Saturday, October 08

Rant

The Fun Never Starts

So, Azusa, my shiny Dell notebook, got unceremoniously murdered by an errant Windows update (as if there were any other kind).

I can get it to boot in safe mode (which is now completely undiscoverable - if you don't know how to reach safe mode, you will never find it).*  Windows 10 has apparently lost the network and video drivers, which means that when booting normally I get a black screen and no network access.  Booting into safe mode loads the default video drivers, which don't work right on this hardware (it has dual video controllers and a 4K screen) but work enough.

I downloaded the network drivers, put them on a USB drive, and copied them onto the Azusa - because once the network is working again, I can download anything else I need.

And you know what?  You can't install drivers while running in safe mode.  And since the drivers are broken, I can't run anything when I'm not in safe mode.

Thanks a whole lot, Microsoft.

Apparently the solution is:
REG ADD "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Network\MSIServer" /VE /T REG_SZ /F /D "Service"
net start msiserver
Which is about as undiscoverable as you can get.

And I have to type that by hand.  I can't copy and paste because the drivers are broken.


* Shift-click the power button in the login screen, then reboot.**  That will give you a menu where you can choose safe mode, and, you guessed it, reboot again.

I think a mid-level manager at Microsoft asked his team "How can we make things as annoying as possible for someone who is already having a very bad day?" and they then had a very productive brainstorming session.

** How undiscoverable is it?  I just did it, and I still didn't know how to do it.  You click the power button, and then shift-click the restart option.  Shift-clicking the power button itself does you no good at all.  And holding down shift gives you no indication that anything has changed.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:40 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 335 words, total size 3 kb.

1 When my old PC up-chucked and died on me a few months back, I replaced it with a Mac Mini.  One of the reasons I chose an Apple was to avoid dealing with Windows 10.  I seems I made the right decision.

Posted by: Peter the Not-so-Great at Monday, October 10 2016 09:43 AM (jS1F0)

2 Windows 10 itself isn't bad, but the update process is a a colossal mess.  I do have a Mac as well, but that has its own problems.  Mostly not because things are broken, but because they are working precisely as designed rather than the way I need them to work.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, October 10 2016 07:33 PM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment




Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




42kb generated in CPU 0.0168, elapsed 0.3041 seconds.
58 queries taking 0.294 seconds, 208 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.