back to article Windows 10 Anniversary Update completely borks USB webcams. Yay.

Microsoft says a fix is on the way for a video encoding issue in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update that has left people unable to access their USB webcams and applications. Multiple peeps and developers have reported issues with their cameras or software not working following the installation of the Windows 10 Anniversary …

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      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: Linux? Meh.

        "Where the FreeBSD icon when you need it?"

        would THIS one suffice? (posting from FreeBSD)

        (but I like Linux too!)

        1. MJI Silver badge

          Re: Linux? Meh.

          How about Orbis OS for games?

  1. ecofeco Silver badge

    The beginning of the end

    We are watching the beginning of the end of Microsoft.

    1. chuckufarley Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: The beginning of the end

      It's been a long time since I last posted a comment on El Reg, but I think this needs to be said.

      The end for Microsoft began a few years ago and will continue for many more years. As a modern technology company they will have many, many chances to avert their decline and they will squander most of them in the name of tradition and short term profits. They may even drop the ball a few times while trying to give their customers what they want and need. Their only hope is that the chances they don't waste are amplified by the failures of their competitors, startups, and government regulators.

      Just as Rome wasn't built in a day, it didn't decline in a day.

      As far as driving end users to linux: They won't go. Linux is in the hands of the "developers" and they don't care about end users. They don't even really care about power users. They care about other developers. After all, what good are Free Open Source Software projects if no one is helping you write the code for them?

      1. Ropewash

        Re: The beginning of the end

        "Linux is in the hands of the "developers" and they don't care about end users."

        While I've certainly said something very similar to that on occassion, it's not entirely true and also not a game-breaking detail. Eventually someone doing dev work wants to use the program in a way that makes it beneficial for all users.

        Sure a guy isn't going to sit down and say "How can I make this exactly what the people who aren't even thanking me let alone paying me want it be?" but he might sit down and say "Shit. This thing doesn't work how I want it to. I'mma gonna change that." Sometimes that change is exactly what everyone wanted. (for a given value of "everyone")

        Sometimes the user doesn't even notice when there's a new and useful change;

        I've been mounting .iso images and smb shares manually for so long that I didn't even notice that you can click your way through it now. (though the clicking seems more convoluted to me than the mount command, but that's just habit.). As a sub-entry to that, the mount command used to need a flag for smb. Now it just knows. That's pretty useful too.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The beginning of the end

          "Shit. This thing doesn't work how I want it to. "

          Perfectly sums up my windows 10 experience for the last year !

          1. Pompous Git Silver badge

            Re: The beginning of the end

            "Shit. This thing doesn't work how I want it to. "

            Perfectly sums up my windows 10 experience for the last year !

            Me too. But the same happened when trying to use Libre Office. There's no Outline View like in Word so I'm back running Word in a Win7 VM. Obviously people who just write letters don't need an outliner, but they make complex documents much easier to manage.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: The beginning of the end

              There's no Outline View like in Word so I'm back running Word in a Win7 VM

              You'll have to explain to me why you'd need that. I have as yet not found a need for that, but I assume you need it because there's no other way for you to keep an overview - in which case you *certainly* need LibreOffice.

              When I construct a document framework, I start with the chapter headings - that, indeed, is an outline. But after that I have the LO Navigator open which is substantially more powerful and flexible than Word's overview functions as it also offers a live overview and navigation of other document elements such as text frames, graphics, indexes, tables, even document searches.

              The Navigator is one of the key reasons I would never switch back to Word again - it's simply a superior approach to navigation and management of complex documents.

              1. Pompous Git Silver badge

                Re: The beginning of the end

                But after that I have the LO Navigator open which is substantially more powerful and flexible than Word's overview functions as it also offers a live overview and navigation of other document elements such as text frames, graphics, indexes, tables, even document searches.

                The Navigator is one of the key reasons I would never switch back to Word again - it's simply a superior approach to navigation and management of complex documents.

                When I move a main heading in Word's Outline View, it carries all of the text below it up to the next main heading. Ditto for sub headings. Navigator only moves a little bit of what's below a heading, leaving most of what was between it and the next main heading in place. I managed to totally fuck up a document I've been working on for a considerable time. Thank goodness I keep snapshots of any work in progress. Only a few hours wasted.

                Editing documents is not the same as navigating through them.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: The beginning of the end

                  When I move a main heading in Word's Outline View, it carries all of the text below it up to the next main heading. Ditto for sub headings. Navigator only moves a little bit of what's below a heading, leaving most of what was between it and the next main heading in place.

