Microsoft just paused Windows 11 24H2 update for many PCs due to crashes and freezes : technology

[–] [email protected] 64 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

This isn't the first time they've pushed an update which crashes PCs.

IIRC, the development/testing is done on Windows under VMs rather than a sample of real world hardware, so it's like "well yeah, duh, no wonder why you keep releasing updates that crash & freeze end users machines"

Between shit like this, Crowdstrike, and Microsoft Recall I wonder why anyone even bothers with Windows anymore. I have both Mac and Linux (both which I love equally). Both of them don't seem to have anywhere near these levels of issues - Macs I would hope not given the eye-watering amount I've spent on it, and Linux I could be forgiven if it did give me hassle, but no.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

the development/testing is done on Windows under VMs rather than a sample of real world hardware

I highly doubt it, seriously, I don't think they test update some VMs and say "that's good", there's thousands and thousands people working at MS, I don't know how many on win11 but certainly a few hundreds, I doubt none of them install the upgrade on real hardware to test.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I work with all sorts of Microsoft products daily.
And I'd be really surprised if a sane, sapient person used or tested their products in any way before they're pushed out.
Cause then there just wouldn't be any explanation for what the fuck they're currently doing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago

A couple of years ago they pushed out an update for the enterprise version of Windows Defender that deleted every single program shortcut from the start menu and desktop on every single device. There’s no way that was tested at all

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago

Between shit like this, Crowdstrike, and Microsoft Recall I wonder why anyone even bothers with Windows anymore

Out of necessity most likely, sometimes you either have no alternatives for proprietary software on Linux, or it's extremely cumbersome to get and maintain such software on Linux.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

the development/testing is done on Windows under VMs rather than a sample of real world hardware

And yet there's a recent update that keeps killing my Windows VMs. They'll run for a while then one day they install the update and won't boot again. It really feels like MS have lost control of Windows testing these days.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Not as if updates that break things aren't a thing on Linux...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Between shit like this, Crowdstrike, and Microsoft Recall I wonder why anyone even bothers with Windows anymore.

Or think about it differently. People hate Linux and Mac OS so much that they'd rather deal with this than deal with them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Between shit like this, Crowdstrike, and Microsoft Recall I wonder why anyone even bothers with Windows anymore.

It’s mostly a habit. I’m tech savvy I can even work on BSDs if there’s a necessity but the finance and legal teams at my workplace lose their mind whenever a button changes its place in an app update.

So we’re 400 macOS machines and chugging the remaining Windows users who won’t let go. Wish I could manage a single system only.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I've come to truly believe that MS stopped caring too much about windows now. They're focused more on ads and other subscription services. They are still in the mindset of "we are the only player in the field and people can't live without us".

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You'd have thought they'd have learned from losing the browser monopoly they had 15 years ago due to complacency

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago

They are a mindless organization, not one or a few using logic. Everyone working there can figure out the general issues, on their own, for sure. But it’s an out of control huge organization. Even the top leadership is along for the ride at this point.

Every department is headed by competent and intelligent people, I assume. But they each only control a small slice of the environment, and even in each division there are many things the middle management cannot control directly. Too big

It’s not like a car manufacturer, there is an exponential difference in the number of parts to control and the complexity.

When the sales, and other parts are woven in, I doubt there is a dozen people alive who can explain how all the company structure works together

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

They are still in the mindset of "we are the only player in the field and people can't live without us".

No, they are in the mindset "we are a company selling cloud Linux, our legacy products are money drain". They clearly state it in their yearly reports.

[+] [email protected] 33 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

I just picked the one that lets me decide when to download the updates instead of when MS decides it's time for me to download the updates. And I paid for the pro version just to get that.

It'll be the last time I pay anything for Windows, and no, I don't mean I'm going to switch to the ad supported version next. I'm hoping the last xbox game pass subscription payment I made before finally cancelling it is the last money they ever get from me.

And to add insult to injury, one of the last things I did before cancelling was scroll through their list of games and add the interesting looking ones to my steam wishlist, as well as the ones I uninstalled and enjoyed playing.

And yes, I realize I could have looked at that game list without a sub, but I had been delaying cancelling for a while because I always saw more games that I wanted to try when I looked through what they had and needed to do that to let go.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Windows is just not quite there yet for desktop use. Give them a few years to clean up their sharp edges and clunky UX and add some long overdue features, then maybe it'll be a real alternative.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago

May we live long enough to witness the year of the Windows desktop!

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

The latest update broke ipv4 on my ThinkPad, ipv6 works just fine. How is that even possible?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

That's hilarious. I haven't been able to enable IPv6 since the August update. The machine just spins to 100% CPU across every core like a forkbomb.

It pissed me off because my home network is built IPv6-first.

