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Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

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Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#221
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people run complex simulations that take days or weeks to run, and a forced reboot in the middle ruins progress. If someone needs to skip an update on their own machine and their own network that is their right.

> If someone needs to skip an update on their own machine and their own network that is their right. And if you want your machine to DDoS Playstation Network that's your right too, right? And if I want my kid to get measles and spread it around, that's my right? As much as you may argue it's your machine, and your right, sooner or later your choices start to impact other people. What about their rights, then?

I'm not saying never update, I'm saying let me update (manually) when I am not in the middle of using my computer for work (which may be a week or two at a time). The OS should get out of the way, not ruin what I'm working on.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#223
post #76

I wish I could disable updates. Dumb ass win10 thinks it's ok to download 2 GIGABYTES of data. How is it reasonable to have gigabytes of updates ? For security ? I have gigabytes of binaries here ? And then 15 days later, 1.5GB of updates. (note: my win10 laptop is usually used with mobile internet) Win10 is a shame. They could have at least separated security updates from random crap updates. A button would be nice…

Unlike all these Stockholm-syndrome affected users here, I will tell you. Start --> 'services.msc' --> find "Windows Updates" service --> right-click --> properties --> switch it to Disabled and reboot. Turn it on once a month or whenever YOU want to update. Done.

Wow i feel stupid. Didn't even think to try the standard things.

Thx.

Time to msconfig this laptop to "usable" state.

edit:

Parent comment flagged ? Are we on "Anti-hacker Non-news" ?

Anyway; Start-> type "services" (or "msiconfig" for more options, basically the same as winXP) and you can turn off "windows Update" there. Don't forget to turn it on every once in a while, especially if you use public networks.

update: There's also a thing called "Background Intelligent Something", that is the thing doing the actual downloads. Seems it continued downloading even without the update service running. Said service looks mildly important, but still it had to die.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#224
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anti-vaxxers think that vaccines are harmful (or useless). Vaccines are harmful; it's just that the positive effects vastly shadow the negative effects in the general case.

You are technically correct (everything is harmful, and vaccine application is probably associated with some amount of micromorts — but so is, say, getting up from the bed). However, vaccines are very safe (safer than many everyday activities), and negate much more micromorts. Thus, I believe that your technically correct appeal doesn't contribute anything useful to this particular discussion.

In same vein of logic, neither does yours. People who have these comments in discussions with hundreds of posts must have either bad day or some deeper issues.

Had a colleague, he took a rabies shot (X-th in his life) and got 1:3,000,000 strong reaction from which he directly died. Feel free to explain to his small kid some micromorts crap.

FYI it didn't change my opinion on vaccines, fiancee is a doctor and keeps me updated on usual stuff (tetanus, tick-transmitted stuff, hep a+b and some odd stuff if required for vacations). But it makes you think how rare those reactions really are.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#225
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How nice for you! Having active hours be ignored, and the machine update itself in the middle of a workday, has happened more than once to me. (Once would be enough.) It's happened more than once to a lot of other people, too. How far do you expect to get with this argument by implication that that's not the case, and we're all just full of it?

That only happens if you put the updates off of they've been there for a couple of days and you have something running that makes it assume that the machine is still active. People seeding torrents overnight seems to be the only place I see that not happen. See update notifications? At the end of the day, restart and install the updates. It's not rocket science. It doesn't just hit patch Tuesday and then reboot immed…

I have a friend that booted her computer to windows 7, logged into gmail and facebook, had to leave her computer to care for her little kid and came back to her computer in the middle of windows 10 installation. She had seen no warning whatsoever.

A client had started a time consuming process before leaving the office, came back the following morning with the process having failed due to windows applying updates and rebooting killing the process and losing a day worth of work.

YMMV.

I don't know what you mean by "this has to be done", there is no obligation to apply updates. What if I want my computer to run a windows without updates ? Am I not entitled to use my own property as I so choose ?

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#226
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taskbar > Context menu > Cortana > ( Hidden / Show icon / Show search box )

A better option is to open "gpedit.msc", then open "Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components" Then spend an afternoon going through each option, setting enabled/disabled for everything you don't want or don't recognize. You can easily disable entire subsystems like Cortana, tips, telemetry, camera, biometrics, error reporting, games, Homegroup, Defender, Window…

Crudely, gpedit.msc needs to be installed by hand in the home version of windows 10.

So, this should work - but only in the pro Version.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacOS handles this perfectly. It clearly notifies you when an update will be installed if you restart.

It also gives you the option of re-trying the update "tonight" which takes up WAY too much of my cognitive load. "Tonight" doesn't appear to be configurable, or even well-defined, although an obscure knowledge-base article tells me it's between "2:00 and 5:00 a.m", which is nothing like my expectation of what "tonight" means. Does that run if my laptop is sleeping? What about if it needs to reboot? I really should kn…

[deleted]

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#228
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows also tells you it will perform an update on restart. It says "Update and restart" rather than just restart.

But it doesn't have a "restart and defer update" option. If you need to restart for some other reason, you're forced to take the update.

I don't know about Win 10 but I get around that on Win 7 by doing "shutdown /r /t 0" for reboot and "shutdown /s /t 0" for a shutdown.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#229
post #148

Does this guy work for microsoft ? It reads like a partisant piece for microsoft. Totally overlooked the suspicious timeline of Microsoft releasing patched for vulnerabilities that were exploited for a long time by the NSA right after it was made apparent those had been stolen and were about to be released in the wild. No question asked about NSA having known and exploited those vulnerabilities for a while, no questi…

> No mention that disabling Microsoft update trend is a logical answer No, it isn't. Disabling update isn't a logical answer to _anything_ except "what's the best way to get malware". If you don't want Microsoft's "spyware" don't install their OS. There is no coherent logic to simultaneously not trusting Microsoft, and running their code - any version of it.

There is no coherent logic to simultaneously not trusting Microsoft, and running their code - any version of it.

Of course there is. Many of us found Windows 7 to be a useful OS and trusted Microsoft of that era to produce it. That doesn't necessarily mean we trust Microsoft of this era or more recent Microsoft products to be something we want to use. There is no logical incompatibility here. They've simply changed their strategy to one some of us don't like, after we bought some of their earlier products and before the support lifetime of those products ran out.

Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This still isnt always useful. I work in an office that creates and runs CFD software. It often takes days, or weeks to run and the recent windows "feature" of rebooting when it wants to update with no way to shut it off has killed so many peoples work in progress. Its insane there is no ability to only update manually.

If your CFD software isn't saving at least the last converged timestep in order to restart the calculation if there's an unplanned interrupt maybe you should implement such a feature! It's been a lifesaver for me many times.

That's right. Blame the victim.
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