Any computer buffs here? Need a bit of advice.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Well, I’m back and seeking advice about my recent crash, which seemed VERY eccentric to me.

On Sat 21 Nov, I foolishly pressed 'yes' on a Microsoft ad to upgrade my system to Windows 10 free. Started the upgrade at 10.00 PM and it went on, and on and on. After a bit it seemed to stop, but didn’t close down, and I went to bed. Got up at 2.00 AM for a piddle and had a look to see how it was doing and there was a message saying words to the effect of upgrade failed, repairing hard drive and reinstalling Windows 7. In the morning, however, there was another message; this from Explorer.exe 'The application failed to start correctly: press OK to terminate the application.' I did and got a blank screen. After much messing around, I worked out that Explorer had got buggered somehow and I didn't have a working operating system. Of course, this was Sunday...Phoned our local computer repair shop Monday morning and left a message to call me back. Still no call  

Monday afternoon, my wife reported she couldn't get the internet, which had been working fine all day Sunday and Mon morning. Worked out that the router had gone west. Phoned our phone company and, after much discussion and arguing, persuaded them on Wed eve to send us a new router. So we missed our Christmas delivery slot from EVERY online grocer!

Router arrived Friday. I decided to restore my system from the reference discs I got when I bought it in 2011. Did that and found a way of doing it that meant I didn't lose much data and all except iTunes was fine. Very happy. By Saturday morning, I'd got everything, including the new router, working fine, and spent the day shuffling stuff around to get things the way I like them. Shut down at 10.00 PM Saturday night and found that Microsoft had sent me 246 updates!!!! Well, the system I was running was four or five years old. So I watched it for half an hour and it seemed to be doing OK. When it got to number 70, it got stuck. Didn't move. Went to bed midnight and it was still installing #70. And still on Sunday morning. So I turned the bugger off, then turned it back on. Still worked...

BUT - I'd got an outdated Windows 7. I was getting a message from Yahoo to say that I was using an unsupported browser and I'd better upgrade it so I could get all the full wonders of Yahoo. And on Organissimo, I could neither post nor send messages, no doubt for the same reason.

Closed down on Sunday night and found that the system wanted to continue shoving updates at me. Never knew you COULD stop an update and it would restart on the next shut down. Anyway, it started off doing update 153 of 246! So what happened to #71 to #152? I assume that, while it continued to SAY it was doing #70, it was doing all those others. But it CAN’T have taken ten hours to get to #152… or can it?

Anyway, I gave it 45 minutes and it continued to SAY it was doing #153, so I turned it off again, thinking it might have done a few more secretly. Turned it off at lunchtime today and it said it was doing update #1 of 83. But, miraculously, it finished that lot and closed down in good shape. And I found I could post onto Organissimo and Yahoo wasn’t complaining about my old operating system.

However, I just had a look at the Windows start screen and it’s showing me I’ve got another bunch of updates queued up for the next time I shut down.

So, what’s going on? Well, I can quite understand that, with all the messing around I’ve done, there’s gonna be some stuff missing and that would probably lead to inconsistencies. I’m surprised that it did what it did, but I’ve gotta say, it was pretty all right altogether. But are there any computer experts out there who can tell me what WAS going on? Like…

Why might the upgrade to Windows 10 have failed? I had plenty of spare space on my hard drive - about 120 gb.

Why, when it said it was reinstalling Windows 7, didn’t it do that properly?

What happens with these big updates? Is it possible that a big wodge of updates might be EXPECTED to take twenty-four hours or so? This seems kind of unreasonable to me, especially with no warning.

Any advice or info would be welcome.

I also need to get iTunes because it keeps saying it doesn't work without Apple Application Support and I should uninstall it then reinstall. But I don't know how to uninstall a non-working programme that isn't installed and included in the control panel list. I've heard bad things here about v12, which is what they're doing now, so I always refuse to upgrade to it. But I don't suppose I've no alternative now. More advice on this would be helpful, folks.

MG

[JSngry]

If I was a guessing man (and since I'm not a trained IT guy, I am just that), I'd guess that your Windows 10 download got stifled by a buggy router and/or IP block.

Before I went to fiber-optic net, I had Time-Warner Cable internet (and before that, DSL, and before that, standard dial-up). My actual IP was a regional group called Internet America (ironic, eh?), but Time Warner was the deliverer of what Internet America provided. What could possibly go wrong?

