Utility that Kills Windows 10 Update

Michael Coslo

The most amazing thing is that people accept that level of instability. Better keep the think off the network - I know I set my W10Pro machine to delay updates as long as possible, but they don't pay attention to that. Anyhow, I'm going to try the software, and hope Microsoft doesn't uninstall it.

Steve W6SDM

Rick, you're living on borrowed time.  Eventually you're going to have to boot your computer.  It's like sitting at the bar and thinking that you'll never have to ****.

Plus, I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to boot the thing for you at some point.  Resistance is futile.

Walt, thanks.  Yeah, I agree that power users have most of the problems because we expose the OS to more failure points.  Nevertheless, even casual users get hit sometimes when their favorite app stops working because of an incompatibility.

If you remember, several years ago Bill Gates himself was hauled before a congressional committee investigating antitrust because it wasn't possible to remove Explorer from Windows without bricking the system.  If they don't investigate Microsoft over Windows 10 improprieties, then it's only because Microsoft made a lot of campaign contributions.

Walt - KZ1F

Ya know what? At this point I say someone who volunteers to be a Windows user....they get what they get.

AA0KM

Sept 2015 count >over 100 million

Walt - KZ1F

Keep in mind, you can't buy a PC without Windows being preinstalled. And, yeah, to most consumers, Solitaire and Facebook, they don't care because it is an appliance to them. It is not a statement of good taste.

Jay Nation

To no one in particular.
When faced with the choice of riding the roller coaster or just warning other riders about why they shouldn't ...
I usually ride. 
I prefer the view from the roller coaster, to the view of the roller coaster.

73, Jay - NO5J

Takeshi Yamada

I experimented to upgrade to Win10 from Win8.1 with my new core i7 6700. 
I have DAX warning as many says.  I tried to clean up Flex install and re-installed, but still it comes up.   Another issue I noticed is; I cannot install Spe's TERM_2K_USB - it complains it cannot find FTD2XX.dll.  I tried the latest FTDI driver, however the situation does not change.  It implies me that I might have problem with RS232c <-> USB, hence CAT, although I have not tried any other RS232c<->USB.
Any experiences, fixes for FTDI driver is appreciated.

It is only a beginning of the painful journey, but it seemingly takes sometime to replace Win8.1 at my shack.

73 de JI1BNU
Ken Yamada

EA4GLI

It is interesting to see the Relates Conversations that pop up at the bottom of this thread...

EA4GLI

I really wanted Windows 10 to work. I don't like bashing Microsoft and I wanted to give them a chance. After the nonsense of win8, a tablet OS that doesn't make sense in the desktop I thought Microsoft had lost it giving in on the tablet pressure from Apple and Android. I was very glad to read how they were finally listening to users and 8.1 was a glimpse into a bit of hope. In all fairness 8.1 is a very good OS, it is just a horrible gui. I will never understand a company that will through all their customer base down the drain and completely revamp an os environment that was so familiar to so many. The idea of win10, going back to what we all like in win7 and some of the improvements of 8.1 made sense. One OS for phone, tablet and pc sounded awesome. I bought into the whole thing. I bought a Windows phone. I bought a Windows tablet and I upgraded my best laptop to win10 technical preview. The phone on win phone os worked ok, until I wanted to use some apps. There weren't there. Neither my banking or cellphone apps were available. Many others where just not close to the level of refinement. I had to go back to angels as main phone and leave this add my secondary phone. The tablet failed to update to win10 and it took me 3 months to get it back to win8 to make it usable. There wasn't a roll back option. The touch screen didn't work the device kept rebooting endlessly... I finally found a thread were a guy uploaded an image of win8 for the hp tablet and that allowed me to recover the device. I bought the office365 $99 yearly deal, office in 15 devices, 4 household users, 1tb of onedrive, 60mins Skype a month. Awesome until you try to use it. Try any of these features with **** Internet anywhere outside north america. And the final straw, I made the mistake of taking the win10 laptop on a business trip. I tried installing a Bluetooth mouse, that sent me on a downward spiral of suffering. At 80% battery the os shutdown. And on reboot it failed to load the os, i spent hours going through the win10 recovery that ultimately only gave me the option of a new install of win10. I was in the middle of the Maldives, business trip with a laptop with no bluetooth mouse and now with no office. With bad Internet I couldn't load 365 again, it times out. A laptop that on win7 had 150 days of standby couldn't even go into sleep mode because on win10 it will not come back from sleep. I had to keep it connected to the outlet constantly. Power management in win10 is awful. My fault for trusting windows 10. But I gave it another chance. Back home, had a day long meeting and decided to take this laptop to the meeting. I load all the documents i need, i connect a usb 3 thumb drive to the laptop and Windows 10 crashes again. I am now very happy with win7 back into the laptop. This is just my experience. I really wanted windows 10 to work. It just hasn't yet for me.... Maybe some day.

