Let's Rant About Windows Update

[KuranesDreamer]

Man, I don't know about any of you guys, but Windows Update is both the best and worst part about Windows, IMO. It's great that they included it to keep your system up-to-date, provide you with drivers, and other optional MS services/applications.

However, the POS never works the way I tell it to. I always set it to "Notify me of updates, but do not download or install automatically." Yet, even when I click "I do not wish to install these updates" after receiving an update notification and then go back to whatever I was doing, Windows decides that my opinion is invalid and decides to download, install, and reboot my computer while I am in the middle of a game/work without saying anything so I don't even have the opportunity to save. :mad:

It is also annoying that, unlike most update services that simply apply the latest and greatest versions of whatever's been changed, Windows Update seems to have to go through every patch, from start to finish, after a reformat. Isn't this what the Service Patches are for? If I am not mistaken, they are cumulative updates, so you DON'T have to spend hours/days updating from smaller, individual files. Just install the SP, then get whatever updates came afterward. Nope. Windows Update wants you to download and install everything that came before the SP, then the SP, then everything after the SP. :mad:

[Bud042]

Mine always does what I tell it when it pops up with an update.

Then again, my Windows hasn't been able to properly update in roughly a year due to some error that always makes updates fail...

It may be really old updates that I don't need that have somehow popped up as being as "needed," which is why they fail but don't hurt my computer...

Ok, I'll stop rambling.

[bluz74]

I must have something in the setting, because it always restarts in the middle of the night and never effects me. Plus, the updates have been better for me. They no longer reset my resolution. *knocks on ewood*

[HellJumper]

Windows decides that my opinion is invalid

Made me laugh :D

[HeadshotHoncho]

Mine decided to wait for about 4 days after I set up the computer to finally tell me that it found the service pack update; even though I told it manually to find updates, and it found like 100 of them. It's been finding updates for NET every time I launch it too. :/

Overall though, it's a great timesaver, at least for me, since it downloads them automatically, then waits for me to confirm the install.

[cakefish]

It works perfectly as it should for me.

You are on Windows 7 yes?

[JimmyMcNulty]

Mine is as obedient as my sex-slave.

[stillmatic07]

It should be working fine. Something is wrong with you're current configuration.

[Legacy-ZA]

Mine has not given me any issues either, it is very obedient thus far.

[Flamingtwigz]

My computer always says it's installing 1-5 updates every time i restart it, it then takes forever on one of the updates, to the point that i either restart it and it doesnt goto the update or just do something else for a few hours

[monkeedude1212]

Holy carp, I mean like sacred fish, you have no friggin' clue the stuff I have to deal with when it comes to Windows Updates. You can work in IT for a million years and never see it all I tell ya. Every week there's something that completely befuddles even my astute computer prowess.

It's funny that you bring this up now, because I literally ran across this issue no more than 5 days ago. So I get this Help Request ticket in our system. Now, at our company, English isn't always the persons mother tongue so sometimes when they make a request its a bit difficult to tell what they mean. In this case, the only information I had to go on was "when printing through excel, it doesn't come out smoothly." I mean, first guess is that its a printer issue, because "not smooth" sounds like semi paper jam. I slide over to buddy's computer to see what he's talking about.

Well the printer is just fine, and his computer seems to be working just fine. What's actually happening is he builds a report with this spread sheet, the same spread sheet they've used for 5 years, and it makes a bunch of charts and graphs for our clients. Cool beans right? Well when he goes to print it, it only sort of works. See, we can see the nice chart, but the title, the labels on the axis, the nice little percentages or whatever, they aren't showing. I mean I can see the nice coloured bars, but no info. And we go and we look at the graph, same kind of thing, no labels. We can see the lines, but not the data plots. It really makes it look as vague as possible. It all shows in the print preview, so theres no reason we can think of why it wouldn't show up.

