Windows 10: What You Need to Know

[Rockin Robbins]

I'm using Firefox and an add-in called IE Tab 2, which will encapsule an IE windows safely within the confines of Firefox for those sites which require IE. IE Tab 2 will even memorize sites that need it and automatically load them into an IE Tab whenever you visit the site.

One thing I hate about IE is that it will remember your passwords. Then any hacker or intruder with actual access to your machine can start up IE on your machine and all your passwords are just handed to them gratis. They are entirely unprotected. Same is true of Chrome. Not true of Firefox.

I can let you on my machine and you have no access to my passwords. They are all protected by a master password.

@Debbie: a botnet will run on your machine just fine and not inconvenience you a bit. They automatically sense when you are at the keyboard and ratchet back to less than 5% or 10% of CPU resources so you can't even tell they're there. But when you're not at the keyboard, the botnet software, which is giving you no trouble at all, is busilly passing out spam to all your friends and contacts, as well as helping distribute stolen movies, software, porn, etc. Some malware, like Comodo firewall, actually perform a service for you while performing all the above slimey actions when you're not aware. Does that justify their use?

Just because something works and is no trouble is not sufficient reason to say that the application or operating system is okay. If Windows 10 were the best working operating system on the planet it would be unacceptable because of property conversion, privacy issues, peer to peer use of your computer and internet access to conduct Microsoft's business at your expense, lack of respect for user choices, total ownership of all files and software on your machine, unspecified data collection with twice daily encrypted uploads of large amounts of information to Microsoft, unrestricted use of your microphone and webcam at all times your computer is on (you want that in your daughter's bedroom at night?), updates that are not updates but a vector for even more spyware officially sponsored by the computer company who should be protecting our interests, not preying upon our ignorance or misplaced trust.

Ease and effectiveness of operation can be sweeteners for a trojan horse. In the case of Windows 10, that is exactly what they are. Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine (or poison) go down.

[AVGWarhawk]

Sigh....

Shut the computer off and pull the plug to be sure.....:doh:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows-10/camera-privacy-faq

The camera can be shut off allowing no app to be able to use it. Cortana as well for using the microphone.

There is always the master switch so your daughter can sleep at night and not be watched!

Cameras have been compromised long before MS decided to use it for Windows Hello that scans the retina.

[STEED]

Microsoft prepares for massive Windows 10 upgrade strategy
Uses updates to enable -- and re-enable -- Windows 7 and 8.1 PCs for next move: auto-downloads of Windows 10 upgrade bits
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3012613/windows/microsoft-prepares-for-massive-windows-10-upgrade-strategy.html

Charming. :damn:

[AVGWarhawk]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3012613/windows/microsoft-prepares-for-massive-windows-10-upgrade-strategy.html

Charming. :damn:

Just like the other OS of past....MS stopped supporting them. They died a slow death. Now it is a forced execution.

[Rockin Robbins]

NOT just like operating systems of the past. No other operating system has become its own adware and malware server. Only Microsoft knows its new product is so unlovable, so decrepit, so against the interests of its customers that it has had to redefine the words customer, menu, update, upgrade, privacy, purchase and customer choice.

Look, who's a nicer guy than Leo Laporte? Who's more learned about the state of the art in multiple operating systems and who communicates better? Just about nobody, that's who. Taking part of your day to listen to what he has to say is never the worst possible expenditure of your time. So what does a much nicer guy than myself have to say about the situation?

Can Microsoft Access Your Hard Drive? by Leo Laporte (https://youtu.be/FuYtQGfORwY)

If he's concerned then I'm not a fruitcake. It shocked me that he used the same example of Holland before World War II as I have. But he was so much nicer about it, while saying a good deal more than I have.

[AVGWarhawk]

NOT just like operating systems of the past. No other operating system has become its own adware and malware server.



Read again what I posted. It has nothing to do with how the OS operates. It concerned the method of forcing out an old OS as compared to letting it die a slow death from non-support.

You have beaten your point to exhaustion.

[Rockin Robbins]

Read again what I posted. It has nothing to do with how the OS operates. It concerned the method of forcing out an old OS as compared to letting it die a slow death from non-support.

You have beaten your point to exhaustion.
My point is entirely unrebutted. I'm just releasing information as I find it to demonstrate that my opinion is not only mine, but shared among the best respected minds in the computer press. And, of course, I release new information as I find it.

[STEED]

Just done my Oct/Nov updates and checked Dec updates for Win8.1 got nine classed as important and four as optional, ran a search and MS trying on!

Important updates
KB3112336 Update turns out to be another Win10 being pushed.

Next two seem odd, MS classes them for Win7. :hmm2:
KB3108381
KB 3109103

Same for these two optional updates
KB3102429
KB3112148

Any how wrote them all down and will check the lot out in Jan to see what I will allow on my PC.

[Skybird]

Just like the other OS of past....MS stopped supporting them. They died a slow death. Now it is a forced execution.

Are you getting paid by Microsoft, or why do you distort things so constantly in here? Stopping to support an OS, and trying evertyhing to bypass people'S defences that refuse to get the replacement but want to stick to the old one, are TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT THINGS. People want Microsoft to accept their No as a No - and MS totally , impertinently refuses to do so, like a burglar does not accept a locked door, but breaks it open. You could as well claim that kicking in a door with heavy boots, and politely knocking on a door one time, asking, are the same. MS does not take a No as a No, that is where their behaviopr oversteps the line to impettince, and imo: crime. Now get it, finally.

[Skybird]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3012613/windows/microsoft-prepares-for-massive-windows-10-upgrade-strategy.html

Charming. :damn:

I told before that best thing is to leave W7 updates behind - forever.

Search for a patch collection download bringing a newly installed W7 to standard SP1 from 2011. Then find another patch collection that includesthe patches form then until November 2015 ( most likely find), or preferrably early 2014 (difficult to find). And use exclusively these to update W7 if you reinstall it.

Note that such collections usually get updated by the maintainer of these collections. So if you wait another couple of days, the critical items of December Black Thursday will be included. I would not want these anymore.

Keep your notes on critical KB updates from the past, since Spring 2014 (that roughly when MS started its coups to overthrow users' freedom of choice and freedom to reject). If you ever update from these downloaded patch collections, have these critical numbers excluded from the installer. This is a German download site, pick the third line of download icons (W7), left icon that reads "Vollversion" (full version - the one to the right is just an update from an earlier library version) These collections still are 2.58.1 at the time I write this and still do not include the December malware.

An SP1 pack must be installed before this, but should be easier to find via Google.

Stop caring to ever switch on Windows Update for W7 again. Understand that you are now under attack by Microsoft- and they will not stop that soon. Its no ideal solution - its the lesser of two evils only. Thats why I recomend to go dual boot, to reduce the risk from being exposed to all the non-MS threats out there.

[AVGWarhawk]

Stop caring to ever switch on Windows Update for W7 again. Understand that you are now under attack by Microsoft- and they will not stop that soon. Its no ideal solution - its the lesser of two evils only. Thats why I recomend to go dual boot, to reduce the risk from being exposed to all the non-MS threats out there.

According to the article you will have no choice but to move to Windows 10. Clinging to W7 will all be for naught.

[andy_311]

Im running win 10 and have my updates set on manual but yesterday I got these updates installed. I checked them and most of them relate to office 2007 and flash player so they say.
KB3114431
KB3114457
KB3106614
KB3085616
KB3085549
KB3116869
KB3114422
KB3114458
KB3114425
KB3119147
now like i said most of them are for office 2007 running on win 7 and 8.1 so i don't know why there being installed on win 10.
there's anouther update for silverlight and flashplayer.

[STEED]

Im running win 10 and have my updates set on manual but yesterday I got these updates installed. I checked them and most of them relate to office 2007 and flash player so they say.


I had a similar situation I run MS Office 2003 because mainly I like it more over the new versions, anyway I had KB's listed for MS Office 2007 and 2010! I posted on a Tech site asking do I really need them, answer came back no delete them. I'm now on manual download no auto, you may not need them but best to wait to hear from some one with better knowledge.

It seems MS is getting sloppy over its updates, here you go install this lot hang on as posted here I got four marked for Win7 I'm using Win8.1.

[AVGWarhawk]

I would hope the opt out is available. I have very little use for Cortana.

http://news.yahoo.com/windows-10-next-major-let-153620360.html

[vienna]

There are quite a few people who have no use for Cortana, myself included. If you Google "disable Cortana", you'll find several links on how tow to get rid of Cortana and its features. I really have no use for it, so I have disabled it and have had no problems...

There is one little bit you should know about Cortana: since it is built into the coding of Win 10, a kernel for it will load when you boot up. The kernel does not really affect the CPU usage (Task Manager shows it as 0%) and seems to have no other negative effects; it just resides there should you ever wish to reactivate the app...

