If Windows Update is vaccine administration, what is NSA?
I fear the answer is "the NSA".
You don't say "the HIV" either...
Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
111–120 of 567 posts
Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
#112I love the way he's compared the people who tell you to turn off auto-updates with anti-vaxxers; it's quite an apt analogy. 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 Microso…
Does Windows classify updates as bug-fix, security-patch, feature-update and allow different policies to be set for each? Because it seems like that might help.
Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
#113I love the way he's compared the people who tell you to turn off auto-updates with anti-vaxxers; it's quite an apt analogy. 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 Microso…
The cleverest move was to integrate Cortana with local file and application search, which many users likely use as a universal command line/shortcut (hit windows key and just start typing). I find that when I disable Cortana, local search becomes severely degraded. If anyone has any tips on how to fix this, I'd appreciate them.
Do not use cortana for your local search but an alternative tool, I think locate32 has some issues with win10, maybe agent ransack[1] will do or voidtools' everything[2].
IIRC there were other tools: regain, lookeen, ...
[1]: https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack [2]: http://www.voidtools.com/
Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
This is an edge case for a very small percentage of users. Use GPMC to turn it off entirely or change the key at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings
Set DWORD IsActiveHoursEnabled to 0.
Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, I run a single Win10 desktop (all of my laptops are Linux-only) that I update roughly annually, by allocating an entire day for going through the updates one by one and getting rid of any Microsoft malware along the way. I am far more concerned about Microsoft's own malware than any ransomware floating around the Internet. Of course, I've also had SMBv1 disabled for many years (there's no reason to retain…
Really? You're more concerned about the software being provided to you by Microsoft, who is at least presumably trying to keep you as a satisfied customer and provide a secure operating system then you are for faceless hackers connected to the Internet who's whole objective is to either out right steal people's money, disrupt people's lives, or else subvert your computer in order to launch attacks on other users?
> Microsoft, who is at least presumably trying to keep you as a satisfied customer
You surely jest!
Individual users are not customers of Microsoft in any meaningful sense. Microsoft sells the OS mostly to companies who install it on machines so that the end user buys a computer with Windows already installed.
If MS wanted to keep me as a customer they would have provided a proper upgrade path for all the millions of lines of VB6 code that are out there and they would create an IDE that has a usable editor.
Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
#116I would like to keep my Windows Update on, but I just can't afford it. Data bundles are too expensive where I live. I can buy a week's worth of groceries with the amount I spend buying just 2GB data bundle. Not everyone lives in a country with cheap data bundles.
This is exactly my situation. Worse, ever used a wifi network slowed to a crawl by different laptops updating windows? I once had to turn off updates on all laptops in my workplace so we could use the internet. (They thought the network was under a virus attack)
You should have a look at traffic shaping and different networking queues. Fq_codel is great, but even SFQ works better than nothing. No need to turn off updates.
Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
#117And the reason why people were suggesting to turn off Windows Update was precisely because of malware payloads directly from Microsoft. "Do you want to upgrade to Windows 10? Press the hidden button to cancel, otherwise upgrade commences." This is how malware works.... But published and pushed by MS's own channels. And his jab at people who say that turning off WU is similar to anti-vaxxers is completely inane and fa…
Less egregious but still awful: updates that then have ngen randomly consuming half your cpu for hours because ms is too cheap to make native .net binaries remotely.
This is even worse when your freshly deployed AWS instances run like shit for the first hour too.
Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
#118I don't know why people complain about updates and restarting, particularly in this thread. You fill your car up with fuel regularly because it has been warning you it's nearly empty for a while much like updates remind you regularly. People seem to complain and say "it updated right when I was in the middle of X" but they've been putting it off for ages. Do you break down in the middle of the motorway when you run o…
> You fill your car up with fuel regularly because it has been warning you it's nearly empty for a while I like this analogy! A car that runs out of fuel when its manufacturer tells it to! > Windows only updates when you're doing something because you're putting everyone else at risk Are you sure it's me putting people at risk, and not Microsoft?
It's you. Look at the spread of this malware. If MS17-010 was applied automatically unconditionally, this would have not spread.
The global scale of it shows how the end user is less trustworthy than the vendor.
Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
#119And the reason why people were suggesting to turn off Windows Update was precisely because of malware payloads directly from Microsoft. "Do you want to upgrade to Windows 10? Press the hidden button to cancel, otherwise upgrade commences." This is how malware works.... But published and pushed by MS's own channels. And his jab at people who say that turning off WU is similar to anti-vaxxers is completely inane and fa…
No, most people turned it off because they didn't want updates interrupting them. You are vastly overestimating who cares about "MS malware".
Outside of the US, it is a thing to have a policy of disabling windows update for a variety of reasons among which a significant one is to allow the computer security agencies to audit the updates and remove any MS provided malware.
Re: Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update
#120I don't know why people complain about updates and restarting, particularly in this thread. You fill your car up with fuel regularly because it has been warning you it's nearly empty for a while much like updates remind you regularly. People seem to complain and say "it updated right when I was in the middle of X" but they've been putting it off for ages. Do you break down in the middle of the motorway when you run o…
Forced restarts have been wreaking havoc among my users that have switched to Windows 10. Plenty of notice, you say? Hardly.
Our software and engineering staff are no longer confidently able to perform long-running operations overnight or across weekends. Simulations, and data-capture runs in particular are now routinely being done during normal business hours since users cannot trust that their OS won't kill everything for an update midway.
Among my tasks for this coming week is working up plan to isolate key workstations, and estimating the required budget to provide the affected users with secondary PCs for routine tasks which require internet connectivity.