Microweenies die!

[Tunnelcat]

Screw Microsoft. They must think we want Windows 8 like Twinkies.

I just spent half a day unscrewing up my gaming computer after they "assumed" I wanted a new video driver, like I wanted to update my rig to Windows 8 at the next available opportunity. Uh huh. Fat chance bozos.

Even though I do manual updates, Windows Update surreptitiously moved a video driver update from "optional" to the "important updates" section, and with me being in a hurry and having bad eyes, I missed that little item, UNTIL I noticed it DURING the install. A little to late to turn off EVGA Precision or MSE. Plus it gave me no chance to NOT INSTALL Nvidia's extra crapware like their HDMI sound driver and updater. Just what I like to do, fix their helpful updates, especially if it's for something I don't want. Maybe I should charge them for my time!

[Avder]

Or maybe you should not use a new OS until it's been out in the wild a few months and they've had the chance to work the kinks out.

Or just adhere to the every other version rule and go back to 7.

Or pretty much any version of Windows prior to 8.

Or get better glasses.

Or not update when you are in a hurry.

Lots of things you could have done differently.

[Aggressor Prime]

So you upgraded (or rather downgraded) to Windows 8?

[Krom]

Why not just uninstall MSE? Because even up to last week, every single computer I've ever had to clean a virus off of had a resident antivirus program running. They don't work. The user is either safe and doesn't get their PC loaded with malware, or they aren't. No antivirus program is going to change that.

[Alter-Fox]

TBH Windows 8 sounds idiotic. Microsoft is abandoning the entire reason people still buy their product despite them being Microsoft.

I'm sticking with Vista...

[Krom]

My PC does not have a touch screen, so Windows 8 makes absolutely no sense on it.

[Isaac]

Dear Microsoft,

Pleases leave screwing-up the DE to Canonical. Like the new logo

Love, Isaac

[Tunnelcat]

So you upgraded (or rather downgraded) to Windows 8?

No. I haven't touched Windows 8 at all. 7 is just fine by me, for quite awhile I guess. Especially since I don't have a touch screen, and every gamer on the planet is griping about 8. Even though I have 7 now, I'm guessing that Microsoft wanted to be "proactive" and give me a Windows 8 ready driver to "be nice" or just plain sneaky. Notice to Microsoft, you aren't being helpful and you aren't endearing people to your software (not that they ever did ) by trying to do things we don't want, but you think we need.

Why not just uninstall MSE? Because even up to last week, every single computer I've ever had to clean a virus off of had a resident antivirus program running. They don't work. The user is either safe and doesn't get their PC loaded with malware, or they aren't. No antivirus program is going to change that.

Do you run any virus protection at all? By the way, MSE only messed up it's own .ETL file that always gets corrupted if an abnormal shutdown occurs. What really messed things up EVGA Precision. I use that to monitor my GPU temps and run the fan. That is not supposed to be active during a driver change either. Not that Microsoft gives a crap. I can just hear them at one of their weenie meetings. "Ooooooooooo! Let us be nice and get your computer ready for Windows 8, which we just know you'll want to upgrade to.".....................NOT!

[Krom]

I don't run MSE or any other memory resident antivirus program on my machine. The only time I do is when I'm dropping someone else's drive in a toaster to scan it from my system, then I load MSE or antivir first, drop the drive in and full scan/clean and then uninstall when I'm done. MSE is a bit nicer than antivir in that aspect because it can be installed/uninstalled in a couple seconds with no reboots required.

The rest is a combination of using adblock plus, noscript, and request policy to break/block most vectors that can get you if you happen to stumble across an attack page, and refusing to have adobe pdf reader on my system at all. Also when I go off hunting for something that is likely to cause attack pages to show up in the search results, I do it in a virtual machine instance that gets wiped upon shutdown.

Just for kicks once I installed antivir in a VM, then went on an attack page hunt by searching for stuff like photoshop/3dstudio warez and the like, using firefox without noscript or adblock, just by loading a couple attack pages the VM got hit by some piece of malware that promptly killed antivir and started popping up advertisements on the desktop. I have no doubt that if I had tried it with MSE the result would have been the same. And all the software in the VM was up to date.

[flip]

I think there gonna have a hard time improving on Win 7 myself. They should honestly stay with the core of 7 and release a good media version with full featured recording, or a Win 7 version geared directly towards musicians, full featured amp software the works....etc, or for the other crowd who just likes to pretty it up, animated icons and an immense amount of themes

[Jeff250]

I think the problem with Windows 8 is how religious Microsoft has gotten about their desktop environment. It used to be if you wanted how you should use your computer shoved down your throat, you would buy a Mac (and sadly these days, although perhaps to a lesser extent, many Linux desktop environments). But Windows wasn't always like this. Windows 95 still came with program manager, Windows XP still supported the classic theme, and Windows 7 still supported the classic task bar window list. But with Windows 8, it's the metro start screen or bust.

