Don't install Windows 10 Creators Edition....

[Tony1044]

Not my advice...MS's.

Seems that particularly if you have older hardware you may hit issues

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/26/stop_downloading_win10_creators_update/

 

[Oussebon]

Thanks for the heads up. Guess I'll stick with 1511 a bit longer then, and free up one of my very full ext hdds for a system image beforehand.

 

[Tony1044]

Have to say I've noticed nothing untoward on my machine.

Not sure it classes as old enough to be problematic though - it's not quite 2 years old yet

 

[ubuysa]

I wouldn't class mine as old either, it's less than 6 month sold, but I'll take your advice and wait for the update rollout rather than install it now.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I'm so pleased I deferred the update (for the first time ever), usually I'm the first to upgrade but I had suspicions this would be a problematic release.

 

[Tony1044]

Again though, my own experiences are only "meh" - as in there's nothing good I've noticed (but I am still yet to try a game!) and there's nothing bad I've noticed.

 

[ubuysa]

Again though, my own experiences are only "meh" - as in there's nothing good I've noticed (but I am still yet to try a game!) and there's nothing bad I've noticed.

Well that's encouraging. My plan now is to wait for Windows Update to offer the Creator's Edition and then I'll download it as an ISO and do a clean install - with fingers crossed.

 

[Tony1044]

Well that's encouraging. My plan now is to wait for Windows Update to offer the Creator's Edition and then I'll download it as an ISO and do a clean install - with fingers crossed.

Sensible approach. As I had an image, I just bit the bullet and did an in-place update.

I'm more of a fresh install approach fan myself, as it happens but wanted to see if it would bork anything.

 

[spooky23]

So does W10 still have issues with 4k scaling? I appreciate that the issue is mostly to do with third party apps not being auto scaled by the devs.

 

[ubuysa]

Not that I'm in a hurry but there is still no sign of the Creator's Upgrade via Windows Update here. I'm wondering whether Microsoft may have Greece tagged as a location where they'd expect a higher number of older computers and are not offering it yet here?

 

[SpyderTracks]

Not that I'm in a hurry but there is still no sign of the Creator's Upgrade via Windows Update here. I'm wondering whether Microsoft may have Greece tagged as a location where they'd expect a higher number of older computers and are not offering it yet here?

I haven't got it yet either, but apparently there are further issues with it gaming wise, I think ms have postponed it.

 

[ubuysa]

I haven't got it yet either, but apparently there are further issues with it gaming wise, I think ms have postponed it.

Ahh, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks!

 

[MJSWARLORD]

i got the creator update as soon as it came out and the pc shown in the spec below was purchased from pcs last july. after installation my reliability log went to day zero and my sound settings changed but that was an easy fix in sound properties , other than that everything is ok.

as for windows 10 the only thing i dont like is updates making me have everything. yes you can get a third party program that lets you choose and hide the bits you dont want but after hiding , msoft just tries to give them me again because it does not know they are hidden.

 

[ubuysa]

i got the creator update as soon as it came out and the pc shown in the spec below was purchased from pcs last july. after installation my reliability log went to day zero and my sound settings changed but that was an easy fix in sound properties , other than that everything is ok.

as for windows 10 the only thing i dont like is updates making me have everything. yes you can get a third party program that lets you choose and hide the bits you dont want but after hiding , msoft just tries to give them me again because it does not know they are hidden.

Updates are a GOOD thing, especially with Windows 10. It's still largely a work in progress and blocking updates simply means that you don't get the fix for issues that have been found and, more seriously, you don't get fixes for security issues that have been found. It is true that sometimes an updates causes additional problems for some users but it's not a wise move to prevent updates.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Updates are a GOOD thing, especially with Windows 10. It's still largely a work in progress and blocking updates simply means that you don't get the fix for issues that have been found and, more seriously, you don't get fixes for security issues that have been found. It is true that sometimes an updates causes additional problems for some users but it's not a wise move to prevent updates.

As any SysAdmin will do, they'll defer updates until they've researched them and found out known bugs and resolutions, then install them once they're ready.

 

[Tony1044]

Ok, so....

Firstly to respond to the question of updates. Let me give you a bit of history and what many people seem to gloss over or miss with their complaints about "Microsoft make me take everything regardless of whether I want it or not..."

Go back to Windows XP days.

It was necessary, for the first time with an MS operating system to activate it online. Now up until this point, MS had a fairly light touch on piracy as the general thinking was twofold - as long as their bread and butter license fees were coming in from business users and PC manufacturers' it was ok for home users to pinch a bit here and there as it got people hooked as potential customers back in the business arena.

But with the advent of the web came a much bigger piracy issue. Now I am not sure you could justify entirely the stance that MS took on this - if the genuine activation system detected that it had been bypassed then it wouldn't download updates.

The problem with this was that the updates themselves were being reverse-engineered to be used as exploit attack vectors - i.e. the things that MS were fixing were being used to attack XP.

Whatever you thought of Vista, it did start to introduce better security protocols within the OS to, to some extent, try to mitigate some of these attacks.

Now for corporate customers, behind high grade firewalls with multiple layers of security, holding off on these updates is sensible - you don't want to roll them out immediately and find out you've just killed off potentially thousands of machines in one click. This is especially true of servers.

