I have been tied down since Friday afternoon updating a Windows 7 box after a system reload. By now M$ should have been able to provide some form of consolidation instead of making people download dozens of files.
When I get this machine stabilized, I will have to reload my Win 7 laptop that was a victim of the Windows 10 attacks.
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Argh! I hate when that happens. Hope it doesn’t take too long.
It always takes days, and I know it, but it still annoys me. Days is no longer an insignificant amount of time at my age. 😉
Bryan, Bryan, Bryan… *sigh*
I keep telling you m8:
WSUS Offline Update
It has the added advantage that updates are installed in the correct order *that actually works* rather than the order M$ thinks will work. It also checks that the update is necessary & any prerequisites are also installed. Any updates that are known to be broken are not installed.
An example to the above in the latest update:
“Rearranged scan prerequisites’ installation sequence in order to avoid repeated installation of kb3172605 (July 2016 update rollup for Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2)”
“Added scan prerequisite update kb3177725 (MS16-098)”
and others. 🙂
And on Linux I type “yum update -y” and a while later, it’s updated. No continuous reboot loop hitting the “find new updates” button and it finds updates it didn’t find the last time $%!!@#$. Windows could have been made modular and package-managed like Linux, but that would have made sense. SIGH.
I’m going to give WSUS a shot on my Toshiba laptop which stopped updating during the push to update it to Windows 7. WSUS might fix whatever the problem that occurred on or after June 6 that broke things. Otherwise, as soon as I get the little HP box updated I will reload Win 7 on ‘Tobie’
I know, Badtux. Ubuntu just tells me and I accept or not. It doesn’t crash my machine by updating and rebooting during the middle of night while I am running a software upgrade and screw up days of work. or leave someone without a machine while we try to sort everything out. [Bastards]
The best way to use WSUS if you have more than one Win system is use a USB pen drive or external HDD (or NAS of course). If you are updating Win 7 & 10 (& office), you’ll need about 8 GB of space. It’s portable (no installer) and update files are machine/OS independent.
Good luck. 🙂
Oh! For actual hardware driver updates, I recommend: DriverPack Solution
It has both an offline (which I use due to my flaky Internet & my Dev server not being on the Internet often) & an online update version. The offline version basically has a library of pretty much every driver out there! So it’s quite big (August ISO is about an 11 GB file) and only via BitTorrent. But has the advantage of not needing Internet except for future driver updates. You can choose specific drivers to install/update of course. It also supports Win versions from XP to 10. It’s also free. 🙂
I’ve got the new Win7 box working and am ready to do a WSUS update after system recovery on the Toshiba.
Meanwhile M$ has taken out many webcams, including those used for its own Skype, by an update to Windows 10 and reduced the rollback time limit to 10 days from 30.
I’m annoyed but not despairing because my Windows XP box chugs right along since M$ stopped ‘updating’ it. Windows 10 may replace 8.0 or Vista or even ME as Microsoft’s worst system. They used fraud and deceit to impose this on the unsuspecting masses and make it a bigger PITA with every update.
Don’t dis Vista. Mine is (mostly) still tooting along, thankyouverymuch. The “mostly” was an update about a year and a half ago that munched my mouse functionality, but it’s an irritation not a show-stopper. Meanwhile, things go much smoother without the constant updating.
Thankfully, Using W10 Enterprise LTSB means I can (and certainly have) disabled all updates, notifications & phone homes! The only way I update my systems is with WSUS & DriverPack. 🙂
Oh! One word of warning if anyone decides to use DriverPack! Do NOT use Automatic updates! It will also update/install software it thinks will be useful (like Firefox, Opera, WinRAR and the annoying Advanced SystemCare garbage!
When the main screen comes up, there is a light grey “Expert Mode” option at the bottom. Click it. Disable any drivers & Software you don’t want. Also, on the Security tab, it may have autoselected some installed s/w to be removed! This is a new *feature* they added this year which is pissing off the users. they must have hired an ex M$ coder!
Still, at least you can change it. If you know how. 😉
The updates are the problem, not the solution. Windows 10 sort of worked when I first upgraded on the big box, but it wasn’t long before updates turned the machine into a door stop. My XP is the only machine that doesn’t have ‘an IV’ attached to it. The annoying part is that the updates that cause the most problems for me are to ‘features’ that I do not and have no intention of ever using.