                  Ah, OK, I understand now.

                  I think this depends a bit on how you work with the Navigator. If I'm moving whole chapters I tend to collapse their content, and at that point it's a matter of grabbing it with the mouse and moving it, and the whole lot comes at once. If I want to move pieces I personally find it easier to simply open an extra window on the same text so I can drag & drop chunks across.

                  I managed to totally fuck up a document I've been working on for a considerable time. Thank goodness I keep snapshots of any work in progress. Only a few hours wasted.

                  I've worked with Word from the days it was more "What You See Is Roughly What You'll Get", and in all the years that I suffered that, Auto-save never actually did. Thus, saving frequently becomes a must anyway. LO is in that respect better, but the LO people did one thing wrong: "Save a new version" (File - Versions) is not a single function, so you're always forced to cook up a macro to make it a single-key action, the same as "Paste text only without adding any &^%#$ formatting debris". The latter is IMHO the real cause of Word document problems: there really is no more efficient way to utterly screw over a document than doing a lot of cut & paste which allows it to scatter formatting fragments all over the place and confuse itself.

                  That, more than costs, was eventually the key driver to move to LO: if I have to use LO to open a document that Word can no longer open without crashing (because of the mess it made itself) I might as well save myself the trouble and stay in LO, and learn how that works instead. It also means I don't have to start excavating useful commands from deep inside the menu structure every time Microsoft decides to foist an UI change on us because it needs to sell a new version and by God, I hate that &^%#$ ribbon (and it appears I'm not the only one).

                  That said, there is one Word function I could really do with in LO, and that is "resume last cursor position" (Shift-F5). There is no LO equivalent, and it's super handy if you're in a long document and need to look something up. I solve that by usually having 2 windows open on a long document (one edit, one view), but that's not quite the same.

                  On balance, I now prefer LO. Your mileage appears to differ, of course - if you're frequently use a Word specific function it makes sense to stay with Word. That is, until Microsoft decides they need to change the UI again, of course :).

                  1. bombastic bob Silver badge
                    FAIL

                    Re: The beginning of the end

                    (regarding micro-shaft office)

                    "I hate that &^%#$ ribbon (and it appears I'm not the only one)."

                    it's the most hated feature, I'd venture to guess. And in addition, I *hate* 2D flugly and hamburger menus, 2 more "new, shiny" things that have attempted to dominate our desktops. Yucchhhhh!

                  2. Pompous Git Silver badge

                    Re: The beginning of the end

                    On balance, I now prefer LO. Your mileage appears to differ, of course - if you're frequently use a Word specific function it makes sense to stay with Word. That is, until Microsoft decides they need to change the UI again, of course :).

                    I would have stayed with Word and Win7 but MS in their wisdom decided otherwise ;-)

                    The menus the stupid ribbon replaced can be returned with an add-in that works quite well. [Aside] Sometimes Outlook hangs on startup and this is caused by it failing to load the Menus add-in.[/Aside] However, your comments inspired me to do some investigating, something that's always tempting when you really should be working on the document! It would seem that the Organon add-in for Writer might do the trick.

                    I too have worked with Word for a very long time (as well as Word Perfect, Lotus Word Pro and Wordstar) and IIRC there was no autosave in Winword 2. My autosave is Ctrl-S and it's completely automatic. That said, I've never had a problem with Autosave. Mind you, I've always turned off Quick saving. This latter saves edits to the end of the file rather than in place and makes for a longer, more complex file.

                    Your theory as to the cause of instability seems sound, but I invariably paste as plain text. Local formatting is pretty much confined to bold and italic. Another cause of headaches in Word is attempting to use it as a page layout program. It's not and both Word Perfect and WordPro suffered from the same blight of adding such features.

                    Yes, Shift-F5 is a dandy feature. Another workaround is to insert some unlikely text (e.g. "^6") before leaving the document. Then you can Ctrl-F to find it when re-opening the document. Since it's already highlighted, you can just hit the Del key before commencing work. Your two window solution seems more cumbersome.

                    1. Anonymous Coward
                      Anonymous Coward

                      Re: The beginning of the end

                      I would have stayed with Word and Win7 but MS in their wisdom decided otherwise ;-)

                      I parted with Word in Office for Mac 2010. When I replaced my machine, the restored backup of the software wanted the license code yet again, and between me and the possible location of the box was about half a planet worth of travel so I decided what I had been thinking about anyway - after all, FAST has been telling us that it's very bad to get licensing wrong so I figured I might as well free myself of that risk too.

