Microsoft Windows 11I bought a HP laptop which came with Windows 11. After some effort, I was able to dual boot it by adding linux. I ran an update today to 22H2. During the update, the computer needed to rebooted several times. After one reboot, the computer wouldn't boot. It seems the UEFI boot manager had been modified. I had to go into the BIOS and select the windows boot manager. After that, I booted linux from USB and I was able to rebuild the boot partitions. There is no excuse for Windows to overwrite the UEFI boot. If it does (which windows 10 did a few times), at least it should boot into Windows. Leaving the computer unbootable is completely unacceptable. |
I have run the windows 10 upgrade/installer several times. It has worked a few times, but it has failed many times. For my old HP DV 8305 it downloaded everything and took several hours before it gave an error message. Even though I was running Windows 7 64bit and 64 bit Linux, 64 bit Windows won't install. It turns out the old AMD 64 bit processor doesn't have a 128 bit comparison instruction, and Windows 10 requires it. I could have installed Windows 10 32 bit, but I couldn't do a free upgrade from Windows 7 64 bit to Windows 10 32 bit. So that notebook won't get an update. It would have been nice to determine that before downloading gigabytes of files and taking several hours.
I had many other issues. I was unable to do a fresh install on an existing computer with Windows 7, and my disk was reformatted in the process. So I had to do a fresh install of Windows 7, do an upgrade to Windows 10, and then do a fresh install of Windows 10. It was not a smooth process. At least I learned to download all of the files once, rather than doing it each time. That was a waste of a day and about 6gb or so of wasted bandwidth. I have had other issues with the upgrade, but I have blocked them from my memory. Clearly the update process was not well thought out. Given that many million people used it, it should have been a smoother process.
Today I tried to format a big usb drive to fat32. Windows 10 wouldn't let me do that. I could format it to NTFS or exFAT, both of which are nice, but the hardware I will be using the flash drive for only accepts fat32. There are a few dvd/bluray players with usb ports that only deal with fat32. I did download a utility called SmartDisk fat32 for matter which did the job. Epic fail Microsoft.
So Microsoft is rolling out their anniversary update. One of my computers got it, and when I logged in, I got the "We can't Sign Into Your Account" error. There is a fix. UGetFix I ended up creating another account and using the registry editor. However, I fear this is beyond the skills of the average windows user. One might wonder how this bug got deployed. One would think this sort of thing would be tested before deployment. The web site above has 5 different solutions. I know regression testing can be difficult. I know there are many different configurations of windows. But clearly, this is a widespread issue that should have been detected and corrected before deployment. I am disappointed.
I needed to reinstall windows 10. One good thing is that on modern computers, the UEFI has the windows 10 key backed in. No need to type in a long key. In fact you can't even see the key, unless you use a tool like OEMKey. So using the Microsoft tool to create a usb stick, it downloaded a fresh image to install. The installation went well and was reasonably quick. Now it was time to update the computer. I clicked on PC Settings->Update & Security. I have had it take a long time to run in the past, but one would think Microsoft would have fixed the slowness. About 8 hours later, when progress was minimal, I decided to manually run the tool to get the latest build of windows. One might ask why I didn't get that version when I download the files for the USB key yesterday... In any event, the tool quickly ran. Now 8 hours later it is stuck at 99% done. I simply don't understand it. I have installed several year old versions of linux on old hardware and ran software updates. Even with hundred of mbytes of data and hundreds of updates, the process is pretty quick. The longest I have seen is less than 2 hours (and I am talking about processors speeds measured in mhz not ghz). You can see the progress. It doesn't freeze. It can be interrupted. You don't have to reboot during the process. Why does Microsoft update seem to freeze for hours? Why does it take many hours (I have seen multiple reports of it taking more than 24 hours with fast processors). What is the machine doing? There is minimal CPU and network activity. Something must be happening, but I have no idea what. This is completely unacceptable for any software, let alone software that purports to be serious software. I cannot recommend windows 10 for any system that needs high availability, due to the unacceptably long time it takes to do a software update. This issue needs to be fixed right now.
Well, I waited 8 hours while the update was stuck at 99%. I searched the internet again, and found https://ugetfix.com/ask/how-to-fix-windows-upgrade-assistant-is-stuck-at-99-error-on-windows-10/ I tried method one, which actually worked, though I don't understand why. Of course it didn't update me to the current version of windows, just to a newer version. I am trying to update to the current version now.
