O'K' folks. You are all wondering why I hate Microsoft and why I think they're a criminal organization. I had been running Office 10 or whatever version of their software I was running. (Running the latest version of some fancy new program so I can tell everyone how up to date I am doesn't do a thing for me. I find that equivalent to people who will boastfully tell you the name of every drug they are taking for every disease that that they can give you an acronym for. I only want a program that does its job as simply as possible without all the fancy and unnecessary bells and whistles.) Out of the blue I get a message from Microsoft informing me that the password I have been using is no longer valid. They will give me a new password if I repurchase the app. So, to avoid giving an explanation to some tech who doesn't care, I went to the 365 app. I spent three days and four tech calls before someone told me that there was a conflict with another program. That's after I ran the compatibility check which told me there was no problem. I was sent to three different sites and told to open my account. The only problem was that none of these sites had a link to my account.. Now I was perfectly happy with my previous version, but MS just tells me the password is invalid and I can buy a new one. So that answers one of you folks who says MS doesn't force you to buy anything. No they don't. They just deny you access to your old app. So if you don't buy it just say goodbye to all the files stored on disks. Since I have Windows on a disk that I purchased I'd call that denial of service and a criminal act.
As for trying a new O/S I tried to install Windows 10 (which, by the way is so good that everyone I know who switched from Windows 7 to Windows 10, switched back. However I tried three times to download Windows 10 even though I don't need or want it. The download froze in the middle of the download. I then tried to install Linux. Same thing it froze. When I attempted to reinstall my AV program it also froze so I've been running for days without protection. Since it is possible that the problem lay in the fact that Windows Update may contain a file I needed. It took over 24 hours to download the updates, let alone installing them. However now that they are installed I get the following message when I try to access three years worth of work on my disks:
"The program can't start because api-ms-win-runtime-11-1-0.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem." So I have to attempt to reinstall my O/S for the fifth time in three days. (By the way, I can't send you a screenshot of this message because my snipping tool is not working.) My conclusion is that MS is attempting to coerce me into buying Windows 10. So right now I have a system that tells me I have to reinstall my O/S which I am certain MS does not want me to do as they don't make any money from people who keep using a perfectly satisfactory system. Therefore they will make it difficult to get a clean download of an older version. This not a new occurrence. With every iteration of a new Windows O/S I have had reinstall, by hand, one at a time, over 1000 music files. I have been running MS Windows since its first version as well as a number of other MS apps. Ever since MS quit giving anyone the possibility of purchasing a disk and decided to only issue new apps on a download basis things have been a wreck with them failing to recognize activation codes or the number of allowable reinstalls because their system is garbage and constant reinstallations are necessary.
Now, before I hear some nonsense about how other folks have no problem with the system, I assume they use it for such activities as sending e-mails or visiting chat rooms. I have at least 40 different apps on my hard drive, everything from photoshop to a working (unlike MS) disk eraser and I use them all. This machine is not a toy for my amusement. It's a working computer. I have a TB of hard drive space and 6 Gigs of ram, so I expect that this machine is more than capable of handling the load. Unfortunately the O/S doesn't seem up to the task and I would expect that switching to Windows 10 (which as far as I can see is designed for mobile devices which I don't have) will not give me any better functionality.
