Windows and Its Damned Forced Actions

Windows is an asshole. Windows 10 in particular is an asshole. To the point that I wish we could all just go back to Windows XP or whatever. But it’s not just any asshole. It’s an asshole that does things without asking you about it.

While I am writing this article, I am supposed to be working. I have a bunch of stuff that needs doing, from website updates to artwork for labels and swing tickets. Right now, I can’t do any of that. Why? Because I had the audacity to leave a particular external hard drive plugged into my computer when I shut it down, and didn’t unplug said hard drive when I booted up again. Because I happened to turn on my computer and not stare intently at the dark screen and instead decided to get a glass of water, I missed a 10 second countdown for CHKDSK to start scanning and repairing this hard drive that I didn’t ask for.

It’s been an hour now. The scan is on 11%. A scan that can’t really be cancelled.

I’m not mad at the scan though. I am mad at the fact that my computer with Windows 10 did this on its own. Windows 10 does a huge amount of things on its own. Like Windows updates. Sure, Windows tries to be nice and friendly with the updates but unless you know how to turn them off or set your own settings, you’ll eventually get a prompt that you need to restart. Either in a bit or right now.

But we can’t even TRUST Windows 10 to do updates properly. Alright, not every update is going to run smoothly because of how many computer setups there are out there, but plenty of cases exist where one has to roll back because of an update gone wrong. I’ve seen it happen. I have had to reinstall Windows because of it.

I particularly like how Windows will replace the Shut Down and Restart buttons on the start menu with “Update and Shut Down” and “Update and Restart” buttons. That one feels great after a long day of work.

But it’s not just updates. There are other things too. Like the fact that all my desktop icons get rearranged after some updates. Or Windows will turn some settings back on. Or ignore the fact that you have graphics drivers installed. Or when Microsoft decided no one wanted MSPaint any more and planned to get rid of it. It’s mainly the forced updates that bother me but there are always tiny little things that Windows seems to do without informing US, the users.

Look, I get it, you want everyone to be up to date. But people don’t want to always be up to date and they might have options and settings they like which they don’t want to be changed. And of you ARE going to force changes, then give us more than 10 fucking seconds to do so. I should be the one who starts a disk check, not Windows. Recommend change, don’t force change, because people hate change and hate being forced to change even more.

This all sounds like a good advert for switching to a new operating system. But that ain’t happening. Most people use Windows and being the minority that uses Linux or anything Apple-based is no fun because all you do is run into compatibility issues. This has gotten better over the years but we are still a long way off from being able to have everything on every operating system. Plus, I kinda don’t trust the average person with Linux and for a lot of things (like games), I still have to run WINE or similar anyway.

So we’re all kinda stuck with this shit.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for CHKDSK to finish. 16% completed. Ugh.