I have a few computers that run Windows 10. I have updated some of them to version 2004 without issue. Then today, I updated a fileserver that runs windows and linux. There are 4 hard drives in a raid-5 configuration. I have done many windows updates in the past 15+ years without issue. During the update, windows ran chkdsk or something that looks just like it. It ran it on disk D:, E:, F: and G:. I thought that quite odd as I only have C: with windows partitions. It turns out that the update decided to format my 4 raid drives using NTFS, overwriting the data in my raid-5 array. It decided there were some problems, and 'repaired' them. It may have been possible to fix this using a disk partition editor, and relying on the redundancy of raid-5. Nonetheless, I was quite pissed off. I ended up reformatting and rebuilding the array under linux. It is unacceptable to partition drives with other filesystems during an upgrade. Fortunately, all of the disks are on a hard drive controller (hba) that isn't built into the motherboard. I uninstalled the windows driver for the hba, so this shouldn't happen again. Also all of the drives are in hot swap caddies, so I could pull them out before updating if necessary. Unfortunately, I have another fileserver that has 9 drives in a raid-5 array. 8 of them are on a hba, but the ninth is on a controller built into the motherboard. Also this fileserver doesn't have hot swap drives. I will likely pull the power or data connectors for these drives before I do a windows update. Totally unacceptable of Microsoft.
I decided to update my OS drive to a SSD. This computer is my main fileserver, and it usually runs linux. Previously I had a very old version of windows running on it. I decided to install Windows 10. Now the SSD is a 300gb Intel SSD, and the computer also had six 4tb drives and one 5tb drive (where my raid array lives). The Intel SSD was partitioned using MBR partitioning and the big disks were partitioned using GPT partitioning (which is what is used for drives over 2tb). I put my new copy of windows 10 which I had just downloaded on a USB drive and I was off to the races. After perhaps 15 minutes the windows 'window' gave way to a prompt where I could pick a language and other options. After another 5 minutes or so I could enter my product key. I selected the partition I wanted to install the OS on, and everything went smoothly from there - in my dreams. In reality, win 10 said it could not install there. I removed all partitions, and made a new partition. It didn't work. I rebooted and tried again - no joy. I booted up knoppix linux and created a new MBR record and a partition - no joy. I finally decided to unplug all the other hard drives (which wasn't a big deal as they are all hot swap) and let Microsoft use the default option to install - no joy. Finally, I manually selected the partition where I wanted to install and it worked. That took about 3 hours. I guess windows gets confused when there are MBR and GPT hard drives and won't work. After running all of the updates, I installed linux. Start to finish, including hardware detection was about 30 minutes. It didn't seem to mind the MBR and GPT disks. It is not such a rare thing for people to have a smaller SSD for the OS and a bigger than 2tb drive to store most of their files. This is a pretty serious bug which needs to be fixed, like yesterday.
Yesterday, all the color disappeared on my screen. I booted linux, and I had normal color, so I knew it was not a hardware issue. Long story short, there is a windows 'shortcut'. If you press control-windows-C, then all the color goes away, and you are left with a black and white desktop (and all applications are also black & white). If you press it again, the color comes back. No idea why this exists. No indication that the computer was in this mode. Thanks to the wonder of google it only took me a few hours to find the 'feature' and get a normal desktop.
For black friday, I bought some SSDs. I decided to put one in a recent computer that dual boots into windows and linux. The SSD was a Samsung 860 EVO 500gb. I first tried cloning the existing hard drive. I was able to boot linux, but not windows. I decided to do a fresh install since there were some issues. About 20 installs later, I gave up. I put in a HP 120gb SSD, and the install went quite smoothly as it should. No UEFI changes. Same install media. Somehow the Samsung SSD doesn't like windows 10. I can boot up with USB media, and copy all the files, but the computer will not boot the windows partition. I was able to do a fresh install of a recent linux. Fortunately, I had a spare SSD lying around. With an identical copy of that computer, I did a fresh install of windows 10 on a rust drive this morning. I have successfully installed windows 10 more than 10 times, so it is clear there is some issue with the Samsung SSD. I even ran the linux 'dd' command and wrote all zeros to the hard drive. No joy. I am exchanging the SSD for another Samsung. I sure hope it was an isolated incident. It would be nice if there was some kind of error message, but there was nothing. It is likely some weird interaction between the SSD and Windows, as my HP SSD worked fine, and linux installed fine with the Samsung SSD.
