Don't update Windows 10 today

Every time I update windows I have to "fix" a few things.

1. Reinstall my Win7 version of FreeCell. It's a legacy version, preserved by Winareo. For some reason, with every update Windows gives it the boot. They replaced it in Win10 with a glitzy, ad-laden version that I can't stomach.
2. Make a small registry edit, so that Alt-Tab (to swap between running programs, aka "apps" ), show a small, easy to understand icon for each program, not the great postcard sized rendition that I can't understand. I'll paste in the steps for that below.
3. Find my printers again, if they get lost.
4. There's a few others, but I'm getting cagey enough to realize that it's not worthwhile repeatedly fixing minor things that'll be broke again with the next "update".

Revert to old alt tab behaviour:

1.Open Registry Editor. (run "regedit")
2.Go to the following Registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer
3.Create a new 32-bit DWORD value named AltTabSettings and set it to "1".
4.Sign out from your Windows 10 session and sign in again.

 

Recently upgraded to Win 10 at work and home.
Only issue at home is that a "app is preventing shutdown" notice, but I've been running the free, watermark version for nearly a year.
At work, a few, minor hiccuaps with needing to relog in, or restart, because of Office360. There are some annoying restarts, but those also include updates for the other software forced onto our machines.

Both boxes have solid state hard drives, which greatly reduces the pain of any updates and restarts.

I like the different daily games and challenges, when I feel up to watching adds. Just wish there was a way to easily play offline; besides unplugging the cable. Work blocks it, so once you get past the pop ups crying about not being able to connect, it becomes ad free without the dailies.

 

Bottom line is you need to update Windows 10 as quickly as possible when an update is released. It is still the largest pc presence, and hence the biggest target for hackers....

moto g(7) power ?

 

This particular update is much more urgent than normal:

" The company said the vulnerabilities are potentially "wormable," meaning affected computers could spread viruses and malware without any action on the user's part.
...
"It is important that affected systems are patched as quickly as possible because of the elevated risks associated with wormable vulnerabilities like these, ..."

 

I am a long time Windows junky. However, slowly but surely converting to Chromebook. I still use a few Windows 10 machines both at work and home, but when Microsoft ditch the stand alone Office Suite, I will probably ditch the Windows machines for good.

 

Apache Open Office is a good substitute for Microsoft Office.

Yes, some updates are even more crucial than others.

moto g(7) power ?

 

Microsoft's email and browser programs have gotten increasingly difficult to use, especially with advent of windows 10. For those I went with Mozilla Thunderbird and FireFox respectively. MS Office I got a Student Edition, about 8~9 years back now, basically only use Excel.

 

I might give a try for LibreOffice when my MS Office stop working, but until then, I will keep using the old version. For now, most of documents can be opened and edited using Google Doc. My work place has already converted to on-line version of MS Office, so I will likely have to get use to the idea of using cloud-centric MS Office anyway.

 

Why would an older, stand-alone version of office stop working? I can think of a few reasons myself, mainly MS trying to get some more $'s from us "deadbeats".

 

It will probably work fine if you are working on a document by yourself. The problem is collaboration with others become difficult if you are not on the same platform.

 

I've used LibreOffice for years but the real acid test came when I loaded it onto my CFO's 'puter a while back.
She started using it without batting an eye.

It's definitely worth a look and the price is right.

 

I put Open Office on a PC running an instrument at. It had been banned from the network for having too old of an operating system. Could be pre Win7. There are slight differences between it and MS Office, but they only stand out because I rarely use it.

Had LibreOffice at home. Just haven't needed to reinstall it on the new machine. LibreOffice is an offshoot of Open Office, so the two should be similar.

 

I have Microsoft Home Use Program through my work and MS Office Professional version cost me only ~$10. I would never pay the retail price for it, and refuse to pay subscription fee for any apps. Certainly there are plenty of FREE apps out there that works perfectly fine. MS's own web based free version of Office Online also works fine for most casual users.

 

Lather, Rinse, & Repeat.

But today's critical update it is only for MS-Internet Explorer and Windows Defender, not the OS:
Microsoft sends another warning: Update Windows now to fix critical security issues

The Defender update should run automatically, but the IE update must be manual.

 

Don't forget to reboot after each update!


defrag
reboot
rinse
repeat ad infinitum Infinity - Wikipedia

if you haven't defragged in a long time or ever
I wouldn't try it unless you have a partition with a terabyte of unused space.
singing Windows Windows Windows close them damned Windows please

 

Buy a Mac

 

I don't think Windows will let you defrag if you don't have sufficient space. I defrag every once in a blue moon, and it always tells me not to bother.

And in the old days, it was SO much more satisfying, watching the little blocks of data shooting around, being consolidated. Didn't it used to be you needed third-party software to defrag, Norton IIRC.

 

My Win10 appears to be automatically doing it in the background. I hadn't looked at it in a very long time, but pulling up the tool now, it self-ran on both drives less than 4 days ago, both are at 0% fragmented.

 

Modern SSD does not need to be defragmented for a performance boost. In fact, most techies agree that defragmenting SSD too much will shorten the life of the drive. That being said, it is also true that on Windows10 if you have Volume Shadow Copy turned on (it's enabled when you have Windows System Restore turned on to be able to rollback to a previous system snapshot), defragmentation will happen once a month by default even on a system with SSD.

 

Thanks for even remembering defrag. I believe even windows 3,1 had a basic defrag tool. The company whos defrag tool was contracted to Microsoft is Executive Software, who offered/offers a full version of the defragmentation tools. I purchased version 8 and got the upgrade to version 9 from Executive Software, which included the auto defrag option many years before it was available with the Windows version.

Condusiv Technologies: Virtual, PC & Server Performance Software

Microsoft Drive Optimizer - Wikipedia

Yes, defraging an SD or SSD is not recommended. There are other tools for SSD's and one is call trim on Linux OS and is coded specifically for SSDs.
Read Write operations on an SD or SSD memory device have a much lower life span than those of spinning hard disks. Storage live span is also shorter of SD and SSD than on Hard Disk.