Regarding the whole Win 10 brouhaha, this morning I was thinking about how it must be difficult for software publishers who have been around for a couple of decades, or a bit less, to deal with customers who, for whatever reason, wish to cling to earlier versions of a particular software. On the one hand, you have new customers who are demanding the latest tech advances be catered to; you have an ever diverse hardware base to adapt your product to; and you have to remain competitive with other publishers. On the other hand, you have a loyal base of previous and existing customers who tenaciously wish to cling to the familiar and known. Then, there is the ever-increasing appetite by the potential customer base, in general, to be connected via the various social media outlets existing and being created or modified every day. As a publisher, you have limited resources as regards research and development and, likewise, limited resources for customer support. The question for the publisher is this: Do you devote your R&D and support to creating new product to meet ever-increasing demands or do you siphon off a significant portion of your resources to support what is rapidly becoming a line of outdated, possibly irrelevant, former product for a portion of your customer base whose product use is dwindling as time goes on? There has to come a time, no matter what the product, when a manufacturer or publisher has to take what resources they have and cut the apron stings the ever smaller percentage of die-hards have been clinging to. There is a reason there is not a large public demand for buggy-whips...

In thinking of this, I was reminded of a situation I found myself involved with when I worked for a film production company. The controller/co-producer of the company had worked her way up from accounting clerk to her then high position and had been among the first to use PCs and film production accounting software when they came on line. The problem I faced was she had become very accustomed to the DOS version of the software and adamantly refused to even consider using the newer Windows version of the software. There were occasions when some problem or other would crop up requiring a rep from the publisher to have to come down to or offices and patch or repair the software. More than once the rep would privately ask me if I would please try to get the controller to upgrade to the newer Windows version; our production company was the last one still using the old software and having to upkeep the product was a nagging problem for the publisher. The only reason the publisher even continued to support that one, lone, copy was because the production company was a long-time client and generated a good amount of revenue. However, the rep told me, the publisher was really nearing the point when he would have to "pull he plug" on the lone hold out. Now, take this situation and multiply it by hundreds of thousands or millions of hold-outs and it is easily seen where, in a strict business sense, the cost of supporting such a customer base is just bad business...


<O>

[DragonRider]

Every problem that has been posted in this forum can be solved in most cases by simply turning that option off.
Even Cortana when you click on the search icon and Cortana starts up it will ask you if you want to use it to search just select no and it won’t ask again.
If you want to use the web browser I.E. then just search for it and when the icon shows just right click on it and select pin to task bar and there you go.
With a few little add-ons my Windows 10 Looks the same as my Windows 7 System although Window 10 handles things a lot smoother and also quite a bit faster.
Windows 10 will run any program that I have installed and working on my Windows 7 machine.
And yes some information is save in my Microsoft account so if I have to re-load Windows 8 or 8.1 or 10 then all my bookmarks in I.E. are saved and will re-appear as will the passwords I also saved in I.E.
This means I don’t have to re-bookmark them.
I myself didn’t like one affect off Windows 10 and after quite a few goes at it I finally manage to turn that problem off for good this also helped with any communication with my machine when it was in sleep mode.
Although I never found that this had happened I read somewhere it was possible.
So nearly all the Scare Mongering can be got rid of with a right click of the mouse.

[Rockin Robbins]

So nearly all the Scare Mongering can be got rid of with a right click of the mouse.
Dragon Rider, I took the trouble to assemble the vast majority of the diverse materials I have posted to the thread telling you that your sentence above is not only wrong, it is damned wrong. Read them.

Windows resets switches. Switches are not available for all spyware/adware incorporated into Windows. Microsoft has even deleted the entire malware module, renamed and redistributed it, rendering all disabling of your precious options null and void. The right click of the mouse is not respected by Microsoft. And it is not effective anyway.

Example: Microsoft reserves the right to access and modify all your files on any connected drive without restriction. Where is the right-click to disable that? They even uninstall software from your machine. Where is the right-click option to disable that? Are you happy giving away ownership of your machine to a company who profits from it and gives you none of the resulting revenue? Do you acknowledge that you have any property rights whatever or do you see all property as owned in common, subject to confiscation or conversion to others' uses in conflict with your own? Property rights are a central point of republican government. Surrender of property rights puts you in a fascist or socialist regime. Wanna go there?

[AVGWarhawk]

http://www.idea-venue.com/wp-content/tutsource/power/Power%20Button1.png

[STEED]

Only answer people must rise up but as I have often said they will not, result we are boned on and off the Net. :03:

[DragonRider]

Dragon Rider, I took the trouble to assemble the vast majority of the diverse materials I have posted to the thread telling you that your sentence above is not only wrong, it is damned wrong. Read them.

Windows resets switches. Switches are not available for all spyware/adware incorporated into Windows. Microsoft has even deleted the entire malware module, renamed and redistributed it, rendering all disabling of your precious options null and void. The right click of the mouse is not respected by Microsoft. And it is not effective anyway.

Example: Microsoft reserves the right to access and modify all your files on any connected drive without restriction. Where is the right-click to disable that? They even uninstall software from your machine. Where is the right-click option to disable that? Are you happy giving away ownership of your machine to a company who profits from it and gives you none of the resulting revenue? Do you acknowledge that you have any property rights whatever or do you see all property as owned in common, subject to confiscation or conversion to others' uses in conflict with your own? Property rights are a central point of republican government. Surrender of property rights puts you in a fascist or socialist regime. Wanna go there?

You Keep saying all this but I am using it and have seen no evidence of it :nope:

[HW3]

No point in arguing with them DragonRider, your not going to change their mind. Unless you happen to enjoy stirring the pot, then have fun.

[DragonRider]

No point in arguing with them DragonRider, your not going to change their mind. Unless you happen to enjoy stirring the pot, then have fun.

I think you are right and I give up Still I am happy running it so I will use it :up:

[HW3]

I am too!:up:

[aanker]

Many Windows users are rising up. RRobbins posted a pie chart with similar numbers to percentages I've seen. Over 50% of users like their Win 7 and are performing update gymnastics to avoid the step down to Win 10, and the additional loss of more personal privacy. (Win 7 64 Professional upgrades to Win 10 64 Premium etc.) The Cloud isn't where I want my files to exist

I pass on knowledge I gain from RRobbins, Skybird, & others here, plus info from websites, and I hope RRobbins keeps posting his KB findings. AFAIK there are no important Win 7 updates this month.... at least according to info on 'the websites' - so far. Skybird may be correct; forget about further updates from MS.

This Win 10 Topic is a valuable resource for satisfied Win 10 users, and for those of us who wish to avoid Win 10. I hope that nobody is angry. I don't want to lose RRobbins informative posts, or posts by others who do like their Win 10. We can all learn something in this Topic...... Microsoft may even learn from the backlash they're getting from the large number of users who are against being forced to 'upgrade' to Win 10.

I swear, the way this is going, it sounds to me like the NSA must have put a bug in MS ear to make their data mining easier.

[Aktungbby]

I'm particularly annoyed by the constant persistence to sign up for WIN 10 ...everytime I start the computer.

[AVGWarhawk]

I'm particularly annoyed by the constant persistence to sign up for WIN 10 ...everytime I start the computer.


From my understanding one day you will not be able to decline not installing 10.

But look here to stop the annoyance for now:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2979572/microsoft-windows/gwx-stopper-an-easy-way-to-permanently-delete-get-windows-10-nagware-in-windows-7-and-81.html

[Aktungbby]

From my understanding one day you will not be able to decline not installing 10.

But look hear to stop the annoyance for now:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2979572/microsoft-windows/gwx-stopper-an-easy-way-to-permanently-delete-get-windows-10-nagware-in-windows-7-and-81.html

RA thanks U!:D http://thumb7.shutterstock.com/thumb_small/564376/564376,1328117754,1/stock-photo-light-bulb-turned-on-94264255.jpg

[vienna]

I'd like to bring up something concerning temp file in Windows 10. It appears some of the temp files loaded on to devices running Win 10 are not being properly deleted by the app located in Settings and will remain even if the app is run; the total file(s) size(s) can be seen in Settings->System->Storage [Click on C: Drive]. One of the tablets I assisted with the install of Win 10 showed a whopping 3.2GB temp file aggregation and the deletion option was not cleaning out the files; neither was the Disk Cleanup tool under Drive Properties. 3.2GB may not be a very large deficit for most desktops or laptops, but it is on tablets having only 16-32GB available. I did a little digging and found out this is a rather common problem and has yet to be addressed by MS. Further digging turned up a freeware app known as Temporary File Cleaner (TFC); I downloaded the app and used it on an affected tablet; it ran smoothly and did the trick, removing the whole 3.2GB mass, and there has been no problem with the operation of Win 10 or any other functions, so if you are having problems with temp files that won't go away, you might want to give it a try...

One other note: there is also apparently a bug between the temp file size given in the Storage data and the temp file size given in the This PC data; this is a known bug and the This PC data can be taken as the most accurate...


