Win 10 Users May Need to Uninstall Office, Plus Cortana Images
No one said using an experimental operating system would be easy. In fact, for Windows Insiders, who are test driving the Technical Preview version of Windows 10, the experience at time can be downright annoying. Case in point: yesterday, Microsoft started telling users that to receive an important security patch, they may have to uninstall Office.
A post on TechCrunch points the way back to a series of Tweets from Gabriel Aul, Microsoft’s Windows Insider program manager, who explains that the Technical Preview team was forced to go this inconvenient route – but that it’s for the best. Here’s the scoop in a series of five tweets:
(1/4) Hey #WindowsInsiders, we just made a tough call after working through the night that I thought I should share with you.
— Gabriel Aul (@GabeAul) December 9, 2014
(2/4) We have a security update going out today, and the installer fails on 9879 if Office is installed.
— Gabriel Aul (@GabeAul) December 9, 2014
(3/4) Rather than rolling a new fix (losing several days in the process) we’re going to publish it as is.
— Gabriel Aul (@GabeAul) December 9, 2014
(4/4) The workaround is painful: uninstall Office, install the hotfix, reinstall Office. Sorry. We’re working hard to fix.
— Gabriel Aul (@GabeAul) December 9, 2014
#WindowsInsiders – please try to install KB3022827 *before* the workaround to uninstall Office first. It will work for many, no harm if not.
— Gabriel Aul (@GabeAul) December 9, 2014
Aul explained the situation further in a post on the Microsoft Windows forum:
“We recently released an update for the Windows 10 Technical Preview (Build 9879) to fix an issue with frequent Explorer.exe crashes – KB3020114. We’re releasing a few fixes to the most painful issues hitting Windows Insiders on this build since we won’t have a full new build until early 2015, and we want to keep it usable for you through the end of the year.
[…] On a shipping OS, if we hit an issue like this we’d normally pull the update. But since the Windows Insider audience is technical we decided to leave it up while we work on the fix so that people hitting the Explorer crash can get some relief. We need to fix the 2 underlying issues above, and make sure that no additional problems prevent hotfix installs in the process. We’ve been working on this since last week but it will take a bit more time to ensure we got it right.”
In short, it’s a pain in the ass, but Microsoft has a solution for users who are having a hard time with this. It’s not ideal – but that’s kinda what you have to deal with if you’re going to use an experimental operating system that’s constantly being updated. I haven’t checked the update on my Surface Pro 3, so I’m hoping that I’m one of the lucky people who doesn’t have to uninstall and reinstall Office.
Meanwhile! There’s some good stuff coming down the pike that sounds a lot more fun that having to perform workarounds for buggy updates. A post on Neowin has a gallery of images for what Cortana, Microsoft’s digital assistant tool, will look like on Windows 10 coming soon. It’s not clear just yet when we’ll get to try Cortana out, but rest assured, it’s definitely in the works. Stay tuned…
[Sources: TechCrunch, Microsoft, Neowin]