Microsoft, Patches and updates, Windows 8.x

When ‘Checking for updates…’ takes forever on Windows 8.1

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This week I once again encountered an old nemesis, the infinite ‘Checking for updates…’ Windows Update screen. Not this again! It happened when I was attempting to install the December 2016 updates on my main Windows 8.1 machine.

Is it working? How can you tell?

I tried the usual troubleshooting steps: rebooting, stopping all non-essential processes, the Windows Update troubleshooter, and so on. Nothing helped.

What makes this problem really annoying is that even when Windows Update is working properly, there are long pauses during which nothing appears to be happening. Even looking deeply into the running processes sometimes shows a complete lack of activity. Since a hung Windows Update often looks exactly like Windows Update actually doing something, all you can do is watch helplessly, in growing frustration, until you finally can’t stand it any more and stop the Windows Update process.

After banging my head against this problem for a while, it occurred to me that since most Windows updates are now available in ‘rollup’ form (i.e. packaged together in one update), I could install the appropriate ones manually, which would at least get my computer up to date, and could conceivably also fix Windows Update.

After a bit of searching I found the July 2016 update rollup for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2. One of the prerequisites for this update is the Servicing stack update for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2: July 12, 2016, but that had already been installed in July, so I proceeded to install the rollup. It only took a few minutes.

After rebooting, I tried Windows Update, and ‘Checking for updates’ took about a minute to find December’s Patch Tuesday updates. Yay! I installed those updates and the computer is now fully patched.

It’s difficult to know for sure why this Windows Update problem happens, but it’s depressingly common, as are the sometimes wacky solutions users have proposed. The rollup solution that worked for me may work for others, but there are no guarantees. It’s Windows, after all.

Patches and updates, Vivaldi

Vivaldi 1.6

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Perennial also-ran and ugly duckling web browser Vivaldi gets some much-needed improvements in its newest incarnation, version 1.6.

Bookmark, address bar, and link handling have all been improved. For example, hovering over a bookmark now (finally) shows the bookmark’s URL in the status bar. The oddball bookmark editor is still with us, but at least it doesn’t take up so much space in the sidebar. There’s a new option for opening search results in a new tab. Middle-clicking links and bookmarks to open them in a new tab seems finally to be working consistently. And clicking on a URL in the address bar (again, finally) highlights the URL.

It’s nice to see progress on this potentially useful browser, but there’s still work to do. Bookmarks in the bookmark toolbar can be right-clicked and edited or deleted – unless they’re in a folder. There’s still no option to switch to newly-opened tabs.

I continue to use Vivaldi for social media sites, but not as my main browser. Maybe some day Vivaldi really will supplant Firefox, but it isn’t there yet.

Opera, Patches and updates

Opera 42 released

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A new major release of Opera includes some potentially useful features. The release notes for Opera 42.0.2393.85 provide the details:

  • currency converter: highlight an amount of money on any web page to see the amount in your local currency
  • faster startup times
  • improvements to the built-in newsreader

Opera remains a solid alternative to the big three browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome), although it still doesn’t have a proper bookmark sidebar.

Microsoft, Patches and updates, Things that are bad, Windows 10

Microsoft releases fix for Windows 10 Internet connectivity issues

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Details are sketchy, but apparently a recent Windows 10 update caused major problems for some users. Affected users were suddenly unable to access the Internet. December’s Patch Tuesday (earlier this week) included an update that addresses this problem.

This issue once again raises the question of whether Microsoft can be trusted not to push flawed Windows updates, especially now that updates are essentially mandatory and unavoidable.

Update 2016Dec16: Many of the Knowledge Base pages on the Microsoft support site now include this message at the top: “If you are experiencing issues connecting to the internet we recommend you restart your PC by going to Start, clicking the Power button, then choosing Restart (not Shut down).” No further explanation is provided.

User Interface (UI)

Study shows the reality of user skill levels

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Jakob Nielsen is a renowned usability expert. He recently published the results of a study that looked at users’ ability to complete certain set tasks using a computer. The study, which was performed by the Nielsen Norman Group across thirty-three countries, draws some interesting conclusions.

The study reveals that “only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.”

Implications

For the majority of computer users, accomplishing anything more complicated than the most basic tasks is a struggle. This is almost entirely due to poor user interface design. And the reason for this is simple: the people who create software are always at level 3. They create interfaces that seem perfectly logical and sensible from their own perspective, but which may appear hopelessly complicated to ordinary users.