I have a Philips 43 inch 4k display. It developed an issue with the backlight, and Philips replaced the unit under warranty. I plugged it in, and when booting windows on my main computer, after the blue 4 rectangle display, the screen went blank. And it stayed blank. On the same computer, I could boot up linux and it worked flawlessly, which showed it was a software issue, and not a hardware issue. On a different computer, I was able to boot windows. I tried control-alt-delete, but that did nothing. Sometimes I was able to do windows-L and I could get a cursor, but nothing more. I am pretty sure that somehow windows set the graphics mode to something that didn't work at all. I have never had this issue before with any version of windows dating all the way back to windows 3.1. Fortunately, my motherboard had onboard VGA, and the Philips monitor has a VGA input. Using the VGA graphics, I was able to log in. I was then able to set the Philips monitor so I could see graphics. I unplugged the VGA and rebooted, but no graphics on the Philips. I had to disable the VGA input and uninstall the graphics driver for the VGA hardware in order to get the graphics to work on the display-port input without the VGA cable being plugged in. Windows needs to be smarter and generate some kind of visible graphics. I don't care how bad it is, but a blank screen isn't acceptable. And why did all of this happen? The monitor is the exact same model as the one I replaced. I suppose the serial number changed, but that shouldn't make windows go into black hyperspace mode. I am not impressed.
I did a fresh install of Windows 10 last week. I was getting blue screens sometimes, and the error was WDF Violation. This is the windows driver framework error, and it generally means drivers are not up to date. Why a fresh install of windows would install drivers that are not up to date is a mystery to me. Using Drive Easy, it revealed 7 drivers were not up to date, including the Intel graphics driver and the Intel wifi driver. I installed new versions of all of the drivers. After that, Drive Easy still said 3 drivers were not up to date. I was mostly using the 'update driver' button in device manager. Sometimes it would find a newer driver, and sometimes it wouldn't. Why it installed drivers that weren't the latest windows certified rivers is another mystery. A fresh install should install the latest windows certified drivers, but clearly that doesn't happen. A 'update driver' should install the latest drivers also, but clearly that doesn't happen either. Really poor, Microsoft.
I ran the Microsoft Windows 7 compatibility checker tool. It mentioned that I would need to update my scanner driver and Nero wouldn't work. I did a fresh install of Windows 7 64 bit. Well, there is a scanner driver for my Epson 3200 scanner for Win7, but only for the 32 bit version. No driver at all for the 64 bit version. My HP LaserJet 2100 printer has a driver, but the link is broken at the HP web site. I manually selected HP 2200 for the PCL driver and HP 2300 for the PS driver. They work ok. I run my display through a KVM switch. It turns out that the KVM switch doesn't pass the 'display data channel', which is needed for plug-and-play. On the other OS's I have used, I could specify the display, but with Win7, there is no way to specify the display, and Dell has decided to not provide a driver for any displays before made before 2007. So, it looks like I will have to upgrade my KVM switch (the resolution is 1920*1200, but Win7 does 1600*1200 which makes everything wide).
I updated an older notebook (my HP DV 8305) to Windows 7, as the operating system it came with (Windows XP) is no longer supported. The install went smoothly, but a few devices were not detected. I don't care much about the modem, but the audio controller was not detected. HP doesn't have a driver for their old notebooks and new operating systems. It turns out that the audio chip is a pretty standard part, but HP had the manufacturer change the hardware IDs so you can't use the manufacturer's drivers. After a few days of failure, I was able to use a HP driver for a different notebook and force the installation. The specific driver file from HP is called sp35558.exe. It is unclear if this is a Microsoft problem or a HP problem, but most likely it is a combination of several issues. Microsoft doesn't want to install an incorrect driver, and so I can understand them being conservative about installing software that doesn't match the hardware. On the other hand, Microsoft didn't include the generic HD audio driver for me to choose from while installing the driver, even though it was known that the hardware was an audio controller. Of course Linux was able to figure out that the audio hardware was, and install a working driver for it.
There is a bunch of software I used to use which doesn't work any more. I expected some of the issues, but not all of them.
I am sure there will be some more issues I will find. For the driver problem I mainly blame Microsoft. They could have updated existing drivers, if they have the source code for them, for Win7. I also blame HP, Dell, Epson, and anyone else who doesn't provide a driver for Win7, or for Win7-64. It is interesting that most apps are still 32 bit. I also run 64 bit Linux. All the programs are 64 bit. All the drivers work. If Linux can do that without any manufacturers support, than surely Microsoft with its billions should be able to do so also. Stability is reasonably good. I also installed Microsoft's 'WinXP mode' which is their VirtualPC software as well as Sun's VirtualBox. Both seem to work pretty well. I can run my scanner using either virtualization program.