k3Tim

Hey Ken,

Please check:

http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/D2XX.htm

for theFTDI driver. I see FTD2XX.dll is provided per the release notes. 
No device here using this device so I do not know for certain this will be the fix you seek. 

Best of Luck...

Tim

Walt - KZ1F

Sal, months ago the tech world was abuzz with news Microsoft ceded the mobile market. Perhaps it was Gartner or Forester but I do recall the headline that, and I am pretty sure the verb was ceded, the mobile market. If it's any consultation, they do have the desktop market.


KY6LA_Howard

I guess the W10 download I removed counts in the100MM For all those who are reporting no issues good luck to you For the rest who have issues this utility may help BTW. I usually am one of the guys building or testing the new roller coasters so I don't have time to ride or watch.

EA4GLI

I was writing with my cell phone and had a few typos in there.... I wish we had more time to edit a post. Anyway...

I really was looking forward to one OS where my apps will work the same on different platforms. Opening SmartSDR in any of my devices sounded fantastic. 

I use office all the time, it is my main productivity tool. I have to write reports, review documentation and go over many spreadsheets daily. From time to time I use powerpoint and once in a blue moon some of the others. Every other piece of software I use in the PC, from movie/photo editing to programming to gaming is for my personal use.

There are a couple of things that Microsoft has done over the years where I really wanted them to succeed. One was Sharepoint and the other Windows 10. The idea of Sharepoint was great. A web based environment where I can collaborate with colleagues. Another monumental mess. Even today, 10 years later, sharing a Sharepoint folder is a total pain. Luckily Dropbox came along and provided a very friendly, easy to use platform, to share documents across devices. I can easily see when I file has been modified or a new files has been added, I can then access it in any of my connected computers. To add a user all I need is their email.
  
It is so clean and simple that I even use it for all my ham needs. My logging programs backup automatically into Dropbox, which allows me to use the same logging program in several computers without having to import or export anything. I just download everything there and it is automatically available in all the connected devices. 

My personal experience with Windows 10 was explained in the previous post....

All of my desktop computers are built by me. I put together PCs that serve me well and stand the pass of time quite well. Good power supplies, powerful video cards and plenty of memory are must have ingredients in my builds.
For Windows 10 I decided to test it in the one computer that had no personally added hardware, to avoid adding complexity to the upgrade, the Asus ZenBook UX31E laptop. A very good looking Core i7, 8GB laptop that wasn't cheap when I bought it and has worked flawlessly for several years.

If it fails on that I have no hope that it will work on any of my main work PCs. 

dlwarnberg

Just curious, all those that have issues with windows 10 upgrade did any of you look through the error logs and cleanup any issues prior to the upgrade?  Windows in general is a very forgiving OS, it allows programs not well written to continue to work even though they throw errors....

Just curious..

Walt - KZ1F

You mean like unhandled exceptions? There is not a lot an end user can do about them. You mean like incompatible device drivers? Not much an end user can do about that either. It's a false equivalency comparing a corporate network with a consumer user running on a wide open network.

EA4GLI

I see your point David, I am sure there is a lot of user error involved... but then more of a reason to avoid pushing the upgrades on people. I just find it a very bad practice on the part of Microsoft.

Jim Gilliam

I did the latest extensive update of windows 10 and had the DAX failure. I hate, I mean hate, the rigorous routine of completely eliminating SmartSDR for a new reload. I wish the **** Flex would come up with routine to wipe out the whole **** program for a fresh reload. Be that as it may, I loaded in the software and have Windows 10 back before the large upgrade and everything is working fine.

