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DerekT-P wrote: when the phone rang so I just closed the laptop
What is the connection between those two events? I rarely reboot my PC, and nor does Microsoft, unless I allow it. But I do close the lid every day, and never lose anything; mainly because I make sure I save any open stuff first.
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No direct connection. I would normally double-check I'd saved everything at the end of the day, but routinely just close the lid (suspend, with power plugged in) overnight. On this occasion I was intending to pick up where I left off but got distracted.
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Overlooking the unsaved thingie, it seems to me that your biggest mistake was in the assumption that you had stopped Microsoft's (self healing) ability to update. Silly you. Microsoft works under the (correct) assumption that many/most people are too stupid/lazy/busy to do updates on their own. Then they blame Msft for any malware. So,they do the the updates automagically. I think the only ways to stop them is: 1. use an Update Server to control[ 2. Turn off the network card (hard to do if you are doing cloud stuff) or 3. use a firewall that blocks by application (mine does, they are expensive). I run W10 in a virtual machine, so I can disable the NIC when I don't want to risk anything interrupting me. Once, I created rules in the firewall to block updates. I think I wound up with about 8 or 10 IP address ranges!
Leave the machine without backing up my work? Get caught once and I probably won't do it again.
The best way to remember your wife's birthday? Forget it once. 
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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Indeed. Over the couple of years I've had to use W10 I've lost track of how much time I've spent trying to turn everything off; there is a whole industry advising people of the "absolute" solution. It's not the loss of a few lines of code that peeves me - though it is inexcusable - but the fact that my system became totally unusable after their update. Although I'm no W10 expert, it only took me about 15 minutes to get the system in a state I could use it again. But for many people, they would have absolutely no way of finding out how to do it (especially since W10's own help is simply wrong on the subject). MS can force updates upon me to draw a fancy animated box around options in settings when I hover over them (100% pointless bling), yet can't be bothered to provide a way to permanently stop updates that totally screw up my display and cause my printer to no longer print.
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kmoorevs wrote: I still consider Win7 to be the pinnacle.
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If the average consumer would just think twice about what purchasing hardware on which to run software entailed, in a contractual way, they'd quickly realize that the fine print can be interpreted.
The job of good lawyers, interpretation.
Honestly what is a rant? Is this an expression of some dissatisfaction with some product you bought? Let me ask you this, how much RAM is installed on the offending piece?
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I ranted about this before. One thing as an FYI: When I ranted about the problem, I NEVER received any notifications in the taskbar that Windows was going to reboot for updates, and would come back to find everything gone. Frustrating as all get out.
About six months ago Visual Studio started giving me errors I could not understand. I used that as an excuse to reinstall Windows from scratch, since the previous install was the overwrite upgrade from 8.0->8.1->10.
After the reinstall the notification now appears in the taskbar, which is a HUGE improvement from before. Also, my Visual Studio errors disappeared.
I'm not recommending you do that, because it sucked. Almost two days of reinstall hell. But it is something to be aware of.
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To be honest, it's not even the lack of notification that irks me. (On this occasion, I did get prompts twice asking me when to update; perhaps windows should interpret my repeated dismissals as an indication I do not WANT their "update".) But why on God's earth should an "urgent" update (which I assume it was) decide to resize the fonts in all the menus to make them miniscule? (I already have an overall magnification of 1.25 set, but this new setting made *some* fonts much smaller than even the 1.0 setting).
In fact it's all the little things together that are so frustrating. The number of ways to reduce updates, the seeming impossibility of permanently saying "no, my system's really great as it is, I like it, DO NOT CHANGE IT"; the fact that even when I've explicitly backed out an update MS re-apply it days later without warning; the way updates break random stuff like making my printer 100% non-responsive, or changing menu font sizes across the board; the way sometimes updates run "silently" and sometimes don't; the way that after an update from MS the "help" information is just plain wrong, if you can find it at all.
I'm old enough to remember upgrading from Win 3.1 to Win 3.11 and finding that (a) everything still worked, (b) everything still looked pretty much the same, (c) I'd not lost any of my personal settings, and (d) there was new stuff. And I did the upgrade when I wanted to. I cannot for the life of me understand how the present situation is an "improvement" from those days.
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Pretty sure it's time for windoz users to experiment. Buy a cheap laptop remove the SSD or HDD replace it with a new one on Amazon. Install Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, or some other Linux distro from a USB stick. You may/may not have to install Firefox, and you can always get the Libra/Apache Office suite for free. I built a small form factor desktop with my son and installed Fedora. The only think I need my cheap windoz laptop is to run turbotax every April.
~d~
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haha. It gets worse. In Settings / Windows Updates it tells me I've "paused" updates. There's a link that says "See what's new in this update". Clicking on that opens a (non-standard) message box that says "You'll need a new app to open this ms-get-started link". What's an "ms-get-started" link?? There's an OK button but no others. The OK button is disabled. (Fortunately clicking anywhere, in or out of the message box, closes it).
So I need to update something (what?) in order to find out what the updates are.
When I go to Settings / Windows Updates / View Update History, it shows me a blank screen under "Update history". Even though I know previous updates have been applied.
Just how bad can you get, Microsoft??
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So, another update has once again trashed my printer driver. TWICE I've un-installed this, TWICE MS have re-applied it.
My "Update history" is now completely blank, but I can go to "Uninstall updates". Trying to work out which one is which, there's helpfully a "Support link" shown at the bottom of the screen as you highlight each uninstallable update. The "Support link" is NOT a link, and worse, it's not even selectable / copyable. I have to re-type the URL into a browser. (Guess what, MS? I'm NOT using Edge.  )
Oh, and the URL is wrong; regardless of the ?kbid= parameter, it takes you to a generic "support" page that provides no support whatsoever.
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Was pretty shocked to see that, I loved Mythbusters.
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I still can't get my head around it.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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An aneurism is one thing I would not want to survive after seeing what that is like three years ago. Poor man, but death may actually be a mercy in this case.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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CodeWraith wrote: but death may actually be a mercy in this case.
Well, not having one in the first place would be a better mercy.
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As if anyone has that option when it happens.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Right.
As much as they have the option of surviving or not.
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No. That privilege goes to the doctors and the family. Had that three years ago.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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NOMMAG (10)
As this is so short, I'll tell you it is thematically related to yesterday's CCC.
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I like it! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Thanks. I've never seen or heard of a clue where the letter ordering was 1/2 the clue - it was (to me) a novel idea, so I wasn't sure whether it was exceedingly trivial or perverse. Obviously, it was trivial!
I've given it to @Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter as he gave the answer, even though your response came first. Hope that is OK
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It was a lesson learned the hard way.
that MS has made it so difficult to disable the unattended restart. I'd settle for a simple warning that a reboot was required...and always wait for a human response, at least giving the opportunity to save and close my open apps.
It crashed so often that I got used to hitting the save shortcut frequently while coding. The cure for that catastrophe was Win2K which I used until Win7 came out. I still consider Win7 to be the pinnacle.