Where we stand with Windows versions, builds, rings, updates, branches and editions

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If you aren’t confused, you aren’t trying. Microsoft jettisoned its old system of Windows SKUs and Service Packs more than five years ago, with the re
[See the full post at: Where we stand with Windows versions, builds, rings, updates, branches and editions]

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As long as they have mass confusion they will have complete control of the masses.

Dave

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“Why do I get the feeling that Microsoft is making this up as they go along?”

Because that’s what they do… with ALL of their products!

It helps putting the average person into the state of total confusion causing them to just give up and gulp down the whole pitcher of Kool-Aid instead of just taking itty-bitty sips!

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Corporate past reputation is what they are banking on, now driven by greed, control and scaremongering with administrative permissions to inject their own malware.

Linux is the way forward, have already taken the leap of faith in open source 2 years ago on a test m/c and loving it!

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Good news (I hope) for Kaspersky Internet Security users who have updated to the Win 10 Anniversary Update.

I noticed that my Kaspersky on my Win 7 desktop last night updated from v.17.0.0.611(a) to v.17.0.0.611(b).

Though their support page here: http://support.kaspersky.com/us?_ga=1.203373721.969049900.1466015314 has not yet been updated, I just spoke with a Kaspersky support rep on the phone and she told me that the (b) patch fixes all those issues.

Here’s to hoping she’s right!

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It’s unfortunate that there really isn’t a good way to count market share, at least not with 100% accuracy. I dual boot between Linux Mint and Win7, running Linux over 90% of the time but hitting web sites using both OS’s (and doing a few other things in Windows that I haven’t yet replaced with a Linux version). I have to wonder how I or people like me would be counted (or double counted).

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I wonder how many people upgraded to Win10 to “reserve a copy” then rolled back to an earlier version. Are those upgrades being included in MS market share even they may not have been used since? Wonder if Win10 real time usage will show a flat line or drop to reflect that.

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“Why do I get the feeling that Microsoft is making this up as they go along?”

They may very well be making up the details and implementation as they go along. But I think I know what their overall strategy is.

I think their overall strategy is to have all Windows PCs sending telemetry information back to Microsoft. Microsoft will then use this telemetry information to tailor their malware protective measures to make Windows more and more secure. If this is the case, it would be better not to reveal what information they are collecting, so as not to reveal it to the hackers and malware authors.

I base this on the following statement I read in a recent ZD Net article:

“E5 incorporates everything from E3 with the addition of Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection, which arrived in the recent Anniversary Update. The security service taps Microsoft’s telemetry data from sensors embedded in Windows 10 devices across the globe and uses it to counter sophisticated attacks that can bypass other defences.”

Here’s the link:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-enterprise-now-available-on-subscription-from-microsofts-cloud-partners/

Of course, they could easily be using the collected information to send tailored ads to Windows users, thereby earning some money off of the deal.

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I know Microsoft has all the corporate users trapped and locked in, but us little folks out here can thankfully switch to Apple. I have been a faithful customer of Microsoft through Dos Shell, 95, 98, XP, and Vista. I am still running Vista until Apple comes out with their new Mac Book Pro by the end of the year. At that time I will buy a new Apple. Meanwhile I switched off updates on my computer and I am relying on Kaspersky to protect my machine for the meantime. At 73 years old I no longer want all the headaches Microsoft imposes on their customers.

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Good question – and the only people who know the answer aren’t talking about it.

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Phew!!! come back SP1,2 etc all is forgiven 🙁

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Netmarketshare a Microsoft partner.

When it comes to Operating systems, W7 is around 80% usage 9-5 Mon-Fri, mostly because Enterprise and Government are the majority of MS clients that use Windows. Linux and OSX register low usage 9-5 Mon-Fri and much higher outside business hours.

As you say Windows is still very important no matter what Netmarketshare spews out in Microsoft’s favor. It is in our collective (no pun intended) interest that Microsoft succeed in delivering a quality OS to all of us. Hopefully they can untangle this mess and get the process working a lot smoother.

