).

[Nusa]

Sure, a 1957 Chevy Pickup is missing a lot of bells and whistles we take for granted these days, but it still gets one from point A to point B. And it has a lot of features that modern vehicles don't have. Like large fresh air vents in the footwell, windows that can be opened when the ignition is off, no seat belts installed or required, hand throttle and choke, and just about everything can be maintained with ordinary tools. And to top it off, it's now worth more than your average NEW car.

You get rid of things when they no longer do what you need them to do, not when someone tells you it's time to upgrade.

[Electro Detective]

This talk about hammers and Windows 10, may give frustrated users dark ideas 

..in alternative problem solving   

[Mr. Scram]

No, there is no monetary gain for me to figure out what is wrong. That was your question a few posts ago: according to you it should pay off to figure out what is wrong with Windows 10. Well, it doesn't pay off. Just bang the hammer on a piece of steel for one hour prior to use because that takes less time than fixing the hammer (-if it can be fixed at all-).

I just told you multiple times that mitigating or fixing the issue your experience is likely to cost less time than enduring it once according to your own story. Yet you insist it doesn't pay off. I can't say I'm surprised people are utterly unwilling to budge from their preconceived grudges and do anything to hold on to them as Zbig already concluded pages ago, but it's still disappointing.

[Electro Detective]

What part of "..there is no monetary gain for me to figure out what is wrong." was not clear mate ? 

[Mr. Scram]

What part of "..there is no monetary gain for me to figure out what is wrong." was not clear mate ? 

The concept of it taking less time to fix or mitigate than to endure the issue even once isn't terribly complicated, although I may be severely overestimating some people's abilities.

[Mr. Scram]

Sure, a 1957 Chevy Pickup is missing a lot of bells and whistles we take for granted these days, but it still gets one from point A to point B. And it has a lot of features that modern vehicles don't have. Like large fresh air vents in the footwell, windows that can be opened when the ignition is off, no seat belts installed or required, hand throttle and choke, and just about everything can be maintained with ordinary tools. And to top it off, it's now worth more than your average NEW car.

You get rid of things when they no longer do what you need them to do, not when someone tells you it's time to upgrade.

The problem is that this Chevy Pickup has a flaw in its design which is no longer going to be fixed by the manufacturer, but enables criminals to endanger the owner and his surroundings. These are the kind of well organised criminals who do this systematically. Owners are expected to conclude it's in their best interest to move on to a safer model, but due to not understanding the actual risks involved very well don't seem to do that as much as they should.

[nctnico]

What part of "..there is no monetary gain for me to figure out what is wrong." was not clear mate ? 

The concept of it taking less time to fix or mitigate than to endure the issue even once isn't terribly complicated, although I may be severely overestimating some people's abilities.

Ofcourse I investigated the problem and found out a) I'm not the only one b) there is no fix. By your own admission you know the problem exists but you are also unaware of a fix. So how many unknown hours do I need to sink into a problem for which even Microsoft themselves has no solution for?

[snarkysparky]

MSFT is using the security issue to force upgrades and keep the income stream going.  Mr Scrams only argument seems to be the need for more network security.

It is for sure an issue but me thinks they make a mountain out of it.

[soldar]

Microsoft has realised the desktop OS market isn't growing as explosively. Mobile has taken off and has partly replaced casual desktop computing. The desktop market has reached maturity. Microsoft is being overtaken by companies like Google which sell ads, information and services instead of software. Microsoft has reinvented itself as a cloud service provider and is re-jigging Windows to be a tool to push those services. I thoroughly dislike this development as I don't think it brings improvements for the customer, but it's effectively the world who told Microsoft to get with the program. Selling OSs won't keep your company relevant as it did 20 years ago and Microsoft needed a new course. 

MS botched the mobile market and now they are doing the same to the computer market. They could have left well enough alone and started new lines of business without ruining the old ones. They could have said "we will offer a free OS in exchange for ads and your first-born child or we can also offer you a traditional OS in exchange for some cash". They are trying to be all things to all people and the result is they are not pleasing anyone.

I hope Linux finally takes off and can become mainstream.

[NorthGuy]

It's the very point of releasing updates.

Consider two scenarios:

Scenario 1. You browse web and because software you use it buggy you accidentally download a virus. You computer became slow. Some unknown processes are running in the background consuming lots of resources. There's unwanted background Internet traffic consuming the bandwidth you're paying for. Settings unpredictably change, and if you restore your previous settings, they mysteriously get changed back again. Some of the software which worked before stops working ...

Scenario 2. You use Windows 10 and Microsoft rolled a new update. You computer became slow. Some unknown processes are running in the background consuming lots of resources. There's unwanted background Internet traffic consuming the bandwidth you're paying for. Settings unpredictably change, and if you restore your previous settings, they mysteriously get changed back again. Some of the software which worked before stops working ...

Do you see any difference? I don't.

[soldar]

You know, I would pay good money for an OS which was stable and secure. I do not understand why they keep making changes which introduce vulnerabilities. I do not need flashy things, I just want reliability, stability, security first and foremost, before anything else. Windows has been a disgrace in this aspect. They run to introduce technologies (which are sometimes retired soon after) which introduce vulnerabilities.

Can you imagine an airplane manufacturer who did this?

OK, never mind, bad example.

[james_s]

The desktop market is mature, Microsoft bought into the hype that the desktop is dead. Mature market is not the same as dead by a long shot. The traditional desktop (and laptop) PC is alive and well, with something like a billion of them in use and they are not going away any time soon. What has changed is the technology has matured so users are upgrading less frequently than ever and the casual users who never really needed a full PC in the first place can now get by with mobile devices. Microsoft missed the boat with mobile, they arrived to that party almost 10 years too late which is an absolute eternity in tech then tried to play catch up with predictable results. Android and iOS were firmly dominant with Blackberry a distant third by the time MS even took the market seriously, by which point it was hopeless.