So generally they will wait a small period of time to make sure there's no critical flaw being immediately reported. Then roll out to a small selection of test users (usually IT staff as they can cope with issues as they occur) then to a larger test group and finally to everyone.

For servers, it's normal to have a test environment for this exact reason (among others) that ideally mirrors - even at a much smaller scale - the production environment.

Therefore the trade-off for home users is one, as always, of security over convenience and maybe even the odd crash / outage due to a borked patch.

Now even though I've got my kit behind some seriously high grade border protection, I still let it update automatically. All of it, where I can.

Anyway, back onto my installation of Creators Update.

I am seeing a few oddities - nothing major so far but some of it is annoying:

Gaming - I don't do much gaming but I do like a good session of Portal 2 or Left 4 Dead 2 occasionally. Both of these, and as a test, DooM (2016) all suffer from stuttering - suddenly mid-game, it'll judder for a second or two and the sound will skip then carry on.

There seems to be a 50/50 chance in L4D2 that all the characters flesh tones will be jet black.

The OS:

Also seems to occasionally lose responsiveness for no apparent reason.

It's over chatty. I know my E: drive is almost full - it's my local backup - give it a rest, Windows. I do NOT need telling this every 15 seconds (ok I exaggerate tub it is every few minutes - it's done it four times while I type this!).

Likewise - I know I am running on less-than-optimal battery settings. I chose them. Stop telling me and let me dismiss the alerts permanently or until I choose to see them again.

Screen scaling - seems to occasionally go nuts! Honestly I can launch IE one time and it's fine. Next time, it's like I've set a 400% zoom. Seems perfectly random. Don't see it in any other browser yet.

The WiFi connections were incredibly unreliable. Dropping every half hour or so. However, to be fair to the OS, I did notice that the Intel driver was a couple of versions newer than before the update. Rolling it back seems to have cured this little problem so far, so that might not be the OS at fault.

Overall the OS doesn't feel as snappy as it was prior to the update.

So as I say, nothing major for me as yet - just odd behaviour that shouldn't be there.

 

[mdwh]

Seems ok on my Vortex 3 (but I waited until the update was offered). One oddity that Skyrim could only see the Intel and not NVIDIA graphics, though this also happened when my GeForce Experience disappeared (which apparently is an issue that's been reported for a while, fixed by reinstalling latest version) so it's unclear if it's related to the Windows update. It works if I force Skyrim to use NVIDIA in the NVIDIA control panel though (I'm sure I didn't need to do that before).

The Creator update does give more control over when updates occur. I was also pleased that this time I got a clear warning that it would be a big update.

Traditionally I've tended to be wary of updating software unless required, but to be fair to Windows, there's only ever been one problematic update I've had in all the years of Windows Update (related to Visual Studio, and was a minor inconvenience). In a world of increasing ransomware etc, it's probably for the best for home users.

 

[ubuysa]

As any SysAdmin will do, they'll defer updates until they've researched them and found out known bugs and resolutions, then install them once they're ready.

The problem with that approach for a home user is fully understanding what the update does and how likely it is to impact your system. One big problem with Windows is that it doesn't have a decent update install tool, IBM's flagship mainframe OS (z/OS) has a truly excellent update installation tool (it's called SMP/E) which allows you not just to install updates and fixes but to take them off again should the update cause problems. Windows does allow you to uninstall updates, and sometimes it works as expected but not always (in my experience anyway) it also does have system restore but it's a rather clumsy method of getting updates uninstalled.

My approach to bad updates is the same one I use for malware infections; I cut a nightly disk image of my system drive. I always install all updates available for my system and if I believe one of them is causing me problems I restore the disk image cut prior to their installation. Only then to I attempt to research the failing update(s).

 

[Tony1044]

The problem with that approach for a home user is fully understanding what the update does and how likely it is to impact your system. One big problem with Windows is that it doesn't have a decent update install tool, IBM's flagship mainframe OS (z/OS) has a truly excellent update installation tool (it's called SMP/E) which allows you not just to install updates and fixes but to take them off again should the update cause problems. Windows does allow you to uninstall updates, and sometimes it works as expected but not always (in my experience anyway) it also does have system restore but it's a rather clumsy method of getting updates uninstalled.

Microsoft have gone one step further lately too - in an attempt to use security by obscurity, they're not always being clear one what each update is meant to actually do.

 

[Tony1044]

So my network issues were getting worse by the hour.

Seriously never seen anything quite like this before - a fine connection that's been solid for hours (and everything else currently connected remaining so and in near constant use) - would suddenly drop.

I'd get the WiFi icon with a star - the one you get to show there are wireless networks available. This would always include my own.

I'd get connected with full IP, gateway and DNS and even be able to ping the gateway but nothing outside. And here's a weird thing - no DNS requests hitting the inside connection of the firewall (which is also the gateway).

I did some research and this appears to be quite common for the glorious Intel WiFi cards (mine being the AC-7625 but it was also being reported for the AC8xxx series too, from Intel). It would appear that whilst very common for Creators Edition, it's not limited to this and can occur in Anniversary Edition.

Anyhoo the workaround was to revert even further back to the 17.15.0.5 driver.

Touch wood (it's still fairly early days) this seems much more reliable so far.

Given it's also apparently affecting Anniversary, I am still not convinced it's a purely MS/Windows issue but for anyone else having issues you may want to revert the driver.