Warning about HP Laptops - incompatibility with Win 10 Creators Update

[Mouse]

Thanks Tony

That's seriously bad news about your videos. You were making a fine collection. I really hope you can find an alternative soon. Don't give up looking

I can still map - just about, but not as large scale as before. Everything takes such a looooooong time to do now, and I'm making so many cups of coffee waiting for save operations in Krita that I risk becoming a caffeine addict! LOL! Save takes up to 20 minutes, but I have to do it before I try anything really dangerous - like a drop shadow, a blur, or a gradient fill. I've had to switch autosave off. I discovered that autosave can tie things up for about 45 minutes. And I really do mean tie things up. All other apps that are open when a Krita autosave starts automatically crash, and you can't minimise Krita to do other stuff. It just sits there - apparently frozen. It does eventually do its job and come to an end. You've just got to be patient... and drink a helluva lot of coffee!

Although I've thought about it in the past I'm really glad now that I never took on any commissions. If I had any clients relying on me to get things done within a time limit right now I'd be in a horrible mess - letting people down all over the place.

[Tonnichiwa]

Coffee? And here I thought you brits only drank tea!

Thats what I used to hate about my old computer. It would do that whenever I tried to make a map larger than 6000 × 6000.

[Mouse]

I actually don't like tea at all - unless its lemon and ginger

I can no longer open most of my older maps. They are simply too large. Since the Creator's Update I have only been able to make maps of a much smaller size. My last Challenge entry was really pushing the boundaries.

Krita can't handle files as large as GIMP can, and since I've more or less lost GIMP I'm down to about that size myself.

No more 10,000 x 10,000 city maps like Merelan City, I'm afraid. Not until I get a new computer. CC3 can do it, but I can't open the resulting jpeg export!

[Mark Oliva]

Just to be fair to Microsoft ...

The company announced this issue two months before the new update was released and sent it out in news releases to all the standard media. Among other places, this was published in articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian in London and the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany, to name doubtless but a few. It also was in our smaller local newspaper, Fränkischer Tag in Bamberg. Those are the articles that I read personally.

There are things that Windows 10 Fall Creator Edition can do that some (and not all) HP laptops can't handle. Microsoft made the decision to include these elements and exclude the HP laptops. Good decision? Bad decision? Y'all can have your own opinion on that.

However ... I can't imagine how Microsoft could have been more fair in warning about its decision. And those who have sensible settings on their Windows 10 computers have the ability to reject the update before it starts. So ... I can't see this as being a typical Microsoft run-over-the-customer operation, but rather, one that was handled rather well. Nice for a change!

Servus,

[selden]

It'd be nice if they included incompatibility warnings in the installer software itself, giving the person doing the installation/upgrade the option of terminating the process.

Unfortunately, as with any event which causes the loss of the system disk, often the only thing that can help to recover from such a situation is to perform full system backups to external media as often as you can.

[Mouse]

I agree Selden.

Just to be clear - Win 10 worked perfectly on my laptop and I was very pleased with it in the beginning.

Its the Creator's Update that doesn't work.

News about the incompatibility problems may have been everywhere else, but I never saw it. What's more, I don't generally expect a publisher like MS to even try to install an update that simply isn't compatible with my machine. They know my system specs. The update should never even have been sent to me, but it was - automatically downloaded and installed by the OS.

I wasn't given a choice in the matter.

[Straf]

@Mouse - have you tried a fresh install by downloading the slipstreamed version of Windows 10 Creators Update from their website and making installation media? You'll need a 8GB memory stick or a dual layer DVD. The problem with the update was it was changing a lot of stuff such as system files in the background. It was like stripping down and rebuilding the engine of a car as the car was running. Perhaps putting a fresh engine in might help?

Also @Mouse - I still think it's possible to downgrade to 8.1 by downloading it from the MS website. Again you'll have to put it onto some sort of installation media.

@Tonnichiwa - here's a list of video editing software for you to check out:

Avidemux
LiVES
Open Shot
Pitivi
Shotcut
VideoPad

There are a few others that seem to have been abandoned/discontinued. I haven't done any video editing on Windows for a long time so I can't offer any advice on any of them. You'll have to do your own research on features and that. I know when I was editing video I was using more than one application. I use one to cut the scenes/clips out of the main sequence then another to put them together with the effects I wanted (fades, etc.) This was the same thing as I did on Linux as well but there's a much wider range of products available on Linux. Another thing is you might want to check out some converters too, for going from one CODEC to another.

[Straf]

@Tonnichiwa - here's a list of video editing software for you to check out:

Avidemux
LiVES
Open Shot
Pitivi
Shotcut

There are a few others that seem to have been abandoned/discontinued. I haven't done any video editing on Windows for a long time so I can't offer any advice on any of them. You'll have to do your own research on features and that. I know when I was editing video I was using more than one application. I use one to cut the scenes/clips out of the main sequence then another to put them together with the effects I wanted (fades, etc.) This was the same thing as I did on Linux as well but there's a much wider range of products available on Linux. Another thing is you might want to check out some converters too, for going from one CODEC to another.

Oh I forgot to add - Blender can also be used to edit video but I tried to follow a tutorial on it and gave up.

[Falconius]

Oh I forgot to add - Blender can also be used to edit video but I tried to follow a tutorial on it and gave up.

That sounds more like a nightmare than it does a useful tool. Ah, I love Blender.

[Mark Oliva]

I get a lot more excited about companies that continue to make software that isn't up to using my machines. I mean specifically Battlemap Games, which is making MapForge, and ProFantasy, which makes CC3+. They still are unable to move away from antiquated 32-bit software in the era of 64-bit computers, which, of course, can address only 4 MB of memory, making it impossible to make some of the big maps that people here would like to make. For the present, my own mapping software, FM8, is a part of this group too, but I do understand that NBOS is working on FM9 and that a 64-bit version is planned.

For a long time, Microsoft had a track record of dumping out products that didn't work here, there and somewhere and not saying a word about it. A lot of us complained about it. This time, Microsoft issued a warning to HP owners two months ahead of time via the mass media. More Microsoft bashing in this case seems to me to be pointless. It can lead to no positive end whatsoever.

Of course, once can go to a Mac. Then one can trade Windows problems for Mac problems, with which I became rather familiar when working with the official ProFantasy beta testers.