<O>

[Rockin Robbins]

It's interesting that I assemble the research and conclusions of the top minds in the PC press and people have a response "I use it and it works fine, RR is full of crap."

Obviously the detractors have not checked out my links. Bad stuff is happening and it is not a bunch of people with tinfoil hats crying wolf. But those who will not look will not see. That doesn't mean that if they were to look there would be nothing to see.

Malware has evolved past the point where it rendered your computer inoperable or cluttered your screen with ads or slowed down your system. Malware today is carefully crafted by professional programmers paid by organized crime to convert your property to their use. So their object is not to inconvenience you at all.

They detect when you are using your computer and throttle back to 5% of CPU resources so your computer runs fast. They cloak themselves so that task manager won't even show they exist. But when you are not on your computer, it is part of a vast botnet, passing out malware, sending porn, sending spam, whatever the organized crime networks can make money doing. It's big business now and not a bunch of script kiddies after yuks.

Now let's pretend Microsoft is entirely honorable and exercising its equivalent of fiduciary responsibility to protect its customers. The fact that Microsoft is now using "updates" to serve ads and perform spying on you means that bad guys can use their routines to do the same. Microsoft can use your machine as a relay point to upload their "updates" and Windows 10 to other users, whose computers are then used for the same thing. This transfers the cost of uploading updates from Microsoft to their customers without any benefit to the customers. Criminals can use Microsoft's mechanism to use your computer to pass out child porn, scams, illegal software and malware.

And unfortunately Windows has joined the malware wave, acting as they do, professionally written, performing enough service for the user that he will keep it installed, not inconveniencing anyone but the thousands of Internet access capped Comcast users who have had to pay for 2 and three times their allotted bandwidth when Windows uses their machines to pass out copies of Windows 10 to people who don't want it.

I'm afraid the tin foil hat crowd is not who is pressing the issue of the inappropriateness of Microsoft's actions. It is the people who built and maintained Microsoft's reputation since the late 1980s, the betrayed experts who have seen the very definition of "operating system" perverted before their eyes.

[AVGWarhawk]

It's interesting that I assemble the research and conclusions of the top minds in the PC press and people have a response "I use it and it works fine, RR is full of crap."

Obviously the detractors have not checked out my links. Bad stuff is happening and it is not a bunch of people with tinfoil hats crying wolf. But those who will not look will not see. That doesn't mean that if they were to look there would be nothing to see.

Malware has evolved past the point where it rendered your computer inoperable or cluttered your screen with ads or slowed down your system. Malware today is carefully crafted by professional programmers paid by organized crime to convert your property to their use. So their object is not to inconvenience you at all.

They detect when you are using your computer and throttle back to 5% of CPU resources so your computer runs fast. They cloak themselves so that task manager won't even show they exist. But when you are not on your computer, it is part of a vast botnet, passing out malware, sending porn, sending spam, whatever the organized crime networks can make money doing. It's big business now and not a bunch of script kiddies after yuks.

And unfortunately Windows has joined the malware wave, acting as they do, professionally written, performing enough service for the user that he will keep it installed, not inconveniencing anyone but the thousands of Internet access capped Comcast users who have had to pay for 2 and three times their allotted bandwidth when Windows uses their machines to pass out copies of Windows 10 to people who don't want it.

I'm afraid the tin foil hat crowd is not who is pressing the issue of the appropriateness of Microsoft's actions. It is the people who built and maintained Microsoft's reputation since the late 1980s, the betrayed experts who have seen the very definition of "operating system" perverted before their eyes.


RR,

You can lead a horse to water. You know the rest. :up:

Just keep posting what you find as others are interested in what your finding in Windows 10 that proves to be a problem. Although I have no issues with 10 I do read what you have found and ways to shut down items of concern. :up:

[STEED]

We should all go back to writing letters. :haha:

[vienna]

I have my quill at the ready...

http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/17647721/13/stock-video-17647721-hd-monk-writing-with-a-quill-pen.jpg


I'm looking rather well in that photo... :D


<O>

[Rockin Robbins]

RR,

You can lead a horse to water. You know the rest. :up:

Just keep posting what you find as others are interested in what your finding in Windows 10 that proves to be a problem. Although I have no issues with 10 I do read what you have found and ways to shut down items of concern. :up:
Thank you AVG. And so far, it IS POSSIBLE to shut down all of Microsoft's questionable actions. But when Microsoft has had enough of our meddling it's not too difficult to take all the bad stuff out of the updates and shove it into the Windows Kernel itself. That would mean than no fixes would work except a hardened hardware firewall and packet sniffing to verify that Microsoft doesn't simply spawn more servers to replace the ones you ban.

Facebook yesterday saw the writing on the wall and realized, like Google, that service to customers is the source of income. Not that they're getting out of the social networking business, but they just OPEN SOURCED all their data gathering and telemetry software, so it is publically scrutinizable and able to be independently analyzed to satisfy any suspicions of inappropriate behavior. Imagine if Microsoft were so sensitive to the needs of its customers! Instead they hide, bait and switch, force downloading of an operating system we're already suspicious of. It's like Apple planted some moles in the organization to take it down. Their choices have just been incomprehensible in their apparent thuggery.

It's great to see Facebook buy a vowel and I hope they loan it to Microsoft soon or Microsoft comes to its senses to buy one also.

[AVGWarhawk]

We should all go back to writing letters. :haha:


Well....people did and still do take things from mailboxes and go through others trash. Therefore, even the written language can compromised.

This message will self destruct in 5.4.3.2...

[Aktungbby]

I have my quill at the ready...

http://i.istockimg.com/file_thumbview_approve/17647721/13/stock-video-17647721-hd-monk-writing-with-a-quill-pen.jpg


I'm looking rather well in that photo... :D


<O> We'll call U Erasmus of 'Frisco; U man o' letres!:O:

[Skybird]

MS has just released - and meanwhile pulled again - famous KB3305583 nagware trying to sneak W10 onto W7 installations FOR THE FREAKING 6TH TIME. I have no doubt that we will see it again in the not too far away future, under the same name or maybe under a deceiving other one, to keep the game more interesting.

Tells you all you need to know about them.

Mind you, almost none of the updates for W7 in past months were updates improving anything in W7 or sealing it against security threats, but a big part of the updates were related to the W10 offensive, or trying to install data surveillance technologies form W10 into W7, and then some updates were related to Micriosoft software updates like Office and the like.

Mind you also that MS does not shy away from giving false update descriptions now, rates W10 spyware now in parts as "recommended" or "important", and many of the last months updates were not given any patch description in the MS bulletin at all anymore.

One can read the writing on the wall, its is there, clear and big and wide in letters. But that does not help if people actively refuse to open their eyes. Didn't somebody just said "you can lead the horse to water but you can't make it drink"...?

For W7 users, I stick to it. Deactivate Windows Update Service and several other automatic background services than connect themselves with Microsoft servers regularly, and never switch it/them on again. Get a download archive for SP1, and a download archives for patches since SP1 until some time in the past. Do not use Microsoft software packages as long as your job does not demand you to do. Where you can avoid Microsoft, avoid Microsoft. - W7 users must consider themselves to be under siege. So close the gate and raise the bridge - and leave it like that. If you leave one secret tunnel open, one small hidden door, one unknown entry - its only a question of time until MS finds and uses it. Its THEIR OS - they know it better than you ever will.

For putting trust into "options" to "protect" privacy" even when some of these already have been proven to be resetted by MS secretly time and again, or were shown to be fake options, and other data extraction channels not even being documented and not beign represented by such options - for putting trust in where no trust is deserved, I lose no more words. If people do not want to open their eyes although they have even two of them, you cannot help it.


Never has been the taste of Mint on my tongue as refreshing, as in these days. :)

[Rockin Robbins]

http://cdn.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/privacy-windows-10.jpg (http://www.ghacks.net/2015/12/15/free-ebook-preserving-your-privacy-in-windows-10/)

This is only a partial guide--how to ensure that the controls built into Windows are properly used and how to keep them that way.

And for those trying to keep Windows 7, you're safe, but your mother, ungeeky family member, children, etc are about to find out first hand that the primary purpose of menus in Microsoft products has changed. Their function is now to keep you from finding out what you want to do.
' Get Windows 10 prompt without “no thanks” option (http://www.ghacks.net/2015/12/12/get-windows-10-prompt-without-no-thanks-option/)

They've removed any "no thanks" option from their GWX (Get Windows X) program and trust you'll be happy using your computer while they point a gun at your head. Facebook knows better. It's still not too late for Microsoft to change its ways.

