8mo ago

Windows updating just before thesis defense

252 comments

I saw that happen once in a big presentation.
There was a team of students presenting their work to ~200 people. Right in the middle, a pop-up says updates are finished and the computer needs to restart. It has a helpful 60-second countdown, but "cancel" is grayed out, so all they can do is watch.
I was only in the audience and I still have nightmares.
- Then it proceeds to take 10 minutes to boot. Happened to me before an important meeting once and i just couldn't believe it. wtf makes Microsoft think they can get away with shit like this?
  
  Probably that they very obviously are!
  
  They think they can get away with it because they keep getting away with it.
  
  wtf makes Microsoft think they can get away with shit like this?
  I'd wager a guess it's people dumb enough to constantly put up with shit like this?
  
  Usually for large businesses like universities IT can choose when to push updates.
  
  our work uses macs but also Kandji for software management, which also locks you into restarts during business hours 😎
  
  Because the alternative is people getting compromised and getting their computer crypto locked, accounts stolen or their bank account drained.
- Those kids are still wincing to this day
- The super duper shitty thing is that they could have canceled it by opening the Run dialog box and typing "shutdown -a", so it's not even like canceling wasn't an option. M$ just decided to be dicks about it
  
  M$ just decided to be dicks about it
  A most concise yet comprehensive company bio.
  
  Maybe? If I recall correctly, this was Windows XP. Also the computer was owned by the school, so the students didn't have admin access.
- shutdown -a couldn't help in that situation?
  
  For every 1 person who knows how to use the windows command line, there are 50 people struggling because they didn't embed their video into their PowerPoint, or worse, their USB stick only contains a shortcut to their actual .ppt file
  
  I love these comments. If you need to use the command line (the largest argument people have against Linux) why are people still arguing to stay on Windows? Hell, Linux you don't even need the terminal if you don't want to use it and choose the right distro.
  (I recognize that for schools and offices, people don't have a choice. These students were probably on a personal laptop though, so they could have a choice. The issue is Windows comes as default and no one actually makes a choice. They don't choose Windows. They just have Windows.)
  
  They didn’t know, but yea.
  
  Damn I forgot about that
- Is this a w11 thing? Or does o&o shutup in default settings disable stuff like that. I actually never have seen a forced reboot like that myself.
  It sounds really shitty and i dislike windows alot.
  
  It only happens if you neglect to install updates for a very long time, which is a pretty dumb thing to do. This is actually a non-issue if you just install the damn updates once they're announced. Just update when shutting down. Also, using home edition is pretty dumb. With the pro version you'll likely never run into this problem.

"Don't turn off" is the worst kind of status message.
When it eventually hangs for various reasons, you actually do need to turn off your pc for it to complete or to let it roll back in an error state.
When "just hang in there" is still present on the third day you'll start wondering why you bought that piece of furniture and won't mind the consequences of turning it off.
- What should it say instead?
  
  Console output with status of the current operation, including error and warning messages

This might take several minutes
...or itcould take several hours
- Then failed half way through, and needed another hour to "reverse changes".
- It says "several" but I think it means "many", important distinction to make there Microsoft.
- "If you play your cards right and allow recall ;)"

Should make that screen the first slide of the PowerPoint
- One in the middle, including the pop-up notification about a pending restart before that. Hahaha nice
  
  I know what to do next time I'm teaching on 4/1...
  
  I'm going to do this now

My favorite windows update was when I was attending an onsite coding competition hosted my Microsoft. We were all in this large meeting hall that looked like a theater, and we spent first 10 minutes or so at the start of the competition just looking at Windows update, with the Microsoft rep apologizing to us, because his pc decided to do the "Forced update restart you cant postpone any more" literally two minutes into the presentation
- When your dog food tastes like dog food
- As a presenter would be mortified.
  As an attendee, hilarious.
  
  As an attendee, would be somewhat annoyed
  As someone on the Internet, hilarious
- That's probably the presenter's fault for not updating it earlier. Keep on top of your updates so they don't force you to do it at an unfortunate time.

