How not to install the Windows 10 Anniversary Update

[Rbneader]

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...ws-10-testing/

Seems like something changed with the USB drivers, leading to unpredictable failures when plugging in USB devices? I wonder if Nadella is regretting firing the majority of the Windows QA department yet.

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'd be very surprised if there were to be a widespread problem with iPhone/iPad. They are such popular products that they must surely have been tested!

One would think, but Microsoft missed a problem with webcams and Skype. They own Skype, it's very popular, and the Logitech webcams in question are among the most popular webcams to use with Skype. The problem actually affects far more programs than just Skype, but you'd think they'd have tested their own software. But they didn't.

All signs are that Microsoft does nearly no testing on updates now, particularly for Windows 10. Back in 2014, Microsoft laid off nearly all their "programmatic testers" as part of a massive cut of 18,000 employees. Programmatic testers are the ones that develop programs to test updates against. In other words they're quality assurance. After this Microsoft began depending on developers to code their own programmatic tests.

The problem with that approach is two-fold: 1. Developers tend to not spend nearly as much time on developing the tests as they do on coding. This is just human nature, you focus on your main task (coding new stuff) and less on the side-tasks (testing that new stuff). Then you have 2. Developers tend to have trouble finding their own mistakes. This is also human nature, you coded it so you tend to think it works because it works the way you intended it to be used. Bugs often only show up when things are used differently than developers expected them to be used. So it's important in all types of software development to have testers hammering on it that try things that aren't planned. It's been known for a long time in software development that this is true.

It appears that Microsoft thinks the Windows Insider program is good enough to replace all the quality assurance in Windows 10, but signs are that it's not. There have been major bugs in the Anniversary Update that weren't caught by insiders. (Including serious problems with Kindle devices, apropos to this thread.) There's also the fact that Microsoft is not handling the bug reports it does receive through the program very well. They seem to be using next to no actual people to go through the reports, and rely on scripts to decide what problems are reported most often. This is, quite obviously, going to miss a lot of stuff.

So don't count on Microsoft testing things thoroughly, testing seems to be an afterthought to them now. Major tech publications are starting to call them out on it. (Notably, the author of that Article, Peter Bright, is an unabashed Microsoft cheerleader. When you have even him criticizing Microsoft, something is seriously wrong.)

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

...
Maybe this is caused by the anniversary update.

The hard disk problem I described above, which I first saw when running that big Steam update, seems to be caused by the Anniversary update. I see more and more reports online when I search for a solution. Flipping the MSI interrupt bit described on the Microsoft site didn't resolve this. It is caused by the fact that I have both an SSD and a HDD, where the OS is on the SSD. The HDD then sometimes spikes to 100% disk usage, stalling the entire system; sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes for many minutes, and sometimes, completely.

This is getting very annoying. I hope MS fixes this ASAP. I've ran every test possible in Windows (full chkdsk, full memory scan), the full diagnostics suite in the laptop's BIOS (which tests everything, including HDD's and memory, and it takes 8 hours), and MemTest86+. Everything with the hardware is 100% fine. I've also updated all drivers to the latest version, where possible.

I can't do anything anymore on this end. There is no strange, illegal or wacky software on this computer. Everything is either bought, free, or open source, and all the programs have existed for many years.

Think along the lines of 7-zip, GIMP, LibreOffice, VLC, CUETools for ripping CD's, Cygwin, CCLeaner, Calibre... that sort of stuff. The only thing that is a bit niche is a trial version of Pianoteq, a piece of software that models virtual piano's. This will be uninstalled; the bought version is now running perfectly fine on an Intel NUC attached to my piano.

[jhowell]

Got the latest update to the Anniversary update last night (KB3176938). Since then my PC fails to boot (spinning dots icon forever) half the time and when it does boot removable media seem to be behaving oddly. Love ya Microsoft.