I need Windows 10 because I must make sure that my software works under Windows 10, because some of my customers have Windows 10. I’m not having the problems you guys are having, but I think that’s because I have a fairly new motherboard and video card and lots of memory, as well as running it off of an SSD rather than spinning rust. That said, if I had no reason to have Windows 10, I was plenty happy with Windows 7…
Roger that, Badtux, the same reason I have an XP machine up and running. The good news is that the big box has a Linux drive that makes it very useful even with Win 10 messing up the other 1TB drive. It is the messing up of my little backup/hurricane laptop that pisses me off. I did everything I could think of except just shut it down for the duration to protect it, and my first machine eaten by malware was the Toshiba taken out by Microsoft’s Windows 10 campaign.
The Big Box was my fault for trying it out. Given what happened to it, the Toshiba would have been ready for recycling if I had tried to upgrade it.
I have to use Win10 on my new build & the Tablet. they are both latest gen & driver support in Win 7 is in some cases a kluge that sometimes may work or not. One thing that works every time in Win 7 is the iSCSI initiator. On both the Win10 systems, at boot, it just sits there with a “reconnecting” message. So I have to disconnect, select the LUN & hit connect, & it connects instantly! Then I get a W10 message that there is a “problem with this drive. Scan and fix.” Except there is no problem at all! On Win7, the NAS & iSCSI perform perfectly. If I put a heavy load (copying a large file or number of files for eg.), on W10 it will usually drop the connection at some point. On W7, no problem at all! The biggest problem with W7 is the M.2 NVMe support is flaky. Though, Samsung say they are working on a fix. Hardly surprising given the number of people begging for it to work on W7. When that and a couple less important driver issues with W7 are fixed, I’ll probably dump W10 altogether, on the PC at least.
Even though I have legit Enterprise LTSB licenses, queries about the iSCSI problem have resulted in nothing except one message that I posted my request on the wrong forum, with zero indication of what the right forum was! M$ Always have been, and always will be, a bunch of cluless cretins!
Can you not just turn off the updates, period? Then just update the things you want when you want? I am no computer expert. But I am always game for avoiding aggravation if I can help it.
I updated my husband’s W.8 to 10 and that went fine. He can’t see any difference, but then all he does is email and listen to youtube videos anyway. And likes the screen where it looks like the old system, so he doesn’t even use the “newfangled” screen with all the boxes (or whatever the hell you call them).
On my W7 Toshiba, I just took out that annoying update that kept asking me to upgrade to 10. Heard too many horror stories like yours of people who upgraded 7 to 10. No, thanks! The days thing…..YES
Yes, Kryten, about the time they get all of the drivers and other annoyances fixed, M$ pushes out a new version that works with almost nothing. Manufacturers assume wrongly that most people will switch to the new system and stop working on Win 7 bugs.
I can do that Moi, but I have a mild OCD and I want things to work. Most 8 to 10 updates seemed to have worked. I think it is a hardware driver problem in addition to software bugs. I tried to stop the upgrade on my Toshiba 7 by turning off auto-updates, but it updated anyway and broke something.
Not sure if I posted this one before. It’s one of the best Win10 config tools I’ve used, and it’s free. It will completely disable Updates in Win 10 and many other annoying *features*! Each item has a help message about that function when you click on it. It’s also stand-alone (no install required). 🙂 If using WSUS (or something else) to manage updates, W10 updates are not necessary, and you get to control what updates you want.
It’s updated regularly, as M$ try to stop these tools from working. Check the change log at the bottom of this page to see what M$ *update* changes they make to stop people from disabling things (like Cortana etc.)
O&O ShutUp10
I killed off most of the annoyances when I installed it initially by refusing to accept their recommendations, but they have had a couple of months to override my wishes. I’ll be bringing the big box over to the big house because the cats don’t seem interested in it anymore 😉
Well, my list of app’s (especially Development tools) that no longer work in Win 10 grows! The latest is MarkdownPad 2. Though to be fair to M$, it’s because the MDP team are extremely slow to update things! They still use the quite old Awesomium v1.6.5 HTML UI Engine (latest version is v1.7.5.1 which is 2 years old! But at least did work in Win8, v1.6.5 didn’t). With MDP installed as is, I get no preview of my Markdown files. Which is the reason I paid for MDP instead of the free half-decent free options. I installed the latest Awesomium SDK, and MDP crashes instantly on start!)