Right?

As my internet usage ev olved, I noticed that more and more, updates or any other potentially larger downloads would seldom complete, they would time out first. IA said it was a TW issue, TW said it was an IA issue, and when I finally got them both on the phone simultaneously, it was TW who ended up putting me on hold never to return and IA saying SEE? We told you this was what it was.

And what it was was that somewhere in the TW chain, which was really just a block or two up into my house, they were throttling/limiting/whatever downloads of over a certain size that didn't complete in  a certain amount of time. The more prime time you were, the less of a window they gave you to complete before stalling you out.

I switched to Verizon Fios about a week later and as if by magic, all my downloads started happening in a nice, timely, and most importantly, complete fashion.

You're in kind of a semi-rural area, right? Between that and the probably buggy router waiting to die, I think that's a safe-enough guess as to what went wrong with that.

But - now you've got a 2011 version of 7 racing against itself to keep up with god knows how many updates. some of those newer updates are rendered obsolete by subsequent ones, so don't wig on the counting system. And preferably, don't shut down in the middle of an update until the computer tells you to (and it will). It's not supposed to make a difference, but hell, this is Microsoft, they sort of expect you to think for yourself sometimes, and if you guess wrong, hey, that's what Apples are for!

I skipped my 7 updates for about a year and a half, and when I got around to doing it a few moths ago, yeah, it took several gothroughs until they finally got caught up. But they did. You just gotta leave it alone to do its thing, it won't respond to imposed deadlines and shit like that.

And oh yeah - check to see that, for right now anyway, you're just doing the "critical"(?) updates and not the "optional" ones. That will save you some time, and you can always come back later to see what of the optional ones you really feel are desirable.

I've not yet been extended the "invitation" to update to Windows 10 (they're rolling it out in segments), and I can't say I've heard a LOT of horror stories about it...and some people are actually quite please, especially those that got suckered into 8. So if you feel like you NEED to update, Microsoft will be more than happy to take your hit on their website and run like hell with it.

As for iTunes, can't help you there. I stopped updating mine a long time ago, since it more and more got cross-platformy, like what, you DON'T have an iPhonewatchtv yet? Well, you SHOULD if you want this shit to work like we want it to! I just use it for my iPod, for how much ever longer that's going to last. I'm told that if you know somebody who knows how to do such things, there are places to go to get older versions. But that's jsut what I'm told.

 

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Thanks Jim - that's very helpful to know. And I can well imagine that up here in the Valleys, I'm going to get limits. No one admits to anything, however. I got another 72 updates thrust at me last night and, after just over an hour, it was stuck, so I turned it off. I turned it on at 6 AM today and it did all 72 in 75 minutes! I think I won't let the machine shut down normally in the evenings, which seems to be a peak usage time (10.00 PM), but do the proper shutdowns at 6.00 AM, as today, when no other bugger in the world is up and about :G

BTW, it's not the router's fault; all this happened AFTER we got the new one, which works fine. Well, seems to, anyway.

Thanks once again.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

No, that can't be right, because I invariably turn the router off well before I close down in the evening. And didn't turn it on this morning until after breakfast, by which time the updates were done. So it's still a mystery. But anyway, in the morning, I'm less in a hurry to get some shuteye, so I could let it run.

Oh well...

M

[JSngry]

I think the old router might have been a part of your 10 debacle...it went out after you had begun reinstalling 7, right?

Also...if you're running a wireless network in your house, try connecting your computer directly to the router with a LAN cable for the updates instead of running them wirelessly. Shortest distance between two points, and all that.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

If you think it's the wireless router, buy an ethernet cable and hardwire your PC to the router to see if that helps. You should be able to get one pretty cheap from Monoprice.

If it's your internet provider throttling you back, try doing the updates at off hours. Many providers throttle you back during peak usage times so doing your updates during their slow period may help avoid this problem.

BTW, I thought that a lawsuit was settled recently that made it "illegal" to have your internet connection throttled?

[Dave Garrett]

I think Jim's guesses are probably correct - it sounds like your internet connection either went down completely or got extremely slow at some point during the attempted upgrade to Win10, and it caused something in the upgrade to get irretrievably buggered up. The failed restore to Win7 could've been caused by any number of things - no idea there. 

