THE COMPUTER THREAD

[d00hickey]

Sounds to me like the 'silent' part of the name is false advertising

I didn't use to be. It was super quiet for the longest time, I didn't add anything or take anything away, just one day it got very loud.

You may want to replace the fan. It's not too hard.

[RVR II]

Got my Dell Inspiron N5050 laptop back from my friend with the new 500GB SSD and everything that was mirrored over works great!
Re-ran the Windows 7 performance assessment and the hard disk went from a 5.9 to a 7.9 
So now it's ready to make YouTube videos for my upcoming trip to Mexico

Just a quick update from Mexico..
This SSD has been amazing! Been making non stop YouTube videos for 2 weeks straight running 2 video editing software programs simultaneously and the i5 processor, 8GB RAM, and the SSD upgrades have really ramped up the rendering speeds of both programs!
I am thoroughly impressed

[RVR II]

Windows 10 upgrades are not going very well for me at all..
Got home from Mexico, finished uploading my videos to YouTube from my Dell laptop so I thought I would go ahead and upgrade it to Windows 10 but it froze up at 32% and wouldn't boot up after that. It's been with my IT guru friend now for over a week and looks like the only way for it to take is to wipe the SSD, and load 10 from scratch.

Then last night my home entertainment computer got updates before in shut down.. Go to start it today and it no longer boots up; just shows 'Diagnosing your PC', then Preparing Automatic Repair', then says 'Your PC did not start properly' and won't load the OS. I look for a restore point and it says there was no restore point found!

So I disconnect everything, take it out of service and put one of the office Dell computers from our closed down Charlotte location in it's place and now It's having problems booting up in Win 10! After a couple hours of restarting it, I finally get it to boot so I figured it needed updates.. It downloaded updates fine, rebooted fine so I shut it town completely and restarted it again but it went into the 'Diagnosing your PC' screen like the other computer!

Looks like some recent update may be corrupting the Win 10 OS because I can't figure out WTF is going on and why 2 PC's in a row are suddenly having boot-up issues

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Looks like some recent update may be corrupting the Win 10 OS because I can't figure out WTF is going on and why 2 PC's in a row are suddenly having boot-up issues

Yeah, it's a big cumulative update that is causing problems on a lot of systems.  My desktop has one reboot issue after it but has been fine since.  For a few weeks my laptop has been in the mode of rebooting once after I turn it on saying it can't complete the update, says it's undoing changes, then reboots and works fine, then when I shut it down it tries again to install the update and the same thing happens...

Last summer they had the same problem with an update, guess they still are not testing these things well enough, and of course in windows 10 you can't turn off updates so you are stuck getting them as soon as they come out.  That's really the only complaint I have with win 10, you should be able to set updates to manual....

FYI:  the update in question that has been a problem on my laptop is kb3172985.

[RVR II]

The office Dell boots up but then shortly after it boots, it either locks up or goes into that diagnostic mode..
When I try and reboot, it freezes up on the bios screen.
Looks like I will have to turn it over to my IT friend as well but first I will need to pull all the client files off and move them on to another computer

[RVR II]

Just got back from dropping those two PC's off at my friend's work and he gave me back my laptop but forgot to give me the charger cord D'OH!
I'm not driving all the way back to Charlotte to get it, guess I'll just wait till he has one of the other PC's fixed before reloading all my video editing software back on it

[LucasM]

I was about to post this in the specific 'Windows 10' thread, but I felt this had more traffic, and more people reporting on difficulties they've encountered with it.

I was just about to 'upgrade' to Windows 10, when I started to re-read some of the articles about it.  This is what Newsweek had to say (which was supported by many other things I've read on it):

From the moment an account is created, Microsoft begins watching. The company saves customers' basic information—name, contact details, passwords, demographic data and credit card specifics —but it also digs a bit deeper.