                      The menus the stupid ribbon replaced can be returned with an add-in that works quite well

                      OK, but isn't it daft to have to add something to software to simply get back what you used to have? Call me fickle, but I like to have the option of NOT following into this new wonderful Microsoft world where everything is shiny but nothing actually *works*.. As for the software you've used - yep - all of them. Heck, I even used Borland's Sprint, and Solution Software's BRIEF with the dBrief Paradox add-on for writing scripts - been there, but the T-shirt eventually fell apart.

                      I don't use "resume cursor" to find my place in a doc when I open it - Word as well as LO go back to where you were automatically (for LO that's a somewhat recent innovation :) ). It's more when you're in a doc and you suddenly realise that what you're writing links with something else so you have a quick look - with Shift-F5 you can just jump back to where you were, even if that was a couple of jumps back (as it saves a history). Never mind - different purposes.

                      I've had a look at Organon but it strikes me as unmaintained (last update was for LO 4, not 5). That said, it would be overkill for my needs anyway - the complexities in my writing lie elsewhere. That's why I tend to write "black screen" using the Ulysses application - more or less turning my super wonderful computer back into a slightly more intelligent VT220 terminal, nicely without distractions :).

                      Anyway, happy writing - whatever works for you!

            2. Kiwi

              Re: The beginning of the end

              There's no Outline View like in Word so I'm back running Word in a Win7 VM.

              Just as hopefully something to save you some time - did you ever try installing Office directly (under WINE basically)?

              I have done this for Offfice '03, '07 and '10 (years may not be exact, substitute appropriate versions) under Mint 11 and one later version (maybe 14) as well as on Fedora (can't recall what version, this was sometime in '12 or '13). It worked perfectly from what I and my then boss (who was pissed off it was so easy to install and trying to prove that you cannot run Office on Linux) could tell. Of course, more modern versions of Office or Wine may not want to play so well together.

      2. a_yank_lurker

        Re: The beginning of the end

        Linux and BSD have been successfully commercialized as viable user OSes as ChromeOS, Android, iOS, and OS X as wells a few solid commercial traditional Linux distros. But your point Slurp will be around for awhile before it becomes another marginalized player or completely disappears is quite correct.

        A far as FOSS developers not caring about about power users or end users misunderstands that FOSS projects often begin life as someone trying to fix a problem. Often the project, particularly in the early stages, does not have a wide perceived target audience because the developers are not doing marketing surveys, marketing plans, etc. It's often later when they realize there is more interest in the project that start to address the other needs.

      3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: The beginning of the end

        'They won't go. Linux is in the hands of the "developers" and they don't care about end users.'

        My emphasis.

        Did you even read what the Microsoft developers were quoted as saying in the article?

        To some extent I agree with the general point - developers can easily become detached from what users want except where they're working in in-house teams, and maybe not even then. It's not a prerogative of open source developers. As regards Linux, Linus seems to have a pretty solid mantra: don't break userland* which the Microsoft camera team could have heeded in this case.

        I like to distinguish between projects and products, product in the sense that Brookes, used in in chapter one of TMMM, not necessarily something that's going to be sold. Projects all too often go off on personal gratification but open source also delivers some solid products such as LibreOffice.

        *IME userland did get broken between 2.4 & 2.6.

      4. hplasm
        WTF?

        Re: The beginning of the end

        ""Linux is in the hands of the "developers" and they don't care about end users."

        rather

        "Microsoft is in the hands of the "developers" and they don't care about end users."

        Didn't you get the memo, forced down your throat?

        Or are you still on XP?

      5. Updraft102

        Re: The beginning of the end

        Linux, though, is not one unified project. It's dozens upon dozens of smaller projects, rolled into distros by still more projects.

        The kernel people aren't concerned about end users. They don't have to be at the kernel level, though. Each bit has its own developers, and they seek to make their portion do what that one portion is meant to do as well as possible, and that doesn't really depend on the end-user either at the deeper levels.

        When you get to the desktop environment level, the end user does matter, and Ubuntu has been trying to develop Linux into an OS suitable for regular end-users for more than a decade. A lot of people think Ubuntu has gone astray with its Unity desktop (not to mention Gnome itself), which is why Ubuntu derivatives like Linux Mint have appeared. Mint is meant for the ordinary user, though the tools appreciated by power users are still available if the user wants them.

