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[Eric Blank]

Had to help bandage the dog after she got in a fight. Passed out on the floor next to her, like blacked out apparently with my eyes open, got sick and nearly threw up. That's never happened to me before. Poor olives gonna get stitches with her scheduled polyp removal.

[Loud Whispers]

Had to help bandage the dog after she got in a fight. Passed out on the floor next to her, like blacked out apparently with my eyes open, got sick and nearly threw up. That's never happened to me before. Poor olives gonna get stitches with her scheduled polyp removal.

Oh shit are you okay? Is your dog okay?

[nenjin]

And why did you black out?!

[Frumple]

It... sounded like a reaction to the blood et al? I've had more or less that happen a few times, too. Not quite full on blackout, but nearly so. S'one of the reasons I never even considered going into medical work. Some folks just don't handle wounds very well, sometimes.

[Eric Blank]

I'm fine, the dog is doing better. I really have no idea why I passed out; like I said, it's never happened in any past case I've been in.

[Jopax]

So aside from updating to win11 fucking up my tablet, turns out it fucked up the xbox controller too as the damn thing is no longer recognized by windows at all. You'd think something as basic and belonging to them wouldn't be fucked up in an update they've been so aggressively pushing but nope, here we are, trying to troubleshoot something that up until recently was the simplest fucking plug and play piece of hardware out there :I

Edit:

Bugger this I'm going back, MS clearly can't be trusted to not shit things up irreparably or for profit. Multiple attempts to fix this always lead to having to use their shitting app and account system which offers no help because it redirects me to their website which again tells me I need the app to solve the potential firmware issue. Win 10 it is until I can find something else that isn't a dumpster fire with a slightly changed UI.

[King Zultan]

I wonder if Microsoft will ever realize they've ruined their OS over the past few versions.

[Starver]

Amen. So many problems are being added to Windows, these days, each time a forced update happens.

Spoiler: Do you want an example? Here's a 'little' example... (click to show/hide)

As there seems to be no Filmstrip folder view any more, in Win11, my attempts to simplify my Win11 user's photo-viewing process has fallen back on the "image preview" utility/whatever it's called[1].

It started picking up all kinds of functionality, up to and including some AI-ish things and "search Bing for this image", or similar (no, no, we just want to view what's here, and not try to integrate it with some cloud or other and all that jazz). But at least it seemed to work like the Filmstrip (hence we that wasn't needed any more), because clicking F would show the images below, and it at least showed/navigated the images in the very same order as the folder-view[2], so it was basically "Filmstrip in a second window", if you wanted it like that. Which just skipped non-images.

Now, as in within the last two or three weeks, the Preview-type window/utilty/app/whateveryoucallit no longer seems to be properly tied to the sorting of the folder window from which you call it. First of all, it takes about half a minute to acknowledge there's a further neighbouring images to right-/left-cursor onto (I have sympathies with it, it probably is taking time to read each further image, check that it is an image, perhaps establish a thumbnail for it/from its own metadata...) But then, even when it does, it's broken (compared to before). In one of several ways:

1) All images are there, but out of order. And, apparently, sometimes (when it realises there's more than the initially opened image), the primary image changes perhaps getting mixed up with "I opened the third image, sorted by date - but now that I have all the images sorted by alphanumeric name, I shall switch to the third image in the alphanumeric list". Though I haven't truly determined that it's even that logical, in this circumstance.

2) A subset of the images. There are (say) 40 images in the folder. Once the (F)ilmstrip in-app preview stops showing just one image, it shows (maybe) only six or seven. The one you opened with is the first, usually, with the same other-five/-six available to right-cursor to. If you quit the picture-viewer and open a (non-featured) image, it unfolds as the first in the filmstrip, followed by the same 5/6 others, the "first 'first' picture" does not feature, now.

3) You only ever get the one picture in the viewer. However long you wait, the (F)ilmstrip never shows any others. Close the viewer window and re-viewer with a different image file and it is the sole known image (forever, I've even left it a full hour). Never has any problems with any image as a singular (often works better with those images if copied/moved to other folders), but seems to forget that it can do so if it's "yet another image in the same folder". No rhyme no reason,cas far as I can see.

Ok then, so once you could reliably click a (Large Iconed) image file of interest, check the next (sorted by date) ten or so images to make sure they're of the same view as the one you start with (trip over to the eleventh-ish, note that, yes, this one is of a different location) and then be able to quit the viewer-preview-whatever and rename the required run of images accordingly (relying upon DSC-numbered or TimeStamp-named images, alphabetically, ran the risk of maybe/maybe-not the file order changing after each rename... ...even that no longer seems to be consistent in operation).

