Windows 8 Customers Fuming Over Spotty Updates


Recommended Posts

I remember this argument when the RRoD on the XBox 360 came up. Turned out that the very vast majority of XBox 360's from the first 2 years resulted in RRoD. Turned out that all the people saying what you just said, were dead wrong.

the difference here is that all 360s have the same hardware, not quite true with the PC market

Having received two show-stoppers in a row, many Windows 8 users are now threatening to go Apple.

"I do blame Microsoft because unlike Apple who don't claim to support ever piece of hardware out there Microsoft do actually claim this otherwise they would have gone down the same route as Apple and only built their own hardware," said one user. "So it Microsoft's fault for not having a test pool large enough to stop most people from running into problems like this. It would appear that windows 8 is suffering like Vista did."

"Maybe I should just uninstall Windows 8 and go get a Mac," said another.

LOL WAT?

So they had a problem with Windows and they're ready to jump to another platform? Must be raining money these days. And Apple is better because...it doesn't support more drivers then Microsoft? :laugh: oh dear..

and finally...yeah just uninstall Windows 8 (and leave your laptop/desktop without an OS :D ) and got get a Mac... :rofl:

So after looking at the KB, it's a problem with the Out of Date AV software or 3rd party drivers..... not really sure how this is MS's problem TBH...

Agreed, with millions of potential out of date computers being upgraded, is this even news? Next, Windows 8 will fail because it won't install on old CPUs without the NX bit flag.

Sheesh between this and politics it's like the AMD vs Intel forum wars all over again...everyone acting like children because they can :p

Very much agree with the early adopter point. Even 7 had early adopter pain. They all do.

I couldn't install KB2756872 on my PC as the update would fail and revert changes at 98% and the same thing happened when installing the newer cumulative updates and adding the Windows Media Center feature. My laptop had no problems installing these updates and Media Center.

The problem was caused by an activation issue. I tried uninstalling my product key and reactivating and that didn't work. I was finally able to fix the issue by importing the activation info of a fresh install that I temporarily installed. I was then able to install the updates and add the Media Center feature to my installation. It had taken hours of troubleshooting and was very frustrating. I was very pleased when I could finally install the updates. :)

It becomes a show stopper when these people's computers become part of a botnet because their computer cannot receive updates. I mean seriously, since when did having outdated AntiVirus software ever screw up OS hotfixing? Unless these people tried to force install incompatible A/V software, that sounds like a poor excuse to me.

Did you miss the thread on Neowin about the guy who force-installed Norton 2007 on Windows 8 and ran into issues?

People do it all the time. Often unknowingly since they don't know about things like patchguard.

  • Like 2

Today I had to do system restore and apply updates again because WIFI stopped working magically after like a day or so...

W8 is as stable as radiation is not poisonous.

Sorry, seems to me most of the vocal ones do have to use it and more importantly, support it.

I'd wager that the majority of the people using and supporting windows 8 are doing just fine without raging about it. Most of us know what to look for in these instances and would rather debug it and be done with it or offer a solution vs the stuff I read here with people wishing failure upon Microsoft.

I don't run much mac or android and I sure as hell don't have the time to rage about their issues/bugs in forums.. seems odd people have plenty of time to do noting but bash and complain

Today I had to do system restore and apply updates again because WIFI stopped working magically after like a day or so...

W8 is as stable as radiation is not poisonous.

Radiation isn't poisonous :)

What WiFi chipset do you have?

My old laptop has an issue where the WiFi card will stop working, not sure if it's just Win8 but that's the only OS it's been running since the issue. to get it to work again, I pretty much have to shut down the computer and use the WiFi on off switch while off and/or during power on. but the ocmputer need to be shut down completely, so I need to use the restart function.

I put the blame on this on the WiFI card and bad drivers, and the fact that historically, all computers with a physical on off switch for the WiFi card have had problems with them

Which means these people are lying?

Lying? No. Partaking of a healthy serving of hyperbole with their "most" comments? Absolutely.

No update problems here. All works fine apart from the irritating store bug where the live tile claims there are updates when there aren't.

Two machines:

4-year old Dell XPS M1330 (Vista 32bit->Win7 64bit->Win8 Pro 64bit RTM)

ASUS TF600T Win8 Tablet

Both devices fully updated last Tuesday and running strong since.

On the Dell notebook, had crashing trouble with 4965AGN drivers, then intel released updated drivers through Microsoft Update. Patched and all was good again ;-)

Cheers

This is rather silly to be honest. I mean, let's be honest. These users have no intention of going Apple. It's just a threat because the average consumer now thinks that's how best to get their way.

If it is a driver issue, I would hope that the OEM's got this taken care of as soon as possible, but that is ultimately who is responsible. It is unfortunate that companies like Microsoft don't point things like this out more often.

Sheesh between this and politics it's like the AMD vs Intel forum wars all over again...everyone acting like children because they can :p

Very much agree with the early adopter point. Even 7 had early adopter pain. They all do.

Agreed. I think we have to accept at this point that the average consumer *IS* a child...

Person gets glitch/issues with new Windows version:

"Windows is terrible, I'm getting a Mac!"

The technology world is becoming like politics, same stuff thrown around every couple years.

I am curious, when was the last time AV or hardware driver actually prevented a windows update from installing?

Last time I had to do anything other than let automatic updates do its thing was Windows XP SP2 - had to disable my AV for it to update.

The issues are technically down to the third parties involved, but Microsoft has to take a little bit of responsibility for changing something in the update that is going to cause massive issues in specific circumstances. If an AV literally needs to be disabled, why not display a message as such then use action center to confirm (ie. "oh noes you have no AV enabled" = update can go ahead)? If a driver has to be updated, why not display a message or try to find the updated driver prior to running the update that requires it?