        That's not to say, of course, that there are not gaps in the "end user friendly" bits of Linux. There clearly are... and it is true that for a long time, these were overlooked because the nerds who develop Linux for themselves don't mind doing things with the command line instead of graphically, so they never had the "fire in the belly" to go develop graphical tools for administrative stuff the way they did for other things that also needed their attention.

        One thing that Linux devs DO share, though, is the desire to provide an alternative to the Microsoft hegemony, and they are realizing more and more that this means making Linux friendlier to the end user who is somewhere in between "total beginner" (for whom Linux desktop environments are quite adequate, and where someone else is doing the admin work) and "Linux guru/power user" (who would use the command line instead of a graphical tool even if the graphical tool was incredibly powerful and easy to use).

        Linux isn't at the point where all of the things you could do in Windows graphically can be done without the command line in Linux, but it is moving that way. Progress is sometimes frustratingly slow in FOSS projects as compared to commercial software, but it is at least moving in the right direction, whereas Microsoft seems determined to annoy and alienate every one of its users to the point that they jump ship. They're looking toward a future in which they are a cloud services company, not a traditional "software in a box" company as they have been in the past, so perhaps they don't even care if they destroy Windows with all of this short-term "monetizing" of the product.

    2. Captain DaFt

      Re: The beginning of the end

      "We are watching the beginning of the end of Microsoft."

      Been watching that for way too long. Can't I just fast forward to the good part?

      1. itzman
        Linux

        Re: The beginning of the end

        This IS the good part. The slow motion crash as bits start to fly off, and the carcase starts to do 360 degree rolls and spins.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The beginning of the end

      We are watching the beginning of the end of Microsoft.

      Not a chance. A Microsoft infestation is like malaria: just when you think you've got it under control it flares up again. As long as you have a large volume of C level people that rather believe the chap they meet in a club than their own techs, as long as very senior people can be swayed by some sponsorship to look the other way and as long as consultancies and advisers make more money off the continual maintenance of Windows based platforms than they would do off a far more stable Open Source environment Microsoft can pretty much do what it wants - the rest of us have no choice but to follow.

      It can continue to produce average, unsecure software that just about works because it simply buys sponsors the key players. If you want an example of how that works and what devastation follows just look at the UK: we're *still* mopping up the mess, almost a decade later. Worse, I have seen inside information that this is about to be repeated in another EU country where at very senior level the dictat "thy shall use Microsoft, and nothing but Microsoft" has been given, despite formally reported issues re. security and data protection.

      I don't have to disclose which nation it is - you'll know soon enough by the constant reports of failing government IT. Give it a year or 2 and it'll be abundantly clear where this is happening.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: The beginning of the end

        "A Microsoft infestation is like malaria: just when you think you've got it under control it flares up again. As long as you have a large volume of C level people that rather believe the chap they meet in a club than their own techs, as long as very senior people can be swayed by some sponsorship to look the other way and as long as consultancies and advisers make more money off the continual maintenance of Windows based platforms than they would do off a far more stable Open Source environment Microsoft can pretty much do what it wants - the rest of us have no choice but to follow."

        That's what they used to say about IBM. They sold off their printer business. Then they sold off the PC and Laptop businesses. They're still around, they're still big, but they don't really have any impact on the market that most people remember them for. They used to dominate it. Hell, they more or less invented the desktop mass market.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: The beginning of the end

          > (IBM) Hell, they more or less invented the desktop mass market.

          But it only took off when clones appeared.

    4. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: The beginning of the end

      "We are watching the beginning of the end of Microsoft."

      PROMISE???

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh, for the love of...

    While I do appreciate the extra work that Microsoft is throwing my way, please stop. I'm up to my eyeballs in family members and clients seeking to climb out of the rolling dumpster fire that Microsoft has become.

    1. Doctor_Wibble
      Devil

      Equally conflicted, different reasons... Re: Oh, for the love of...

      Having spent many joyous hours playing with webcams on W9x and their marvellous ways of requiring 15 gigs of unsplittable driver-plus-crap-program just so you could have an unscalable 20x30 jumpy postage-stamp of a moving thumbnail (with the rounded-corner window, be still my beating heart, that so makes it worth it) I am happy to see such things condemned to oblivion. I sympathise with affected users but it's only fair that everyone gets to enjoy such indignity reminiscent of ye olden dayes.