Microsoft has serious problems with the Update program. Most of the issues I ran into when doing a fresh Windows 7 install related to the Update program. On several occasions, it seemed to take forever. There is a known issue with that, and by searching the internet, I was able to download a specific fix for the specific issue. However, Update is still unacceptably slow, if you run it manually when it is running in the background it will fail, and it requires the computer to be rebooted too many times. Each of these issues is critical, but all of them together are completely unacceptable. When I was frustrated with Update hanging, I rebooted the computer, installed Linux, and did a complete update. For Linux, the time it takes to figure what needs to be updated is typically 2-5 minutes or so (with a slow 9 year old computer). Then it does an update. On some occasions you need to do a second update. No reboot is needed in between, and you end up with a totally patched system. Why can't Microsoft do that? I think I needed to reboot about 8 or 9 times to go from a fresh Windows 7 install to a fully patched one. Total Linux install and update time was under 2 hours. Total Windows 7 install time was about 4.5 days. Do the math.
You can make a 'boot floppy' with windows XP. This is very useful for installing hardware flash updates for things like motherboards, disk controllers and the like. Just go to 'My Computer' and right click on the floppy drive. Under 'format' select 'Create an MS-DOS startup disk'. Doesn't sound very difficult, does it?
The first problem is if your floppy is write protected, you will not get an error message, and you won't get a startup disk either. Hey Microsoft, can you say 'Error Message' ? The second problem is the disk that is created is not a startup disk. First, it won't boot. What is worse, it does something nasty to the disk, and makes it think there is 4gb of data somewhere on the floppy. And you can't reformat the disk after that. Throw it out.
The solution is to get a different floppy, boot up windows 95/95/ME and type to a DOS prompt "format /s a:". Now you have a boot floppy.
I have a system that had Windows 98, and Windows NT 4 workstation on a fat16 partition, and Windows NT server on a different partition. I decided to install Windows 2000 server on yet another partition. The installation went smoothly. It installed the Win2k boot manager on the boot sector. I can now boot win98, winNT, and win2K fine. The problem is, there is something in the win2K boot manager that screws up the com ports for winNT. The event viewer showed some unnamed device driver got the resources of com1. I used to have com1 and com2 enabled. That somehow got switched to com2 and com3. What is worse, is the modem won't work, and can't be reinstalled. I had to restore the winNT boot manager (which won't boot win2k), in order to fix the problem. Say bye bye to win2k.
When installing NT 4.0 with an all SCSI-II system, the disk blocking size is set incorrectly when you have Three 2 gig disks. The way I found this was by installing Diskeeper which told me how big the blocking was on my disk (D:). Fix by installing another copy of NT, on another disk (E:), and formatting the disk (D:) you care about. Then install NT on disk (D:), and format (E:), and install NT 4.0 on (E:).
If you have a 4mm DAT formatted by some weird program, NT backup can't format the tape, and says the tape is bad. Fix by booting Windows 95, and use Adaptec Backup to format the tapes.
If you install a sound card (in my case on the motherboard) with Windows NT 4.0, and something goes wrong, you cannot simply re-install the software. It may act as if it is being installed, but it simply gets confused. Instead, you must install *a different version* of the software. Then it is possible to install correctly. I found this out when trying to get MIDI playing working with my crystal audio on my Providence motherboard.
If you install a Windows 95 program that doesn't like Windows NT, it hoses up the system, including the Registry. Partial Fix by using Emergency Recover Disk. Full Fix by reinstalling Windows NT from scratch. See below for more details...
I have a machine running Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT Server 4.0. Like a fool, I got a copy of Microsoft Personal Web server, and like an idiot, I tried to install it on Windows NT. This software is available from their web server. Remember kids, don't try this at home. Now this software is designed to run under Windows 95, and not under Windows NT. The web site said that it worked with Windows 95. I made a mistake in trying to install it on Windows NT.
Seems this program has some 16 bit code in it. When I ran the executable, it installed a buncha files, without asking me anything at all, or checking if I was running Windows 95. Somewhere in the install, it blew, saying something about not being able to deal with 16 bit applications. Did it un-install itself? No. So I tried to uninstall it, with the very nice Windows NT uninstall. But it gave me a similar error message about not being able to run some 16 bit application. I was able to disable it to the point where it would not pop up nasty error messages during boot. But there were still all those nasty files around. I deleted them manually, but then I got another nasty error message at startup, saying that it couldn't find a program. I couldn't find where the program was starting up. I am sure that I looked everywhere except where it was started up from.
After spending several hours with the nice folks at Microsoft technical support, I was able to repair my registry, and get rid of the nasty messages at boot. The %$%$!!@ icon for Personal Web Server is still in my Command Panel, and nobody knows how to get rid of it. I can click on it, and change various settings of the program. Looks like I will have to re-install Windows NT from scratch (again).
If you have 2 SCSI controllers, Windows 95 gets very confused unless you disable one. I found this out when I upgraded to my new motherboard (with onboard SCSI) and kept my disks on my PCI card SCSI controller. Fix by disabling one controller in the control panel.
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