Posted on 10/19/2013 1:06:03 PM PDT by dayglored
The much-anticipated Windows 8.1 update was finally released on Thursday. Since then, however, early reports of bricked devices and lost data from some users indicate that the release may have been premature. In response, Microsoft took its Windows 8.1 update offline until further notice on Saturday.
The Redmond, Wash. company posted the following a message to its website:
Microsoft is investigating a situation affecting a limited number of users updating their Windows RT device to Windows RT 8.1. As a result, we have temporarily removed the Windows RT 8.1 update from the Windows Store. We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and apologize for any inconvenience.... there are, as of this writing, no official instructions from Microsoft regarding the issue, Ulanoff said the company advised him download an ISO file to a USB stick as a possible recovery tool for his device. Unfortunately, when Ulanoff attempted to retrieve the ISO file that Microsoft provided, he was unable to download it.
So far, the problem appears to be limited to Windows RT devices. How long will those who attempted to update their Windows RT devices have to wait for answers? According to Microsoft's website: “We will provide updates as they become available.”
(Excerpt) Read more at mashable.com ...
I have Windows 8 machines and they run fine and have certain advantages over Windows 7. Getting used to Windows 8 didn’t take too long but there are a lot of people who are having problems adapting to the new start screen. This update by Microsoft did very little if nothing to help that issue. In fact it changed the way some of the apps such as Skydrive and Skype have to be accessed. Now in order to access Skydrive and Skype one needs to log in with a Microsoft account. Logging in with a local account makes these apps unusable. Fortunately the desktop versions of these apps are still available and work fine.
Ah, and so many years to perfect that boot problem! You’d think that maybe if that was such a problem that they might have solved it earlier but what do I know, they can’t even get the Obamacare interface working!
(Sorry, could not prevent myself from stating the obvious”)
You're correct.
Abomination is a perfect way to describe it.
It's designed for a touch screen , on anything else it is just a headache.
No reason to upgrade from Win7 and if any are still on Win95 it is much better to go to Win7.
Friend of mines office has plans to upgrade to Win8 after Christmas. They told me they can't wait for their upgrades .... I told them they are going to be calling me and paying me plenty to fix their mess after doing it.
So how can you explain people like me using it on a non “touch screen” and getting along just fine?
For some reason people have taken incapable as a virtue instead of seeing it as personal inability.
“I cant figure X out therefore it’s bad”? Must really suck broadcasting that out to the world.
I updated Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 on both my desktop and laptop and yes I do notice the little bugs here and there..my Avast anti virus was not compatible on 8.1 on my laptop, it deleted it automatically..on my desktop I noticed the boot up was a little slower than usual, than it improved..the new start button is there but it doesnt show the program files, I still had to install startisback to make it work again
Well put! I hope that you do not have to spend too much time getting your friends upgraded. You do have to look at the bright side though - lots of work coming your way...heh.
Your main problem is not losing your friends over this...ha.
The first time somebody showed me a photo of the Metro interface, I swore they were pulling my leg. I lost a bet over that, because I couldn't believe my eyes were seeing a serious product. Using it makes me feel vaguely queasy, like I'm operating a bad parody of Jeopardy or Truth-or-Consequences.
The underlying design language has been around for many years before Windows 8, and is actually kinda cool: Microsoft Metro Design Language (Wikipedia).
Did you know that the name "Metro" and the general visual layout was taken from the King County, Washington Metro transit system, which is near Microsoft's Redmond campus?
Welcome, VanDeKoik, I knew you'd have to join in at some point. :)
Of course, yes, the original title was too general, that's why I added the parenthetical "Bricks RT Devices". It wasn't "completely inaccurate", Microsoft did pull the update, but just for RT devices.
Why do you think this has anything to do with Apple? Why do you find it necessary to bash FR's Apple users? Are you trying to hijack the thread? I trust not.
No of course Microsoft isn't going out of business any time soon. But they've got a lot of egg on their face lately and it could have been easily prevented with somebody else at the helm the past 10 or so years. Ballmer was great in a sales role. CEO, not so much.
Reputable companies pay people to do their QA before they ship their products, they don’t make their customers pay them for untested products and force them to find their problems.
