Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update

troyhunt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 567 posts

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

#431

Post by CydeWeys »

kuschku wrote: post #243
viraptor wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're generalising over a whole bunch of devices with different specs. Sure, there was a problem with updates on the 8gb devices. But that was few hardware cycles ago, around 2.3. Now, those devices are around 1% usage, mostly have dead batteries and other components and it's hard to find a new Android device which lacks space for upgrades. What to do? Upgrade the hardware. It's not supported anyway. Modern Android…

What? On 2.3, the average device had 250M internal storage for apps. A Moto G 2015 has only 8GB storage. Even mid-range devices sold today only come with 8GB storage, of which 6GB are used by the OS.

What mid-range device only comes with 8 GB? And what price range are you using to define mid-range? Is there even a low-range (lower than 8 GB) if 8 GB seems to be the absolute minimum, since the OS won't even fit on something smaller?

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

#432

Post by zeta0134 »

novaleaf wrote: post #356
sangnoir wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft shares part of the blame here for pushing features that the user clearly doesn't want through updates (especially to the major OS version). Look at the recent ads in Windows file explorer for one example. A lot of the advice to turn Windows Update off is a misguided response to Microsoft's own bone-headed moves in recent years to install bullshit that the user doesn't want. Vaccinations are awesome, but M…

I don't think this is the reason why most people (non tech savvy) look to turning off Windows Update. Most people don't know/care about Windows Update pushing features. However most people DO care when their computers spontaneously reboot themselves with no warning (sometimes even in the middle of "active hours"!) which is what msft has set by default (and indeed has/had no UI to modify in some versions of Win10)

Honestly, if Windows Update worked like Linux updates tend to, I would leave them on 100% of the time. On just about every Linux system, I can upgrade the entire operating system and all the packages all at once without a reboot. Sure, the kernel does get updated from time to time, but the system is in no hurry to force the new kernel to load right away, and just switches to it at the next reboot.

By contrast, every single Windows Update that I deal with (a) requires a restart for seemingly no reason, (b) slows down the shutdown process immensely, and then (c) goes through sometimes multiple long installation processes, during which I cannot use my machine.

Of course, as a casual user, I would find Windows Update annoying enough to want to disable it. More so when my computer decides to restart of its own accord, sometimes right in the middle of me actively using it.

(Obviously, I am security conscious enough that I don't really disable Automatic Updates on my Windows boxes, and instead just remember to reboot my machine once in a while so it goes through them on my schedule.)

Could switching the Windows Update UI to a scheduled weekly reboot + updates (call it "Maintenance" or something) be useful? Would fewer people see the need to try to disable the updates if they could control exactly when they would happen, consistently?

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

#433

Post by criddell »

signal11 wrote: post #407
jamie_ca wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Active Hours" is such a stupid idea, too. I'm perfectly happy if my box has to reboot at 3am for updates, but I do actually make use of it in the morning as well as into the night, and as it shares some home-fileserver duties for the rest of my family, it gets used sporadically throughout the day. In its infinite wisdom Windows won't let me set "7am-11pm" as active hours - it caps it at either 10 or 12 hours. So no…

Seriously. Active Hours was such a terrible idea, how did it move past the design stage? There were some hilarious hacks to disable the Update Orchestrator and prevent the reboots. They work well, although allegedly you should not need them any more with the new Creators Update OS refresh.

Why does the computer even have to ask what the active hours are? If anything knows when the computer is being used, it's the computer.

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

#434

Post by supernovae »

jessaustin wrote: post #424
supernovae wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

computers are customizable for a reason and software always requires human interaction to be updates/useable.. most people are OK with their iPhone updating itself and its apps and showing related apps -not sure why that's so hard for windows users to adopt.

Any process can be more or less usable. GP described a setup in which the user is responsible for noticing that updates are available. That is just terrible.

I don't follow. Windows 10 has an action center, it shows everything pending. If there are security updates and they're frozen or pending restarts they show up in there if you misted the toast notification. Nearly all OS's have the problems of security updates being hidden unless they're forced (like a phone). OSX you have to click update inside the app store, Linux you have to check apt-get / yum update or whatever it is you do, brew you need to "brew update" - humans need to be part of the equation in some fashion.

I think the biggest thing is that people should care about being secure.. care enough to check for updates and be a part of the community they choose to be a part of - be it Linux/windows/osx/android/whateverthe* you want

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

#435

Post by valuearb »

supernovae wrote: post #397
CydeWeys wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows 10 is awesome.. the experiment with "ads" sucks but its all tweakable. I don't want to have to tweak my fucking operating system to remove ads!! Also, I think we're asking too much of the average user. It's not obvious how to do most of the tweaks, so your random older/casual user won't do them, or maybe even realize that such a thing might be possible and go off to look up how to do it. They're more likely…

THe "ads" are recommended apps. You can disable that.