Looking at the free Haroopad, but it’s new and has a way to go yet!
Getting really annoyed. I have a number of tools I need that I cannot use (except on my Dell Precision M6700 Notebook which has Win 7).
Why be fair to M$? They still haven’t figured out that the purpose of an OS is as a structure for applications. Unix was created to play Cave. Users don’t give a nanoshit about an operating system, they want a way to post cat pictures and send messages. Businesses want to keep track of their money and send long, annoying e-mails. Neither could really care what OS was involved, only that it supported what they wanted to do.
If the box won’t do what you want, it’s a door stop.
Well… I cannot disagree with that! Given I’ve said (and often thought) similarly over the decades! 😀
If M$ were an OS company, or had any intention of being one, they have no excuse at all. But given that their intent is to be a huge money sucking vampire, their model is understandable… somewhat. They also realise people are mostly clueless morons. So it’s pretty easy for them. Let’s face it, how many times have they conned people since DOS 1, and still get away with it every few years? LMAO
Well, I guess I’ll play Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. It helps me calm down. 😉 I have 3 characters now, two @ max lvl 70 on Torment IV difficulty (Badtux may know what all that is!) LOL That’s one thing my new build IS good for! I get an average 128 FPS. Nice & smooooth! 😀
If anyone is curious: Diablo III – Kryten42’s Profile
Actually the reference to games is a subconscious reaction to the terrible thing that M$ has done to Solitaire, FreeCell, & Mahjong in Win 10. They are no longer relaxing time-wasters, they are annoying.
Well… This explains everything! LMAO
And, shouldn’t the image on screen say “…Future Graduates” Two fails in one image! Way to go MicroStuffed! LOL
Epic fail! 😀
Oh! Bryan, I meant to post this last week for your Win 7 systems!
There is a simple way to disable updates to Win 8/10. Stert RegEdit and find this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
Add this entry (as DWORD): DisableOSUpgrade
And set it to: 1
Alternatively, you could create a .reg file:
Also, you can stop AutoUpdates for Win10 systems (NOTE: I understand this will not work for Home editions! Only Pro or Enterprise. Home doesn’t support Group Policies.):
That’s it. 🙂
I’m trying to get the laptop to start updating again and I think that M$ broke it in May while setting up the upgrade to Windows 10. There are so many people out there posting about Window 7 update problems that it is highly unlike;y to be a problem with only my machine.
I have seen that kind of screw up so many times at trade shows. People would create a presentation that won’t run on their company’s equipment, so the box gets covered with a tablecloth. M$ forgot the tablecloth.
It’s definitely not just you m8. I’ve been following the drama on several professional Win forums. It’s why I prepared well in advance & delayed setting up my 3 new systems for a couple months. But even that hasn’t saved me from problems. But then, they are the norm with M$ software! History certainly proves that beyond doubt! My CentOS server has been purring along for years since CentOS 5.2 to 6.4 with only minor hiccups along the way. But it’s used for a specific, well known, purpose. I haven’t updated to CentOS 7 yet, because I have no need to for now. When I decide to move to 7, I’ll test here & then create a new COS 7 image for prometeus. Usually only takes a few days of testing. Migrating from one Win to the next takes months of testing & planning. And waiting for fixes.
All you can ever do with M$, is hope to minimise the problems! They can’t be eliminated. Particularly because M$ won’t tell anyone the actual facts or truth about their products!
I’m working on improving WP performance, which even with a moderate site, really sux *out of the box*! Looking at 3 areas:
1. Using Nginx web/proxy server for static content and caching, Apache for dynamic content.
2. Using Percona Server with the XtraDB engine instead of MySQL (or MariaDB) – it’s significantly faster so far! Has the added advantages of excellent high availability and highly scalable cluster & offload support if/when needed, and XtraBackup to perform non-blocking backups of the DB as often as required to local & online backup systems.
