When I first bit the bullet and upgraded from Win 7 to Win 10, I lost my HP PSC 950 printer – no available drivers could get it to work. By dint of a lot of pray-and-try fiddling, I was able to get my Canon all-in-one (MF 4350D) to print, but the Canon toolbox was no longer recognized, so my ADF feeder was bricked.

Now, after the Anniversary Update, the entire scanner function is gone. Sticky notes are locked to a minimum size, regardless of how much text is on them. Chrome demands permission to run every blasted time, along with other programs like Paint Shop Pro 7.0 and WinAmp, to name just a few. And you can now no longer tell Windows not to restart your computer after an update, but only specify when you’d like to do it… and you can’t specify longer than a 12-hour exclusion window. ¹

Do you have any idea how enraging this is?

(With apologies to Bud Grace.)

Do you remember the scene in Dirty Harry where the serial killer, Scorpio, pays to have himself beaten up by a thug so he can blame his injuries on the police?

Yeah, that’s what I’d like do do with every Microsoft executive responsible for the Mißgeburt that is Windows 10. In an abandoned warehouse somewhere, until they beg abject forgiveness from every frustrated user who had Win10 forced upon them without permisson, and even those of us who upgraded by choice.

Not very charitable of me, I know. But the frustration level has risen to such a point that some Linux distro is starting to look darned attractive, learning curve notwithstanding.

I have some words for Microsoft, but they’re not suitable for what I try to keep as a family-friendly blog. Fill in the details yourself, it won’t be hard.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

¹ Edit: A month or so after I had written this draft, Canon (bless their souls) had come up with a new driver for my printer, so at least the scanner works again. And Windows did fix the issue with sticky notes. The rest of my frustration remains. Yes, these are #firstworldproblems, but I live in the first world and depend on my machine for a whole lotta things.