So ages and ages ago, I posted a rather whiny thread asking/grousing about problems with Win10 and any recommendations regarding it. I'm looking, more calmly, for any updated advice y'all may have. More opinions are useful data.

I am -finally- pulling the trigger on a new PC, and I'm trying not to work myself back into a state of research-induced paranoia. I have all my files ready to dump on an external and switch over, and I'm trying to keep from waffling too much.

I'm buying something off the shelf, and within my parameters and price range, everything comes with 10 Home. Considering what I'm planning to do, I don't think the upgrade to Pro is really worth it - I'm okay with (and have the instructions for) doing a registry tweak to shut off Cortana (I'd be fine installing gpedit as well, but apparently MS removed that option).

So for people who've been using 10 for ages now, and not hating it, are there any real standout issues to watch for? I already know about going in and slapping every possible privacy setting to Deny, and switching telemetry to Basic mode. A couple other random questions I've yet been unable to answer from Google searches:
- early in Win10, there were horror stories about updates installing and rebooting PCs spontaneously, is that still a thing? I don't seem many mentions of it any more.
- likewise, horror stories about random updates bricking PCs. I only have one personal machine, so grabbing fixes off another isn't really feasible. Is this a thing that still happens? Likewise, haven't seen much on it.
- I'm indecisive on the AV/firewall front. I have install files for Avast and ZA ready to go, but I keep reading that Defender and the built-in firewall are pretty reasonable these days. For an average user who surfs the internet and wants to play some more modern PC games, is it worth screwing around with something more complicated?
- less technically, from what I've been reading I feel like I'm very out of place for...y'know, shutting my PC down when I'm done with it for the day. Do people just not do that any more? Not a serious question.

Again, this is all research-induced paranoia talking. Let's just say the last time I bought a PC, I plugged it in, booted, made my account, copied my files, and went. I didn't have to worry about a thousand different activations and privacy options, and it's all new and frightening to me.

 

Good gawd you've been on the internet for 5 years without security updates and your worried about using Windows 10?

2019 builds let you turn off the unprompted restarts, won't install the major feature updates automatically for 18 months and let you temporarily pause all updates.

Not heard much of this lately and it's something that's always happened early in the life of Windows versions for as long as Windows update has been a thing.

I'm just using Defender and Malwarebytes on my home stuff with no issues. How aggressive a solution you need as a consumer user is generally down to how competent you are at not getting shit in the first place.

I still do. Be aware that pressing Shut Down in modern versions of Windows is more like what Hibernate used to be and that you need to use Restart to get an actual fresh boot of Windows.

 

Appreciate the candor - and yes, I'm a careful internet user. The stupid thing that's prompting this is increasing issue with my current PC (which used to be my backup PC) where I'm physically unable to update things any more - including Adblock, Noscript, all those good things.

As I said, it's irrational and I know it. I just want stuff to work off the shelf, out of the box, and without selling my soul - is that really so much to ask?

 

Milage may vary for off the shelf and out of the box, but your definately not getting anything without selling your soul thesedays.  

 

only issue i've ever had with win10 is that i've been getting a page fault in non paged area error when trying to update (and sporadically on boot) since july. did memtest and all associated "solutions" and everything checked out. finally got it updated and decided to check my drivers as that was another potential cause and there were 8 or so that were out of date, though they werent showing as out of date in device manager. im hoping that now that they're updated the error will go away

 

Welp, did it. Pulled the trigger, got things set up...posting from the new machine, and now I have to figure out how you actually buy software these days.  

 

They've pretty much got it on par with Windows 7 now in terms of stability and usability.

A lot of security crap and features have either been removed or able to be uninstalled or hidden.

I use Windows 10 pro on my gaming PC and my work laptop.now and never any issues.

 

So interesting turn of events with that bsod error in boot I was getting, was getting a page fault in non pages area at least once a day upon boot since the October update (tried everything to fix it including manually setting the paging file size). swapped out the 11yr old tv I was using as a monitor with a newer one today and after 3 reboots I’ve yet to get the error.