3. Optimizing the code, ESPECIALLY plugins! Some are so badly written, it’s amazing they work at all!
I managed to get a fairly average test site using readily available & typical themes & plugins, page loading from around 11 sec/page to 4 sec. So far, so good. 🙂
Next step is to load the test site with auto generated content (1,000, 10,000, 100,000 threads & comments with a mix of content). See what breaks. 😉
The biggest weakness of open source software is a lack of consistency in the quality of code and the overall style. No one wants to clean-up other people’s code, and there are no enforceable programming practices. The plug-ins are often the result of ‘see what I can do’ projects, like my habit of adding snippets of music to all of my programs when I went back to get my degree. I always used assembler to activate the PC’s speaker. It wasn’t necessary, but I was really bored writing classroom code. I would never have done that for software going to a client. When you write software for yourself, you can get sloppy.
It looks more and more like the changes M$ made to their website are at fault, but they won’t admit it, and won’t or can’t tell people how to fix it.
That’s all true Bryan, unfortunately.
I remember when I was writing code (mostly assembler) for M$ DOS. At first it all seemed fairly straight forward. Then (usually when M$ released an update) I’d find problems with my s/w & significant performance issues now and then. I spent more of my time trying to figure out what were causing the issues than writing the code! In my naivete then, I’d always assumed it was my code. Turned out that most of the time it was DOS! Some routines my code relied on were just crap! So, I had to create my own routines and bypass the DOS calls. I got so fed up with this after awhile, I began commenting my replacement routines with things like: “This code is here because the morons that Billy Bob employs have no idea how to write working code, and certainly never bother to test anything!” Followed by a description of the problem. And DOS was relatively small! It continued through Win3xx to W98/ME. I gave up after that! My last project was a hybrid W98/ME that was very popular on Usenet that was 1/4 the size of W98 or ME & pissed off Billy Bob no end! Ahhhh… The highlight of my coding career that always makes me smile! 😀
Hmmm… Reminds me, there are some people who still know how to write compact code that does exactly what it is intended to do, in spite of Windoze! LOL
I’ve used a number of tools from this German developer since W98! And most (if not all) of his programs work from W98 to W10 (usually different versions of course). Includes x64 & Unicode versions where that makes sense to do so. They are mostly portable/standalone (no install necessary) and amazingly tiny! (Most are less than 100 kB & only one (I think) is over 1 MB. Any bug’s are fixed quickly. He has excellent CMD (ColorConsole) & Explorer (Q-Dir) replacements. 🙂 And all are Freeware. You may find something useful:
SoftwareOK
The iSCSI issue has really become a PITA! Earlier, it dropped the connection during a file xfer, & the NAS just locked up! So I had no choice but to power it off. It’s been busy the past 3.5 hours re-syncing the array! Will take about 9 hours or so! That’s just BS!
I’ve sent a REALLY annoyed email to a few M$ departments, and one to Seagate! I am sure it’s M$ fault, but I no longer care! I just want it fixed!
I did find that the iSCSI driver files in W10 are dated 2006! So it’s code from Vista!
Someone is playing silly buggers because I have had to step back from the latest versions of several device drivers to get ones that work. It seems that since May any M$ update is suspect, not just Win 10. Most of the problem drivers were changed to include Win 8 or 8 & 10. This is really pissing me off. I spend all my time fixing things by using my XP machine to to download old software.
Maybe Seagate knows someone at M$ who actually cares, rather than the minimum wage screen readers that you normally get in support.
I’ve decided to buy a Thunderbolt-3 4-bay enclosure (all-aluminium w/ 2x 120mm fans & LCD control panel) on special at one of the dealers I buy from for $379 (they sell on Amazon for US$430, would be over $500 here). Using thunderbolt (which is one reason I bought this MoBo, as it’s on of the very few to support thunderbolt 2/3 (20/32 Gbps – they quote 40 Gbps, but given it’s fed by 4 PCIe lanes @ max 8 Gbps each, 40 Gbps is impossible) & *real* USB 3.1 (10 Gbps)). It’s RAID 0/1/5 internally, but looks like a single big drive to the host, so no iSCSI needed. I’ll use RAID 0 as performance is my priority here & I loose 5 TB to RAID 5 & all the formatting & iSCSI, and I’ve used just over 8 TB already! I don’t care about redundancy given I can back it up to the big NAS continuously (and have the s/w to do that). I’ll take the 4 x 4TB HDD’s out of the Seagate NAS for it. I’ll either sell the Seagate or keep it for later. It’s definitely a W10 issue for me. The Seagate works perfectly on my W7 notebook & linux! Screw M$ to hell!
