Windows 10

This is noob level support, but maybe try creating a new user and see if it still happens on the new account.

Sounds like there might be a process running in the logged-in account that’s preventing the shutdown, and since it’s in shutdown mode you are unable to interrupt it to login to the account in question. Someone more tech-knowledgeable than I may have some pointers, but perhaps enabling verbose shutdown messages will help in tracking down the problem: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/enable-verbose-status-message-windows.

Sorry I didn’t get a chance to respond earlier, but huge thanks for posting this. Really appreciate it.

— Alan

No problem!

stusser, any idea why the key is so cheap there? I left your link open in another tab for a minute, and when I switched back, a “pick a coin to win!” flash pop-up had appeared. But you feel safe giving your CC number to that site?

I assume they’re grey-market keys from regions with cheaper prices.

I actually use PayPal, I don’t give them my credit card.

I’ve bought around a dozen keys from Kinguin so far with no problems at all, and all but one were games. In fact I’ve never really heard of anyone having problems with any title other than Guild Wars 2. Never buy GW2 expansions or gems from anywhere other than the sites they list as OK.

Well, the April update finally popped up on my PC. I was in no hurry to get it, so just waited until I was promoted to install. Took about a half hour. No major hassles right away, just minor annoyances like changing my background and putting an Edge icon on the desktop. We’ll see if anything more serious comes up in the next few days.

Did you have to give them your real address? If so, did that concern you?

I just checked and I did give them my old address. I moved since then but what’re they gonna do, show up with an entrenching tool and threaten me?

Haha yeah who knows. I also saw they apparently will allow bitcoin purchases but you have to have Euros as your base currency. Which is interesting but kind of takes the whole privacy aspect out the window if you have to put in your address and already IP detects you…

— Alan

Man the major Win10 updates just do not get along with my laptop.

1703 blew up my Office install (various stuff flat out crashed Office, particularly Onenote, documented in this thread above) which required a reinstall to fix

After I finally let 1803 through this past week, it somehow blew up DirectX (…Bad Image - dxgi.dll is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error…) and apparently a bunch of other stuff. Rendering a ton of shit unusable - Edge/Vivaldi/Firefox all crashing (Chrome still managed to work - OpenGL I guess?). And apparently it’s a prerequisite for start menu search (Cortana now?) so that also broke.
sfc /scannow wasn’t able to repair since apparently it’s cache also got exploded, so had to f all back onto Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth and a repeat.

Still going to keep my main desktop on Win 8.1 for the foreseeable future it seems.

Microsoft has more competitors now than ever, I guess. But, are they really in such dire straits that they can’t do adequate testing? Is mobile hurting them badly?

Microsoft pushed 1803 to my main PC over the weekend, so far 2 BSODs, both were random, one during a Fortnite load and the other surfing the web.

:|

1803 has been a mess for me as well. It’s fine on its own, but the very first cumulative update kills the start menu and all window apps (like calc) Reinstalling windows saved the start menu, but store apps such as calc are still bonked.

I let support rummage through my computer on the off chance that they could do something, only to be told that my hardware “is not compatible windows 10”. Ok.

I’d customized my work Win10 machine so the current focused window had bold title bar text. Latest update apparently killed that ability. Thanks Microsoft, fuck you too.

Cortana tells me I can use her to give voice commands for things like search and apps. But is it possible to tie voice commands to hotkeys? In one of my software I’m constantly having to flip between frames and have to contort to reach my keyboard over my tablet. It would be much easier to say “forward” and “back” and have the voice command tie it to the “,” and “.” keys so I don’t have to press them. Possible?

You could presumably do that with Voice Attack.

So folks, I’m about to get Windows 10 due to building a new machine, so what do I need to turn off automatic updates, keep it from sending all my shit to Microsoft and all that nonsense?

I know I could Google it but I trust you guys more. ;)

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

There’s a long list of domain names attributed to Microsof you can block in your hosts file.
There’s also the Group Policy settings you can apply using “gpedit.msc”.
Services to disable (services.msc)
Etc.

Shutup10 probably does 80-90% of everything you’ll need to disable. For the rest you can probably just install a good firewall, like Comodo Internet Security and block everything outgoing from your computer that you haven’t initiated yourself (just make sure you allow DHCP if you use that).