Class action lawsuit if you were harmed by the downloading of Windows 10 upgrade files (http://www.askwoody.com/2015/class-action-lawsuit-if-you-were-harmed-by-the-downloading-of-windows-10-upgrade-files/)

Enough already: Microsoft pushes Windows nagware patch KB 3035583 for sixth time (http://www.askwoody.com/2015/enough-already-microsoft-pushes-windows-nagware-patch-kb-3035583-for-sixth-time/)



It's marked important but not set for auto installation this time. Unless...


Is Microsoft switching machines from “Download but let me choose” to “Install updates automatically”? (http://www.askwoody.com/2015/is-microsoft-switching-machines-from-download-but-let-me-choose-to-install-updates-automatically/)



Is nothing sacred? No.

[Buddahaid]

No, nothing is sacred. I choose to move on is all and not bash my brains against the wall.

In the medical industry for years now you buy expensive diagnostic equipment, but the reality is you don't really own it because you don't own the software that runs it.

That is the new model and there is no going back.

[Rockin Robbins]

http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa293/RockinRobbins13/Screenshot%20from%202015-12-17%20195629_zps3qtz76d4.png

The answer.

[Buddahaid]

The answer.

Your answer to a question I'm not asking.

[STEED]

Is 32bit the answer against Win10?

A friend of mind has a Win7 32bit notepad and has had no issue what so ever with Win10 nagware and he asked others he works with and those who run 32bit no problem and those on 64bit yes Win10 nagware. I'm no expert but judging this survey of a small number of people a clear answer seems to be 32bit Win7/8 not one bit of bother. Any of you experts can throw more light on this? :hmm2:

[AVGWarhawk]

Pushing W10 hard. I have found a few internet games will only work on W10.

[STEED]

I hear Jan 1st 2016 Microsoft's guns will be blazing away 24/7 pushing Win10.

[Rockin Robbins]

Your answer to a question I'm not asking.
First of all it's not my answer. There are thousands of people scattered all over the world who have worked together to make Linux possible. It is entirely open source. That means that anyone can scrutinize the code and verify that it is not malicious like Windows. It is free, not free like Windows 10 which is a bargain with a mugger, but free like something that works for you, not against you, and which costs you nothing.

It conforms to the old definition of an operating system: software which exists for the purpose of doing your will in running the other software you have installed on your machine as transparently and for your sole benefit as possible. It is not the new definition of "operating system," software which exists for the purpose of serving advertisements to you, collection personal information about you and selling it to the highest bidder.

It runs Silent Hunter 4 and many Steam games as well as Windows does, and will do so on older equipment than Windows demands in order to perform its nefarious activities in addition to meeting enough of your needs so you will not ask the question: why am I putting up with this abuse? Aren't they supposed to be serving me, not I submitting to their ends?

I agree that you did not ask the question. But my answer is not for you. There will always be those who do not take the better alternative when given a choice. But denying the others the better alternative is not on my menu. Nor will it ever be. The world does not revolve around you. It does not know you exist.

Yes, Steed, starting in early 2015, GWX will automatically download Windows 10 on all computers which have not been protected properly (and some which have) and it will at least partially install Windows 10 without your approval. Microsoft assures that you will be given a choice to revert. It may work as well as the Windows XP to 7 migration software that screwed up both XP and 7, forcing you to do a clean install. I fear that reverting will be to a badly mauled Windows 7, 8 or 8.1.

Keep disk image backups on a separate external hard drive and do not keep it hooked to your system when you are not actually backing up or restoring. Do not trust Microsoft. They have a proven record of coercion, dishonesty and deceit here. Run GWX control panel weekly. Install Spybot Anti-beacon and blacklist all Microsoft telemetry servers. This is a heck of a party and we're the cake and ice cream.

[Rockin Robbins]

Is 32bit the answer against Win10?

A friend of mind has a Win7 32bit notepad and has had no issue what so ever with Win10 nagware and he asked others he works with and those who run 32bit no problem and those on 64bit yes Win10 nagware. I'm no expert but judging this survey of a small number of people a clear answer seems to be 32bit Win7/8 not one bit of bother. Any of you experts can throw more light on this? :hmm2:
According to ultimateoutsider.com, source of GWX Control Panel, GWX installs on both 32 and 64-bit systems. GWX is a true trojan horse, a program which sits in a hidden directory (that's because of how honest and forthright Microsoft is and they have your back!) hooked up the Microsoft servers and waits for instructions. It's a bot or robot trojan horse, the type that anti-malware programs and anti-virus programs traditionally hunted down and executed. the bot's instructions can even including updating GWX's code (it is a self-modifying bot--the most dangerous type) so it can be taught new functions not planned for before the invasion. So its behavior will vary from computer to computer. Some computers may receive instructions to download and install Windows 10 in January. Others may get the instructions in February or following months.

My wife's computer didn't start nagging her about installing Windows 10 until two months after mine. She kept telling me I was wrong and nothing had happened on her computer, I must have encountered some malware. Yes I did, from Microsoft. When I installed GWX Control Panel on her computer, there were 5 gigabytes of Windows 10 installation files taking up 1/3 of her free space. I killed GWX for her before it had issued a single nag. But it had already executed at least one payload (malware lingo for nefarious code bundles).

[STEED]

A friend of mind has a Win7 32bit notepad and has had no issue what so ever with Win10

I asked him to check certain MS KB No's, first up he told me he only updates the security KB's only and never the optional ones right from day 1. Well after going through the list I sent him about doggy Win7 KB's not one of them is on his Notepad, could be that he has a small hard drive as I recall some where up to 20GB?

[Rockin Robbins]

I asked him to check certain MS KB No's, first up he told me he only updates the security KB's only and never the optional ones right from day 1. Well after going through the list I sent him about doggy Win7 KB's not one of them is on his Notepad, could be that he has a small hard drive as I recall some where up to 20GB?
Sounds to me that he's been sensible since this whole Microsoft Malware business started. He might have not known about what was going on but he was wisely choosing updates.

But unless he installs GWX Control Panel quickly he will still be caught up in the auto download and install planned for the first quarter of 2016. Those updates will be marked critical security updates even though they will be nothing of the kind. They will be malware.

[STEED]

2015 the year MS was pushy

2016 will be known as the year MS got ruthless

[Rockin Robbins]

2015 the year MS was pushy

2016 will be known as the year MS got ruthless
And it's totally unnecessary as their great successes with Windows XP and Windows 7 show. There was very little advertising with either of them. They cost about a hundred dollars. People recognized their excellence, sought the products out and bought them. Heck, I purchased two copies of XP and five of Win 7 Pro for new machines I built for myself and others.

Now they're "giving away" Windows 10 (but it's not free. Free choice seems to be forgotten) and fewer people have adopted it than had bought Windows 7 at this same time frame since introduction. Something is seriously broken at Microsoft.

They could be like Kmart, rotten from CEO all the way down to floor sweeper but even though it's dead they continue as a zombie. Or it could be like Oldsmobile---poof! Or they may buy several vowels and rebuild their company as a genuine service to mankind. I hope it's the latter but I'm sure not predicting that.

[Rockin Robbins]

Latest word on December Patch Tuesday and subsequently released December patches. Woody says (http://www.askwoody.com/2015/ms-defcon-4-get-windows-and-office-patched-but-watch-out-for-kylo-ren/) we're at MS-DEFCON 4: problems are well known and can be dealt with--patch away.

Do not install patches that are not checked by default. As Woody says:
As always, use Windows Update, DON’T check any boxes that aren’t checked. Reboot immediately after patching. If you’re using Win7 or 8.1, run GWX Control Panel (http://www.infoworld.com/article/3000299/microsoft-windows/a-better-blocker-is-available-to-shield-you-from-coerced-get-windows-10-updates.html) right after the update to get rid of any sneaky “Get Windows 10” nagware. Then, if privacy is important to you, follow Susan Bradley’s suggestions to turn off the Diagnostic Tracking Service (http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/attempting-to-answer-whether-ms-is-snooping/). When you’re done, make sure Automatic Update is set to Notify but don’t download (see the tab at the top of this page).

Optional patches may include an nVidia patch. That one is fine. Go ahead and check the box. If you use Space Engine like I do that will break Space Engine until they update. Your planets will all become completely transparent! I compensated by buying Kerbal Space Program. Arrrrrr!:arrgh!:

[wessex]

ahoy shipmates,this old sea dog is having problems installing SH4 wolves of the pacific on to my hard drive..after I put the disc into the machine and follow installation instructions,it seems to go through the complete installation phase,and at the end,nothing game not installed,is this a windows 10 issue?I never had this problem with XP..any help or advise will be much appreciated..capt.wessex.
sorry if im in the wrong place for posting problems ;-)

[Rockin Robbins]

ahoy shipmates,this old sea dog is having problems installing SH4 wolves of the pacific on to my hard drive..after I put the disc into the machine and follow installation instructions,it seems to go through the complete installation phase,and at the end,nothing game not installed,is this a windows 10 issue?I never had this problem with XP..any help or advise will be much appreciated..capt.wessex.
sorry if im in the wrong place for posting problems ;-)
The main Silent Hunter 4 forum has a dedicated thread (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=221366) about installation into Windows 10. In addition to the advice applying tto Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 that you need to not install to the system protected directories, program files or program files x86, there is another adjustment you need to make to get SH4 to run. I don't know what the adjustment is because I will never run Windows 10. It's entirely possible that after Windows 7, the last true operating system ever produced by Microsoft, I will never use Windows again as my primary operating system.