I’ll take the router off the internal LAN (via the switch) & connect it to one of the Ethernet port’s on the MoBo. I have the 4-port Ethernet card for my internal network which will be isolated.
When the software sucks, look for a hardware fix, like tripling the RAM, which I did on my Win 7 box because it was sluggish.
Seems I have another weird hardware related W10 issue. I have 4 SSD’s in my build from hell. A new Samsung SM961 m.2 NVMe 1TB, 2 Samsung 850 Pro 1 TB, 1 Samsung 840 EVO 240 GB. In this system, TRIM only works on the 961 & 840. The 2x 850’s report TRIM is enabled, but testing with a cool CLI tool called “TRIMcheck” shows it isn’t doing a thing! I moved the SSD’s to the W7 notebook, installed W7 on one, and tested for a few days. During that time, TRIMcheck reported all was working as it should. Put them back on the W10 system, made sure TRIM was enabled, tested… nada.
I emailed Samsung but not expecting much. As with most SuperCorp’s, their customer support/service is absolute crap!
Damned if I know. Well, I know I seriously hate W10! *shrug*
I use the 740 EVO for /TEMP & the User DIR’s (Documents, Music, etc.) & other Win DIR’s that can be moved so as to not clutter the SM961. At least they got that right in W10, though it worked fine in W8. Of course, M$ doesn’t go out of their way to let anyone know they can do that of course. It’s not hard to do with W7, but need one of several 3rd party tools. Or know how to do it from CLI or regedit.
SSD prices are dropping. I got the commercial SM961 1TB M.2 SSD a couple weeks ago for about $15 less than I paid for the consumer 950 Pro 512GB almost a year ago! Though, Samsung’s new 850 EVO 4 TB SSD is insanely priced! Maybe in a year (or 3) it might be worth considering! 😀
Starting to believe W8 was the alpha, W10 is the beta!
Oops! I made a sleight error (for the sake of accuracy)… 😉
The SM961 is “consumer” grade (Samsung calls “Mainstream”), the 950 PRO is “commercial” (Samsung calls “Premium”). Main difference really is that the SM961 is usually an OEM only part and has a 3 yr warranty. The 950 PRO is retail & a 5 yr warranty. But the 961 is also has 25%-50% better performance than the 950 depending on the data type etc. It has been noticeably faster.
And while you get to play with SSDs, I’m stuck waiting for a chunk of plastic to install another disk in my XP machine, because Dell couldn’t stick to one kind of disk rails.
It would appear that Win 10 isn’t interested in commercial equipment. Rather odd since Win is more of a commercial OS.
Ummm… Seems your blog is eating my comments again. You may find 2, ignore the first. *sigh*
Hmmm! That posted OK. Try again (if this works, ignore the other two!) 😉
Believe me Bryan, I’m not having much fun at all. But I should be! And the actual work I need to be doing, isn’t getting done. 🙂
Funny thing, The Dell notebook is great! Not a single issue since I got it. The Dell Venue 11 Pro tablet on the other hand… Dell have really gone into full on commercialism mode!
The (laughingly called) power adapter that came with it is only 3W! Just enough to keep it on a trickle charge when not using it, when using it, the battery depletes albeit at a slower rate. Of course, you can buy a 36W actual power adapter/charger for $80! It didn’t come with a touch pen. Apparently, they considered that an optional extra on a touch screen tablet! They have a nice keyboard with extra battery that the tablet sit’s into, for $180! And no back-light on the keys. There is a back-lit one for $140 with no battery & can’t be attached. It only has 1 USB 3 port, but Dell do sell a port expander with Ethernet and HDMI 2 ports… $260! And so on!
I do have to say that the tablet itself is quite well made. It’s pretty easy to get into the guts and just about everything that should be is modular and replaceable (like the RAM, SSD, Intel standard WiFi Module, etc.) So it does have it’s positives. Trying to get upgraded parts or addons isn’t! Dell have apparently already killed this model after only a year! The parts are no longer available once stock is depleted. I had to get the power adapter & pen off e-Bay.