They threw Windows under the bus in a desperate effort to use it to jump start their mobile platform but that failed, Windows Mobile is dead yet for some reason they continue on the trajectory of "universal" apps that have no reason to exist without a robust mobile platform. They have failed to grasp that "legacy" Windows software and familiarity is nearly the entire reason most people use Windows, succeed in killing that off and Windows has no reason to exist.

Now it seems what they've done with 10 is made one final last ditch effort, sacrificing what is left of Windows trying to get people using their services and app store. One of the problems there is that the services are not needed by a great many of us and the apps are almost universally garbage. I do not use a single default Microsoft app on any Windows machine, for every last one of them there is a 3rd party product that is superior. When I had Win10 at work I found it incredibly frustrating that it kept changing my settings away from the software that I had carefully selected and deliberately installed, back to the crappy default garbage they wanted me to use.

[Mr. Scram]

Ofcourse I investigated the problem and found out a) I'm not the only one b) there is no fix. By your own admission you know the problem exists but you are also unaware of a fix. So how many unknown hours do I need to sink into a problem for which even Microsoft themselves has no solution for?

It doesn't occur in regularly booted VMs. That's a ready made workaround right there, implemented in minutes. You wouldn't even need to stop ragging on Windows as inventing another problem is easy enough.

[Mr. Scram]

MSFT is using the security issue to force upgrades and keep the income stream going.  Mr Scrams only argument seems to be the need for more network security.

It is for sure an issue but me thinks they make a mountain out of it.

It is a huge issue, but it's definitely also abused to be able to leverage the Windows market share. It's obviously also not the only argument.

[Mr. Scram]

MS botched the mobile market and now they are doing the same to the computer market. They could have left well enough alone and started new lines of business without ruining the old ones. They could have said "we will offer a free OS in exchange for ads and your first-born child or we can also offer you a traditional OS in exchange for some cash". They are trying to be all things to all people and the result is they are not pleasing anyone.

I hope Linux finally takes off and can become mainstream.

You forget that Microsoft is a publicly traded company. They're doing whatever their shareholders feel it should be doing. Shareholders saw Google and Facebook growing exponentially and see the Windows market share as a resource. That's why Satya Nadella got installed. I don't agree with many of the things he's done, but have to admit the company's doing well in the financial sense under his lead.

[Mr. Scram]

The desktop market is mature, Microsoft bought into the hype that the desktop is dead. Mature market is not the same as dead by a long shot. The traditional desktop (and laptop) PC is alive and well, with something like a billion of them in use and they are not going away any time soon. What has changed is the technology has matured so users are upgrading less frequently than ever and the casual users who never really needed a full PC in the first place can now get by with mobile devices. Microsoft missed the boat with mobile, they arrived to that party almost 10 years too late which is an absolute eternity in tech then tried to play catch up with predictable results. Android and iOS were firmly dominant with Blackberry a distant third by the time MS even took the market seriously, by which point it was hopeless.

They threw Windows under the bus in a desperate effort to use it to jump start their mobile platform but that failed, Windows Mobile is dead yet for some reason they continue on the trajectory of "universal" apps that have no reason to exist without a robust mobile platform. They have failed to grasp that "legacy" Windows software and familiarity is nearly the entire reason most people use Windows, succeed in killing that off and Windows has no reason to exist.

Now it seems what they've done with 10 is made one final last ditch effort, sacrificing what is left of Windows trying to get people using their services and app store. One of the problems there is that the services are not needed by a great many of us and the apps are almost universally garbage. I do not use a single default Microsoft app on any Windows machine, for every last one of them there is a 3rd party product that is superior. When I had Win10 at work I found it incredibly frustrating that it kept changing my settings away from the software that I had carefully selected and deliberately installed, back to the crappy default garbage they wanted me to use.

If settings keep changing at work it's most likely those settings are forcibly set by your organisation, or your work organisation isn't managing its IT very well.

[Mr. Scram]

Consider two scenarios:

Scenario 1. You browse web and because software you use it buggy you accidentally download a virus. You computer became slow. Some unknown processes are running in the background consuming lots of resources. There's unwanted background Internet traffic consuming the bandwidth you're paying for. Settings unpredictably change, and if you restore your previous settings, they mysteriously get changed back again. Some of the software which worked before stops working ...

Scenario 2. You use Windows 10 and Microsoft rolled a new update. You computer became slow. Some unknown processes are running in the background consuming lots of resources. There's unwanted background Internet traffic consuming the bandwidth you're paying for. Settings unpredictably change, and if you restore your previous settings, they mysteriously get changed back again. Some of the software which worked before stops working ...

Do you see any difference? I don't.

I'm willing to believe you don't see key differences. I guess that's why they're now releasing updates more forcibly.

[NorthGuy]

I'm willing to believe you don't see key differences. I guess that's why they're now releasing updates more forcibly.

Perhaps if you cannot tell what the differences are, and I don't see them at all, they don't really exist - the king is naked

[Mr. Scram]

Perhaps if you cannot tell what the differences are, and I don't see them at all, they don't really exist - the king is naked

Do I really need to explain the difference between an unknown malicious actor and a known party bound by law and contract? Even just the known and unknown part makes a world of difference. This just boils down to "I don't enough about this to see a difference so there musn't be one". If this discussion has reached the point where people are essentially calling fake news, I guess it's time for me to bow out.