Off Topic Windows 10

Thanks

 

Lots of concern over privacy on this thread. Anyone read a book called The Circle by Dave Eggars? It's a 2013 novel about an internet company taking over lives. A light, entertaining story but seeing what Google and Microsoft are up to these days regarding collection of personal data it's definitely worth a read.

 

Not just Google & Microsoft........Apple are among the worst privacy invaders

 

Sorry but you or I have said both of these things. I don't see anything wrong with Cortana or any software having access to your contacts /calendar etc (if you want a contacts/calendar software, for instance, then they have to have access to this data. Obviously.). The issue is that this data gets sent back to microsoft, and so from there cia/nsa/some other government.

But that isn't the worst thing, these types of backdoors (or security weaknesses) can always be exploited by malicious hackers looking to get access to your data. Any security weakness a government can exploit, a criminal can exploit. I don't mind if you agree or not, it won't change that fact.

 

I have now installed Windows 10 on 3 of my devices and all has gone well, then I spend an age configuring the system the way I want but there are caveats. Like you I liked Microsoft Money I found it a simple straight forward program to help sort out your finances without resorting to the complexities of Excel. Another program, no longer available due to the Win 10 instalations, is the Media Centre but I already knew that would be sacrificed but the best program for me is thankfully still with us, One Note. I think its a marvelous piece of software but as with much to do with Win 10 the program has changed and I'm beginning to understand Microsoft's move to being a servie company and not supply hard copies ie CD/DVD's of their products. The online versions (apps) of the likes of Word, One Note and other stuff, are no way as comprehensive as the desktop version hence my copies of Word/Excel/One Note, and Mail 2010 still in use.

I liked Win 7 and 8.1 but will not be reverting even though support for Win 7 and 8.1 goes through to 2020 I believe but I like the direction Win 10 is going, its still work in progress and although 'free' to download now it will not remain so a few years down the line, Microsoft did not get to be the company it is today by being generous. As for the privacy stuff, I don't like it but as with everything in todays world its a price we pay for our computer use. Its easy to say you use Linux or whatever but for your online world but what about your offline world? You will be filmed wherever you go, if you use credit/debit cards a record of your lifestyle is on record, an OAP like me and have a bus pass, your daily journeys will be on the bus company database. In every strand of your life there will be an electronic footprint, protest you may but with the advent of advanced electronic number plate readers even your travel plans are being watched.

1984 may have been a bit far fetched but we are rappidly employing many of the themes of that book/film but its not only the big bad state that is watching you, private firms want your life history on their servers be it online of offline and it seems the vast majority don't seem to mind.

 

The antithesis of Microsoft's and their ilk's marketing & development strategy is here...

 

im gonna have to wait , at the end of downloading it goes back to windows 7 saying execute noexecute ?

 

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Hard to find then.

 

Something like this happened to me last night, and now my laptop will not boot.

It didn't help that last night the weather seemed to wipe out all my internet access, but my computer also seemingly went through some updates causing it to freeze. I restarted, it told me my updates were configuring (what updates though, it never told me any were ready?) and it booted back up.

Later, it froze. I tried to restart - no operating system. Only basic things you can do from the black screen of death. Memory test ok, hard drive test wouldn't work. There is no safe mode now. There is a BIOS screen were any changes you make seem to have nil effect.

So in essence, Windows 10 has failed after a bad update and now my laptop doesn't recognise an operating system so can't boot.

I go on to the web (on my phone, on flakey 3G, as my broadband is crushed by the clouds) to seek assistance, and all you get from Microsoft is "boot from the install disc on the CD drive" - I don't have an install disc, it was a free upgrade.

So my laptop is dead. I can't even access an option to restore factory settings. I can't set a restore point. It's like they were too arrogant to anticipate a problem like this could even occur, so there is no solution.

I bought this laptop in May. May!! I can only think of taking it back to the shop and seeing what they can do, but I am sure it is a software issue, for which I can get no help. Frustrating.

 

I've had similar issues with my laptop after auto updating. Did you do a hard re-boot? Press and hold the on/off button for several seconds. Release, wait a few seconds then switch it on again. It might take its time but it will re-boot eventually. Be patient. Make sure you are using the power supply and not the battery which might be flat.

 

Yeah that got me to the Diagnostic screen.

As I wrote my post above, the black screen of death popped up with a message that reads "Preparing Automatic Repair". It's not done anything since, but I'll leave it to see what happens. I suspect I could be in for the long haul.

 

I encountered a similar issue a week after installing, for some reason it suddenly rebooted & I got a message that the boot device could not be found.....it would do nothing.

I spoke to a friend who works in IT who told me what the problem was...it was an issue with the bios....somehow the device had lost the setting to boot from the HDD.

The solution was that he let me use a Windows 8 disc to boot from, I then rolled back the PC to W8.....I lost a lot of the programs/files I had (fortunately all backed up pre upgrade).....I later discovered my problem was an incompatible program I had installed to access my network hard drives.....

You might be able to get things up & running if you can find someone with a W10 disc ...... it appears that 80% of issues have been caused by incompatible programs on devices

 

I think it would be nice if they'd established a fix for the millions of people out there who got the free upgrade like me! If this repair doesn't work, I expect I'll need to do something like this.

 

I don't think it's as easy as that, the problems can be caused by so many incompatible programs from different software designers.

I spent £100's on Adobe Photoshop CS .....now with W10 it no longer works & Adobe are not planning patches to make it work :-( Instead they want me to pay £8 a month to use their Creative Cloud version

There appear to be 1000's of software companies who have decided not to make their software W10 compatible

 

Been running Windows 10 on an oldish laptop since day one, it runs better than Windows 7 for me, never tried Windows 8 to make a comparison. You can adjust privacy settings during setup or after setup to ensure you don't share wifi passwords with friends or whatnot. I would use Linux all the time myself for security reasons but compatability with things has always been an issue with Linux so I just use that for browsing or watching dodgy streams( I dual boot with Windows)

 

I have updated a laptop and notebook to Win 10 and have had a text from KC that I am 14gb over my allowance, beware.

 

Without unlimited data the upgrade can be costly ..... my total for updating laptop & PC (including the failed attempts & crash) eventually resulted in over 40Gb of data

 

Any advise on which linux for old laptop

 

Puppy Linux will run on even the oldest kit....low resources & has a familiar look for Windows users

Puppy can run on PCs with 256 MB or RAM, although it does recommend 512 MB for the best experience.

http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview and Getting Started.htm