Fortunate thing is despite the issues it seems to be recovering itself completely rather than just stuffing things up permanently.

I am curious, when was the last time AV or hardware driver actually prevented a windows update from installing?

In this case it's out of date AV that doesn't support the OS on which it has been installed. and due to the way AV's incorporate into the OS and kernel, running an unsupported one will not only make your system unstable, it also may nto provide any protection and will cause problems like this.

  • Like 2

I am curious, when was the last time AV or hardware driver actually prevented a windows update from installing?

Happened in Vista (iirc) and 7, that's why they had to update the servicing stack and update the service pack installers here and there.

Of course back then it often just hosed the OS instead of not installing.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • AltSendme 0.4.1 by Razvan Serea AltSendme is a minimal, cross-platform application designed for fast, secure, and private peer-to-peer file transfers. It allows users to send files or entire directories directly between devices without relying on cloud servers, accounts, or any personal information. Everything is encrypted end-to-end using modern protocols like QUIC and TLS 1.3, ensuring both strong security and low-latency performance. Transfers are verified with BLAKE3 for data integrity, and interrupted downloads automatically resume, making the experience reliable even on unstable connections. You can transfer anything—images, videos, documents, and more. Integrity checks are performed on both ends, so your files are automatically verified for correctness during both sending and receiving. AltSendme works seamlessly across local networks or long-distance links, capable of saturating multi-gigabit connections for extremely fast delivery. With built-in NAT traversal and encrypted relay fallback, it connects devices almost anywhere. The app integrates with the Sendme CLI and will soon support mobile and web platforms. Fully free and open-source, AltSendme offers a lightweight, privacy-first alternative to traditional cloud-based services, removing size limits, upload costs, and unnecessary data exposure. AltSendme 0.4.1 changelog: Release Highlights Self-hosted relays: Run your own iroh relay so transfers don't rely on public infrastructure. Includes a full deployment template in deploy/relay/ with Docker Compose for a VPS and configuration examples for production use. Fly.io support: One-click deploy template for Fly.io, including a quick-start config (fly.dev.toml) for testing without a custom domain, plus production setup with Let's Encrypt and your own hostname. Relay settings UI: New Settings → Network panel to choose how AltSendme connects: automatic public relays, custom self-hosted URLs (with optional auth token), or disabled. Test connections, verify latency, and see live relay status in the footer. Disable relays: Turn off relay servers entirely when you only need same-network transfers (e.g. LAN). Direct connections only. No relay hop required when devices can reach each other. Android graduates from beta: Android is now part of the regular release cycle alongside desktop. APKs ship with each version (universal, arm64, and armv7). Other improvements Private relay access control via shared auth token Relay fallback notifications when a custom relay is unreachable Broadcast mode toggle in sharing settings Android release build fixes (split-per-ABI APKs, universal APK preservation) UI polish: mobile safe-area insets, dropzone layout, transfer progress animation Bug fixes for minification-related serialization issues and system tray icon loading What's Changed feat(relay): add relay status functionality and settings UI (a120cdf) feat(relay): implement custom relay server configuration and verification (51276c7) feat(relay): add configuration for private relay access and enhance observability features (48fbabf) feat(relay): enhance relay URL validation, display connection status (d4fffa0) feat(relay): add RelayChangeGuard component and enhance relay-related translations (16ba514) feat(broadcast): add toggle setting for broadcast mode in sharing UI (ca6d977) fix(relay): correct QUIC discovery port, pin image, templatize fly.dev (52a2ba5) fix: More broken serialization due to minification (67491a9) fix(android): preserve true universal APK across per-ABI builds (e9f256f) fix(ui): conditional safe-area insets padding on mobile (1182f0e) refactor(transfer): CircularRing component animation fix (944572b) chore(android): drop x86 and x86_64 release APKs, keep universal+arm64+armv7 (34ada0b) Download: AltSendme 0.4.1 | ARM64 | ~9.0 MB (Open Source) Download: AltSendme for MacOS | Android Links: AltSendme Home Page | GitHub | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • You are mostly right about the ephemeral nature of it. As I mention in the article, if you dont add a second device or take a backup of your account before uninstalling it, then yes you will lose access to your account. That said, in terms of actual user experience when you sync multiple devices your message history carries across and there's also a Saved Messages chat like there is on Telegram to send messages and attachments between your installs. But yh, what you point out are correct and its not trying to emulate Messenger or Telegram.
    • OK so SearXNG is a meta search engine that you can install locally or use via a public instance. It scrapes other search engines which you choose and then sorts the results. Not as complicated as multiple relays
    • The only difference here is that you think you came up with these reasons. You didn't. These age old fearmongering lies (that were NEVER true) were funded by and the anger stoked by Putin through proxies like Farage (and later in the USA, Trump) and filtered down through the skinheads, Neonazis, etc. until it reached the uninformed, ignorant, and gullible -- never realizing they were being played for fools against their own best interests. Even now, despite all of the EVIDENCE proving that Brexit was a terrible mistake for ALL citizens of the UK and that its supporters were tricked by Putin's proxies into sabotaging their own nation, you're still here defending these well-known lies as if they were ever true. Not only are they not true. They NEVER were. So, when are you going to realize that you were lied to and actually get angry at the liars and charlatans who lied to you, instead of blaming the innocent people they lied to you about?
    • Dupe of "Microsoft further improving Windows 11 Taskbar with latest builds", published <20 minutes apart
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      flexorcist earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Woland13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Woland13 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      bernmeister earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      495
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      225
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      152
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      75
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      71
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!