      If that also indirectly means pain for the manufacturers who thought that it was all a price the plebs would think was worth paying for their unreliable hardware then so much the better. See also venom wrt driver version 2.1.1.1.1b not working with camera version 2.1.1.1.1a because the addition of a small dot on the casing makes it all totally completely incompatible between identical hardware, USB webcam makers the only people worse than printer makers.

      I'm not bitter, just small-minded and vindictive. It's my right, I'm allowed.

      ... and breathe...

  3. Len Goddard

    Optional behaviour

    A change like this is bound to badly impact some users with older/more obscure hardware/software (or home coded stuff). The solution is easy - when you make a change like this you provide a way of falling back to the old behaviour. Toggle "legacy_usb_video". Even if the new behavour is the default, you just need to document the fallback.

    Oops, sorry, I forgot M$ doesn't do documentation.

    1. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      Re: Optional behaviour

      "...provide a way of falling back to the old behaviour."

      Far too many coder drones don't seem to realize that.

      Their instincts are incorrect. Your instincts are correct.

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Optional behaviour

      Microsoft never "falls back". That would be to admit defeat and allow the errors of the past to continue. Microsoft will only boldly go forward, forging brilliant new errors along the way. And now everyone gets to experience them directly thanks to the ever-changing code base.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Optional behaviour

        'Microsoft never "falls back".'

        And yet in the past they've maintained bugs like allowing usage of memory that's been freed simply to allow applications that did that continue. That seems to have been an egregious error that should have been thrown back in the lap of the application developers. This seems to be largely a performance issue; if the user wants to run a combination of stuff that requires a lot of CPU power it's up to he user to provide that power and maintain backward compatibility for the rest.

        1. 9Rune5

          Re: Optional behaviour

          "if the user wants to run a combination of stuff that requires a lot of CPU power it's up to he user to provide that power and maintain backward compatibility for the rest."

          The OS' job is to help the user utilize the hardware in the most productive way achievable.

          Stopping apps from wasting CPU cycles doing the exact same task is an obvious place to start. What the article says MS did makes perfect sense to me.

          OTOH, I do wonder what happens after. I.e. that decoded stream from the webcam is then supposed to be transmitted somewhere. And that means encoding it back to H.264..?

          I suspect there is more light to be shed on this problem.

          BTW: Keep in mind that many hardware vendors are notorious for making crap drivers and bundle crap software. To keep all that ticking along nicely is a rather unpleasant task. AFAICT MS has done more in this department than any OS provider to date.

          1. Dead Parrot

            Re: Optional behaviour

            "The OS' job is to help the user utilize the hardware in the most productive way achievable."

            No, the OS's job is to do what it's damn well told. If I fire up a program that wants H.264 video, I want the OS to go and get H.264 video, not try to give me a different format or a game of sodding Candy Crush.

          2. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

            Re: Optional behaviour

            "The OS' job is to help the user utilize the hardware in the most productive way achievable."

            1. No it's not.

            2. There is no way for the OS to know anything about the "most productive way achievable".

            "Stopping apps from wasting CPU cycles doing the exact same task is an obvious place to start."

            The obvious place to start, then, is to remove Win 10. That way it's not wasting any more CPU cycles.

            I can't think of anything less useful than using the computer's resources for telemetry.

            From the article:

            "If a program expects MJPEG or H.264 from a USB-connected cam, it won't be able to get it. Bye-bye video feed.

            Morante said this change was made in the operating system to improve performance when a PC is running multiple applications that request access to the same webcam. "

            Well... You have to be some effing moron to not realise that this will instantly break many, many applications. Alternatively, you don't give a flying sh*t about your customers.

            Possibly both. (Technically, if you don't give a sh*t about your customers, you ARE a moron.)

    3. Geoffrey W

      Re: Optional behaviour

      Apparently there is a way to change back to default behaviour, though I warn that I haven't tested this because, like, no windows 10 here yet. A quote:-

      "Specifically, a DWORD named EnableFrameServerMode at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Media Foundation\Platform (for 32-bit Windows, and 64-bit applications on 64-bit Windows) and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows Media Foundation\Platform (for 32-bit applications on 64-bit Windows) set to the value zero will restore expected camera functionality."

      This is taken from :-

      http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/windows-10-anniversary-update-breaks-most-webcams/

      Don't blame me if if it doesn't work.

  4. Frank N. Stein

    Who's customer reviews is Microsoft reading? The Internal Wishful Thinking Report?? I have yet to meet anyone who has praised Windows 10, accept Microsoft Shills. We won't even get into the strong arm upgrade tactics that apparently didn't work.

