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Taxpayer wasted money: NMCI Windows 10 update

MIDNJAC

is clara ship
pilot
On the subject of wasted money, I wish we could send whoever is responsible for the windows 10 "upgrade" for DoD to a life term in prison. It boggles my mind how this can be seen by anyone as acceptable. We've been living with this nightmare for close to 2 years now? How long does it take you to log in and actually have outlook and the internets running from a cold start? 30 minutes? Completely unbelievable. And we're just ok with it.
 

Hopeful Hoya

Well-Known Member
pilot
Contributor
Not to mention there’s a bug where the system will occasionally lock out your CAC. Happened to me a few weeks ago, had to go to PSD and get it unlocked. Plugged it back into the same computer and it locked it again before I even made it to the desktop screen....
 

Pags

N/A
pilot
I imagine a lot of this is driven by lack of IT care and feeding. Win10 certainly hasn't been a fun transition for me as well and it's complicated by the enterprise need to have a bunch of security solutions that don't necessarily all play well together (win8 and active client X work great, win 10 and active client X don't work so hot but active client needs time to go from X to Y...blah blah blah). That said, I get poked by numerous IT types to download the SW updates and then do the obligatory restarts. Do squadrons ensure that computers are up to date?
 

Duc'-guy25

Well-Known Member
pilot
Not to mention there’s a bug where the system will occasionally lock out your CAC. Happened to me a few weeks ago, had to go to PSD and get it unlocked. Plugged it back into the same computer and it locked it again before I even made it to the desktop screen....

THE HORROR!!!!
 

Jim123

DD-214 in hand and I'm gonna party like it's 1998
pilot
That said, I get poked by numerous IT types to download the SW updates and then do the obligatory restarts. Do squadrons ensure that computers are up to date?
A few years ago NMCI went to the "leave your computer turned on overnight so the updates can automatically update." Aren't they still doing that?

I'm sure it drove the electrical conservation people batshit. I bet there were some spreadsheets turned from green to red and a lot of angry emails sent.

Maybe the remote automatic update software NMCI was using got disabled by Win10 and nobody noticed until it was too late... you know, I'd be surprised if this weren't the case.
 

Pags

N/A
pilot
A few years ago NMCI went to the "leave your computer turned on overnight so the updates can automatically update." Aren't they still doing that?

I'm sure it drove the electrical conservation people batshit. I bet there were some spreadsheets turned from green to red and a lot of angry emails sent.

Maybe the remote automatic update software NMCI was using got disabled by Win10 and nobody noticed until it was too late... you know, I'd be surprised if this weren't the case.
Yes, but then you also have to do shutdowns in there to get everything to install correctly and no one was doing that either. Nowadays I get told to verify certain loads on my computer and if they aren't there to force the download and install. If that doesn't happen at some point they kick your machine off the network. At one point the green "unclass" banner turned yellow and said "quarantine." I've had multiple instances of patches/updates not taking resulting in NMCI field services needing to take my computer away and reimage it (manually update). Luckily I have access to a dedicated NMCI rep who knows what they're doing. But I don't recall the shared squadron computers getting the same level of care and feeding that I am required to give to the machine that's assigned to me.
 

Brett327

Well-Known Member
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
On the subject of wasted money, I wish we could send whoever is responsible for the windows 10 "upgrade" for DoD to a life term in prison. It boggles my mind how this can be seen by anyone as acceptable. We've been living with this nightmare for close to 2 years now? How long does it take you to log in and actually have outlook and the internets running from a cold start? 30 minutes? Completely unbelievable. And we're just ok with it.
Our NIPR machines aren't the greatest, but we didn't see issues like that upon Win10 upgrade. I can reboot and be up and running in 3-4 minutes. It's probably a function of the RAM installed in your machine. FWIW, Microsoft stopped supporting Win 7, so DoD really didn't have any choice.
 

IKE

Nerd Whirler
pilot
Our NIPR machines aren't the greatest, but we didn't see issues like that upon Win10 upgrade. I can reboot and be up and running in 3-4 minutes. It's probably a function of the RAM installed in your machine. FWIW, Microsoft stopped supporting Win 7, so DoD really didn't have any choice.
Its very hardware-dependent. In my DH tour, the NMCI assets were relatively effective, and I could get work done. Now that I'm at a shore command, it's terrible. Our notebooks here are the same models my fleet squadron had tech-refreshed 2-3 years ago, which were then replaced again in late 2019. They may not have enough RAM, but they definitely don't have the HDD bandwidth to support Windows 10 or the performance-crushing bloatware that is McAfee AV.

I have to reboot every time I bring it home or RAS/VPN won't work. Can't get any nerdery done in Excel without a few daily app crashes.

Maybe NAWDC has fleet-like priority/assets? The newest notebooks are silver with sleek low-profile docks. The dark gray notebooks were before that, and I rock a black HP, probably from before I winged.
 

IKE

Nerd Whirler
pilot
The fact that the military uses windows at all is kinda mindboggling to me in the first place.
You'd rather we employs hordes of coding nerds to wrangle Linux into a turn-key system for English majors and BM2s to use? (no offense to English majors or BM2s intended).
 

AllAmerican75

FUBIJAR
None
Contributor
You'd rather we employs hordes of coding nerds to wrangle Linux into a turn-key system for English majors and BM2s to use? (no offense to English majors or BM2s intended).

A modern Linux distribution (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.) would absolutely meet the word processing, e-mail, and internet surfing needs of the majority of our personnel. When it comes to ubiquity of software however, we'd be hard-pressed to find some of the things we need. That being said, there's a significant amount of our infrastructure that rides on RHEL.
 

antonkr

Active Member
You'd rather we employs hordes of coding nerds to wrangle Linux into a turn-key system for English majors and BM2s to use? (no offense to English majors or BM2s intended).
I mean I dunno. Modern linux distros aren't THAT much harder to use, and don't look all to different from Windows at least from my experiences. Not too different from transitioning from Windows to MacOS. Seems like a full transition would make it easier to manage from the admin perspective in terms of upgrades, security etc, but I am sure there would be a metric ton of downsides too.
 
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