A little more Windows 10 whining....

While doing my critique on here the other day, I probably neglected to say that there's one problem with Win-10 that maybe Mighty Microsoft ought to re-think.

The distribution format that they've chosen is set up so that it does its automatic downloading and installing at a time in the wee hours of the morning. And from start to finish, for this latest build 10240, on my PC, that took just over three hours. 

Three hours is a long time, and my computer is turned off at nights before I go to bed, because I don't want anything going on with it unless I'm awake and there to see what's happening, and perhaps stop it if I don't like it. I used to also shut off the modem at nights, until Bob at the ISP told me that it causes a lot of unnecessary re-synchronizing if I do that, and I should leave it on 24/7. But I don't want my hard-drive spinning away for nothing, or the fans wearing themselves out, if nobody's at it doing something, so I turn everything off when I'm done for the day. It seems more secure to me that way.

But for anyone like me, who turns it all off at nights, it means we have to do this "automatic updating" with its install process and its reboots and all that during the daytime, when most people would rather be actually using their PC for something more productive or more interesting. But we have to wait for three hours, to get the latest incarnation of Windows 10 downloaded, configured for installation, and then actually installed. And this can seem like forever.

I liked it better when we could download an ISO file, burn it to disc, and then install it whenever convenient. Having a disc is also desirable for those who aren't familiar with DISM.exe, and how to use it.

And if you open Windows Powershell in Administrator Mode (It's a more "with it" version of "Command Prompt") and you type in DISM.exe /? at the blinking cursor, you get a lot more than you see above, so please scroll down for the rest of it.

"What can it do?" you ask. It can contact Microsoft's "Mission Control" and compare your installed Windows Image with their official correct version, and then repair yours if the two are not exactly alike. In some cases, that's faster than trying to do a re-install from a disc, and in addition, it doesn't disturb your installed third-party programs and files. So this is the preferred method, and you should familiarize yourself with at least its fundamentals, because chances are, this is soon going to become our best option for verifying the system's OK.