If my work pushes 24H2 I'll just have to disable both :/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Good thing they fixed the ipv6 vulnerability first.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Crashing is the smallest problem. All that sypware, ads and artificial idiocy they are embedding in the bloated excuse of an OS is way worse than any crash. I am so glad I switched to GNU/Linux (openSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE Plasma desktop, after seeing how well gaming works on Steam Deck I also switched to GNU/Linux for gaming) and it is so so much nicer to have an OS that is fast, stable and actually respects basic human rights like privacy and freedom.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Has Microsoft never heard of testing and QA?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago

Home users are QA for enterprise.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure they laid off a lot of their QA team before and didn't replace them since then.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

What an absolute masterstroke for a software company.

[–] filcuk 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Their users are their QA, it saves a ton of money

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

And it works well enough. No one is ditching Windows

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Well I'm not paying for it either. For a free OS it's OK.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

That's what you're for.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm really amazed by their consistent win11 patch fuckups. I've never seen it in this dimension with win10. Luckily I'm still on win10 and pretty sure I'll get the updates past 2025 somehow.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

If you don't mind wiping out and reinstalling the system, you can get the LTSC ISO from MS and activate with this: https://massgrave.dev/
(This site also has the ISOs)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks. I'll check it out.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

It seems to me that Windows, which used to be reasonably stable (say, between XP and 10), as Microsoft systems go, has gone into beta status with Windows 11 and is now slipping into a kind of perpetual alpha.

Disclaimer, I haven't used Windows seriously for decades (now and then for the odd game or for VR) and only boot it every other month to see what it looks like.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

stable between XP and 10

I'm not sure I agree.

XP was good but definitely unstable, Vista was very unstable at the beginning. Shit, it was essentially broken on release for months for Nvidia users, even.

[E: to be clear, this was actually Nvidia's fault. But MS should have known that expecting every hardware manufacturer to completely rewrite drivers in such short notice was a bad idea!]

It was only late Vista and throughout 7 when windows became pretty stable.

Windows 8 wasn't unstable, I guess, just a major step down for usability (accessing the "charms bar" on a mouse was so bad an unintuitive that I'm shocked it made it past the focus group stage).

Early 10 was pretty stable, but very quickly deteriorated as they continued to shovel more bloat into Windows, spent more and more time working on spying/ads at the expense of other aspects of the OS, and had the bright idea of firing most of their testing team, because beta testing with end users is cheaper and what are they going to do if their PC is unstable? Install another OS? Lmao most people don't even know Linux exists.

Windows 11 is basically the same in that regard. The instability of late-stage Win10, just with a lick of paint.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Well, I said it was stable for a Microsoft system.

I understand that it's strange to people used to windows, but we had computers that just didn't crash. Ever. Then everything moved to PC with windows and it all went to shit. Now it's mostly back to unix which while not crashproof is at least reasonably resilient and a proper system.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Rose tinted glasses.

Xp was almost a nightmare on launch. But got fixed (security not withstanding) switching everyone over from DOS to NT was no simple feat, and there were a lot of issues.

Vista wasn’t great, but the change to drivers made it a nightmare.

7, 8, and 8.1 were fine.

But 10 was a nightmare for the first 5 years. Every other update would break things. And those came out about twice a year.

Windows 11 has been surprisingly issue free for me. 24H2 seems to be the buggiest update since so I’ve been holding back. But I updated to 22 and 23 and I never had any issues, nor did I hear too much complaining. Every major update has some minor issues, and that’s largely why MS staggers their releases.

I’m honestly surprised MS took this long to pause the rollout with how bad it’s been.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Disclaimer, I haven't used Windows seriously for decades

Yeah we got that just by reading the first part of your comment...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I never had stability issues in years of being on W11, Bazzite on the other hand, has locked up on me twice in the 2 weeks I've used it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

I've had the odd stability issue every now and then. (There was one ongoing issue with my wifi that was caused by a bug in my manufacturer's driver, but that was years ago on Windows 10, and they eventually fixed it.) But I honestly haven't had any issues caused specifically by Microsoft recently that I can recall.

Any problems caused by major features updates are usually solved by simply reinstalling the driver. (And I haven't had any of those sorts of problems in at least a couple years.)

[–] AI_toothbrush 7 points 3 weeks ago

Me just enjoying linux working while people around me constantly complain about windows. At this point have the money for mac or use linux is what i would say but of course you cant expect people to switch a part of their computer they didnt even know could be switched out.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

They need to go back to making manual updating a thing, plus separating out critical security patches, from their stupid feature fluff.

I've had my system broken by Windows Update way more times than I've ever been hacked or caught a virus/worm.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

When the slop is actually just poison.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

At work I dual boot Windows 10 and Linux Mint. It is astounding how much better the user experience is for updates on the Linux side. Or maybe I should say, it’s astounding how much worse the Windows experience is. I think Mint takes about as long to update Firefox, vscode, and my freaking kernel all at once as Windows takes to update Microsoft Defender definitions.

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