Windows 10 Warning: Anger At Microsoft Rises With Serious New Failure

Forbes ^ | Feb 6, 2020 | Gordon Kelly

[dayglored]

Windows 10 may now be essential but users new and old have had a rough ride in recent weeks. And it has just gotten a lot worse after a new, high-profile Windows 10 failure has left more questions than answers and some seriously angry users.

The drama began yesterday [2/5] as Windows 10 users suddenly found that Search was broken with a black bar showing where search results should be, even for those who tried to perform a local search of their files. Breaking with tradition (1,2,3,4,5), Microsoft was fast to act blaming “a temporary server-side issue”. But the explanation instead kicked a hornet’s nest. First, the fix doesn’t work for everyone. Second, and more worryingly, Microsoft’s explanation doesn’t add up and it has prompted serious questions to be asked about how the operating system works and what personal data it is sharing.

Popular Microsoft pundit Woody Leonard led the charge, writing: “If you believe that yesterday’s worldwide crash of Windows 10 Search was caused by a bad third-party fiber provider, I have a bridge to sell you.”

In an open letter to new Windows head Panos Panay, Susan ‘Patch Lady’ Bradley was similarly sceptical, noting that today “we all found out that our local search boxes are somehow dependent on some service working at Microsoft.” She attacked the company for a lack of transparency and gave it a maximum ‘Pinocchio score’ for a lack of trust.

“Microsoft has been working to unify search experience across Windows, Bing, and Office 365 products...Microsoft’s efforts to supercharge the search box has many advantages, but such problems are ruining the company’s reputation,” said Windows Latest, in a stark warning.

[Note: Embedded links and more text at the source]

[dayglored]

>> “MSFT and APPLE are converting all desk/lap top PC’s to the ANDROID/IOS format”
> Source, please.

Ummm, yeah, second that request. Huh?

(I haven't read all the way downthread so you might have already answered this.....)

[dayglored]

> Yep. I got this problem too on my W10 business laptop. We also use Office 365.

My company switched to Office 365 a couple months ago and it's been a nightmare. That's all I'll say...

[dayglored]

> Windows Search was broken? Gee, how could a person tell?

LOL that was my reaction at work with the first user complaint: "Hey, Search is busted!"

I wrote back: "How can you tell?"

GMTA.

[Varmint Al]

I run Linux Mint 19.3 Cinnamon and Amazon prime movies play just fine with Firefox. I can copy my complete system to another hard drive and put it another computer and it boots up and works. All the drivers are included in the kernel. Computing was never so easy and reliable.

Good Hunting... from Varmint Al

[Fightin Whitey]

Speaking from experience.

Glad yours was better.

[The Great RJ]

Windows 10 updates fried my copy of Photoshop Elements 15. It worked when I first installed Windows 10 pro 64 bit in 2018 but sometime in 2019 an update made it non functional. I've searched the Internet for fixes and all involve various registry hacks. I've had problems with other third party software too but most have been resolved with updates from the third party vendors. I will probably need to.purchase a newer version of Photoshop Elements to get the problem hopefully resolved.

[georgiegirl]

Thank you so much for your answer. I do use duck duck go rather than google...have not had any issues.

[AbolishCSEU]

I do IT for a county in upstate NY. We are starting to roll out VDI but we are also migrating to win 10. I run a powershell script to dump provisioned apps, (like xbox stuff), use app locker to policy out stuff they don’t need, turn off edge experience, most telemetrics, welcome window, cortana, then I image the device.

I have to keep map location service on because the sheriff dept uses gps and i use gpsgate to split the signal for 2-3 different applications.

[AbolishCSEU]

let me guess....ver 1903? that also can cause wireless connections to not reconnect after restart

[Sgt_Schultze]

...but such problems are ruining the company’s reputation,”

You’d have thought BSOD or Windows ME had already taken care of that reputation thing.

[daltec]

Thanks! One of the things I am starting to see more of is the built-in Windows apps like photo viewer will simply stop working over time. I get all sorts of weird error messages about being unable to connect to the Windows Store. But these apps evidently have to connect to the store to work properly.

I try various fixes, which work for a time, but the problems always come back. For one user, I had to install a 3rd party image viewer just so he could review floor plans for the events he manages.

And of course, the problems are never consistent from one user to the next. I like your idea about imaging from a known default that you have set up, but I have had problems when trying to zap all of the included Microsoft stuff. Is your script customized for your organization?

Thanks!

[Still Thinking]

Yeah, saving your documents on a cloud server [eyeroll]

1) What could paddock go wrong

2) Who “thought” this was a good idea? (except the cloud server guy)

[CodeToad]

I remember the 1990’s with “managed services”. It was a dumb idea then and it is not smartly done even today.

Cloud = “We own it, you don’t.”

[AbolishCSEU]

although the store shows up as a provisioned app, don’t remove it as it breaks the os