The New Sudoku Players' Forum

[champagne]

Anybody else in this situation ? Leren

My old laptop is in the same status (on top of it, I have a permanent error in the update of office 2003)

[Leren]

Hi Champagne,

You don't say how "old" your laptop is, but my "old" PC is only a couple of years old, and came pre-loaded with W10. So why can't Microsoft install its latest build of the software that my PC was designed for ?

I also hung on to Office 2007, but I've run out of the maximum number of installs, so I also have a copy of Office 2016. One problem with this is that there seems to be some sort of incompatibility between Office 2016 and W10. No, I'm not kidding.

The main issue for me is the running of Excel 2016 macros. For some reason when I run an Office 2106 Excel Macro it looks like it is not working. But it really is, so It's mainly a visual thing, and you can eventually get used to its quirks.

But I don't have the same problem with my older copy of Excel 2007 under Windows 10. So, in some respects, the older version of Office runs in a more user friendly way under W10 than the newer version.

And both products are produced by the same company. Go figure !

Leren

[Mathimagics]

I am still on 1809 (Build 17763.557). That surprised me, given the history of unauthorized restarts.

Curious, I looked in settings at Windows Update:

WindowsUpdateStatus: Show

Untitled.gif (20.53 KiB) Viewed 1440 times

Is this because I have somehow managed to prevent the update myself (that would be a first)? Or is this normal behaviour? (and I use the word "normal" advisedly …)

More importantly: should I go ahead and install this update?

[champagne]

Hi Champagne,
You don't say how "old" your laptop is,

End 2014 with an i7_4510U 2GHz 8Go
Started with windows 7 or 8 ?? (I don't remember)

[Leren]

Hi MM,

I haven't seen that particular status screen, but it appears that you could move to the feature update. I got the feature update one day when I clicked on the check for updates button with no message showing and the update "downloaded", "installed" and then asked me if I wanted to restart straight away, schedule a time, or it would restart outside of my active hours, so in some sense I brought the feature update forward a bit.

The feature update went OK and didn't cause any problems. The "download" and "install" processes took a fair while, maybe up to an hour, so you can leave your PC running while this is going on. If you are in your active hours period, when these processes are complete, the Windows update screen will tell you that a restart is required to actually carry out the update, which will take maybe half an hour.

My advice would be to try one PC, click "Download and install now" and leave the screen up. You can leave your PC running and keep tabs on how the process is going. The percentage complete indications are highly non-linear. I think in one case the "install" process stopped on 94% for about 20 minutes. Eventually, when it says a restart is required you can stop your PC processes, take a deep breath, and click the restart now button. In my case everything went OK but took a while with the usual scary black and blue screens every now and then but it works out OK in the end. Good luck.

Leren

PS - when the feature update is installed there will be a new button in the update screen that will allow you to postpone an update for up to 7 days, or apparently longer if you go into an advanced features screen.

[Leren]

Champagne wrote : Started with windows 7 or 8 ??

I suppose Microsoft could claim that your PC had (or didn't have) characteristics that might be making it difficult to accommodate the feature update. My PC came pre-loaded with an early version of W10, but there have been so many W10 updates, it should probably be called W210 by now, so I don't suppose there is really much difference between your case and mine.

Leren

[champagne]

PS - when the feature update is installed there will be a new button in the update screen that will allow you to postpone an update for up to 7 days, or apparently longer if you go into an advanced features screen.

Each click gives one week freedom. Just click several times if you want more

[Leren]

In the Update and Security screen click on Advanced options. Then under Pause updates there is a Select date drop down box and the heading says you can pause for up to 35 days, but if you reach that limit, you must get new updates before you can pause again. For example, today is July 4 and I can pause updates until 9th August. I haven't used this feature yet because I like to get updates out of the way. I think if you pause updates for a long period during which there are several updates, You have to go through each one individually. In other words I think that Microsoft does not consolidate updates to the latest build.