As more and more games are made for Linux, Windows will become less and less necessary.

Already it is as easy, perhaps easier, to install SH4 in Linux as it is in Windows 10.

[Buddahaid]

Sorry, I thought your answer was your win10 modified. Still, I don't see fighting win10 as being sustainable and only a delaying tactic at best. Linux may well be the best alternative but I find myself less interested in games now so that's not my concern. Learning Autodesk Fusion 360 is and that's just a hobby.

[Skybird]

I beleive to just have learned that the activation concern regarding W7 and Microsoft maybe blocking it one near day, might be pointless, since activation codes can be worked around or the need to activate can be deactivated - I hope rleiably!? - or that existing activations and their certificates can be extracted and the codes noted on paper for later repeated use (it is not the code on the labels you find on boxes or DVDs by Microsoft, but a generated code stored in the deep dungeons of the system).

I do not want to translate and explain it all in English, since I just red it in German, but it should be no problem to find the info via google, it seems to be no big secret.

The HD-stored activation code I would red out, if I were you, right after having red this post. Just in case.

Buddhahaid,
as has been indicated many times now in this thread, as long as you do not desperately rely on gaming (you said you don't) and do not depend on software you need for professional purposes and that is available for Windows only, there is no pressing argument to jump to W10 now. You can stay with W7 for years to come, in this scenario.

If I ever need, for any purpose, to switch to W10, I will maintain two system then: one with W10 and an uncompüromised limitation of focus to the reason why I need to have it (and not one inch more), and a second one for anything else that will have nothing to do with Microsoft. Most likely one tower, and one laptop.

But i currently do not see the need to accept W10 for the forseeable number of coming years. If there come games depending on W10, I will pass on these.

And even if you do not have objections against W10, see it like this: W10 got released in a lousy state, way too early, and even their patches time and again cause hundreds of thousands of user, if not millions, problems and many hours of wasted time, time and again. Every year you delay switching to W10 is one year you safe time for something ore pleasant, save time that you do not get abused as a beta tester against your will and without your intention, and getting abused without Microsoft paying you for your involuntary participation in this experiment.

I also remind of the fact that already at the time of of the release of W8 it was said that the next OS by MS, back then still referred to as W9, would be the last OS MS is developing as an individual built, and that with W9 (aka W10) they would switch to a new policy to constantly upgrade and change that one OS then, not developing a new one. I predict that the problems there are now, will not significantly fade out over the years, since every time they implement something new that in the old times would have justified the development of a new OS version, they will instead release it to the existing W10 userbase. And with that you will get, time and again, to where you are with the existing problems today. You will get blotched upgrades. You will curse and and try to work around. You will waste hours and hours of your life working for MS - for free.

Thats why MS probably will get their will, and will get away with it - you guys, all of you, allow that.

But your anglican patience is nothing I admire, in this case. I have far more drastic and unpleasant adjectives on mind to describe it.A huge part of Windows updates and Microsoft product updates, are not security-relevant, but repair what is broken and unfinished or misdesigned. Plus many of these updates are broken in themselves. SINCE YEARS. Making lives of many users complicated over and over again. This should tell everybody what to think of the quality standard Microsoft software gets released in. Its garbange. Junk.

And you guys defend it. Draw your conclusions.

[Rockin Robbins]

Sorry, I thought your answer was your win10 modified. Still, I don't see fighting win10 as being sustainable and only a delaying tactic at best. Linux may well be the best alternative but I find myself less interested in games now so that's not my concern. Learning Autodesk Fusion 360 is and that's just a hobby.
No problem Buddahaid. I see sending Microsoft a message about what we will and what we will not tolerate is very important.

It is also important to highlight that Silent Hunter 4 runs just as well in Linux as it does in Windows. It even installs as easily and that is the Windows version (there is no other) running in WINE. It just installs and works flawlessly. Also Steam is migrating top games with native Linux adaptations that work identically with their Windows counterparts. Borderlands 2 and Kerbal Space Program, from my personal experience, are just as fast, just as reliable, just as good as their Windows counterparts.

Putting pressure on Microsoft by resisting Windows 10 (there are still at least five years of Windows 7 support remaining) and helping build Linux to a viable alternative will bring competitive pressures to Microsoft which either will goad them to realizing that their customers are the source of their income, not victims to be plundered, or Microsoft will have to die.

Competition is vital to making all participants more excellent. Rolling over to a monopoly is the way to mediocrity at best and at worst a total collapse of much-loved and needed products. Pressure applied to Microsoft is the only way to punch through the corporate bean-counter, ivory tower think and making them consider the source of their prosperity. That would be us. We get what we ask for.

[STEED]

Just spent 2 odd hours going though a total of 41 updates the most I have seen so far.

19 OK
08 Not needed on my PC
14 Win10 plumbing

Since October I now keep a log book of each months updates keeping eye on what to allow what is alright but I don't need it and those ones I do not want at all.

I bet MS will release a bucket full from next month on. :ping: :03:

[Skybird]

OEM versions of W7 pre-installed on new PC will be stopped from selling on October 31st 2016.

Another reason to assume that activation of W7 for the forseeable future will not be an issue.

[Rockin Robbins]

OEM versions of W7 pre-installed on new PC will be stopped from selling on October 31st 2016.

Another reason to assume that activation of W7 for the forseeable future will not be an issue.
And that is an amazing retreat from Microsoft. Originally, in an effort to force sales of Windows 8, Microsoft quietly quit selling OEM and end user copies of Win 7 in January of 2014. For six months you could not buy a new computer with Windows 7. You could only buy Windows 7 from dealers who had stock left over.

On the side, a grey market of OEM Windows 7 developed and you could buy OEM Win 7 Pro 64 for about $60 if you knew where to look. They were entirely legitimate and I bought three copies for people who bought a Win 8 computer and hated it. I was able to upgrade them to a real operating system.

Then, because computer sellers' sales tanked completely, Microsoft caved to the pressure and started selling Windows 7 again during the second half of 2014. That has continued.

Now with the announcement of cessation of Windows 7 OEM sales in October 2016, Microsoft has caved yet again to the truth that Windows 7 is the last real operating system that Microsoft has for sale.

[HW3]

New version of the GWX Control Panel out 12/29/2015, see here http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

Description:
"This is a free tool that can remove and disable the 'Get Windows 10' notification area icon on Windows 7 and Windows 8. Recent versions can also disable 'Upgrade to Windows 10' behavior in the Windows Update control panel and do much more."

Just thought I would post this for those who are interested.

:salute:

[aanker]

Just spent 2 odd hours going though a total of 41 updates the most I have seen so far.

19 OK
08 Not needed on my PC
14 Win10 plumbing

Since October I now keep a log book of each months updates keeping eye on what to allow what is alright but I don't need it and those ones I do not want at all.
I had 18 and spent a couple hours too - the only one I hid (again) was that 6th release of the pesky nagware 'update'.

I installed these:

KB3119142 C++ Update - Optional
KB3106614 Silverlight Security Update (although I may uninstall Silverlight)
KB3099862 .NET x64
KB3108371 Security Issue Update
KB3108381 Security Issue Update
KB3108669 Security Issue Update
KB3108670 Security Issue Update
KB3109094 Security Issue Update
KB3109103 Security Issue Update

I did not install these:

KB3104002 Internet Explorer 11 x64 - I don't use IE
KB3035583 <<- - - - is back - hide it.
KB3083324 Server
KB3112148 Time Zone Outlook Issues for Korea or someplace - lol
- which I don't need, furthermore I read this patch may screw up Outlook on some computers.

I still use Office 2003 although they don't support 2003 any more, but MS offered five Office 2007 updates for Office 2003 that I did install.
OEM versions of W7 pre-installed on new PC will be stopped from selling on October 31st 2016.

Another reason to assume that activation of W7 for the forseeable future will not be an issue.
Good news, Thanks.
New version of the GWX Control Panel out 12/29/2015, see here http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/
......
Just thought I would post this for those who are interested.

:salute:
Thank you.... and Thank you too RR for all of your help in this Topic : )

[STEED]

I had 18 and spent a couple hours too - the only one I hid (again) was that 6th release of the pesky nagware 'update'.

