Most developers are used to being the technical support for friends and family. The latest incident that I have found was slow to fix.
My mother has a Windows 10 laptop that had started to show the “You are currently running a version of Windows that’s nearing the end of support. We recommend you update to the most recent version of Windows 10 now to get the latest features and security improvements” message.
She started to apply the suggested update, waited a while and the update uninstalled itself.
At this point I was called on to help.
I restarted the update process and it eventually prompted that a HP utility was no longer compatible and needed to be removed. This triggered a restart cycle.
At the next restart and update it suggested that freeavg needed to be upgraded or removed. I went for the simple option of uninstalling and downloading a fresh copy. Three reboots later the update manager repeated the same message about freeavg.
This was followed by an uninstall of freeavg, a restart and another trigger of the update to 1903. Again it asked for FreeAVG to be uninstalled (which was interesting as the add/remove program dialog did not include FreeAVG.
Eventually I found a freeavg stand alone uninstaller. This worked on the second attempt (hint: when it suggests booting into safe mode, it’s not kidding).
Another reboot/update cycle had the update working. It only took 3 hours from first update to fully upgraded.
I don’t know if this is expected behaviour for a mass market operating system. If I wrote code that required this level of hand holding then I would be expected to do the install myself.
How an end user that is not very tech savvy is expected to get this working is beyond me.
When I got home I looked to update my even older windows 10 laptop. The 1803 update failed with an error message to search for, and am now attempting to use the Windows 10 update assistant v1903 to get my machine updated.
Developer Rants 