So I'm a bit confused, but we'll try some basic trouble shooting steps. Try printing from a different computer? Works fine. Try printing to a different printer from the problem computer? Works fine. It's only when this specific PC prints to this printer that all the useful info goes missing in action. As a work around, I set his default to the other printer till I can figure it out. I've got other tasks that are more important if they can get by for a while till I can research it.

Murphy's law though, this issue pops up in another laboratory. Problem is, they don't have any alternative printer to print to. They are literally at a stand still until this issue gets fixed. So I start googling around. Oh hey, a few other people are reporting the problem. Well would you look at that, a very recent Microsoft Update (deployed Dec 15, 2011), for Microsoft Office 2007... It's causing this issue with certain models of HP printers. Well I'll be. Uninstall the update, works fine!

Now, the funny thing is, this problem wasn't that wide spread. Even though it should have been. This is because we had issues LAST year with a mis-configured Windows Server Update Services. You guys might not be familiar with WSUS, but basically, at a corporate company, it's not realistic for 1,000 computers to all go out and download windows updates Tuesday morning. The bandwidth just isn't enough. Instead, you set up a server to have WSUS, so that the server downloads the relevant updates, and when any of your 1000 computers need an update, they contact your server instead of microsofts, so you can make use of that Gigabit inter-office connection instead of relying on your 30 megabit download.

Anyways, so that server was misconfigured, and it caused a huge friggin memory problem with Windows Updates on our network: certain computers would request an update, not get a response, request it again, not get a response, etc etc; before you knew it, the Windows Update service would take up over a Gig of memory on the person's computer, and they wouldn't be able to do anything; not check their email, not open a PDF, opening the start menu could take 30 seconds. Pretty brutal. As a workaround, we had to go around and disable the Windows Update Services on the machines that were badly affected. So a lot of computers have Windows Updates disabled, but since we've recently fixed the configuration, we're periodically pushing out the policy to turn it back on. So these guys got burned last week because of a bad update, meanwhile their co-workers haven't received the update.

FUN TIMES I tell you. FUN TIMES.

[Fat Cat]

Wow....interesting story

[jenovaweapon]

If you are talking about Vista OP, I have it set to automatically update as well and it doesn't do it itself, pops up to tell me when to update. It does it sometimes randomly by itself

Vista is a buggy messy at times, keeps forgetting my folder settings and I accidentally deleted the defrag registry entry so I can't use the standard windows defrag (don't ask me how I did it, I have no clue myself)

[Sgt.Gotee]

I was finally able to receive the Windows 7 SP1 after about 8 months of it being out. I'd tried everything and eventually just gave up and then one night it just decided to push it through.

[skippy72294]

Mine is as obedient as my sex-slave.

Well... I would certainly hope that your hand is obedient.

[monkeedude1212]

Wow....interesting story

And to think, that's the BORING stuff I've had to deal with. I really need to write a book about my experiences at work. It'd be like a Harry Potter 7 parter - except I'm only on my 4th year. It's all about how an under-staffed and under Budgetted IT Department of bright and funny individuals keep a nation-wide corporation running smoothly despite having few tools, training, time or money - armed to the teeth with only our wit, cunning, and an odd assortment of computer related skills.

And just when everything started looking bright... THAT'S WHEN THE METEOR HIT.

[PvtHudson]

Mine is as obedient as my sex-slave.

I say.

[Yiffles]

There's something I changed in group policy or something that made it so I don't have my computer automatically restarted. There's just no excuse for anything that might cause you to lose unsaved work if you get away from your computer for a while and come back to find that it auto restarted.

[Scared]

Windows update always respects my opinion and does what I tell it to do.

[Anlashok]

I have a desktop and laptop both running Win7 Ultimate, both using the same exact settings as far as firewall and virus scanner etc and I have WinUpdate set to download and notify me but not to install. On my desktop it works fine every time but my laptop will not download the updates itself and I have gone through every setting and verified it is ok but it just never will do it :/