Heh... maybe a good example of why we should go back to BIOS and keep the OS out of the hard boot process...
Friend of mines office has plans to upgrade to Win8 after Christmas. They told me they can’t wait for their upgrades .... I told them they are going to be calling me and paying me plenty to fix their mess after doing it. “
If I were going to do that I would go buy some cheap laptops and send them home with employees to let them get used to it before hand.
My windows 8 box runs without a hitch. I’ve run plenty of video recodes - photo editing - games - minecraft servers. No problems at all.
What makes you think that a vendor (MSFT), throwing a wildly different interface on a product that had defined the world standard computer desktop interface for 20 years, makes people's dislike of it a "personal inability"?
Look, Microsoft made a mistake. Mistakes that big are hard to admit, but this one is huge and demands addressing, not whitewashing.
There's no reason in the world to intentionally break something ubiquitous unless you're trying to kill it off.
When MSFT wanted people to shift from DOS-based Windows to NT-based Windows, they made Win-2K/XP look as much like Win-95/98 as possible, and folks moved over -- indeed, XP became the world standard, and it still is the single largest user base.
And MSFT broke the old DOS-based Windows line with Win-ME, and that was necessary because the DOS-based Windows line needed to go.
Apple shifted people from the old MacOS Classic to OS-X in a similar fashion.
But this time, MSFT tried to shift everybody to a radically new interface, with no discernible benefit to the desktop end user. Metro is fine for tablets. The world has voted, and the vast majority of those trying Win8 on desktops find it pointlessly difficult to use or adapt to.
For you to use that as an excuse to bash XP users as having "personal inability" is condescending and actually rather pathetic. If Metro was that easy for all as it was for you, people wouldn't be having trouble with it in droves.
Well if it wasn’t an Apple user, then my apologizes to them.
But I seriously doubt it. They are masters of that drama queen style bloviating whenever any company has even the most minor snafu with some product, while they ignore the ones from Cupertino.
It isnt like puling down a file from another part of the world, of a size that would have been impossible 13 years ago, to update a tablet computer is something that could never have a potential issue.
Some of these people need to save their outrage for some other piece of software that is really reeking havoc with the whole nation.
Personally I think Microsoft would like the whole RT debacle to just go away. Everything about RT has been trouble for MSFT, and confusion and frustration for RT customers who thought they were getting something very like the Windows they knew and loved.
So my guess is that MSFT doesn't really care if this kills off RT. That may even be their intention, as it was with Win-ME.
I should say, I do NOT think for a moment that MSFT intentionally bricked anybody's RT tablet. They just aren't paying the RT QA enough attention, as you said.
They're clearly scrambling to recovery years of lost ground and some very unfortunate missteps. With luck, they'll recover and may yet become a serious player in the handheld marketplace.
On desktops and non-touch laptops, however, it's almost certain that Windows 7 will become the new "XP", with a lifetime measured in decades.
No antivirus? I have windows security which I think is the problem.
Yeah, there are mad-fan devotees for every OS. Windows has its share, as does Linux; hell, you should have heard my friend years ago going on about BeOS.
Apple has certainly had its f**kups, and I think most Apple users are getting used to the idea that their systems are not perfect, can get infected (albeit via the user, not the OS itself), that software from Apple can have bugs and misbegotten "features"....
I note, for example, that the new plastic iPhone is doing rather awfully in the marketplace. I'd call that a major misstep on Apple's part, because they've never been able to compete at the low end, and a cheap plastic Apple product is almost a contradiction in terms.
> It isnt like puling down a file from another part of the world, of a size that would have been impossible 13 years ago, to update a tablet computer is something that could never have a potential issue.
You're not really saying it was file corruption during transmission, are you? I have to call that a red-herring argument. Surely the patch does a self-exam and digest (CRC/MD5/etc.) check after download and before installation. And just as surely, the patch does a system exam to make sure the necessary existing pieces are in place.
C'mon. :)
> Some of these people need to save their outrage for some other piece of software that is really reeking havoc with the whole nation.
On that point you and I are in complete agreement.
In fact, the few remaining folks who are defending the ObamaCare web experience sound even lamer than those who blindly defend and excuse operating system update lameness, whether it be OS-X, Windows, or anything else.
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