Now, one has (often) to preview-view each image individually, reject any notion of being able to scroll left/right sensibly while doing so, close the preview window, cursor to[3] the next folder-entry (left/right in Icons view, or up-down for List/Details views) and preview-view that, close that preview, select the next of interest from the folder, preview-view it... etc.


All this is bad enough for me, but causes no end of grief for the usual victim of all this perversely changed functionality, as they need to look at the keyboard to even find the enter-key, and can get confused when commands get get typed but other commands (or none!) get obeyed. It's my main obstacle to weaning them off the mouse/touchpad (which has other issues, like inaccuracy of hitting the right spot, accidentally clicking-and-dragging things, accidentally clicking things twice when (in a given context) a single-click is what's needed), which they also tend to look down at so it would have been nicer if the keyboard shortcuts were still reliable. (Used to be able to Alt-F and "open wit(H)", but they've removed Alt-F H as a keyboard sequence, you have to Alt-F and either return to the mouse (if you don't start with a right-click with the mouse, not that my user has yet managed to get used to what a right-click is for, on top of single-/double-left confusion) or cursor-cursor-cursor (right-or-down) past the cut-copy-rename-share-delete options, then (down-(cursor) past the Open to the Open With, right-cursor into that drop-down, to then down-/up-cursor to the one of those you want (e.g. Notepad instead of Firefox), only the last part of which was necessary beforehand. (Don't tell me to add an alternate "Open with Notepad". Yes, I'd do this for me, and "Edit in Notepad" is an installed option (whether by Edge/default or when I put Firefox on) for actual .htm/.html files, but it's also in the "less easy to access" category (best case scenario, open right-click menu and cursor up a few times), under Win11, rather than how it worked in XP, ME(!), either of the 98s or even 95.)

And I'm really not sure if this is all just Win11's thing. I have no Win10 machine at hand, Win8(.1) had its own issues, Vista started the terminal post-XP slide into the OS and its creators thinking that you basically had no right to know what on earth the underlying logic was behind all the fancy bells and whistles. XP had some of this (in trying to unify NT/2K and 9x/ME branches into one Fisher-Price-like interface), but even its auto-updates didn't try to add AI functionality (or whatever the contemporary equivalent was) into Notepad, and/or offers to reverse-image-search random pictures that (for copyright, privacy or even just bandwidth/performance issues) you have no desire to be made potential training data by dint of some rather precipitous background attempt to push into a Cloud of some kind.

[1] I tried to wean them off it in their past Windows version, as it opens a full app up, and that app can be hidden behind other windows, so they end up opening multiple Image Previews and leaving them around by accident. With the Filmstrip view, pretty much the same functionality as needed was more easily navigated back and forth through a folder.

[2] Once you get them in the right order. Well, first there's the fact that Windows now now longer knows what view-type you're using. It seems to assume that you want Details/List/Large Icons according to the contents (all images, it'll go for Large Icons, and maybe also with a couple of text files in there/etc; but after a certain point it seems to go for Details, perhaps - don't have it in front of me to check the precise behaviour) and - unlike past Windowses - seems to no longer remember (by way of that hidden .ini file, at least at earlier points in the OS's evolution) which view you consciously left that folder with. So that needs attending to (you want Details, had to switch to that from Large Icons, or a List is the most economical view for your purpose, but you need to redo that again, and some folders should ideally be Large Icon, in the absence of Filmstrip, but need changing every time),vand then you probably need to sort it. Defaults alpha(numeri)betical ascending. But most things we would like to be sorted by date. (Ok, click to sort by date...) And, please, could that be Ascending? (No. Not until you click "sort by date", or the "Date" column a second time. Typical. This from the company that gave us Outlook(-Express) and decided to impose/indoctrinate top-posting standards on a world that had happily and more pleasingly adopted the convention of bottom-posting (or, for the more savvy, inter-posting, bottom-posting immediately after each paragraph or two that this bit of reply was specific to - and made deleting the superfluous bits easy and usually obvious to do), thus contributing to the post-Eternal September ruination of Usenet and generally confusing everyone as to which order things like web-page comment sections should be.) Not that it matters, because next time you visit the folder it's (probably) the same (wrong) view and (certainly) the same originally wrong sorting criteria/direction.

[3] Or click. In fact, you probably need to click, as exiting the preview-view does not return focus to the item within the view that you had opened upon. Occasionally, left/right cursor has even changed the folder-view style (focus somehow being attached to the top-bar to the folder, where this functionality 'lives'). But, mostly, it seems to not even give focus back to the folder window in any way at all.

Grrrrr....

