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Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

troyhunt.com

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

#341

Post by digi_owl »

sumanthvepa wrote: post #184
vocatus_gate wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Army Reserve and we frequently have this problem in field exercises. Fire up some Win10 laptops on our very limited Verizon MiFi access point, they promptly download gig's of updates without consent and immediately push the bandwidth past the limit and the AP gets throttled to oblivion. Yeah yeah you can turn of Windows updates or whatever, but you shouldn't have to do that just to force Microsoft to respect your…

Windows 10 has the option of specifying that a specific network is a metered connection. It won't update the OS when connected to those networks. Found this out the hard way after getting a big bill while traveling and tethering to my phone's 4G connection.

I could have sworn that with Anniversary and later this is no longer the case, as people used that on their home network to get Windows to shut up.

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

#342

Post by Arizhel »

vocatus_gate wrote: post #154
retox wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe at one point the windows 10 complete installer was downloaded to everyone, 'just incase' they decided to install. Really narrow-minded behaviour.

I worked in Antarctica last year, a "winter-over" contract as combination Network Engineer/Glacier Search and Rescue (GSAR) team member, at one of the very small U.S. research stations. In the atmospheric/climatology lab there are a number of computers running very specific versions of Windows (down to specific patches) tailored to really obscure science research software packages, some industry standard, most custom…

That was the researchers' fault for using Windows as the platform for all this work. They should have known better.

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

#343

Post by coding123 »

I'm totally clueless at this point in history. How are people still getting infected with shit when you give them these two rules:

1. Don't use a public IP on your laptop on the internet.

2. Don't run shit or use IE.

Bypass 2 if you're a developer and you are experienced in this stuff.

Seriously, I genuinely want to know, because the people that just got this, are going to continue to get shit in the future.

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

#344

Post by digi_owl »

dublinben wrote: post #263
bigbugbag wrote: post #84

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…

He isn't directly on their payroll[0], but he is definitely not a neutral observer. He has financial interest in Microsoft's success, as he is primarily a consultant for their products. [0] https://www.troyhunt.com/microsoft-regional-director/

Ugh, one more thing to loath about Windows.

Get some error code, search for it, find 1001 sites that offer you to tell exactly what is wrong, for a price.

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

#345

Post by rhodysurf »

ZoFreX wrote: post #274
rhodysurf wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True, I was a little unfair on you :) Still, I see the software you're using as much a part of the problem as Windows here. Needing weeks of solid up-time to complete something is a challenge and doesn't seem like a realistic assumption by a developer for software running on Windows. Why can't it remember progress and resume after a restart? That would not only make the impact of Windows Updates much smaller, but als…

Its in house CFD software and the saved state feature has been broken and at the bottom of people's priority for a while unfortunately.

Definitely gunna use this as an opportunity to resume that conversation though

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

#346

Post by Qwertious »

c17r wrote: post #228
ams6110 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is why I like Linux - you don't need to learn the commandline just for basic OS functionality. Windows really needs to get a decent GUI already.

^_^

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

#347

Post by apostacy »

tsukikage wrote: post #310

My PC is not a toy, and is owned by me, not by you. * Don't reboot it without my consent * Don't install/run advertising without my consent * Don't install/run spyware without my consent * Don't keep interrupting my work to nag me for my consent The tasks I want to accomplish using my PC are more important to me than the tasks you want to accomplish using my PC. If the latter get in the way of the former, I will take…

I totally agree with you. Unfortunately, it is becoming culturally acceptable to push destructive updates on users. Dropbox for Linux downloads and installs new binaries and unlinks the old ones. Of course Chrome does this. Firefox does it too. I shouldn't have to be so vigilant in defending my computer.

Of course it is not as bad as on OSX, where if you install any Google product, like Drive or Chrome, it will nag you to authenticate it, by misleading you with messages like "We need you to authenticate so that our software can run properly" (It will run fine without you authorizing it). Google will then install the deceptively named "Keystone Agent", which runs as root, and monitors your filesystem for Google software, and will silently delete and replace it with the latest versions. Often, these newer versions remove existing functionality, such as the ability to disable DRM in Chrome [1].

The reason for this pattern for updates, is because users might not agree to this if they were given a choice.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13514415

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

#348

Post by cartoonfoxes »

UK-AL wrote: post #255
bigbugbag wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what about the small majority ? Do they get a "sorry not sorry, f*ck you" card ? You should assume that windows users doing batch stuff over night are people who have better things to do with their computers during their day or want their computer to work for them while they're not sitting in front of it. Try considering the whole instead of splitting to only address the large majority.

If software worked every convincible use case, it would become impossible to use from UI perspective. Windows 10 is focused as a consumer os, designed for users to run their applications. Similar to iOS or android. If you want to run batch operations, use the right product.

> If you want to run batch operations, use the right product.

Sorry, but this does come across as a bit asinine.

What's the right product for running software written for Microsoft Windows, if not Microsoft Windows?

"Users running their applications" isn't just Grandma on Facebook, or your little sister playing Candy Crush Saga. Microsoft's unquestionable strength has been it's support for enterprise, small-business and professional desktop users. There is a lot of deserved anger thrown their way as a result of deliberate decisions to force flexibility and choice-limiting behavior down the throat of their core market.

My shop is small, but I can count COMSOL, SolidWorks, OrCAD, LabVIEW, various SPICE frontends, and a dozen other small odds and ends for instrument control and data capture without even leaving the engineering suite. All of which are going to be forever stuck on Win 7, at this rate.

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

#349

Post by Qwertious »

cesarb wrote: post #57
dozzie wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's an interesting problem. Live updates without requiring a restart is going to be a complex task, how do you reload a library in use by a program without crashing it? Well, how do Linux and other unices do that?

They don't, the program keeps using the old library until it's restarted. Some Linux distributions restart daemons when they or their dependent libraries are updated, but that can't be done for desktop software. Firefox sometimes notices it's been updated and pops up a warning with a "Restart Firefox" button (which keeps the session state), though AFAIK it's only for updates to Firefox itself, not for any of the libr…

I believe this is solved by NixOS, by the way.

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

#350

Post by ziikutv »

digi_owl wrote: post #323
ziikutv wrote: post #319

I have Windows 10 Education version, completely legal. But I have been "restarting to apply the patch" for the past four days and it always reverts itself. I am stuck in a loop.. This is why I turned off updates.

Ugh, that. Had it on a Home install some time back. Best i could tell was that MS was trying to update some drivers, this failed badly, had to be reverted, but that still left the relevant patch in the queue, and so Windows would try again on next reboot. Finally had to resort to some kind of downloaded wizard from Microsoft to blacklist the patch. Not sure if that will be possible on the education version (or am i c…

possibly, but I am just contempt on updating. I don't do anything illegal on this computer. I use it for browsing and playing games on steam, I think I am pretty safe.

You can really avoid like 90% of the shit by...

* Not going on shady sites

* Not getting scammed via Phishing

* Not pirating (you know, its really funny how most illegal 'patches' say, oh yeah patch is detected as trojan and its a false positive)

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