Seen in Print

[chuck]

Microsoft dumped it's in house testing team and went with "simulations" on virtual machines to test updates/patches. It seemed like a good idea at the time. In many cases the computer/OS isn't really broken, its' the user account settings that are hosed relative to the updates. Since we rarely think ahead to create a second "backup account" we're locked out and the machine is effectively useless in its current state. We tend to set up our accounts to automatically do things to make the machine easier to use, aka mount network drives/resources, customize the video, etc. When it can't do those things because of the updates/patches it looks like it's dead. If you have a vanilla secondary account you MIGHT be able to log in and examine what is going on.

The next most common failures of these patches are related driver/firmware issues. If you have not been doing these updates or were unaware that you needed to do them then the new code in the update may not work or may actually break the network interface, video, audio, USB, printer, ... drivers. e.g If you have enabled automatic mounting of network resources and execution of code on those resources as part of your startup you won't get very far if there is no network interface to access them.

Linux machines have less issue with this as they usually leave low level driver code out of the equation. Their firmware/bios reliance is limited to basic features, aka lowest common denominator. They have higher level software drivers to do the fancier tricks. When it doesn't work, you can still log in and poke around to try and fix. Apple has even less of an issue as they manufacture their own hardware and know it's full specs. I had users that bought Mac Laptops because they were very well built and then ran boot camp to run Windows. Since Apple created the drivers and they know all of the hardware on the machine these computers were some of our most reliable Windows computers, period. "Generic" Windows machines are running on thousands of variations of mother boards, chip sets, video, network, .... This is why your testing group needs lots of trained people beating on lots of variable hardware to find these bugs before they become catastrophic.

When setting up a new computer I always did two accounts, usually three. The admin account that was only used to do set up and serious maintenance, primary user account which had some level of admin rights, and a third back up account that did not have admin rights per se but could do admin functions when challenged for credentials. On linux you have a properly configured Mac you can usually log in remotely to check things out if the console is hosed, aka you can check what's going on. It was kind of shocking to see machines that users tagged as "dead" were actually running, you just couldn't interact with them because the user interface was dead. On systems with multiple accounts you could back out and try an alternate. If that worked then the question became what is unique about that account that makes the machine look like it's dead.

[HONDO74]

Microsoft was awarded the Defense Department's 10-year JEDI cloud computing project.

[rogruth]

Chuck,
I have little idea of what you are saying.
My computer uses the latest windows and up-dates automatically.
Usually there are no problems. My computer use is to read train
forums, e-mail, check the weather and find out what is on TV.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Wow. Yikes. Wow. But Thank You, Chuck.

[chuck]

Roger said:

My computer use is to read train
forums, e-mail, check the weather and find out what is on TV.

When it comes time to replace it, you may want to take a hard look at a Chrome book. That's pretty much all it's meant to do and it does it really well.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Microsoft was awarded the Defense Department's 10-year JEDI cloud computing project.

Over Amazon..............and between the 2 of them, they control ~48% of the entire cloud marketplace.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Roger said:

My computer use is to read train
forums, e-mail, check the weather and find out what is on TV.

When it comes time to replace it, you may want to take a hard look at a Chrome book. That's pretty much all it's meant to do and it does it really well.

How about online banking?

[chuck]

How about online banking?

If it's done through an app or a web interface, yes. Chrome books are like smart phones minus the phone or a tablet with a keyboard. TOL tablets are more powerful (and more expensive) but they can do more.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Thank you, Chuck.
Murph

[Rufus T. Firefly]

[HONDO74]

When your jeans no longer fit.....

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Brings new meaning to carrying a load.....

[rogruth]

I'm sure that would be considered to be art to some people. To me it is just strange.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

I'm sure that would be considered to be art to some people. To me it is just strange.

Made me think, though.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I'm sure that would be considered to be art to some people. To me it is just strange.

Probably falls under the heading of folk art; creative and working with what one has to make something eye catching and also useful.