Jim, K6QE

Michael Coslo

Unlike some others, I haven't had a problem with Windows 10 - yet. DAX has remained running, and I've only had to reset the radio once - which isn't a windows issue.

But I'm going to bring this topic back to Amateur Radio and flex here shortly, so bear with.

But my fear, based on my sideline of computer support since the mid 90s, and large scale Windows support, is that Windows updates break things. I wasn't an actual computer guy, but as the person in charge of a suite of conference rooms and auditoriums, I ended up supporting them since the regular IT guys didn't handle the suits too well.

And the day after patch Tuesday - or when the IT guys handed it out - was almost always a nightmare. While the base users, like Office Suite users. didn't have problems all that often, the machines that got a little more complicated - with codecs, and sound and video drivers, and programs that did more "stuff" were hit by problems most every update.

But one thing I wouldn't put up with, was the notion that somehow it was my fault that a codec was removed, or a a setting changed. Yesterday the machine worked, today I have 50 angry 6 and 7 figure guys wondering why their DVD doesn't work any more.

Now here is the issue I have with Windows 10 updates, and it brings it right back to Amateur Radio.

Given that in Windows 10 you have no choice except to accept the updates, and it has already been proven that updates are following in the tradition of bollixing things up, it presents a problem for emergency work.

If we get a big snowstorm or flooding here, I might turn on my radio and  it doesn't work any more. And my biggest defense against updates borking my computer was to manually install them at a time when I can handle fixing the inevitible update issues.

A magnificent radio is at the mercy of an operating system that is going to fail.

Which is why although I much prefer SmartSDR, I'll be learning DogPark's rig control offering as well.

KY6LA_Howard

Jim What you really are saying is that you wish that MS had its act together so that each and every update to W10 did not break things yet again. Life is too short to be wasted on debugging MS products.

W7NGA

That's why my emergency rig is a Viking Ranger and Hammarlund HQ-170 receiver.
Just kidding ... I have a cell phone for that.

Jim Gilliam

Hello, Howard!

Thank you so much for the info on thwarting auto-downloads. Fortunately I make regular images of the drive, so every time Windows **** up my computer with a new update, rather than trying to fight removing SmartSDR (which I hate to do with a passion) I just reimaged my hard drive. The new software works wonderfully and my computer "thinks" it's up to date now. Sure glad you are part of the group, you have been an enormous help to me over the years. Best regards and Merry Christmas!

Jim, K6QE

James Whiteway

Or, get a Maestro which doesn't run Win10 and connect it directly to the radio and keep it off the internet. Speaking of that, why couldn't one get a Win10 setup running on a pc and do the same (direct to radio). Maybe a spare pc. That way Win10 update couldn't **** things so easy. Just a thought. James WD5GWY

Clay N9IO

Referring back to the original post.
Howard thanks for the heads up on the GWX control Panel.
That Win 10 update business was driving me nuts.
All of my machines but one are Win 7.
I will take a different approach and say I am not interested in Win 10 at this point in time.
Win 7 has been wonderful, my flex and all toys play well in it.
Maybe some day I will give W10 a try just not today.
In the mean time that annoying W10 upgrade window opening every flippin time I open a browser had to go!!!

Thanks again Howard, that made my day OM.

Michael Coslo

Well, the Maestro looks like a fine piece of kit, but I like my dual 27 inch monitors.

My plan is to keep Windows 7 on my Mac via bootcamp, and to continue to experiment with the Windows 10 machine separately.

By the way, going between the two machines has not been any problem at all. But MS have downloaded the W10 OS to my Mac - I just have to hope they don't decide to install it without my permission. Or I accidentally do something to enable it. Already there is a blank window popping up when I log in, and when trying to get rid of it, it has tried to install W10 several times now. So I let it alone.

We really should not have to fight with our computers like this. 

Gary Wise

Thank you Howard. It worked great.

73,

Gary W4EEY

VK7WH Winston

Thanks Howard. All my computers are, and will remain on Win7 for the foreseable future. GWX Control Panel is now on them all. So easy to install and does its magic in seconds. On one computer I recovered about 6GB of disk space I didn't know I had lost. Great little programme, Winston VK7WH