Microsoft May Already Have a Reliability Strategy
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The biggest problem users are having with the AU is, the OEM's have not updated their certificates for their drivers, before Microsoft tightened the screws(which they said they were going to do loooong ago). So it was the OEM's that dropped the ball and not Microsoft, who is trying to make our systems safer, and protect against kernel mode Rootkit Malware.
While this is true that a lot of problems may be with OEM drivers it opens the door for MS to blame the OEMs and the OEMs to blame MS. The problem is it's the end user who suffers and not MS or the OEMs. It wouldn't solve all problems but IMHO MS needs to go back to letting us decide if and when we want to install updates/upgrades.
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The AU did receive lots of testing when it was in the insider program and I don't know how much more testing is needed. If you're missing any part it's that it's impossible to test the OS on every possible PC part combination and set up that users have. If fewer people with a wide variety of PC's test then the test results via the insider program are not going to be as good. The solution.. well people need to either get more involved.
If you recall the last few months before the AU came out no new features were added and the only thing that was being done was bug repairs.
Yes, it did get a some testing. If memory serves me, that particular build wasn't out all that long though. Remember the big is this or isn't it the one, discussions. And it never was actually frozen. No new features were added (that we know of) but they kept patching it. I do highly respect your opinion, so please don't take any of my comments as being directed at you personally. I totally agree that they can't test every conceivable combination of hardware, but these were some big gotchas. My test PC is your common place, tried and trusted hardware. Nothing fancy or state of the art, components that are in millions of PC's. Yet, I lost my 1 TB drive and all the Data on it. I had backups but still. That's not how you win people over to Windows 10. Or wanting to do regular upgrades to a new build. The freezing/lockup issue was an even bigger deal.
Most insiders got that build, then several updates to it along the way. Consumer's got it all in the one image, with I think one small update on release day. It seems to me that something went wrong with the creation of that master final image? One that was never really tested on very many, if any insiders? That's my best guess anyway.
I still very much like Windows 10, and will recommend it to others, I just think they dropped the ball this time around.
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The 'reliability issues' are due to poor software engineering by MS with major upgrades being rushed out with insufficient testing. Why should I be delaying installing the AU due to the missing drive/RAW format bug due to 'reliability issues'?
The releases are tested on many hardware configurations with the Insiders. Now I do believe there are less insiders after the release to the public but there are still quite a few people testing before the updates are released.
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The biggest problem users are having with the AU is, the OEM's have not updated their certificates for their drivers, before Microsoft tightened the screws(which they said they were going to do loooong ago). So it was the OEM's that dropped the ball and not Microsoft, who is trying to make our systems safer, and protect against kernel mode Rootkit Malware.
Herein lies the biggest problem with MS forced auto update policy. OEM's realistically can not be expected to keep pace with MS updating policies and keep pushing out driver fixes. What happens is if the OS is updated, breaks, and the user has no control, and a new driver isn't available and may not be for sometime, the user is screwed. You can't just go back and stop updates. It is an all around bad practice.
Please don't blame OEM's for a Microsoft poor decision policy (forced updates).
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Herein lies the biggest problem with MS forced auto update policy. OEM's realistically can not be expected to keep pace with MS updating policies and keep pushing out driver fixes. What happens is if the OS is updated, breaks, and the user has no control, and a new driver isn't available and may not be for sometime, the user is screwed. You can't just go back and stop updates. It is an all around bad practice.
Please don't blame OEM's for a Microsoft poor decision policy (forced updates).
They(the OEMs) got notified well in advance to update their Certificates. They don't need to do anything with the driver itself, just get their certificates. Not all, but most OEMs want to sell you new hardware, so they just leave the old stuff alone. On the other hand, the user can still use these drivers if they turn off secure boot, or if they just update and not do a clean install. So...
Microsoft let's us use the drivers, at a risk... and the OEMs are at fault in this case.
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This is all they really had to do:
To update a code signing certificate
Step 1: Renew your code signing certificate
- Determine which type of code signing certificate you need (for more information, see Get a code signing certificate). UEFI and LSA certification now require extended validation code signing certificates.