I installed these:

KB3119142 C++ Update - Optional
KB3106614 Silverlight Security Update (although I may uninstall Silverlight)
KB3099862 .NET x64
KB3108371 Security Issue Update
KB3108381 Security Issue Update
KB3108669 Security Issue Update
KB3108670 Security Issue Update
KB3109094 Security Issue Update
KB3109103 Security Issue Update

I did not install these:

KB3104002 Internet Explorer 11 x64 - I don't use IE
KB3035583 <<- - - - is back - hide it.
KB3083324 Server
KB3112148 Time Zone Outlook Issues for Korea or someplace - lol
- which I don't need, furthermore I read this patch may screw up Outlook on some computers.

I still use Office 2003 although they don't support 2003 any more, but MS offered five Office 2007 updates for Office 2003 that I did install.

Good news, Thanks.

Thank you.... and Thank you too RR for all of your help in this Topic : )


KB3035583 and some others came back on the list after hiding them! Good job I keep a note book to jot down the info. Same here with me I only use MS Office 2003 and some time in Oct/Nov they offered me updates for Office 2007 and 2010...Nah I passed up on them.

[Buddahaid]

So after some time using Win 10, I'm finding it's not so much that they've hidden user controls, but that they've changed how to access them. Granted, I don't play with the registries, but disabling startup items, removing junk programs every vendor wants to bundle, er burden, you with, etc., really pretty much everything I ever did using Xp and Win 7 is still available.

[Skybird]

Very recommendable read.

LINK - Microsoft walks a thin line (http://www.infoworld.com/article/3020152/microsoft-windows/microsoft-walks-a-thin-line-between-windows-10-telemetry-and-snooping.html?nsdr=true)

The author does not hide his highly sceptical attitude, but nevertheless does a very good in trying to stay objective and fair.

And as he said: at the core of the issue, it is about trust, and whether you think Microsoft has deserved to be trusted any longer, or has nullified any reason for being trusted. My answer was, and still is, and will remain to be: No, it does not deserve to be trusted.

I tend to agree with what a reader named Frank posted in the comments on this blog entry: LINK (http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/www.askwoody.com/2016/microsoft-walks-a-thinhttp://www.infoworld.com/article/3020152/microsoft-windows/microsoft-walks-a-thin-line-between-windows-10-telemetry-and-snooping.html?nsdr=true-line-between-windows-10-telemetry-and-snooping/comment-page-1/#comment-72417)


Excellent and fair article Woody regarding Win 10 data collection. I guess one takeaway would be “when the product is free, you are the product”. I do not want to get into all the back and forth details about what MS is doing or not doing; however, I personally do not view it as being benign as the very design construct of Win 10 is intrusive. I find comparisons to Google snooping of online searches not very compelling as it is more naturally “bounded” by the manner in which I employ their search engine. In the case of Win 10 it is the entire OS and hence covers the user’s entire computing environment. Although I generally approve of regulatory action as an absolute last resort, I do see early parallels to the way we got the Federal Communications and Federal Wire Fraud Acts. In the early days of telephone, eavesdropping on party and private lines was quite common, This occurred for a variety of reasons ranging from personal nosiness to commercial espionage. Once it became apparent that virtually everyone needed a telephone to conduct the requirements of daily living, a new regulatory doctrine was set forth, namely, the telephone company owned the phone and the communication line but they had no legal interest in the communications transmitted. Hence, communications could no longer be eavesdropped without someone obtaining a court order from a judge having jurisdiction. The Federal Wire Fraud Act worked in tandem to prohibit any “artifice or device to deprive a party to the honest use of communication services”. Now we are in the relatively brave new world of the internet where it is increasingly difficult to conduct one’s affairs without a computer with an OS and an ISP. This is rapidly becoming the new telephone and increasingly we are seeing the types of unregulated behaviors by commercial parties that led to a recognized need to legally circumscribe what is kosher and what is not. I fear we are drifting toward some type of regulatory umbrella if this crap continues because after all the internet is at its core just another venue for two way communication and providing an OS should not confer on the provider an unlimited privilege to intercept and store such communication.

I hate regulation, and since I am also hostile to the idea and concept of modern states, it gives me even more troubles. But the need to install limits on what companies like MS can do without being called to order, should be obvious by now. Since states themselves are heavily engaged in and interested in constant surveillance of all and everybody, I doubt they are the instance that can be trusted to set up such regulation without violating it heavily themselves. No matter what, I think the most realistic scenario thus will be that we will sink deeper and deeper into the surveillance state, and that our young ones will be educated and trained to find nothing suspicious about it. And people arguing against it one day will be seen as suspicious and as a danger to the public like having no debts and no credit cards already today raises your suspectability of being a terrorist and can automatically put you on a terror suspect list (we learned about that mechanism that after 9/11).

Advise? Say No. Do not use all the latest tech stuff. Use alternatives, and if no alternatives are available, say No to using it at all.

Life without all this was possible until just a few years ago. Its no essential stuff. Not at all. All it takes is determination to not accept tempting "compromises" that get YOU sold, and the readiness of confronting offices and services that will be irritated if you do not play by the common rules of embracing all surveillance technology whole-heartly and "voluntarily". You will run into conflicts if you do not play by these rules in full. Have the nobleness and grandeur to fight them.

Else you may one day wake up in a state where resisting them will bring you into prison. Or will cost you your life. States are the coldest of all monsters - all states, without a single exception.

[STEED]

Confirmed: How to stop Windows 10 forcing itself onto PCs – your essential guide

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/08/windows_10_upgrade_blocker/

:hmmm:

[Skybird]

The basic problem remaisn, Steed. You need to trust MS to not alter the registry settings themselves so to allow them to install their stuff. And they already have demonstrated that they altered repeatedly computer settings set by the user, to re-enable the system to receive the GWX stuff. And I already have reported that they use not just the officially documented communication ports and services to transport their GWX stuff.

Why basing on their good will to now play by the rules (why asusming that suddenly they will do that...???), and giving up the sovereignty of yours to control the system by your own demands and conditions? ;) Don'T trust them, leave the control where it belongs: with you.

Also, the installing of W10 tracking elements into W7 and W8 environments does not get stopped and hindered by that article's tip. And that is part of the problem, isn't it: that some of the critical software profiling and surveilling the user, that originally had been designed for W10 once, now is additionally reverse-injected into W7 and W8 installations as well.

And that is what the bulk of the discussion about W10 is about, isn't it.

[Von Schenk]

I have to say that I prefer Win 10 over 8, and not just because of the start screen fiasco. I think Microsoft realized they had made a mistake by trying to compete with Android as touch screen tablets looked like they were going to take over the laptop market. I think that cooler heads prevailed and they negative comments and feedback must have been way greater than they thought it would be. If you look back at Microsoft's history they have got it wrong bigtime on a number of things, did anyone read Bill Gates book 'The Road Ahead'?. In it he says that he doesn't think that the internet is going to be very big or important in the future!!!!.

[Rockin Robbins]

The important quote in the article Skybird references above:
Back in September, Windows honcho Terry Myerson posted a blog (https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2015/09/28/privacy-and-windows-10/) that says: From the very beginning, we designed Windows 10 with two straightforward privacy principles in mind:


Windows 10 collects information so the product will work better for you.
You are in control with the ability to determine what information is collected.

Experiments conducted immediately after (http://www.infoworld.com/article/2987022/microsoft-windows/windows-10-and-privacy-whom-should-you-trust.html) that post showed that Windows 10 was collecting data even with the myriad privacy settings turned off, and sending it to bing.com. What data? We don't know. Microsoft encrypts everything prior to sending it to its servers, and it has yet to give a full accounting.
Note how Woody doesn't ask you to believe him. Woody always supports every position with a link and gives you the means to check it out yourself. The Windows apologists never support their statements with evidence. They demand that you believe them on their own authority, whatever they say about how responsible, truthful and straightforward Microsoft is. The truth can withstand scrutiny, because scrutiny reinforces truth. Falsehood avoids the light because the light would reveal the bankruptcy of their position.

But I am curious about one thing, Skybird. You said
Else you may one day wake up in a state where resisting them will bring you into prison. Or will cost you your life. States are the coldest of all monsters - all states, without a single exception. That sounds very American. At least it sounds like America used to be before the ascendancy of the left. Folks, Skybird lives in a country with the highest cultural, social, artistic, accomplishments. German culture is the pinacle of Western Civilization. But people in Germany DID wake up in a state (their own!) where resisting "reasonable requirements" of the state brought many to prison and death.

The very fact that it happened in Germany is absolute proof that none of us are free from that possibility. We may think we live in a moral and honest society, and we may even be there for the time being. But Germany proves that is not a permanent state of affairs.

Without warning, or with warning that we ignore, our governments, our corporations, our labor unions, or any combination of them can go to the dark side and we are only as safe as how strongly we protected our privacy during the "good times."

Skybird has a unique perspective because of where he lives. But we are all vulnerable to such a malfunction of human decency, no matter where we live or what kind of government we live under. Ignore him at your peril.

