Another Windows Update, a Narrow Escape

Sometimes I long for the simplicity of Windows XP. Once they got that Service Pack 2 online, that was it. They had the closest thing to a perfect operating system businesses had to be forced to give up for the “better” iterations.

Tuesday night, 8 May, as I typed up banter between Derek Grace and his wife Agnes in Chapter 21 of The Wrong Kind of Dead, the fan on my custom-build PC began running hard enough to distract from the music I was playing. 

I run a 64-bit system on an 4 GHz AMD FX-8350 eight-core processor with 16 gigs of RAM. Although I could use more RAM—we can always use more RAM, right?—this is by no means a weak rig. After a few days or so of browsing and watching videos online, however, it does need a reboot. I opened up Start and proceeded to do just that.

Next time I’ll chance printing my galleys before I save. I thought I was losing everything. As you guessed, Windows was downloading its largest update in a while, full of unasked-for bloatware. In my case, the download hadn’t quite finished. This meant several reboots as the cooling fan in my rig built to a near scream trying to keep the processor from melting.

 

Calculator and Calendar have worked well for decades
without improvement. I suppose there was a crew that
needed something to do to justify its existence —
of which this proves the precise opposite.

I got through this, but for an hour I was resigning myself to having lost everything, including a computer I can scarcely afford to replace. Note to self: Comb through files from MCSA days, see if I can’t find a spare code for Windows 7. Windows 10 really is the disaster most of the Internet has made it out to be. It’s one thing that Microsoft is doing more to invade our privacy in collecting our information. It’s another entirely when it becomes apparent that elegance in design and maintaining continuity of productivity are nowhere in the company’s agenda. 

On 17 May, I opened my SonicStage program to tweak the playlist on a music mini-disc, and noticed the Gracenote add-on wasn’t working, forcing me to manually enter the titles and track listings of the CDs I was ripping. Figuring this likely had something to do with the big devastating update of 8 May, I went into my Update History only to learn that Windows 10 had been updating along the line of every two days. 

Also, the reason my fan was running hard wasn’t because that particular update was making SonicStage work harder. I was already 94% into downloading another update.

My rage burns with my poor overworked processor, forced to download superfluous nonsense like Cortana, Microsoft Edge, and Candy Crush Soda Saga, while inexplicably altering settings in my audio recording program, while installing pages of security patches every two days because they can’t get their architecture right the first 229 times, therefore stressing equipment I cannot afford to replace and putting my productivity on hold for the better part of an hour on their Big Patch days...well, what am I gonna do? 

Indeed, we are very unevenly matched.

For starters, I’ve taken some time off to uninstall the junk, and investigate ways to stem, if not altogether end, this nightmare.  There is a toggle to halt updates for 30 days, but that toggle can only be reset after letting Microsoft install its month’s worth of updates. Knowing the tremendous strain put on my machine letting Microsoft do its thing every two days, I’ve got a couple of weeks to figure a way to get my Windows 10 license declared as “enterprise,” which permits me more leeway in declining updates.

Google is the company you read the most about regarding Big Tech Megacorp Madness, but given the real-life disruptions here in my office, it’s apparent Microsoft has gone full-on throwing-fine-china-at-the-wall gibbering stupid on top of crazy. Something has got to give.