That is an MS Teams Room system in the conference room, it runs Windows IOT. Whoever manages those rooms should have set the working hours of the room so it didn’t apply this update during business hours. By default the system updates at 2 or 2:30 AM, I forget... so might be a weird MS bug or someone fudged up a config
Source - installed a lot of these a few years ago.
- I've always set windows to update around late hours.
  But once in a while, Microsoft ignores that and does updates anyways. Usually just a quick min or two. But it's still annoying.
- Probably Windows default is just Pacific Time.
- Oh god, Windows IoT is the real-time version used for robots in the medical industry or serious stuff. This is overkill.
  
  Windows IoT can be configured into a soft-realtime (realtimey-wimey). Disabling audio is one of the steps, so I doubt it's rtos mode for teams.
  IoTs target market is companies reselling an appliance that runs on windows. So a Teams Room appliance is a perfect use-case for IoT

You should start your defense saying the same thing.
- And then just sit silently and spin around and around on the chair for 15 minutes.
  
  Unorthodox, but the boldness we need for this brave new world.

Its the final boss.
You need to fight the windows update!
- It's* the final boss.
  
  The worst is when it's actually its, the one time it's their time to shine and the whole thing just flies over their heads. Smh my head
  
  dont bother correcting apostrophes as its not a grammatical mistake, simply lazy typing. well never stop doing that no matter how much yall tell us not to, cuz it simply aint all that much of a problem
  
  And you are the grammar end boss

Much as I always feel Microsoft has made some horrible missteps around automatic updates...I also think many many users are vocally and unabashedly following horrible update policies.
The biggest one is "Fuck you, Microsoft, I don't ever want to update." A simple truth about Windows is that it is currently the most popular operating system in the world. If that OS was Unix-based, the resulting truth would still be true: The most popular OS is going to be the most common target for vulnerabilities, hacks, malware, and exploits. Far more than an antivirus, keeping that computer up to date is the most important step for keeping it secure.
This is true not just of computers used to manage your bank account and nuclear launch codes, but of the swarm of "convenience" computers sitting inside a campus network that could spread a virus to everything on the Wi-Fi.
So, looking at this image, it's a shame on Microsoft moment if this update came from nowhere, or they once again blatantly ignored the configured update time. It's a shame on the campus moment if someone was repeatedly closing the "Time to update" popup.
- Other systems like ChromeOS and Silverblue do atomic updates in the background and then switch on next restart. No waiting at screens like this. Heck even the conventional Linux update system, while far from foolproof, doesn't require waiting like this.
  
  So does windows for the most part
  Do you know how often users actually restart their machines without being forced?
- The issue is some updates don’t contain just security fixes, but rather privacy invading features and advertising that make the OS shittier.
  
  Oh, no argument from me on that. And it's horrible that Microsoft is starting to make people choose between having a secure system and avoiding their adware bullshit.
- In addition to what was said by somebody else about atomic updates, even a simple update via package manager on a regular distro will do all the work up front, and not take extra time on next boot. Before you reboot, most things will continue working fine - and most of the remaining things that might not can be worked around.