As far as the seemingly never-ending queue of updates, that's not uncommon if you're restoring back to something approaching factory default settings and then trying to bring it up to current patch levels. When I upgraded my wife's arthritic laptop from Vista to 7 last year, the actual upgrade didn't take all that long, but pulling all the updates down and installing them took several hours and multiple restarts. Windows Update is pretty good about recovering from an unexpected shutdown in the midst of the update process; we've had power outages on several occasions that have forced me to attempt to shut down both of our desktop computers before the batteries in the UPS ran down, and every time there have been updates in the queue that started to install during shutdown. Since the batteries in the UPS are only good for 10 minutes or so, the updates didn't finish installing before the computers ran out of juice and shut down in a suboptimal fashion. As soon as the power came back on, I fired up Windows Update again and it figured out what had been installed and what hadn't, then picked up from there smoothly. IIRC, the default setting is for it to install Important updates - you have to manually select the Optional ones if you want to install them. I recommend treading lightly there, as I've had to roll back Optional updates before (usually new hardware drivers) when they caused my machine to blue-screen immediately upon restart. It pays to click the "more info" link on the Optional updates and determine exactly what they are for before deciding whether to install them or not. 

If you decide to try the Win10 upgrade again at some point, keep in mind that you will be relinquishing control over the decision to apply non-Optional updates or not - with most non-corporate versions of Win10, Microsoft is forcing users to accept updates, and you will only be able to postpone them for a limited time before you have to install them. They are trying to migrate everyone to a brave new world where the OS becomes just like "software as a service" applications. 

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

On ‎01‎/‎12‎/‎2015‎ ‎13‎:‎40‎:‎25, JSngry said:

I think the old router might have been a part of your 10 debacle...it went out after you had begun reinstalling 7, right?

Also...if you're running a wireless network in your house, try connecting your computer directly to the router with a LAN cable for the updates instead of running them wirelessly. Shortest distance between two points, and all that.

Yeah, but my wife said her computer, including internet link, had been working better than ever before while I was out - well, for a day and a half. She said she hoped I didn't EVER get back online

Anyway, the problem seems to have sorted itself out, in the way you said it would. I got more updates and it did them OK, now I'm not getting any more, so I'm assuming the thing's OK.

Meanwhile, my wife's has gone cranky again. I guess there's insufficient bandwidth to handle two computers simultaneously up here on the top of the valley. In any case her laptop's about eight years old and deserves a boot into the bin. She's going to get a tablet at Christmas, same as our daughter, and get daughter to teach her how to use it.

But why the router should give preference to my computer, which is upstairs of the router, rather than hers, which is right beside it, is a mystery to me. Perhaps it doesn't like her e-mails

MG

12 hours ago, Dave Garrett said:

I think Jim's guesses are probably correct - it sounds like your internet connection either went down completely or got extremely slow at some point during the attempted upgrade to Win10, and it caused something in the upgrade to get irretrievably buggered up. The failed restore to Win7 could've been caused by any number of things - no idea there. 

As far as the seemingly never-ending queue of updates, that's not uncommon if you're restoring back to something approaching factory default settings and then trying to bring it up to current patch levels. When I upgraded my wife's arthritic laptop from Vista to 7 last year, the actual upgrade didn't take all that long, but pulling all the updates down and installing them took several hours and multiple restarts. Windows Update is pretty good about recovering from an unexpected shutdown in the midst of the update process; we've had power outages on several occasions that have forced me to attempt to shut down both of our desktop computers before the batteries in the UPS ran down, and every time there have been updates in the queue that started to install during shutdown. Since the batteries in the UPS are only good for 10 minutes or so, the updates didn't finish installing before the computers ran out of juice and shut down in a suboptimal fashion. As soon as the power came back on, I fired up Windows Update again and it figured out what had been installed and what hadn't, then picked up from there smoothly. IIRC, the default setting is for it to install Important updates - you have to manually select the Optional ones if you want to install them. I recommend treading lightly there, as I've had to roll back Optional updates before (usually new hardware drivers) when they caused my machine to blue-screen immediately upon restart. It pays to click the "more info" link on the Optional updates and determine exactly what they are for before deciding whether to install them or not. 

If you decide to try the Win10 upgrade again at some point, keep in mind that you will be relinquishing control over the decision to apply non-Optional updates or not - with most non-corporate versions of Win10, Microsoft is forcing users to accept updates, and you will only be able to postpone them for a limited time before you have to install them. They are trying to migrate everyone to a brave new world where the OS becomes just like "software as a service" applications. 