    1. David Austin

      Go speak to an mom and pop Windows 8.x user that's happy that a) it looks and behaves superficially the same as Windows 7 & XP

      But yeah, I'm with the power users with this one: for every cool feature in Windows 10, there seems to be a step back in another area.

      Related: I'm I the only person missing Client side Volume Shadow Copy since Windows 7?

      1. joed

        Shadow copy can be enabled/is enabled. MS just convoluted the access (if I recall it required opening folder as a share on localhost\c$ url). But in general it's true that MS has tendency to kill useful functionality while trying to push new crap.

      2. itzman
        Trollface

        a) it looks and behaves superficially the same as Windows 7 & XP

        Linux Mint?

        1. TVU Silver badge

          Re: a) it looks and behaves superficially the same as Windows 7 & XP

          "Linux Mint?"

          It might seem initially counterintuitive, but all the recent market share figures and reports I have seen all seem to point the same way, i.e. that Windows 10's ongoing stuff ups are producing a statistically significant switch to the unices in the form of OS X, Linux and Chrome OS (chromebooks) in a way that the introduction of the controversial Windows 8 never managed to do. That really ought to be a concern for Redmond.

          1. Updraft102

            Re: a) it looks and behaves superficially the same as Windows 7 & XP

            Linux on the desktop has grown at a faster rate than Windows 10 for the last two months, according to netmarketshare.com. Linux still has a long way to go to reach parity even with MacOS or Windows XP, but the longest journey starts with a single step. Linux is actually big enough now to get its own category in the pie chart on the aforementioned web site-- it's not just part of "other" anymore.

    2. Updraft102

      I think the customer reviews MS refers to are those in its Insider program... since all of the critical Insiders have been purged from their official forums and what-not, they're left with an echo chamber.

      Oddly enough, some real-world people do like Windows 10. I've met some. It's like meeting an alien, kind of. Weird.

      1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

        "It's like meeting an alien, kind of. Weird."

        Makes you wonder what's inside that skull, that looks human on the outside. Could be a perfect vacuum?

      2. Geoffrey W

        RE: "Oddly enough, some real-world people do like Windows 10. I've met some. It's like meeting an alien, kind of. Weird."

        Nope. Tech people who care so much about operating systems and technical shit are the aliens. Those are normal humans you're seeing. You, and, I suppose, me, are the weird ones.

  5. Magani
    Trollface

    "Engineering and customer support are investigating these on a case by case basis and offering trouble-shooting tips as necessary."

    Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

    1. David 132 Silver badge

      Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

      You jest, but have you actually seen the responses from "Microsoft technical support" on the MS support forums?

      "Turn it off and on again" is about the level of it. They have a stock response which gets copied & pasted into ANY thread, along the lines of

      "Thank you for contacting Microsoft support. I understand that you have an issue with <completely unrelated problem that totally misses the point of what the user posted>. Please try the following:

      1) Run SFC /scannow

      2) Defrag your disk

      3) Change your desktop color scheme to be just a smidge less blue and a teensy bit more green"

      (OK, I made that last one up, but that's about the level of usefulness they provide)

    2. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Trollface

      Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

      no, but I put it in the microwave on 'high' for 15 minutes.

  6. ACx

    "Windows 10 Anniversary Update completely borks USB webcams. Yay."

    Some of us would think of that as a security update.....

    1. Ropewash
      Thumb Up

      @ACx

      "Some of us would think of that as a security update....."

      They were probably trying to turn the things ON by default to log some more valuable <cough> telemetry to make the Windows experience better for you. Since MSupdate is now Bizarro World, it ended up turning them off instead.

      A patch will be issued soon.

      1. a_yank_lurker

        Re: @ACx

        @Ropewash - I hate to pedantic but please define "soon". I think there are a couple of definitions here: the dictionaries and Slurp's.

        1. Ropewash
          Joke

          Re: @ACx

          @a_yank_lurker - There are a lot of factors used to determine the given value for "soon" at any moment for both source definitions.

          Dealing strictly with Microsoft's "soon" here;

          If it's a fix that will prevent a hacker from accessing your system then "soon" means between the first big media report and the next Windows release.

          If it's a fix that allows you to actually use your own machine as you want to then "soon" means 'maybe we'll get to it after the next Windows release, but it'd be easier to just find third party workarounds.'

          If it's a fix that effects Microsoft's revenue stream then "soon" means in the next patch rollout if we can actually fix the issue, we'll probably break a few things trying. Eggs - Omelettes. Windows users will understand.

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