And remember, trust must be earned, not given out by default. Microsoft, by its nefarious actions of late, changing privacy settings, renaming surveillance "services," reissuing Get Windows 10 (GWX) nagware six separate times, collecting information after all settings they make available are turned off, a lack of transparency about exactly what information is collected and how it is used, has actually earned our MISTRUST. The articles already referenced, here (http://www.infoworld.com/article/2987022/microsoft-windows/windows-10-and-privacy-whom-should-you-trust.html), here (http://www.askwoody.com/2015/enough-already-microsoft-pushes-windows-nagware-patch-kb-3035583-for-sixth-time/)and here (http://www.ghacks.net/2015/12/15/free-ebook-preserving-your-privacy-in-windows-10/)support each and every contention I make here. It's time to be on your guard and protect your sovereignty over your private property.

[Rockin Robbins]

Deck the Halls with Poison Ivy (http://www.infoworld.com/article/3015238/microsoft-windows/microsoft-narrows-win10-upgrade-options-to-upgrade-now-or-upgrade-tonight.html)

[Skybird]

Your view of Germany, the contemporary Germany, sounds quite idealised, Robbins. It isn'T that culturally enobled over here anymore. It all slides, and is in steep decline. One could even say: its a mess.

I remind of some of the mechanism to project power and influence that Philip K. Dick described in many of his novels. I do not mean the robots stuff and drugs and alien stuff, but the structures of the future state he described the US to have turned into. These mechanism work via media, brainwashing, psychologic control, and somethign that reminds a lot of collectivism and mind police as we have seen in Stalinist and socialist regimes in the past, as well as voluntary self-control of the masses today - that we call "political correctness" nowadays.

If anything, then I think Germany/Germans should see it in the way you said I would, because of German history and European history, yes. But it is very much unwelcomed to do so, and easily gets you turned into a social pariah, a witch that get chased through the media. Germany is only a shadow of what you described it to be. Maybe not easy to see from the outside.

Well, the political threads are in GT forum, aren't they.

Just saying.

One can allow a private company the immense potential power that private informaiton about yourself inevitably means, and hope and trust them to not abuse them. Yes, one can do that. The question is how reasonable that is to do, and what speaks for them not abusing their position - when it is truth in what they say: that "business is war".

I think it is clever not to depend on their good will and promises (which they already have broken so many times), but to prevent them in the first from gaining a position where they could plan such abuse. The idea behind it is the same why you lock the housedoor behind you when leaving. You could trust that nobody will get in and steal your things if you leave it wide open, yes you can, and call that your optimistic nature or friendly personality that sends smiles into the world to make it a better place.

But is that sensible...? :stare:

There is a German proverb: Vertrauen ist gut. Kontrolle ist besser. Translates into: Trust is kind. Control is better.

Don't trust Microsoft. The product they sell - is YOU. And who knows to what degree the US government is behind it. MS software running on systems in all world, last but not least means: MS has a foot in the door, they know their baby, they know their OS, believe it. And the NSA has a step in the door of MS. MS must obey American legislation.

Add one and one together.

My W7 installation still is tight and sealed and gets no updates and contacts to MS servers at all (as far as I could figure it out). And it will stay that way, without any plan or intention to change that. Trust in MS is as dead as "dead" can mean.

[Aktungbby]

Von Schenk!:Kaleun_Salute: And what a debate brawl to 1st post-surface in..afer a three year silent run!!: 'twixt RockinRobbins AND Skybird!:rock:

[STEED]

All set for Malware Spyware Nagware Tuesday? :damn: NO :down:

[Skybird]

Latest:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3020460/microsoft-windows/banishing-get-windows-10-nagware-isnt-as-easy-as-you-think.html?nsdr=true

All set for Malware Spyware Nagware Tuesday? :damn: NO :down:
I'm happy that I must not worry about that anymore.

One thing is interesting, too. Since I have isolated my Windows gaming partition on HD1 as much as possible - by my limited knowledge - from the web, it fragmentises MUCH slower, and defragmentation works much faster, and can be run less often.

[STEED]

I have noticed something odd, since turning off the updates and do not check I have been seeing large error reports, some of them are to with something locked up so what but a lot of them show failed to install. I checked the dates and nothing shows up on those days except one date when I was doing a manual update for MS updates, its like something is trying to install itself but can not. I am wondering is this MS trying to download something on me but due to the fact I switched off auto updates can not get though? :hmm2:

Will keep a eye on this.

[aanker]

No problem here Steed - yet....

I check for updates late in the month, Auto updates off, Win 7 64 Home Premium and Office 2003. You can see those I did and didn't install from last month:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=2369947&postcount=561

The month before we both installed the .NET updates and not much else.

That's my status. I am interested in RRobbins walk-through - Skybirds too, getting SH4 & SHCE running (also the forums) and learn about Linux with Win 7, however I hope that's in the distant future.

[STEED]

No problem here Steed - yet....

I don't see it as yet as a problem more of a mystery, every so often the action centre shows a report under the security section. A percentage of it I can dismiss like Internet froze or crashed so what but since turning off the auto updates I see failed to install on such a day. I deleted the report but the next time it pops up I shall put some info up.

[Skybird]

Use this.

http://xp-antispy.org/en/download/#

Chose the English download.

I do not know whether the interface then is given in English, if it still is in German, find a colleague, friend, buddy, who understands a a bit of German, and who can talk you thorugh all options. You want to switch most of them to "locked" anyway.

The tool does not install, and can be run from just the location where you drop its folder.

It is in pricple nothign else but a GUI for editing many registry settings that you do not need to edit manually then via regedit. You can establish profiles, too: one for having your system locked with maximum security (=isolated), and one with loosend settings to allow checking for updates.

It is old and originally was done for XP, but I can testify that it works smooth and reliable under W7x64 Pro that I use. In German-tongued user communities, it is a classic and quite famous.

It cures many vulnerabilities that were acutal back then, but also some that are still actual under W7. And it seals quite a few background tasks connecting to Ms servers that are not the Windows Update Server.

You do not want to just switch off Windows Updates only. You want to switch off as many - if possible: ALL - connections to MS servers.

---

Latest readings appeared as indicative to me that maybe it helps to not have updated to Explorer 11 to avoid getting certain GWX-related updates shuffled onto your rig. Since I did not use Explorer 11 anyway, I did not update Explorer to version 11. Cannot say with certainty if that is a valid finding, however.

Since I ran xp-antispy, the level of HD activity has significantly toned down when I run the gaming partititon.

---

Never had any error messages like you, Steed. Maybe you did some tricks to your installation that created dependencies, before you started to lock it up somewhat...?

[Skybird]

BTW, I wrote Woody a mail, asking whether he knows of or thinks that Microsoft could consider switching off activation servers for newly installed W7. He replied that he does not see that coming in the next five years or so - and that he thinks in five years Windows will not play a big role anymore anyway. For the time being and the years to come, my gaming seems to be safe. New games needing W10, I will not consider to buy.

I think he is right. There seems to be a big rush towards Linux Mint and other Ubuntu distributions currently. The aggressiveness of Microsoft may be a sign of their arrogance. But it could also be a sign of despair. In some months, the "free" W10 update Window willö end, and then people will need to pay money for this malware garbage. As I see it, W10 has had its greatest level of popularity already behind it. Until that "free update" time-window ends, MS will probably continue to go berserk.

And I learned that some of the games I currently have installed via Steam - are available to be installed under Linux as well, amongst them ETS2 and Tennis Ellbow, which i frequently use.

[Skybird]

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3020748/microsoft-windows/how-get-windows-10-sets-its-hooks-into-windows-7-and-81.html?nsdr=true

"
Over the weekend, a barrage of tests proved what many of you had feared: Even if you use the Microsoft-sanctioned DisableGWX and DisableOSUpgrade registry settings, the KB 3035583 patch (http://www.infoworld.com/article/2906002/operating-systems/mystery-patch-kb-3035583-for-windows-7-and-8-revealed-it-s-a-windows-10-prompter-downloader.html) still installs all of the Get Windows 10 nagware. GWX and all of its components sit there, hidden, running in the background even if you can't see the Get Windows 10 icon in the system tray.
Microsoft's most-reviled patch for Windows 7 and 8.1 isn't going away anytime soon.
"


One cannot repeat it often enough. There is no, zero, rien, kein reason to trust those privacy options that MS underhandingly laid out before your eyes.
You belíeve them only because you want to make yourself falling for the comfortable illusion.

My recommendation stands: DO NEVER USE WINDOWs UPDATE even if you freshly install Windows 7. Afwetr installing, immediately switch off and seal the system'S connections to ANY MS server. Then run an archive of SP1 updates and an archive of Windows updates since SP! that you have previously downloaded and saved to DVD. Before installing their many inlcuded updates, check them for the critical KB numbers - as once agai n listed in the above article - and untick them, so that they never get installed at all. Then activate Windows, but still make sure that Windows Updates are not allowed. Do not turn on "inform but do not install", sinc e this already establishes a link to MS servers. Always, from first installation minute on, have Windows update switched OFF. And never, NEVER, turn it on again. Do not care for updating your Win7. By now, it doe snot get quality improvements anymore, it gets not further worked on. Half of the updates in past months were related to trying to infiltrate with GWX and W10 update advertising, not to W7-relevant updating.

