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

511–520 of 567 posts

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

#511

Post by vetinari »

mattmanser wrote: post #253
vocatus_gate wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have some doubts about this story.... I highly doubt any of these experiments were running the home editions of Windows I guess you've never worked with budget-constrained grant projects before. > I do remember you talking about going to Antarctica in the Tron subreddit 7 months on ice. > I hope that there isn't some undocumented part of the script that is disabling automatic updates. Tron doesn't perform ANY und…

So, no offence, but this reads more like you and your colleagues destroyed a multi-million $ project by trying to save a few dollars by using Windows Home instead of Enterprise? And you're pissed at MS because of this?

Enterprise edition is exactly what it says on the tin - you need to purchase certain number of licenses, and these licenses are on top of the OEM licenses.

They are useless for a small team doing a research project.

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

#512

Post by ekimekim »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #427
post_break wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run two OS's on my computer. Sometimes the clock gets out of wack. Guess which OS decided to update during working hours because the clock got it wrong.

Have you had the issue where Windows updates fuck around with your EFI partition and break your bootloader? I've gone through that one a few times

I can do one better. Every time I boot into windows (7) it sees my md raid1 drives with the metadata at the back (long story - I was trying to boot off it and didn't do a very good job), sees a valid GPT table but that the disk length is "too small" by a little bit...and "fixes" it without asking. So every time I boot back into linux I have to repair my partition table. It's gotten to the point that any time I consider updating or doing anything major to my windows install, step 1 is to physically unplug all my other drives.

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

#513

Post by CydeWeys »

supernovae wrote: post #495
valuearb wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you try to say what MSFT is doing is the same as Apple and Google then you are being hugely disengenous. Ads for apps are ads, no matter how you spin it. People don't pay for android, they pay for windows. A pay OS/platform shouldn't force you to disable ads. Gmsil/Chrome are free apps. Apple doesn't track you. On installs it asks if it can collect usage info, but you have to agree, and it's one time. They don't s…

You obviously aren't paying any attention to Microsoft lately and it shows. I'm not going to change that so the least you can do is show a little empathy for those who do. Its painfully apparent you really hate Microsoft for your own deply personal reasons. I'm not changing that. But I will stand up and say that what you have said is not true and not the case of Microsoft today. I'm not saying you have to change but…

> Google android is "Free" as Windows 10 is free.. you paid for it with hardware...

This isn't true. I had to explicitly go out of my way to pay hundreds of dollars for a Windows license for my computer, which I assembled from components. It's not possible to pay money to anyone for Android; it's gratis. Google makes money on ads, not on selling Android.

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

#514

Post by CydeWeys »

supernovae wrote: post #445
valuearb wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't buy this argument. Its fully of fallacies and misconceptions. Microsoft offers a very similar ecosystem.. You can use office online, One drive, bing.com, skype, Cortana, Outlook.com and many services free for use with advertising (or no advertising) MS doesn't "take your money" either, you buy something with Windows 10 on it or you buy a mac with OSX.. iOS updates aren't usually optional, as they quickly spam…

> you buy something with Windows 10 on it

This isn't true for many of us that build our own computers. I bought a boxed copy of Windows and installed it. It certainly didn't come with or on anything.

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

#515

Post by Magicstatic »

rrauenza wrote: post #334

I have a Windows 10 system that I believe was about 1 year behind in updates. I'd periodically run what solutions I'd find online .. dism.exe, sfc.exe, etc to try to fix whatever was failing. Nothing worked. I stumbled across an awesome forum (sysnative.com) with volunteers that help you track down your issue. Turns out I had a subtle 1 byte registry corruption: https://www.sysnative.com/forums/windows-update/22645-w…

Great website, never heard of it before. Will definitely be using it as a resource in the future!

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

#517

Post by inetknght »

Terr_ wrote: post #401
inetknght wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I've had Windows 10 turn OneDrive integration back on even after disabling it. That was literally the nail in the coffin for me; I've since uninstalled Windows 10. I'm still using Windows 7 for games. Anything else is done on Linux. When 7 goes end-of-life, I'll be 100% Linux.

I'm thinking of making my next desktop with a support for giving a virtual Windows machine access to a video card -- near native performance, but Linux for the host OS.

Yup, I'd strongly consider something similar. But I'd have to seriously consider the security implications: giving Windows access to the graphics card could end up being more hassle than it's worth.

GPUs' memory management isn't exactly security friendly.

-> https://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.7383.pdf

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

#518

Post by JoBrad »

novaleaf wrote: post #413
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…

yeah for me it was 10 hours. I just checked and with the creators update it now lets you set to 18 hours, but seems there's still no explicit way of "ask me to reboot"

I've never had Windows 10 reboot on me. I've always had to tell it to reboot, or choose an option to do so. Very different than previous versions.

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

#519

Post by flukus »

supernovae wrote: post #495
valuearb wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you try to say what MSFT is doing is the same as Apple and Google then you are being hugely disengenous. Ads for apps are ads, no matter how you spin it. People don't pay for android, they pay for windows. A pay OS/platform shouldn't force you to disable ads. Gmsil/Chrome are free apps. Apple doesn't track you. On installs it asks if it can collect usage info, but you have to agree, and it's one time. They don't s…

You obviously aren't paying any attention to Microsoft lately and it shows. I'm not going to change that so the least you can do is show a little empathy for those who do. Its painfully apparent you really hate Microsoft for your own deply personal reasons. I'm not changing that. But I will stand up and say that what you have said is not true and not the case of Microsoft today. I'm not saying you have to change but…

> Its up to YOU to understand what you want to share, enable/disable what you want to share and understand how changing that changes the system you're running in.

So you're suggesting I avoid Microsoft then? Because that's the only way I can control it, otherwise I'm only an OS update away from MS re-enabling features I explicitly disable.

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

#520

Post by nojvek »

oefrha wrote: post #503
Jach wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rebooting in the middle of a game or what have you is the worst feature. It happened with 7 too but was easier to disable (and doesn't get re-enabled when you update anything). It makes me think that malware often tends to be more respectful of your computer than Microsoft. Sure there are cryptolockers, but if you have backups those are an inconvenience. Keyloggers? Bloody drivers ship with them now. Becoming part of…

It's simply hilarious to see Windows Update force rebooting machines in the middle of professional games. Basically, a computer running Windows is actually owned by the Microsoft overlord who can do whatever the hell it wants to do. Occasionally it allows you to use the computer at its mercy.

MSFT upgrades are a joke. I worked at MS and the number of times a machine decides to restart in the middle of a presentation is not even funny. This was in the windows department.

It seems the decision was forced down by management. I hope someone up the chain realizes how much its cost to the actual users.

There was a joke at MSFT "you don't become a VP without making the company lose a billion dollars"

Post reply on HN