Solutions

Nielsen’s recommendation to software developers is to “keep it extremely simple, or two thirds of the population can’t use your design.”

I’ve long argued for user interfaces that can be adjusted to the user’s skill level. Microsoft Word is one of the most popular programs of all time, and it’s used by people of all skill levels. But it’s complicated: less-skilled users encounter difficulties with Word frequently. I’d like to see a user skill level setting in Word. At its lowest level, advanced features would be disabled, and the user interface would be locked, thereby preventing accidental changes to the UI such as moving toolbars.

You may have noticed that the user interface for a typical smartphone application is much simpler than an equivalent application on Windows. A smartphone app’s UI uses less screen space, and compensates for the lack of a keyboard, but the net result is an overall simplification. Microsoft has even forced a new smartphone-style interface into Windows 10, with mixed results: while the O/S may be somewhat easier to use for many people, advanced users struggle to find what they need behind the scenes.

Clearly, if computers are ever to become truly easy to use, much work remains.

Ranking yourself

If you take the time to read Nielsen’s article (it’s about four pages), try to determine your skill level based on the criteria he provides. You may be surprised at the results.

Adobe, Edge, Flash, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Patches and updates, Security, Windows

Patch Tuesday for December 2016

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For 2016’s final set of updates, Microsoft has issued twelve bulletins, with associated patches, affecting the usual software, namely Windows, Internet Explorer, Edge, Office, and the .NET Framework. Forty-seven vulnerabilities in all are addressed by these updates.

Adobe issued updates for several of its products today, but the only one likely to be of interest to most people is, of course, Flash. And I mean ‘interest’ in the sense of “I am very interested in not having my computer infected with malware because I visited a malicious web site while running an out-of-date version of Flash.” The new version of Flash on all platforms is 24.0.0.186. It addresses seventeen vulnerabilities in the still-ubiquitous player. As usual, Flash in Internet Explorer and Chrome will be updated automatically.

Hacking

Mr. Robot’s realistic depiction of hacking

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As I read Cory Doctorow’s recent Technology Review post, “Mr. Robot Killed the Hollywood Hacker“, I found myself nodding my head enthusiastically. Anyone who knows much about computers and watches Mr. Robot will have noticed that the show’s depiction of hacking is very different from what we usually see on TV and in movies. The user interface is a text console. Everything is done with arcane text commands. Nothing is flashing, except the prompt. In other words, it’s accurate.

For as long as computers have been shown in movies and TV, they have been depicted as flashy, noisy, exploding, and otherwise utterly fanciful, almost magical devices. Hollywood obviously took one look at reality and collectively said “no way, that’s boring as hell.” So the vast majority of computer depictions in movies and TV are some art director’s crazy fantasy of how a computer should look.

I long ago stopped complaining about this. Nobody wants to listen to me drone on about how unrealistic a computer is in some TV show. Now, I just allow myself to be amused. I told myself that this was just harmless hyperbole, a layer of pizazz added onto reality to make it more entertaining.

But Doctorow makes an interesting point: the traditional depiction of computers by Hollywood isn’t as harmless as it may seem.

The 1983 film WarGames is about a high school kid who accidentally hacks into a military computer and almost starts a global thermonuclear war. There were – and still are – a lot of reasons why this is an unlikely scenario, but hey, this is entertainment. A lot of people saw the film, and most enjoyed it, including me. One of the least realistic parts of the film shows the WOPR computer smoking and burning when it becomes overloaded. Real computers just stop working when they’re overtaxed. Anyway, I didn’t mind the silliness; it’s all good fun, right?

Wrong. Apparently, Wargames got some people in Washington worried about whether a high school kid really could hack into military systems and start a war. In 1984, one year after the release of WarGames, the US Congress passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which made activities related to hacking illegal. The legislation is ill-defined, and overly-broad, and it’s widely seen as pointlessly destructive. It contributed to the suicide of Aaron Swartz, who was being charged with crimes related to the CFAA.

The next time you’re watching a TV show or movie, and see an inaccurate depiction of something, ask yourself: “is this really just a harmless Hollywood convenience?”

Rants and musings on topics of interest. Sometimes about Windows, Linux, security and cool software.

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