On the other hand, I can still easily get parts for the Dell Precision M6700 Notebook. Warranty just expired on that also, but it was built in 2013!
All these Corporate’s are FUBAR IMNSHO!
Totally weird – since last we talked all of your comments showed up in the “trash” folder. Since I didn’t throw them out something decidedly weird is going on. They should have gone into the spam or moderation folders if the system didn’t like them, not the trash and there was nothing in trash when I first started looking. The software has it in for you, m8, because it doesn’t do this to anyone else.
My currently working boxes are a used Dell XP, a refurbished HP Win 7, and the RP3. The two boxes involved in the Win 10 upgrade campaign are crippled. The hardware is fine, but the software is scrambled.
*shrug* I’ve said many times, your blog hates me.
So, I was doing some research, and came across something intriguing! 😀
Is ruling in the genes? All presidents bar one are directly descended from a medieval English king
More info on that particular King: King John
This explains much to me! I don’t know about *Ruling* being genetic, but maybe incompetence and bad luck is! LOL
Well, at least she figured out that Maarten van Buren, 8th US President, first President born after the US gained independence and only President who spoke English as a second language was not related to the late arriving English. He changed his name to Martin and learn English, but he was as Dutch as anyone in Old Holland, like all of the residents of Kinderhook, New York until well into the 19th century. [New York State history in 8th grade. A Dutch ancestor owned the land along the Mohawk River for the eastern half of its length]
John had a long wait to be King that required older brothers to join the Church, die in tournaments, be disowned for treason, or get killed in a dispute with a neighbor over the placement of a fence [the less than glorious end of Richard the Lion Hearted].
Money is what they all have in common. Abraham Lincoln was born poor, but his grandfather was wealthy, Wealth and power married wealth and power which results in the Habsburg jaw and hemophilia.
I love it! It’s driving the right-wingnuts into a frothy frenzy! LMAO Though sadly, this does include their typical attacks on the 12 yo author. Because, you know, the bible tell’s them to abuse children!
I mean, the apparent fact that Obama (and other evil hated liberals) are related to Reagan, the Bushes etc… *BOOM* LOL
Oh yes! I love this precious young lady! Even if her work may prove to be somewhat inaccurate. But so far, it’s holding up. 😀
Now if Obama actually did have half a brain, he’d not only invite the lass to the Whitehouse to present him with a personal copy, he’d send AF1! LOL But… Politicians! Though, I suppose his run is done, so what the heck. *shrug*
He couldn’t send AF1, but he could arrange other travel. It has been over 900 years, so it isn’t surprising that any group of can trace back to common ancestors, especially if they have British roots. Charles Dickens was writing about a London of approximately 10,000, not 10 million. Given the large percentage of immigrants from the British Isles it should have been assumed.
Ehhh! He’s the Prez! He can do whatever the F* he wants (according to the wingnuts. Though, they only apply that to Wingnuttia Pezidents!) LOL
Someone from LA commented (on that news item):
So, not all crazy. 😉 😀
Brides were in their midteens and the upper class had a half-dozen plus surviving kids until genetics caught up with them. That doesn’t factor in all of the illegitimate kids that were known about, and would add to the lines of descendants. Hell, my Mother’s father was one of 18 and my mother had over 50 first cousins. I’m related by blood or marriage to about 10% of the people in central New York. within 8 generations.
Yep. Up until somewhere around 1.5 centuries ago, marriage age was much lower, 13 wasn’t uncommon. Mainly due to short life expectancy and high childbirth mortality.
My surname is very common around Europe, especially Italy, Sicily & Malta. One of my ancestors a few generation or so ago was PM of Malta. I have several cousins here with exactly the same name & one with the same & DOB (though that was accidental as I was born several weeks premature.) The male side of my ancestors tended to be unimaginative with names! Joe (Joseph or Giuseppe) being extremely common!