Other information Microsoft saves includes Bing search queries and conversations with the new digital personal assistant Cortana; contents of private communications such as email; websites and apps visited (including features accessed and length of time used); and contents of private folders. Furthermore, "your typed and handwritten words are collected," the Privacy Statement says, which many online observers liken to a keylogger. Microsoft says they collect the information "to provide you a personalized user dictionary, help you type and write on your device with better character recognition, and provide you with text suggestions as you type or write."

All this information doesn't necessarily remain with just Microsoft. The company says it uses the data collected for three purposes: to provide and improve its services; to send customers personalized promotions; and to display targeted advertising, which sometimes requires the information be shared with third parties. Microsoft mentions that though it assigns each customer a unique advertising ID, which is fed data during computer usage, it "does not use what you say in email, chat, video calls or voice mail, or your documents, photos or other personal files to target ads to you." It makes no such promise for its other stated data collection purposes.

Microsoft says it will disclose content of private communications or files in saved documents to "respond to valid legal process." In the company's latest bi-annual transparency report released in late March, it says that of the 31,002 government requests for information received between June and December 2014, it disclosed content of personal communications in 3.36 percent of cases and non-content data in 73.17 percent.

While users are given the choice to opt out of Microsoft's various data collections, critics claim this isn't enough. "[T]he Windows 10 upgrade experience...strips users of their choice by effectively overriding existing user preferences," claims Chris Beard, CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, a Microsoft competitor. "It now takes more than twice the number of mouse clicks, scrolling through content and some technical sophistication for people to reassert the choices they had previously made in earlier versions of Windows."

This is really disturbing.  I don't think anyone is entitled to my information: my passwords and website links, what I write to people, hell, what I write for myself.  From what everything says, MS would have access to every word of the highly detailed letter I'm writing to my brother telling him I will likely not communicate with him again.

Despite the likelihood that Win7 will cease being supported (probably soon), I just can't get comfortable with the idea that MS will - can - do this.  And, with the amount of stress it causes me for things going wrong, the idea that updates cannot be turned off, and that some updates may randomly disable everything from my trackball, to keyboard, to monitor is a level of stress that I just can't tolerate - wondering every time I come to my computer if something will have been fucked up by MS since the last time I went on it.  With my functional level almost universally being 'on the verge of so mentally taxed that any little thing can result in me forgetting to do things like eat', I can't deal with having to mess with figuring out how to get peripherals to work again after MS fucks them up.

And who is to say that they won't send out an update at some point that 'silently' turns back ON all the spyware/keylogger functions so they can scan, spy on, and copy every thing you have on your computer again?  They can SAY they won't, but what's to stop them from 'accidentally' doing so, if they can accidentally incapacitate all your peripherals?

Microsoft is doing more to invade privacy than the NSA has.  And the NSA data mining innocent people's information, without warrants, is one of the more disturbing things to happen in the US in the last few decades.

"You can't get something for nothing."  But 'the entirety of my privacy' is a DAMN high cost to pay for a fucking operating system.


Can anyone give me their thoughts on this (obviously soon, since tomorrow is the last 'free' day).  Sorry it's taken me so long to function enough to write this (technically I'm past capacity already, so should not be writing, but with the cutoff tomorrow, I had to force myself to start this process regardless).

Has any legitimate software company come out that has a constant background monitoring program to make sure that privacy settings aren't 'accidentally' changed back to free-flowing information?  And software that can corral and stop ALL information going out via modem that doesn't originate with the computer owner?  Heck, even one that just guaranteed that NO information (other than possibly that showing that the OS is legal) gets sent to MS alone?

Thank you.

[LucasM]

Hell... I'm highly stressed just going through and skimming the various things I've found online describing where to find the obscure 'off' switches for some privacy settings.  I currently have five pages set as pinned tabs in Firefox so that I can go through them and do what each says if I upgrade, but I am severely struggling to read through each to find the actionable parts.  If my computer is actively 'buggy' when I try, I will be too far past my limits to read coherently at all.

Plus I can be pretty sure that I haven't found everything that needs to be turned off to even get the basic privacy returned.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

 As long as you shut down the personal assistant aspects of Cortana, and turn off some of the other activity reporting, you are fine.

