Windows 10 Updates messing up Windows VM

[Don]

This may not be the right place to post this, but my alternative is a Microsoft forum, and they're about as useful as . . . (fill in your own blank).
I run 14.04 with a Windows VM through VMware 12. I have a dual monitor setup, both in portrait mode. Twice now when Windows has forced updates, the VM will no longer operate in portrait mode; it comes up landscape, and the Windows options to change it are greyed out. I wonder whether anyone else has encountered this problem.
I tried web searching for the problem but obviously haven't found the right place yet. I would be happy to hack the registry, but I don't know where.
(The question in your mind is doubtless why I'm using WIndows at all. Two reasons: (1) my university uses Outlook, and there is no good Outlook client for Linux; (2) TurboTax does not (yet?) have a Linux version, nor will it run on Wine.)
Thanks in advance.

[Qqmike]

Don, if no one has any specific tips, you might try the following web site:
http://www.windows10update.com/
I'm not a Windows guy any more, but do have a Windows 10 laptop in the house, I get a newsletter from that link, the owner seems nice, professional, and helpful (he also makes some money doing this), and lately he has written about lots of issues with Windows 10 updates causing problems, and possible (free) fixes, and so on. You might have to dig around at his site, but there's tons of current Windows news there (7, 8, and 10).

[GreyGeek]

You are between a rock and a hard place.

Your second problem has an easy solution. TurboTax is one of hundreds of tax preparation applications. For more than the last 8 years I have been using an online tax preparation system that keeps all of my previous year's data and it is a trivial thing to enter the new 1099's other forms, and carry forward the other data that hasn't changed.

I usually take less than 20 minutes from beginning to posting to the IRS to do my taxes. I get a response from the IRS usually within 24 hours because I always do my taxes in the last week of January or the first week in February. And if you submit your taxes online through TurboTax it exposes you to just as much risk as online sites have.

Your first problem has no solution if you have to use Outlook. There is NO email client in Linux which communicates successfully with an Outlook/Exchange server. Evolution comes close to looking like Outlook but doesn't connect with an Outlook/Exchange server.

Is it possible to undo the last updates which did the damage?

[Qqmike]

Welcome to the Windows 10 Newsletter for Friday, October 14th. It's been an interesting week in Windows because there are less complaints about Windows 10 breaking BUT Microsoft did release documentation showing how to fix problems with the upgrade.
There were fixes and new builds though and Redstone 2 was released as well.

http://www.windows10update.com/happe...ndows-10-week/

[DrGeoffrey]

The question in your mind is doubtless why I'm using WIndows at all. Two reasons: (1) my university uses Outlook, and there is no good Outlook client for Linux

My university also uses Outlook, but they provide me with a desktop Windows system. To work with my Linux laptop, I set Outlook to forward all e-mail to my off campus GMail account. Google Calendar can also be set to access my Outlook Calendar.

[GreyGeek]

Dr Geoffrey, have you checked with passwords.google.com to see how many of your login names and passwords around the web that they have fetched and saved? They even knew my wifi admin name & pswd!


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[DrGeoffrey]

Dr Geoffrey, have you checked with passwords.google.com to see how many of your login names and passwords around the web that they have fetched and saved? They even knew my wifi admin name & pswd!

Yes. Quite clearly they know anything that was ever saved in Chrome, too.

[DrGeoffrey]

These days the question comes down to who do you trust more. It's dam near impossible to maintain a successful career without an on-line presence, so your next step is to make the best out of a terrible on-line security situation. MS has demonstrated, time and time and time again, that they are incapable of maintaining security. After all, why bother? No one gets fired for buying MS.

No matter how incompetent MS proves to be.

OTOH, Google at least provides reliable services, and makes the attempt to provide security.

The only efforts MS expends towards security are reserved for "window dressing" and increased user lock-in.

[GreyGeek]

I had a google account for nearly 10 years (gmail, G+ and YouTube), but when I noticed that YouTube was censoring political speech, and Google was doing the same with its search engine, and then discovered that they had my login names and passwords for all the online accounts I had during that period of time, I felt it was necessary to vote with my feet. I DL's my address book, my emails, and my passwords, and then deleted and canceled my Google account. That was six months ago. I haven't missed them.

Instead of google search I use DuckDuckGo. I also have Ixquick. Neither one tracks me, they disconnect my IP address from my search results so Google doesn't get that info, and their search requests are just as good since they use Google surreptitiously.

I did have a Facebook account a few years ago but they couldn't keep malware out of their system so I dropped them. If I still had my FB account I would have deleted it as well because Google, Facebook and Twitter agreed to censor "hate" speech several months ago. Since they defined "hate" as anything which objected to the current PC environment that to me is fascism. In a free America under an un-infringed 1st Amendment I may disagree with what others may say but they have as much right to say what they want as I do. And, I expect the same respect in return.

As an old college prof myself, I am curious as to what areas you teach.