- Get a new certificate or reuse an existing certificate.
- Once you receive your verified certificate from the certificate authority, you can sign and upload the Winqual.exe file following the instructions below.
Note When you register a new company on the dashboard, you must have a digital ID.
Step 2: Sign and upload your Winqual.exe file
- From the Hardware Dev Center dashboard, sign in as an administrator with your Microsoft account.
- Download the Winqual.exe file from the Hardware Dev Center dashboard, and sign it with the new digital certificate for your company using the SignTool.
- On the Administration page, in the Digital certificates tile, click Upload code for digital certification.
- On the Digital certificates page, click Browse to locate and select the Winqual.exe file that has been signed with the correct digital certificate for your company.
- Update a code signing certificate - Windows 10 hardware dev
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Microsoft let's us use the drivers, at a risk... and the OEMs are at fault in this case.
Well, sort of. OEMs almost never update drivers for new releases and MS surely know this. That is my experience of Lenovo and Dell - perhaps other brands are different but I doubt it.
If you bought a OEM PC with Windows 7 on for example you'd never expect to get Windows 8 or 10 drivers a few years down the line. Why should they bother? There is nothing in it for them except perhaps goodwill. Perhaps it isn't much work but it is work and they only said it would work with 7. Better for them you buy a new one.
What is good news is the rumored enforcement of secure boot never came about. That would have been irritating to those of us who like to use old hardware.
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Well, sort of. OEMs almost never update drivers for new releases and MS surely know this. That is my experience of Lenovo and Dell - perhaps other brands are different but I doubt it.
If you bought a OEM PC with Windows 7 on for example you'd never expect to get Windows 8 or 10 drivers a few years down the line. Why should they bother? There is nothing in it for them except perhaps goodwill. Perhaps it isn't much work but it is work and they only said it would work with 7. Better for them you buy a new one.
What is good news is the rumored enforcement of secure boot never came about. That would have been irritating to those of us who like to use old hardware.
After a few years I can understand OEMs not wanting to spend money or time trying to keep old hardware running on newer OS's. They are in business to sell new hardware and normally give a reasonable length of time for support. The problem as I see it is MS has done everything they could think of to get people to upgrade from a working OS that users were happy with to Windows 10. Even the sneaky part of allowing the red X to close the upgrade box to mean Yes I want Windows 10. Then they force updates even if you don't want them. There is something in this for MS but what do the OEMs have to gain. This isn't fair to the casual user who just wants a computer that works and doesn't want to take a computer course to keep fixing what MS breaks with their forced updates. MS can blame the OEMs and the OEMs can blame MS but this doesn't help the end user at all.
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They(the OEMs) got notified well in advance to update their Certificates. They don't need to do anything with the driver itself, just get their certificates. Not all, but most OEMs want to sell you new hardware, so they just leave the old stuff alone. On the other hand, the user can still use these drivers if they turn off secure boot, or if they just update and not do a clean install. So...
Microsoft let's us use the drivers, at a risk... and the OEMs are at fault in this case.
This makes no difference nor any sense.
Windows is designed to work on multiple types of equipment, with different types of drivers, it isn't a OS specific design as for MAC's with OS X.
The problem still exists, that the user "you know the one who usually owns and uses the computer", still has no control. Microsoft knows OEM's don't keep up, they have been doing business long enough to know this. So why make a policy that can forcibly cause a crash?
Forced updates for this OS is a bad policy... Plain and Simple.
Or perhaps OEMs should stop developing machines for Windows, they kind of have done this with apps, no one really wants to play that game either.
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The problem has nothing to do with the amount of people in the Insider program. The problem is that Microsoft itself is doing almost no testing. It's very well-documented that Microsoft fired its testing staff in 2013 and 2014.
Relying solely on un-paid people who largely don't even put the Insider builds on their production machines is a mistake, and it shows.
That is what I feel it is going on.
Testing takes almost 75% of the hole Costs on Software products!
Further, Windows is growing and growing , what makes it more difficult to test, and the Time for testing increases so that to have a fully tested release will take many months.
After all there is the question around the strategic of offering new Builds as "free", so we may have to accept some "flaws" .
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