As you turn stuff off if it complains that you won't be able to use Cortana then you are on the right track.

A lot of those articles are shutting stuff off that has nothing to do with personal info, just people being paranoid about any information at all going to MS.

I keep somewhat close tabs on what is happening on my home network, and I don't see windows 10 sending any info when I'm doing stuff, and I didn't go nuts turning off stuff, just cripple Cortana so it doesn't read what you are typing, and turn off the activity and usage reporting stuff, and turn off the option for MS to use some space on your computer to send updates to other people (sorry MS, don't use my disk space and bandwidth to save load on your servers...).

[MartyS (Gromit)]

As for software, a goggle search for "privacy software" comes up with a lot of choices.  Funny, searching for privacy monitoring gives you completely different kind of software... 

[LucasM]

As for software, a goggle search for "privacy software" comes up with a lot of choices.  Funny, searching for privacy monitoring gives you completely different kind of software... 

Yeah... the problem I see with that is if I don't know and fully trust the software company.  Because it would be incredibly easy (given the nature of 'add-on' spyware in general software releases) for a company to say they were protecting one from spyware, while sending all that very information to someone with malicious intent.

[LucasM]

As long as you shut down the personal assistant aspects of Cortana, and turn off some of the other activity reporting, you are fine.

As you turn stuff off if it complains that you won't be able to use Cortana then you are on the right track.

A lot of those articles are shutting stuff off that has nothing to do with personal info, just people being paranoid about any information at all going to MS.

I keep somewhat close tabs on what is happening on my home network, and I don't see windows 10 sending any info when I'm doing stuff, and I didn't go nuts turning off stuff, just cripple Cortana so it doesn't read what you are typing, and turn off the activity and usage reporting stuff, and turn off the option for MS to use some space on your computer to send updates to other people (sorry MS, don't use my disk space and bandwidth to save load on your servers...).

Thank you!

Any thoughts on the aspects of different updates messing things up (e.g. the operation of everything from trackball to monitor)?  That is stressful as hell thinking about.  PTSD really fucks with one's tolerance for ANY unexpected event that requires prompt action... and TBIs make 'accurate/appropriate action when stressed' VERY difficult.  And that's not to mention the additional exhaustion (or increased seizure activity) 'fallout' from either.

[RVR II]

After a recent 10 update screwed up 2 of my computers back to back in 1 day, I'm pretty skittish of the OS still, but because I have 9 office computers, I can't afford $120 dollars per license so I had to take the chance.
My main computer that I'm on now will stay Win 7 for as long as possible

[LucasM]

After a recent 10 update screwed up 2 of my computers back to back in 1 day, I'm pretty skittish of the OS still, but because I have 9 office computers, I can't afford $120 dollars per license so I had to take the chance.
My main computer that I'm on now will stay Win 7 for as long as possible

Yeah...it's partially been reading of the problems caused by Win10 that you and MartyS have written about from not being able to turn off updates and getting dysfunction on boot-up that have given me most pause about this (from the anxiety standpoint, not the privacy one).

Suppose MS doesn't EVER fix the problems they cause by a particular update for a group of people (like the two of you)?  Then they add still more problems complicating that glitch with future updates?  If one can't selectively turn off particular updates that simply don't work with their system, who is to say that the entire system won't be rendered a doorstop by MS?

I can (intellectually) understand MS wanting 'every OS to be the same' out there, so that they know what they are working with when doing updates.  But not every SYSTEM is the same, so that is simply not a workable viewpoint!  [I am reminded of the asshole who installed my cable modem who refused to give me the password to get into it 'so I wouldn't mess it up'!  That, making it necessary to deal with someone at the main office so I could open some fucking ports to get Steam working (back when I played).  Same thinking: "we know best, regardless of what you NEED".]

[RVR II]

I'm just glad I have an I.T. guru friend that can help me out with these issues otherwise I'd be in freaking out as well