I don't pay money for software to have to remove ads. When I write that check, the software should work for me, not advertisers.

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

#436

Post by supernovae »

valuearb wrote: post #429
supernovae wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is now fixed.. But inversely, i'm annoyed that this "upgrade phenomena" seems squarely targeted at Microsoft when people who run Linux or OSX upgrade the second new shiny comes out. I'm not ranting here other than expressing a curiosity of culture that leads to cultural problems lingering much longer than they should. Windows 10 is awesome.. the experiment with "ads" sucks but its all tweakable.. just jump to Rs…

No Microsoft sucks. It's my computer, stop hijacking it. This is why I switch to a Mac. Microsoft is 100% responsible for this malware, they trained users to turn off updates by making them unbearable.

That is your personal opinion. I stuck with windows 10 because I like it. That is my personal opinion. Learn a little empathy.

I have a MacBook pro, a surface pro (windows 10), a gaming pc (windows 10), a Plex HTPC (windows 10) and an iPhone.. I'm quite happy regardless and I find all ecosystems have their +/-

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

#437

Post by CydeWeys »

parrellel wrote: post #372
masklinn wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also for forcing restarts for everything. And not restoring jack shit. I wouldn't mind Windows Update so much if it could competently restart my applications and restore my Explorer windows, but the only thing it does every fucking time is make the taskbar icons disappear until I force-restart the Explorer process. Though I would still mind it a lot for the insanely slow and unhelpful update process at shutdown, ev…

God, it's even worse for academic / engineering use. Nothing is better than running a simulation for twenty hours and waking up to a nice blank desktop. /s

Wow, yeah, that'd be a nightmare. I hadn't even considered that use case. I was just thinking of typical desktop use cases.

In a similar vein, imagine that you're ill-advisedly using a Windows server to host your node for cryptocurrency mining, and then it restarts when you're not around. You could lose serious amounts of money from that.

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

#438

Post by valuearb »

supernovae wrote: post #390
GhotiFish wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess in the same way a farmer might listen to its cattle? A nasty disease or two would get fixed, nice food to keep them fed, but if they're telling the farmers "don't eat me" I can't imagine the farmers would be very receptive. Likewise. Stop spying on me, stop advertising to me, stop pushing products I don't want on me, stop treating my computer like your personal playground. None of this is going to gain tracti…

It is fixed. When you upgrade to RS2 it asks you about the services and you can disable them and you can disable automatic updates. BTW, this isn't unique to MS.. phones update all the time and the concept of the phone is going to change.. soon you will have just one device that does everything. Are people going to complain that MS can't then do what Apple/Google do in regards to spying, updates & patches?

LOL at comparing MSFT to Apple or Google in this regard. Googles whole business model is ad supported, in return you get good free software.

Apple actually fights to protect your privacy, when you pay them money for hardware they just try to make it work well for you, not advertiser. And their updates/reboots are optional.

MSFT takes your money, then doesnt protect your privacy AND sells you out to advertisers.

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

#439

Post by valuearb »

digi_owl wrote: post #298
sangnoir wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft shares part of the blame here for pushing features that the user clearly doesn't want through updates (especially to the major OS version). Look at the recent ads in Windows file explorer for one example. A lot of the advice to turn Windows Update off is a misguided response to Microsoft's own bone-headed moves in recent years to install bullshit that the user doesn't want. Vaccinations are awesome, but M…

Sadly MS is hardly the first to have done something like that, but they are the biggest and most prominent name right now. People avoid doing firmware updates on various devices for the same reason, as there is no indication what will change or go missing (never mind that it likely will reset the device, and thus require a full reconfigure before being useful again). The basic problem of our world is that it is ruled…

Apple makes more off PCs than every other PC maker combined, and continues to gain market share. MSFTs main goal seems to be getting people to buy more Macs, like their new crippled MacBook Air clone without a full OS (and the dirt magnet fabric covering).

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

#440

Post by CydeWeys »

nisa wrote: post #50
xg15 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By removing all kinds of search, yes.

No. You can still have local search. Unfortunatly this seems to only possible with a GPO rule.

Yeah, see, I don't even know what a GPO rule is, and I'm more technically inclined than 99% of the users out there. I'm sure there are some people that can totally customize Windows 10 to their liking and get rid of all of the anti-user stuff, but it's such a small proportion of the overall home userbase as to be statistically insignificant.
Post reply on HN