Sorry, just had to vent one small fraction of the ventable vent-gas I have accumulated. I had gotten used to some of the quirks (personally, not quite sure the main user ever will have), but you apparently can't keep up even with the no-change-of-version that the "eternal Windows 11" of forevermore (*cough*) insists it is.

[nenjin]

Can't be the last version when you need a whole new version to capture more telemetry and content from users to feed AI models.

[Mathel]

I have long since learned that relying on Windows built-in applications is rarely a good idea.

Master Commander for file handling.
IrfanView for image viewing.
Winamp for watching videos and listening to music.
Google Chrome for browsing internet.

This has two advantages.
1. These applications usually have functionality that the windows apps just don't.
2. The environment isn't prone to sudden changes, and if it does, you can easily decide to rollback, as the older versions are usually still available.

[Starver]

Master Commander for file handling.
IrfanView for image viewing.
Winamp for watching videos and listening to music.
Google Chrome for browsing internet.

For these, note that getting 'my user' to do anything different is painful enough. But for me:

(Skipping the first, no experience with it.)

An old version of IrfanView is being used to compose Slideshows (handy functionality for that, like populating a show with images from all across the directory structure, at will, and configurable corner-screen hints like Nth/M images and/or filenames), but the version used always seemed too tedious to for... ...well, as described above. At least until now.

I go for a mix of VLC and FFPlay(/ffmpeg). The former has the advantage of playing at adjusted speed (and a timer-bar, for ease of seeing how close to the end we might be), which the latter does not, but both pretty much play anything, with the exception of a few .webms which my current (but possibly not the current) version of seems to splice together strangely (riffle-cut its frames, really must check the webm spec to see why a file might interlace frames from half way through between the starting ones, etc). But ffplay is nice and "light", handy to run multiple videos side by side without having to worry about forcing multiple instances to run. (And, with the ffmpeg suite behind it, all kinds of command-line effects/remixings can be applied, more than I need, but definitely enough and usually simply enough.)

Give me Firefox over Chrome, any day, but they're both better (apart from being less integrated with Windows i  ways I probably don't want to know) than Edge.

[Starver]

Ok, so having quickly updated the Forums Updated post (basically, it seemed to take until this morning for the Auto-detect timezone function in updated forums settings to give me "1" hour, but that's a different puzzle, not the WTF bit), a related thing.

I have a new dumbphone. The mobile phone I use for just just calls and text. (The provider tells me that 3G baseline is being phased out, that the handset I had used wasn't the requisite 4G-capable, and that they recommended this this new handset for those they knew needed to update... Don't know what this means for the tablet which will occasionally drop from 4G to 3G to "H+", "H" or even "E" (if I recall them in the right order), if I'm in a low-signal situation that is part of the reason to have a dumbphone for more general use.) The new handset is a downgrade, not in that it doesn't do the basics of what I want (though it's limited to three alarm-times, and I was used to using six, for my own purposes), but it's a godawful fiddle to configure/migrate to. Most of that's another story.

Anyway, we had GMT(UTC±0) to BST(UTC+1) changeover on Sunday AM (at about the time I was looking at the new forum settings, after the second (or later?) Maintenance Mode dropout of this place).

Old handset had options to never update its time (from the network), always update time or to ask whenever if felt the need. I chose the latter, always nice to know, though it often would tell me it had updated itself just after going over a hill (or standing still long enough, on occasion). And entering/leaving DST would sometimes have it quiet on the subject for a week or more (still happily non-DST or DST, when we had officially changed over). I'm sure it was never off by a few seconds, from device-drift, ignoring that whole hour of occasional wrongness, I put it down to minor GPRS-ish anomalies, perhaps fraction-of-a-second, getting interpreted as a 'need' to resynchronise. The hour thing... Well, if it was sufficiently ok to the second and minute, maybe the hourly offset wasn't quite so much taken note of. I've seen the same in the RC wall-clock that tends to go wrong when mounted on a certain spot on a wall (possible electrical interference getting in the way of the national time-signal broadcast), it'll be wrong by everything but the second hand which seems to be more proof to being messed up.

New handset has simpler controls. Just auto-update or not. It's on auto-update. First time this phone has encountered DST-switching. Did not obey DST until gone midday (either scheme), was wondering if it would ever. By evening, it had changed. Ok, no problem. Maybe copying old handset's general reluctance in that matter.

This morning, woke up at about the time I expected an alarm (though body-clock still a hour behind, so don't ask me how that worked ...probably coincidence), but no alarm. Checked phone. Time completely off. Right now, all other devices show 10:22, but it says 03:38 (back just before 08:00ish, it was giving a time not long after 01:00, but I was more immediately worried about having slept in until 13:00ish than taking exact note of the time differences). Phone was ok (even post 01:00am, that fact and the very obvious daylight outside both prompting recently-awoken me to wonder if it was now showing 12hr clock time).