Lord, luvaduck!

I expect MS will MAKE everyone go to W10 eventually, but I'll definitely try to postpone THAT now I've read your post. Thanks

You and everyone are assuming I do this stuff with the internet on, but I NEVER leave the router switched on after about 9.00PM. It makes me think that I OUGHT to leave it on, but I really don't want to. My wife would be dead worried, trying to go to sleep with anything other than the fridges & freezers, boiler and a clock switched on. No one's ever said I should leave the router on at night. I know lots of people do and you hear stories of geezers driving up in radio vans at night and riffling through the house owners' PC data on the QT.

MG

[Kevin Bresnahan]

If your router has sufficient WiFi protection turned on, you should be OK with leaving it on overnight. Rebooting a router everyday carries its own problems as each time it boots, it has to acquire a new DNS address, which can sometimes cause networking problems. This might be part of your current problem. If I were you, I would make sure that WiFi protection is turned on and leave the router on all the time.

As for getting a tablet... if you want to use your wife's old laptop as a simple web browser, just download and install Ubuntu (Linux) on it. It comes with everything you need to get on line and it cannot get viruses. You'll be amazed at how fast it will run too. Even better, don't shut it down when you're done, just close the lid (suspend). When you open the cover and it comes back alive, you'll be back on line in about 20 seconds. I have several laptops running Ubuntu and I love it.

[mjzee]

Kevin, can you install Ubuntu on an iPad?

[Kevin Bresnahan]

1 hour ago, mjzee said:

Kevin, can you install Ubuntu on an iPad?

To put it simply, no. But is there a reason why would you'd want to?

Edited December 2, 2015 by Kevin Bresnahan

[Scott Dolan]

No. 

[mjzee]

2 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

To put it simply, no. But is there a reason why would you'd want to?

Older iPads slow to a crawl.  Ubuntu might make them a lot zippier.

[Scott Dolan]

Ubuntu did a release for Android-based portable devices, but Apple does not support it. You can jailbreak an iPad and try to get Ubunta to run on it, but you'll simply end up with the most unstable tablet on the planet even if you're tech savvy enough to make it work. 

Ubunta is for laptops and the erstwhile netbook, not for the iPad. 

[JSngry]

5 hours ago, The Magnificent Goldberg said:

 ...you hear stories of geezers driving up in radio vans at night and riffling through the house owners' PC data on the QT.

MG

If they can do that at night, they can do it by day. And if your protection is adequate enough that they can't do it during the day, then they won't be able to do it at night.

An occasional reboot/power cycle of everything is a good idea in general. But a daily on-off really isn't necessary for computers/networks unless there's batteries involved and/or potential heat damage going on.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Heat is the thing that's worrying. The computers' transformers are on the carpet and pretty warm at the end of the day. The router gets hot, too. My Missus, in particular, but I too, don't like stuff on at night. Fridge/freezers are standing on stone or concrete floors, so they're not much of a worry.

What I worried about was that extensive updates wouldn't work properly because they NEEDED web access while they were doing. That doesn't seem to be the case.

I realise our computer security is just as open daytime as night time, but a geezer sitting outside in a van is gonna be noticed during the day.

MG

[JSngry]

They need web access to download, of course, but not to install(?)...and Windows Update is very good about starting back up where it left off when you power up, it'll take care of its business before giving you over to yours.

How hot does your router get, anyway? How big is it? Just asking out of curiosity...our router is about the size of cigar box, a little thinner.

And I remember the days when a stranger or a strange vehicle outside your house raised an eyebrow...it's been a long time, though.

Different worlds!

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Yes, Windows Update finished updating me a couple of days ago, so I've assumed I was OK.

Downloaded iTunes 12. Dislike it somewhat more than 11 but not disablingly so. I don't think it likes me storing my music on an external hard drive rather than on the C: drive. I moved it all after the crash. I suspect each time I connect to iTunes and plug in the external I'll have to delete everything in iTunes and introduce it all to the programme again, if I want to sync more stuff to the iPod. Oh well; I'll try it once and give up if it's a total pain.

Yes, those days are still with us in this old mining village. I imagine it's still like that in similar ex-mining areas in the Appalachians.

MG