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For me the Anniversary Update (or KB3176934, either one) totally destroyed my wifi: it was awfully slow and constantly wouldn’t connect properly – while I had Firefox, Chromium and IE all infinitely downloading some website, my sisters Windows 7 laptop worked just fine, my stepdads Windows 8.1 laptop worked just fine and my phone also worked just fine. The Wifi had worked for me just fine BEFORE installing the anniversary update too. I tried uninstalling the newest driver for my WLAN card and replacing it with the driver provided by ASUS from 2015, didn’t work. I went to Realtek’s website and this particular WLAN card is not even listed there. I went to google and found this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3z6ai9/wifi_keeps_slowing_to_a_crawl/
Some random guy 8 months ago had exact same Wifi adapter as I do and the same issue, but nobody was able to help him. Dangit.
As a last resort, I clean installed the whole OS, that was a big waste of time, because it still didn’t work. 🙁

So I though now’s a good change and went back to Windows 8.1. D**n, would you look at that, I can actually connect to the Internet through Wifi and it works! Pretty crazy stuff, I mean it just works, just like that, crazy stuff!

I gave Windows 10 a fair shot, but I wont be installing it on this machine again I think, this update situation is just out-of-control on Windows 10. Let’s just hope Microsoft doesn’t screw us come October and the changes to Windows Update model of 8.1/7.

I’m sure Realtek and/or ASUS are as much at fault here as is Microsoft, if not more so because they haven’t updated their drivers in a long while, but I really don’t care who’s fault this is: all that matters is that Windows 10 is broken for me as of right now and Windows 8.1 on the other hand is stable and works. And I really value stability over anything else in my OS.

Who knows, by now they could have fixed the issue, but that would have still meant WEEKS without properly working Wifi. Totally unacceptable, in my opinion. (and before anyone asks, no, I can’t just use a wire from the router unfortunately)

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I think I know another thing which is going on with Microsoft with regard to Windows 10:

They are using their customer base as a huge beta test group (even more than in the past). Basically, they push out an update, and then they monitor, via telemetry, how successful the update was, what problems it caused, etc. They then can make adjustments and tweaks as necessary.

And everyone is so distracted with the “violations of privacy” (legitimate concerns, in my opinion) that they haven’t noticed that the entire Windows 10 user base is one huge Microsoft lab for testing new patches and updates!

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I’m in the process of moving to Ubuntu Linux. Currently it is installed in a VM on my Windows 7 computer. Hopefully by the end of this month I will install Linux as the host system and Windows 7 in the VM.

And there I’ll stay.

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May I be the first to say that I don’t appreciate Microsoft having done this to us.

Oh; I’m not the first?

Still, I feel like Gunny Hartman must have felt when he entered the head after lights out to find Pvt Joker talking to Pvt Pyle about Pyle’s M14 which was locked and loaded at the time. Gunny asked Joker why he wasn’t stomping Pvt Pyle’s guts out. Well why isn’t somebody stomping Microsoft’s guts out?

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In other words, there will be ongoing problems caused by updates suddenly breaking something unexpected. Or to be blunter, Windows 10 does not qualify as a beta version, at best an alpha version.

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“we really need a Release Preview for 1511 – and it wouldn’t hurt to have one for 1507, too.”

Why does anyone need a preview for a version that’s been released?

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For admins and devs to check for bugs prior to cumulative updates being released.

That’s the idea behind Release Preview. From three years ago:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2612242/microsoft-windows/patch-monday–a-way-to-avoid-more-microsoft-automatic-update-fiascos.html

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I think you’re missing the point again. (I can never tell whether that’s deliberate or not!)

Even your proposal there three years ago was for a preview *before* general release.

Who needs a preview *after* general release?

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The release preview ring of the Insider Program is specifically intended to provide early releases of cumulative updates for versions that have already been released.

Thus, for example, 10586.456 was released to the Insider Release Preview ring prior to its final appearance as 10586.494.

See http://www.infoworld.com/article/3090032/microsoft-windows/windows-10-admins-and-developers-should-get-build-10586456-kb-3170411-for-testing.html

MS needs to get those early release previews out so admins and devs can test their software against new cumulative releases before they go out.

Am I missing something? Wouldn’t be the first time…

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I did the Win 10 anniversary update today. It’s working like a champ. No issues at all.

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Well done! Keep us informed how it goes.
Some of us are very interested in the Windows 10 project to succeed, but there is still more work to be done on the manufacturer’s side, unfortunately.

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No, you are not missing anything, not this time 🙂

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Heh heh heh. I should probably write it up. Many people don’t understand Release Preview. It’s confusing.

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It wasn’t confusing until you omitted RING in “we really need a Release Preview for 1511…”.

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Understood. Yes, we really need a Release Preview Ring (and release previews for cumulative updates) for all the currently active versions of Win10.