Given it some time, checking that it's still set to auto-update, done various other things. Phone mostly left exactly where it was resting overnight. No sign of any willingness to correctly recorrect itself. Don't know about GPRS prompts, but have a full-bar 4G signal (fuller for phone than for the tablet upon which I'm writing this) right here and now.


From a technical point of view, I'm fairly sure this isn't covered under RTFM (I downloaded it, when I first swapped handsets, and it was rather lacking, I had to work out for myself how to reduce the volume when keys are pressed), so somewhere in the OMG/WTF area, instead. Hope I don't regret the choice to take the recommended 'upgrade' moxel of phone, or rue whatever switchover stuff the mobile signal will be subjected to, outwith my control or input. Just blowing off a little bit of steam about this, however. Half hoping it would correct itself whilst I'm doing so. But no...

[martinuzz]

Anti-virus and anti malware software is getting more and more aggressive with their constant ' buy now, try free premium' pop ups. The latest malwarebytess one froze my computer. Needed to kill the task via task manager.

Now I would like their free premium trials, no problem. But they made them inacesssible for people without internet payment options. Even though it's free trial, they still want your credit card info or paypal info.
15 years ago the free trials were still really free with no risk of suddenly having a subscription becaus you forgot to cancel.

I even had a paid subscription for Avast at some point. But then they stopped offering semi-physical billing options and now you can only pay with online payment.

EDIT: apparently Malwarebytess caused an Nvidia error
5 minutes after it happened I got a error report pop up to send to Nvidia

[Starver]

I can't remember if if's Avast or Avira, off-hand and not sat at the machine concerned[1], but as long as you completely avoid the "Free period of Premium" offer that it tries[2] to give you (and that's ok for you - see feetnete), you can (or could, at the last reconfirmation of this all) stick on the upvrade/renewctrack that's completely Free, and a minimalist-but-sufficient track of protection, without any need to dig up the old bit of plastic[4].


Horses for courses, though. And I have had to reverse back out of the Premium Trial for someone who kept clicking the minute "Free, no bells and whistles, version" buttons yet still managed to hit the "and, as you might want to pay..." dialogues. Obviously in their commericial best interest to hook in actual subscribers (though they'd actively lose my "not paying, but potentially paying in the future" following if they removed the free-optioj entirely).


Used to rave about Malwarebytes. Don't tend to install it "new" on anything, any more, since its pester for Premium-Trialling became too strong. But always handy as a backup to an active AV (and being a related PUP-stuff detector), so long as you don't want to make it into an active always-and-everything scanner. I think the interface is also still far better and cleaner, but might have changed since I last ran it in anger, and can't recall when that might have been. Might have to check if they've ruined it. (if it causes an NVidia error, sounds like it can only be trying some weird Window Manager stuff, like some othernAVs/etc do. Branding themselves with non-rectangular windows, or something. No functional need to do that, so maybe jumping the shark if so?)



[1] I think the first, but there's a connection between them... it was after AVG got subsumed  upwards, into one or (probably) both of them, having gotten used to AVG.

[2]Very strongly. As in choose to continue with the entirely free version (yes, we know that doesn't include <insert long ist of things that aren't considered relevent on this machine, like password managers and keeping an eye out for bank details being given[3]>, but when we want AV then it's AV we want. Enough to stop a rogue executable/script coming in via email/browser download, not that we have that happen very often) but then have to avoid the "Ok then, go shead with the Premium Trial" clicking that takes centre-stage immediately after.

[3] Other things aside, there are all kinds of "give us your personal details so that we can make dure nobody's a using your personal details" outfits out there. Call me paranoid, but... Really? Ok then, sign me up for all of them, from GenuinePrince.ng to InternetOligarch.ru as a defence in depth!

[4] Which is kept safely away from the machine. I may have helped Bezos build a significant amount of his first rocket, personally, but I've reigned that in over the last decade or so, and I've seen no need to subject someone else with the habit of e-commerce/fintech stuff, so they're being helped by me to avoid all such subscription-stuff as well.

[Jopax]

So my plan of reverting back to Win 10 has hit a wall for now as the installation keeps throwing up a generic error every time I try it. Googling the damn thing gives me a range of options from shitty USB to your RAM is broken and all the way to your installation partition is way too large so it freaks out and cancels.

I could take all day troubleshooting this one bit at a time but honestly I don't have the energy at the moment, and would much rather take a crowbar to the whole damn thing.