Cool ceiling tile
- sponsored by Proxmox

The longer I use Linux, the harder it becomes to see where windows users are coming from. Its gotten to the point where seeing people use windows in public feels incomprehensible to me, like watching people go to work on a pogo stick instead of a car.
- I feel the same way, but I feel it with lots of other topics in my life as well.
  I daily drive Linux for both home and work. Windows is absolutely shit, yes, but when you're using Linux as your primary system, the only interaction you have with Windows is through other people. And that interaction is only when people's experience with Windows is noteworthy enough for them to mention anything about it. Its selection bias.
  A similar thing happened with me when I visited home after having been gone for 2 years. I moved from the US to the UK over a decade ago. I'd go back every 6-12 months, but because of COVID it was over 2 years. It was during the vaccine rollouts too, and I was expecting this warzone anti mask/antivax everywhere. I saw a few people (like, over 3 weeks I saw less than a dozen) with signs protesting at intersections. And I saw one guy have an argument with his wife in the parking lot which she just eventually told him to stay in the the car if he wasn't going to wear a mask while she went to the grocery store. Thats pretty much the opposite of what I expected based on the images I got for the previous 2 years through overseas media. You only get the lowlights.
- I've gone off the FOSS deep end so it doesn't stop when I see Windows used in the wild.
  The longer I'm here, the more I recoil at the sight of people using products from Google so casually and thoughtlessly.
  I'll feel visceral disgust when I see the soulless, dystopian corporate logos of Xitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc that wormed their way into a universal presence on social footers of websites or promotional emails or search engines... and everyone's locked down devices, sucking up troves of data to map who you are, were, and will be. Even McFuckingDonalds has a clause in a policy saying they'll measure your intelligence.
  The greater the intersect between emotions felt while enjoying a cautionary fictional cyberpunk tale and those felt while experiencing reality... well, anyway you get the idea.
  Tldr I need a hug from a penguin or cocaine from a bear or something holy shit
  You, reader, go. Hug a penguin. Spread love to the world. Believe in the change you want to see. Be good to each other. And don't let anyone or anything take who you are, were, or can be away from you, be it a corp, a government, or a bad day.
  Have a good day
  
  These comments are copy pasta perfection. Best part they are unironic 🤣😍
- like watching people go to work on a pogo stick instead of a car.
  At least going to work on a pogo stick makes more sense in urban area. You can't bring car into subway. Windows on the other hand...
- Hell it looks ro me like they are driving a Flintstonemobile, where every time they stop using thier feet a boxing glove punches them in the face.
- Three words: High Dynamic Range.
  HDR is a tacked on feature in KDE that barely works. In Windows 11, it's a set and forget thing. SDR gets mapped to HDR space, so you don't have to constantly toggle it on and off when switching between content, like you have to do in other OSes. You can even upgrade SDR videos and games to true HDR, even if they don't have native support. It legit makes content look more realistic.
  And if you have a newer GPU, there's also AI upscaling, which is great for watching HD and SD content on a 4K display. Pretty sure you can't do that* at all in Linux, at least not in real-time.
  But if you have an SDR monitor and/or an older GPU, none of this matters to you. Which in that case, there's no reason for you to use Windows ever. But if your gear is newer, Linux is too outdated for you.
  I'll check back in 5 years. Maybe 2029 will finally be the year I ditch Microsoft products for good.
  
  These are nice, but on the other hand there's the case where you have a limited time slot somewhere and windows randomly decides that it's time to update, pop up a window to upload your data to "the cloud", reboot, and bang, you're f*cked.
  
  It's expected for HDR to mature on Linux later this year. I'll send you an update in December.
  
  You can even upgrade SDR videos and games to true HDR, even if they don't have native support. It legit makes content look more realistic.
  You are just applying filters. They look good, but they are incorrect.
  
  Three words: High Dynamic Range.
  Works fine on Steam Deck. (The comment you're replied to is about Linux, not a specific DE, so your experience with a specific DE doesn't really count as counter argument about Linux in general.)
  And if you have a newer GPU, there’s also AI upscaling, which is great for watching HD and SD content on a 4K display. Pretty sure you can’t do they at all in Linux, at least not in real-time.
  That is wrong.
  
  I am utterly perplexed by the HDR talk, honestly. Why does it even matter? I've been consuming media on Linux for more than a decade and it looks perfect to me.
  When people talk about making it look even better, I literally can't imagine what they're talking about. I mean, when people had black n white TV, they could imagine color. When I had a CRT and 3D games, it was easy to imagine better quality, but going from 1080p to 4k already does nothing. HDR just seems like marketing bullshit that people wouldn't be able to discern, unless flicking between normal and HDR or having them side by side.
  Anti Commercial-AI license
  
  HDR is just a scam. It's essentially automated brightness and contrast controls that is terribly done. I've seen HDR on brand new displays running HDR-capable everything and it just looks like someone can't figure out how to set their monitor up correctly. It's a buzzword created for crap technology that makes people want to spend more on essentially the same trash.
  And as for scaling, look up FSR.
  Windows is 100% obsolete and anyone who disagrees is just looking for excuses.

