Sunday, July 15, 2018

Another Windows mess - automatically start apps open when computer last shut down

Google Chrome started to open every time I turned on my computer. Although a minor thing, I decided to look into why.  It turns out that it is due to a half-baked new Windows 10 feature. Microsoft decided that it made sense to automatically open applications which were open when the computer was shut down. I agree that this isn't a completely bad idea since computers can accidentally be shut down. But there are issues which Microsoft did not anticipate.

The issue which affects Chrome appears to be background processes. It appears that Windows is interpreting Google background processes as being the Chrome browser. Even after I changed Chrome settings to not run background processes after the browser is closed, Chrome still opens on Windows startup. It is thought that this is due to my use of Google Drive. Windows may be interpreting Google Drive as part of Chrome so it reopens Chrome on startup.

Another issue which doesn't directly affect me but may be problematic is when an application actually causes problems which require Windows to be forced to shut down. I've seen multiple causes for this but a virus is one of the reasons. If Windows automatically opens applications which were previously open, the application which caused the shutdown will be opened again.

It seems to me that Windows should have made better settings for this. There should be a means to exclude specific applications. There should also be a means to turn the feature completely off. There is one setting which turns the feature off for Store apps but not desktop apps.

I am getting Windows update fatigue. Between features which are not adequately developed before launch to updates actually causing problems which specific computers, I've become quite frustrated with Windows updates. For a while, I prevented non-security Windows updates by designating all wifi connections as metered. This was because the spring update had issues with each of my computers. I eventually updated 2 of the 3 computers. But the issues with updates are just too much. So I am convinced more than ever that I get more negatives out of the major Windows updates that I get positives.

By the way, 2 of my 3 Windows 10 devices are high end computers. One is actually a Surface Pro 4 yet Microsoft can't even get their upgrades to be consistently clean with Surface devices.


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