My name was going to be Joseph, but Mom cased a family feud when she put her foot down at the Christening (literally apparently) and said loudly “There are too damned many Joseph’s in this family already! His father’s name is Joseph! I will not have two people in my home with the same name!” The priest apparently convinced the paternal (very stubborn and highly Catholic) side to accept Paul as a very good Christian name. LOL I am so happy Mom did that! And I have to thank the priest also. Not something I would usually do! 😉 Irish stubborn pretty much trumps any other stubborn in the World! LOL
For centuries, literally, the primary male line of of my Mother’s father flip-flopped between Johannes and Jakob, her mother’s family did the same with John and David. The genealogy was a mess.
Then you get into the spelling of names. My surname was spelled Doemke when my great grandfather arrived at Ellis Island and Dumka when he left.
My Mother’s maiden name was orignally Imhof, but it was spelled Emhof or Emhof, depending on the person filling out the birth certificates.
SNERK! You should see the census forms for my South Louisiana ancestors. None of them spoke English, but the Census forms were in English, so the Census Bureau had to hire a lot of bilingual people who were literate in only one of the languages and guessed at spellings in the other. Spellings of names are all over the place. My grandfather’s siblings have a different name on every census form that I find them! In the 1940 Census they don’t even have my father’s name right, they refer to him by his middle name (which he hated, which was why my grandfather insisted on calling him by that name, because my grandfather was a bitter twisted little man due to the harsh circumstances of his upbringing and life). I don’t even know how I have my current Anglo last name, because according to the Census bureau, everybody on that side of the family spoke Cajun French at home. All I can figure is that an Anglo man married into a Cajun family and then went away, either voluntarily or via death, because my grandfather and his siblings are all alone with their mother in 1900. I haven’t done enough genealogy work on that side of the family to know, the problem is that I never knew most of that side of the family because both my grandfather and my father married relatively late in life, they were mostly all dead before I was 10 years old and knew enough to know I should ask questions. And now that the War on Terriers has ramped up, getting access to official records to look up historical information is like getting access to Fort Knox, everybody seems convinced that if you get access to a birth certificate that you’re not entitled to get, then the Terriers win. Why not Labradors, I dunno, maybe Labradors are too goofy silly, but so it goes.
Meanwhile, on my mother’s side of the family I can go all the way back to my great-great-grandfather who was a teenager by the end of the American Civil War and oversaw the migration of the clan from northern Alabama to northern Louisiana in the aftermath, northern Alabama having been rather conclusively destroyed by multiple armies marching through it during the course of the war. He died a few years after the conclusion of WW2. Wow, talk about some history he saw during his life! But they were all native English speakers so didn’t get their names mangled like my Cajun ancestors, so I can track them through the Census records without much problem…
On the 1920 Census my great aunt Minnie [Dumka] Schmalz’s eldest child was listed as Henriette F. Schmalz, a 17yo female, which is odd as in 1910 and 1930 the child is listed as Henry F.
I didn’t know any of my Grandfather Dumka’s siblings as they had all died by the time I was born. Working in the woolen mills does that to you. OTOH, I met 16 of my Grandfather Emhoff’s siblings, as well as his parents. The missing sibling, a great uncle died young as a result of being gassed in WWI.
One of my grandfather’s siblings on my father’s side was alive during my early childhood, my grandfather’s younger sister (18 months younger). I only met her twice though because she lived in Lake Charles and we did not. She died when I was ten years old, not really old enough to understand what I should be asking her about her early life. On my mother’s side I even had one of my great-grandfather’s siblings alive until the late 1990’s (he was the youngest of 13 kids, my great-grandfather was the oldest of 13 kids). There’s a lot of history on that side of the family that’s all right there in the family cemetery, which is behind the church where the family donated the land (previously there had been a school there, but school consolidation took the school away and the family reclaimed the land and gave it to the church since it had been merely rented to the school board for $1/year for the duration of the school board’s use of the land as a school). Sadly, seems like the younger generation of that side of the family is pretty much dissolving thanks to meth, oxycontin, and worse :(.
My Father’s side dispersed all over the US, while my Mother’s side tended to stay in central New York, although few are still in farming. I know that the majority didn’t think ‘the good old days’ were all that wonderful. They like vaccines, antibiotics and pain meds. They approved of electricity and cars that went faster than 20 mph.
They wouldn’t approve of the way we have lost ground since the 1980s.