Every day, my work computers force a shutdown-update, take 20 minites, fail the update, recover from the failed update, and then force a 24-hour timer to do it again that I can't turn off. IT doesn't care.
- If it’s happening every 24 hours it sounds like they’re the ones that set the policy.

this is why you use linux
- This is why you check your equipment before any important events
  
  What if Windows decided to update after you finished checking the equipment? I mean, they do use AI to determine the worst time for an update...
- This looks like a public office space. You really gonna go argue with the building admin?
  
  "Hey boss, the display in the corner office automatically updated. Can we get IT to switch everything to Linux?"
  
  Yes
  
  You don't need admin to plug your computer into the AV do you? I assumed it was OP's computer.
- had to recompile my audio drivers with headphone support just before thesis defense
- linux can have some pretty weird quirks though. (don't get me wrong I've been dailydriving linux for several years and I'm not going to use windows unless I'm forced)
  one time I was about to do presentation, I has multiple files and windows in order to present the whole program we had developed, some powerpoint, demo, and the source code.
  then came my time to do the presentation and I plugged in the hdmi cable and my fucking account just logged out. dunno if the session crashed or something, but I had to quickly scramble everything back since all my apps were closed lol.
  I do have older quadro nvidia though
  
  HDMI? Don't you know HDCP is proprietary? Best to just log out. Stallman was right and all!
  
  Important question: is mesa? If not, then fuck Nvidia. If yes, then fuck Nvidia regardless, but karlherbst and other nouveau devs would like to get crashlogs if there was crash.
  Was it reproduced later? What enviroment?
  
  Having been in a similar situation, I now bash script things like that, so it's ./present_dat_shit.sh and you're up and ready, even if things bug out. If it's a really important presentation, you can also add a live boot SSD backup if you're serious about redundancy.
- Sure, but are you really going to go find the building admin and argue with them to update all of their OS' to something they probably don't understand? Linux is primarily a power user platform, not a mainstream one.
- Yeah dude. Just get every computer at school and business to use Linux. Duh.
  🙄

I had windows do a large update in the middle of an exam once. Like the major version number changes or something, took probably like an hour and a half. I was quite lucky with the exact timing and the fact that I am usually able to finish exams quickly as I did end up having half an hour for the exam, but it did make the whole situation a bit more spicy than necessary.

Depending on how the windows network is set up, this may happen every time someone logs in

That's the least of your worries. Once it reboots, its proprietary spyware...errr...AI...will resume taking screenshots of everything you do.

Good luck on your defense! Goodspeed

Windows disagrees with the thesis.
- So did the rest of the committee.
  
  Oof
  
  Is this a joke, or did your friend really fail? Would be interested to know what happened, if you don’t mind sharing

Today's thesis is an improv on why windows sucks.

Well, aside from this I hope it all went well OP!

What’s the thesis on?
And good luck!
- Its on transients in astronomy. I'm not defending tho.
  
  When you defend, print out your slides; at least enough for your committee and you. Then if all else fails, you can present off the paper copies. (also, it gives the committee members somewhere to write notes and to easily look back to previous slides.)
  
  anything exciting?
  Black holes eating stars? Aliens? something blow up?
  hehe.
  I'd say 'be gentle', but uh, brutality is kind of part of the formality, right?
- Why you should use Wimdows

"FUCK MICROSOFT!"
- Oh, so you know OP's thesis name too!
  
  No, I was referencing a scene from the show "Space Force" where the exact same thing occurs.