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Yeah, and some of us would even appreciate a coherent and concise explanation of what the dickens the so-called Windows 10 project actually is in fact. It sometimes appears more like the future of mass surveillance than the provision of a quality OS.

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I have been a DOS, OS2 and Windows user for years. I have been running Windows 7 Ultimate for a while but was wary of the “free update” to Windows 10. Every time I upgrade Windows it costs me “big time” and usually ends up with lots of software upgrades and eventually a hardware upgrade. My Windows 7 Desktop is relatively stable and have turned off automatic upgrades. Funny thing is , I am starting to have more “blue screens of death”…hmmm! I decided to upgrade my laptop from XP to Windows 10 and paid for the license. Bad decision – it is continually doing background tasks (updates?) and is unresponsive. Given this experience, I don’t want to accept Microsoft’s Trojan Horse (free upgrade).
I too have bought a Mac Book Pro and find it so much better. I only wish I could update my Desktop Machine to Mac OS too. I am told Mac OS runs on Intel and it is only a software license issue.
For years I was anti-Apple in the corporate world and very much a Microsoft bigot! They say, with age comes wisdom – Today please give me Mac OS and Apple hardware – stability has a price!

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I live in an area where I have to rely on satellite for high speed internet. I have two desktop systems connected by Ethernet to the router. The service is metered and restricted after 10 GB/month. Since the W10 Anniversary Update, subsequent patches, updates, and whatever the system is downloading is burning through data at a greater than 10 GB/month rate.

This supposedly can be fixed with a registry hack to set the Ethernet connection to metered. I’d do it in a heartbeat if I could find a procedure that two “experts” agreed on.

I have worked with computer systems, one way or the other, since we programmed them by punching in hexadecimal code using binary indicator lights/switches on things the size of refrigerators.

Some things are fundamental. They aren’t being done. In terms of being reliable for and kind of serious work, IT is failing. Whoever made the comment about expecting Armageddon pegged it right.

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anonymous wrote:

For me the Anniversary Update (or KB3176934, either one) totally destroyed my wifi: it was awfully slow and constantly wouldn’t connect properly – while I had Firefox, Chromium and IE all infinitely downloading some website, my sisters Windows 7 laptop worked just fine, my stepdads Windows 8.1 laptop worked just fine and my phone also worked just fine. The Wifi had worked for me just fine BEFORE installing the anniversary update too. I tried uninstalling the newest driver for my WLAN card and replacing it with the driver provided by ASUS from 2015, didn’t work. I went to Realtek’s website and this particular WLAN card is not even listed there. I went to google and found this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/3z6ai9/wifi_keeps_slowing_to_a_crawl/
Some random guy 8 months ago had exact same Wifi adapter as I do and the same issue, but nobody was able to help him. Dangit.
As a last resort, I clean installed the whole OS, that was a big waste of time, because it still didn’t work.

So I though now’s a good change and went back to Windows 8.1. D**n, would you look at that, I can actually connect to the Internet through Wifi and it works! Pretty crazy stuff, I mean it just works, just like that, crazy stuff!

I gave Windows 10 a fair shot, but I wont be installing it on this machine again I think, this update situation is just out-of-control on Windows 10. Let’s just hope Microsoft doesn’t screw us come October and the changes to Windows Update model of 8.1/7.

I’m sure Realtek and/or ASUS are as much at fault here as is Microsoft, if not more so because they haven’t updated their drivers in a long while, but I really don’t care who’s fault this is: all that matters is that Windows 10 is broken for me as of right now and Windows 8.1 on the other hand is stable and works. And I really value stability over anything else in my OS.

Who knows, by now they could have fixed the issue, but that would have still meant WEEKS without properly working Wifi. Totally unacceptable, in my opinion. (and before anyone asks, no, I can’t just use a wire from the router unfortunately)

The Anniversary update (or was it the update to the update?) broke my wife’s “RealTek RTL8168/8111 Family PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.0)”. Device Manager said it could not start. It had been working fine in Win10 until the update. Considering the age of the motherboard, I did not expect to find an updated driver. Surprise… from
http://www.realtek.com.tw/Downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=13&PFid=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3 I found an installable driver dated 2017/1/20. I chose repair and it said it was installing a newer driver. It FIXED the issue. (The site says it’s v10.013 2017/1/20, but after install, Device Manager says 10.113.1223.2016.)

It looks like RealTek is trying to update even some older NIC drivers.

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