[akula65]

tunnelcat: I noticed the same update in the Important category on my Win7 Home Premium 32-bit box last week. Mine showed up as follows:

nVidia - Graphics Adapter WDDM1.1, Graphics Adapter WDDM1.2, Other hardware - NVIDIA GeForce 210
Published: 11/13/2012

These sorts of shenanigans are why I only do manual updates and NEVER apply any hardware updates from Microsoft.

[Spidey]

I have said this a hundred times, and any one who hangs around on a geek rich environment like this board should already know…

Never install software with your security suite running.

And you do know Win 7 automatically makes a restore point every time you do an update, and if it’s an Nvidia driver rollback is a snap.

[Isaac]

Screw that, Spidey. Pitchforks and torches!!! We march to Microsoft!

[Duper]

So you upgraded (or rather downgraded) to Windows 8?

As I understand it, there is no stand alone install. it MUST be an upgrade. There's a bit of flap with OEM providers as well. If MS survives this fiasco, it will be a miracle and a shame.

[snoopy]

M$ sure is spending a lot of money on advertizing these days....

I think the problem is that generally "simplicity" and "user control" are in competition with each other. Microsoft sees the ipad and android devices taking off, and realizes that it's behind the 8-ball. So, they respond with windows 8.... by taking deeper control of the details... because that's the easiest way to create more simplicity for the user.

This is exactly why I'm a big fan of arch. They start by giving you a very bare bones setup, and then it's up to you to build it up as you please. The advantage is that you can basically make your system operate however you please, the tradeoff is that you have to configure it yourself to accomplish the effect that you're looking for.

[AceCombat]

im not touching with a LIGHT YEAR long Pole!! till they put the START Menu back in.

[Foil]

I put Win8 on a machine at home (no, not my gaming rig!). It seems to work fairly well; the Metro UI is pretty darn snappy and effective on a desktop with a touchscreen. My only complaint has been a common one - there's some wackiness with video drivers for my older GPU - but otherwise it's not too bad.

[Sirius]

The driver updates out of WU are usually old - I would recommend getting them from the hardware vendor instead. Unless they're terrible, but the hope is you don't own that kind of hardware.

I think Jeff touches on what's going on - it's a general shift to a more design/user-experience focus at Microsoft. The tradeoff to that is often reduced control. The reason is a perception that this is what the tech-buying public wants these days (note the DBB is not even close to representative of this) - but we'll only know if that's really true once there's a clearer picture of how people and businesses react to Windows 8. Personally I'm expecting it to only really take off on new devices - I have my doubts organizations with large existing bases of desktop PCs are going to be interested in moving them to Windows 8 because of the re-learning factor - but I could be wrong about that.

[snoopy]

In the long term... I do expect companies to go the smart phone/tablet/Win 8 direction. The productivity side of the technology isn't there yet... but I expect that breakthroughs are coming quickly that will allow for higher productivity out of these devices (Microsoft is taking a shot at it with their surface keyboard thing) and soon desktop/laptop PC's will become something that are used fairly exclusively by software developers and/or IT people.

I expect it will come down the price tag. Once productivity with a tablet gets to the point where people that are doing standard document generation, accounting, emails, web can do it efficiently with a tablet, why pay for a full-blown computer when you can pay less for a tablet?

It's just going to take a learning curve... and I expect that the masses won't care a bit if they have less control.... it's less things that they can mess up.

[Tunnelcat]

I have said this a hundred times, and any one who hangs around on a geek rich environment like this board should already know…

Never install software with your security suite running.

And you do know Win 7 automatically makes a restore point every time you do an update, and if it’s an Nvidia driver rollback is a snap.

Not so fast. Things have changed with Nvidia driver installations. That's how I borked my system, by using the driver rollback feature. I ended up with both driver files intermingled and showing up in the control panel. Eeeeeeeeek! What a mess. And of course, forgetting to turn off Precision didn't help either.