Im absolutely upset with whoever installed that rally camera ABOVE the TV.
Also, that cabling is awful...
- Oh, and the microphones aren't even drilled into the table. Just wires all over the table and the microphone loose af lol
  
  When we first got a conference camera we got the older Conference Cam 3000 and our boss made us put it up there against my suggestion. When it came down for the decorator, I put it back up but under the TV and no one complained and there it stayed! It eventually died and since I’m the boss now pretty much I replaced it with the Rally which I really like. But I’ve put the speakers on the table underneath rather than wall mount, with some good distance between.
  Strange how this room looks similar to mine, minus the ceiling art.
  
  If you put microphones into the table, the audio will be horrible, catching up any surface acoustic waves from any noise on the table. Like if someone touches the table anywhere, this will be caught by the microphone. If someone puts down a hard item to the table anywhere (e.g. a pen, fingertips with fingernails, smartphone) you won't be able to hear anyone in the room through microphones due to the transient noise.

Good luck! You got this!

I don't get it. I never had my PC randomly updating itself without my consent. I simply keep my OS updated like everyone should. I do this by installing the update once I get notified (I simply update when I shut the thing down). Why is everyone so weird about this? Or is this a home edition problem? Don't use home edition.
- I use home edition and never had this problem. EU windows is much better though, maybe this is a USA windows thing.
  
  Right. It's easy to forget that M$ has two versions of шindows
- Tbf I do this too but sometimes Windows will shut down after an update and next time I start it it will "configure my PC", restart once more and then show me the login screen. Doesn't even take 5 tho. The worst thing however is when I start my laptop and login, just for Windows to decide it's updating rn. However this is usually happening at work so I suspect that the update server on the domain pushes an urgent security update that can only happen once a user logged in. Still super annoying but doesn't take more than 5 minutes.
  
  No, not any longer. In Windows 11 "update and shutdown" includes a reboot in-between and then shuts off. The only way you get this these days is to "update and reboot" and manually shutting off the computer during BIOS initialization.
  
  Ok, this I can relate to. I often sat down at my desk the next morning just to see that the PC is running. Electricity is kinda expensive where I'm from, so this pisses me off.
- I've had way too many Windows updates fuck my shit up, so I wait as long as possible to update so they have a chance to fix what they broke by the time it gets rolled out to my machine.
  
  I've never really had any major fuck ups with windows updates. This is something I also don't get. I'm not an MS advocate or anything, I completely support people who use Linux because screw evil giant corporations. But most arguments here are completely emotionally driven.

Fairly universally the worst moment (Mine was actually validating, but ppl seem to hate it)

Have you tried turning it off and on aga.... Oh nevermind. Carry on.

How did it go?!
- I didn't defend, but it went well
  
  Well congratulations to the newly minted Dr!

the thesis was on why you should move to Linux

That design on the ceiling looks like the state of Oklahomas new branding

isn’t that the setup process

Use arch

Good Luck

Running updates at shutdown/upstart is something I am not a big fan of. It might be safe but I would rather roll back if something goes wrong.

That ceiling had me thinking the picture was abstract or disoriented

This is why I went to Mac. I can set it to notify rather than auto update and it actually does that. So many times my work windows laptop has started an update as I am shutting it down for the night, delaying my departure.

This is on you. You prepare your computer ahead of time. Do updates the night before, check if everything works. You also have an empty battery? Like I loathe windows as much as anyone, but this would never ever happen to me. I triple check it all, especially if it runs windows.
- That looks like a conference room PC, I would doubt OP even has any control over that and possibly didn't even have access to the room until right before
  It isn't their computer.
  It's likely on a campus domain managed by campus IT and should be configured with a sane update policy that automatically does this overnight when the systems aren't being used.
- Forced updates are still terrible.
  
  nah. at worst it's the lesser of two evils. the alternative is keeping a crushing majority of the user base vulnerable forever because virtually no one likes to voluntarily update their os.
- I'd rather work with my PC than around my PC.
  It's why I much prefer Linux

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