a little more griping about Windows 10

My VS 2013 update did finish installing, eventually, and now VS seems to be working fine. No clue what went wrong there. (Or maybe that’s just how long this update takes to install? No, that can’t be right…)

And I just bought Start10 from Stardock ($4 to upgrade from Start8) and installed it. The Windows 10 start menu isn’t horrible, but Start10 is better. The install was quick and easy.

Meanwhile, I decided to try playing solitaire. Well, that was a bad idea. When I started up “Microsoft Solitaire Collection” it gave me an error code while trying to sign in, and an URL to the FAQ. The URL wasn’t clickable and couldn’t be copied to the clipboard, so I had to type it in manually. Then, the URL turned out to be a redirect to a Facebook page, which is kind of weird, but ok, I guess. The FAQ says that the error code I got likely indicates that XBox Live is down. Checking on that, I see that it is, and least partially.

So here’s my full list of WTFs involved in trying to play Solitaire on Windows 10:

  1. Tying solitaire to XBox Live.
  2. Showing a numeric error code instead of a useful description for the error.
  3. Showing a link to an FAQ page that isn’t clickable and can’t be copied to the clipboard.
  4. Having your FAQ hosted at Facebook, when you’re Microsoft, and certainly have the ability to host your own web pages.
  5. XBox Live being down for no good reason.

Well, it’s possible to play solitaire, even without XBox Live. but I didn’t really want to play solitaire anyway, I just wanted to see what it looked like. So, mission accomplished, I guess, and I got some entertainment value out of the error message, so there’s that.

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