Nvidia has changed the way they do driver updates. You can no longer use rollback or system restore to get back your original driver. You're not supposed to even use the Device Manager. You can't even use safe mode to uninstall PhysX. This guy at EVGA has a lengthy and detailed post on the new techniques for uninstalling/installing Nvidia drivers.

http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=1174372&mpage=1

tunnelcat: I noticed the same update in the Important category on my Win7 Home Premium 32-bit box last week. Mine showed up as follows:

nVidia - Graphics Adapter WDDM1.1, Graphics Adapter WDDM1.2, Other hardware - NVIDIA GeForce 210
Published: 11/13/2012

These sorts of shenanigans are why I only do manual updates and NEVER apply any hardware updates from Microsoft.

I do manual updates too. But I skimmed the list too a little too fast to notice that little sneeky entry. Oops. If I had seen it, I would've hidden the damn thing! I did have on my system the driver version that came out right before the one Microsoft offered, and the Microsoft offering was the newest listed at EVGA. One little version difference, a Windows Update and KBLAM!

[Tunnelcat]

I don't run MSE or any other memory resident antivirus program on my machine. The only time I do is when I'm dropping someone else's drive in a toaster to scan it from my system, then I load MSE or antivir first, drop the drive in and full scan/clean and then uninstall when I'm done. MSE is a bit nicer than antivir in that aspect because it can be installed/uninstalled in a couple seconds with no reboots required.

The rest is a combination of using adblock plus, noscript, and request policy to break/block most vectors that can get you if you happen to stumble across an attack page, and refusing to have adobe pdf reader on my system at all. Also when I go off hunting for something that is likely to cause attack pages to show up in the search results, I do it in a virtual machine instance that gets wiped upon shutdown.

Just for kicks once I installed antivir in a VM, then went on an attack page hunt by searching for stuff like photoshop/3dstudio warez and the like, using firefox without noscript or adblock, just by loading a couple attack pages the VM got hit by some piece of malware that promptly killed antivir and started popping up advertisements on the desktop. I have no doubt that if I had tried it with MSE the result would have been the same. And all the software in the VM was up to date.

Well, I guess MSE has one redeeming quality. You'll know you're infected when it gets killed. I already use Firefox, NoScript, Adblock, Ghostery and WOT. The only thing left to chance is the user giving some page permissions..............

[Spidey]

Ok, my bad…it’s been a long time since I did any video driver updates. The method described is the way I have always done them anyway…so go figure.

In fact, I’m still using the drivers windows installed when I upgraded this machine to Win 7.

Sorry, I should have checked the latest info before opening my big mouth.

[Krom]

I don't use an overclocking application for my video card, I flashed its bios with the modified clocks so the card automatically assumes the correct clock speed even through driver updates with no need for an external utility/application. And actually what I did was took my glitching factory overclocked card back to nvidia reference clocks anyway, so technically its a type of underclock I did.

Requiring the use of driver apocalypse causing GPU overclock utilities is definitely doing it wrong.

[Foil]

tc, you're not the only one. I've actually accidentally installed a WinUpdate-packaged driver (ATI) myself, while not watching my updates carefully. Didn't destroy my install, though. [As Krom implied, this was likely because I didn't have any add-ons or overclocking.] I just had to go back and re-install the driver I wanted to use.

[Tunnelcat]

I don't use an overclocking application for my video card, I flashed its bios with the modified clocks so the card automatically assumes the correct clock speed even through driver updates with no need for an external utility/application. And actually what I did was took my glitching factory overclocked card back to nvidia reference clocks anyway, so technically its a type of underclock I did.

Requiring the use of driver apocalypse causing GPU overclock utilities is definitely doing it wrong.

I'm not using Precision for overclocking. The card runs hot enough without doing that. I only use Precision to monitor temps and run a fan speed profile. It may be overkill, but it's simple and works fine by me.

What's a pain is that some of my games look better, even a couple of older ones and some now have graphics glitches that didn't have them before. One of the reasons I wasn't too hot on updating my driver.

In fact, I’m still using the drivers windows installed when I upgraded this machine to Win 7.

Heh, my HP Touchsmart is still using a 2 year old GT 230 with the original 186.60 driver and even though it has a touch screen, Microsoft hasn't yet tried to force a driver update on it. Probably to old for Windows 8.

[Sirius]

I'm not sure what the reason is, but I've used an HP TouchSmart for testing Win8. I really don't recommend it - the accuracy of that screen is awful.

[Tunnelcat]

Thanks for warning me. I won't even try to install Windows 8 on that system.

[TheBenjaminStilton]

But there are no Twinkies!

[Isaac]

LPT: use quotes, or people will assume you're referring to the post directly above you.

example:

Ok, my bad…

YES IT IS, YOUR BAD!

[Spidey]

Not if the context can’t apply to the post above.

I was speaking directly to tc, the only person in this thread I had anything to say to. (until now)