Leren

<Edit>

Well, while I was preparing that last post (or, I should say Last Post as in what buglers play for the dead), a second update came through on each of the 1903 builds. Yes, that's right, 2 updates in 1 day. For the record, the ID numbers were KB4502584 and KB4501375. What madness is this ? Anyway, as I was saying (before I had to manage the second double update process - today ! ) if you pause updates, You would probably have to go through all updates that were installed during your pause period - which could be a lot. That's why I haven't used the Pause button feature yet. I have been tending to check for updates every day, at least 3 times ; morning, noon and night. Perhaps a good way to go is to use the Pause button feature before you retire, so if an update becomes available when you are asleep, it's locked out. First thing you should then do when you get up is to un-check the Pause button and check for updates. If one, or more, has come through, you can at least manage the update process. BTW I carefully watched the second update and after it downloaded, it installed not once, but twice, on each PC, so maybe it was a double update that had one ID number (That's happened before) and both halves were installed at the same time, so maybe what happened today was one single update and one double update.

Does anybody actually believe that what I'm saying is true ? Even I can hardly believe it and I'm writing it.

Leren

PS - I just checked for further updates on one 1903 PC and none has come through in the last 1/2 hr. What's wrong with those Microsoft people - doesn't anybody do any work there ?

[tarek]

Just did the major Windows 10 update which went fine except for the multiple restarts involved. This was a small hassle as I'm running 2 operating systems on my computer (Windows 10 is not the default OS).

Haven't seen what the major update involves yet

tarek

[Leren]

The good news is that the mouse has several size and colour options. Ain't life grand ! Also there are a few more ways to get rid of Cortana, although I had already figured out how to do that.

I think some slightly bad news is that when you pause updates, and you eventually have to end the pause period, you don't bypass any updates that have occurred while you are paused. Each individual update package has to be gone through.

Leren

[tarek]

I guess if you are a cat then this must be fabulous news

I haven't disabled auto-updates yet. I usually turn off Wi-Fi when I leave the computer multi-tasking overnight and I haven't done a several day task where updates land without announcement!

tarek

[Mathimagics]

I've been wanting to have a good gripe for some time now, but it has to be new, otherwise it's just, well .... it's just micturation on a windy day ...

But I have got a brand new one to report! Yippee!!

As part of the LCT (Low-Clue Threshold) project, I have for the past 8-10 weeks been downloading data files produced by coloin from Google Drive. These files are typically from 2 to 4 GB.

Sometimes (fortunately not that often), when using Edge, these downloads mysteriously hang. You don't really know it's happened unless it happens in the first gigabyte, in which case the "progress" report shows the number of MB's downloaded, and you would notice if it stopped increasing.

But after 1GB the progress updates are then in the form "x.y GB" where y is just a single decimal place!

Now, if your internet download rate is only 1MB/s (which until recently was the case), that's a long time between progress updates (every 100MB). So you sit there wondering and waiting for it to click over ...

I now use Internet Explorer, which hasn't failed yet (but who knows, maybe the problem is not browser-specific) and uses 2 decimal places (rather sensibly IMO) so is 10x more likely to indicate the problem if it should ever occur!

BTW. When the download does hang, the only option is to cancel and start again from scratch.

[Leren]

Excellent Gripe MM, and on another W10 "favourite" of mine, Edge. I turfed Edge soon after it's debut, when I discovered that it handled the way it treats information in the paste buffer differently than Chrome, which was much better (at least with default settings). I wasn't prepared to figure out how to get Edge to work properly, I just tipped it over the edge.

Leren

[Mathimagics]

Excellent Gripe MM ...

Thank you!

Edge is a bummer for you, your problems with Paste buffer relate to Patterns game, right?

I don't have that problem, so I persist with it (for its PDF capability).

Maybe Google Chrome also supports in-browser PDF display, but ... I've got a gripe with them too!

I keep getting bloody "Why not install Google Chrome?" popups which are really annoying, how many %$&$% "No thanks" clicks will it take to get them off my back?

[Leren]

Hi MM,

The problem with Edge related to Andrew Stuart's game Letterlicious. With Chrome, I could Transfer the contents if it's Start page into a Spreadheet cell for cell by simply selecting the relevant part of the Start page and using copy and paste, with just a few tidy ups. With Edge, the same action resulted in all the information being crammed up into Column 1 and I had to write a visual basic routine to fix this. Originally I attributed this to W10, but then I installed Chrome under W10 and it worked the same way as it did under W7, so I don't use Edge.

You may be able to get rid of some annoying W10 notifications with some settings in W10. If you google "W10 stop push notifications" you may end up here which will give you instructions to turn off some of the more annoying marketing based features of W10.

Leren