Of course, this should also be clear by now, but I repeat it just to be safe: this provides you with a W7 environment that you should only use for game-laucnhging and FOPR NOTHING ELSE, do not use it as as your usual working environment, do not use it for surfing. For that, you need an alternative OS on a second HD, like Linux.

[STEED]

Looks like I got all worked up for nothing just checked no updates! Or have I got the wrong Tuesday? :hmmm:

[Rockin Robbins]

No problem here Steed - yet....

I check for updates late in the month, Auto updates off, Win 7 64 Home Premium and Office 2003. You can see those I did and didn't install from last month:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=2369947&postcount=561

The month before we both installed the .NET updates and not much else.

That's my status. I am interested in RRobbins walk-through - Skybirds too, getting SH4 & SHCE running (also the forums) and learn about Linux with Win 7, however I hope that's in the distant future.
You can see my video of SH4 running really well on Ubuntu Linux (https://youtu.be/ebE7BKVxymA). I haven't installed U-Boat Missions yet because I'll have to go through the begging Ubi for permission to use the add-on I purchased process. I should do that and then post a complete tutorial.

I can't notice any difference between how SH4 runs on Linux from Windows 7. There is no "unfortunately" to the fact that I'm running it in Linux.

Now some don't like Ubuntu. But they are mostly running derivatives of Ubuntu or Debian. Linux Mint, Peppermint Linux, Elementary OS, and a couple dozen others are completely compatible with Ubuntu. There are a bunch of people who down Ubuntu and use Mint. They ignore the fact that Mint is essentially Ubuntu with a different GUI and they can't agree on whether to use Cinnamon or MATE. And they have XFCE and KDE editions now as well. The fact is you can take any of the Ubuntu family Linux installations and install the Unity, Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon, MATE, LXDE, OpenBox or even other GUIs to be selectable at boot-up or log-on.

It as if you could actually have Windows 10, but were able to pick the Windows 3.11, Windows 98SE, Windows XP, Windows 7 or Windows 8 GUI to work with any time you wanted. Linux is SO FAR ahead of Windows on implementing user choice. They know what an operating system is. Microsoft has entirely forgotten.

[Skybird]

Microsoft has entirely forgotten.
[psych mode]You cannot intentionally forget something. You can only intentionally ignore. [/psych mode]

[Skybird]

Looks like I got all worked up for nothing just checked no updates! Or have I got the wrong Tuesday? :hmmm:
Give it until Wednesday at least before calling off stations.

[STEED]

Give it until Wednesday at least before calling off stations.

Just checked again and they are up.

Win8.1
Important
KB 3124275 IE11 not needed by me
KB 3109560
KB 3109853
KB 3110329
KB 3121212
KB 3121918
KB 3123479
KB 3124001
KB 3133431 IE11 Flash player not needed by me
KB 890830 Malicious Software Removal Tool

Optional
KB 2976978 this one has been treated as suspect and at the time very little info

Two written off don't use IE11 as for the rest they will remain on hold until I get info what is OK and what not to install. Glad the number of updates is well down on last month.

[STEED]

JAN 7, 2016

Windows 10, Microsoft’s flagship OS is now active on more than 200,000,000 devices monthly.

http://news.filehippo.com/2016/01/windows-10-installed-200-million-devices-globally/

Comments below are in most part anti MS.

[Skybird]

http://www2.pic-upload.de/img/29425195/Auswahl_003.jpg (http://www.pic-upload.de/view-29425195/Auswahl_003.jpg.html)
from here: http://www.askwoody.com/2016/how-get-windows-10-sets-its-hooks-in-windows-7-and-8-1/

[Rockin Robbins]

Here's what you need to know about the latest batch of updates according to Woody at Infoworld:

MS-DEFCON 2:

Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don't do it.


Reminder: Why is this so? It is because Microsoft in their play for trust and transparency (little irony there....) has quit describing their updates at all. They are black boxes and until they are analyzed we can't say what they do. Up to just a couple months ago, with every update, Microsoft supplied detailed information about the functionality of each update so we could decide for ourselves whether we wanted to use that update or not.

Now, fortunately, Microsoft sees us as hapless gawkers around a public hanging and themselves as pickpockets. Telling us what they are up to would keep them from picking our pockets, so OF COURSE they have nothing to say.

Has Apple bought controlling interest in Microsoft with the aim of taking them down? It's the simplest explanation why a company would commit willing suicide as Microsoft is. I thought the backlash for Vista was fierce. This makes it look like the Summer of Love.

[Skybird]

As I said in Woody's forum, and he agreed: I assume MS obeys orders.

If you assume that for a moment, and consider what the official intel policies are that are being run, and what legal claims are made by various government offices for controlling the WWW, and what government agencies have even openly admitted they want to achieve in global control and enforcing access to every existing PC system in the globe: - then what confuses you about MS campaign all of a sudden falls into a logically assigned place, and it all makes perfect sense, all of a sudden.

This is not about the famous quote by A.C. Doyle (Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth), it does not really apply here - but this is about Occam's razor. That simple. It is the simpliest and most potent explanation that explains all contradictions there appear to be.

[STEED]

As said I made a note of them and they are on hold until I get more info on them. I have no interest having a nasty KB malnagspyware on my OS thank you.

[Skybird]

Microsoft announces that hunting season to bring down its victims is about to be stepped up.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3022418/microsoft-windows/microsoft-expands-get-windows-10-campaign-to-domain-joined-win7-and-81-pcs.html?nsdr=true

I do not know what should stun me more. The behaviour of MS - or that so many users still excuse MS and submit to them instead of storming Redmont, throwing their executives out of the windows (pardon the pun) and setting their HQ ablaze.

[Rockin Robbins]

Microsoft announces that hunting season to bring down its victims is about to be stepped up.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3022418/microsoft-windows/microsoft-expands-get-windows-10-campaign-to-domain-joined-win7-and-81-pcs.html?nsdr=true

I do not know what should stun me more. The behaviour of MS - or that so many users still excuse MS and submit to them instead of storming Redmont, throwing their executives out of the windows (pardon the pun) and setting their HQ ablaze.
That is nothing very surprising, but think about this. These domain joined computers are commercial in nature. XYZ corporation has 300 computers joined to its domain and a full-time IT department administering it.

It's vitally important that all the computers be configured the way the IT department wishes. It's very important that these computers all run the same licensed version of Windows that the corporation spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for a domain license.

Now these individual computers start getting ways to install Windows 10 with one keypress. The company probably runs proprietary software which requires them to run Windows 7. If Microsoft defeats all the safety settings and actually allows these domain computers to install Windows 10 against the policy of their IT department I'll bet they begin research on how to implement Linux, as NASA did. IT departments demand complete control over their domain because the survival of the company who pays them is dependent on it. Typically they intercept Windows Updates, research and pass them out themselves if they want their computers running those updates.

This is a meaningless move to us with no additional hazard, but it is deadly to the trust which is the true currency of Microsoft's commercial business.

As far as the Occam's Razor stuff, the theory that Apple has bought controlling interest in Microsoft and is actively seeking to destroy them is at least as simple and more plausible than the government conspiracy angle. Successful commercial espionage is more likely than effective government control.

[Skybird]

Counter terrorism is the smaller share of what counter terrorismä-legislation is about, Robbins. It's the alibi to widen business espionage (and cutting civil rights and widen citizen control) - that is what it is about in the main. Think of it. Cloud computing, with servers in the US, falling under US legislation, known as well as secret legislation. OS produced by American companies, running on most networks in the world, but again Ameican legislation being the controlling authority. Most companies using Windows. It is naive to assume the US will not only not use the opportuntity, but does not also try to widen the abuse. OF COURSE it does. Every state would, because states - are states. Of course American intel agencies spy on "allied" nations. Of course the yoverhear friendly government communications.

Don't assume that Snowden was just a collective hallucination. Why do you think they want his head? Becasue he has stoledn just anything? Every politicians steals from his voters, and nobody calls for their heads, but defends the system by which they act.

Some months ago some high ranking official or even the head of the NSA himself even admitted that it is official policy that the US claims the right to secure it can access any computer system in the world, anywhere, no matter regional laws. That is as much "conspiration theory" as is the legal fact that some weeks ago Obama signed law that demand all nations of the Earth that when they want to claim parts of space or on other planets or the moon, they have to ask the US authority first. They say it is for "coordinating claims" only. LOL. Sure. Truth is the US implies by this authority it wants to reserve for itself that all cosmos is its own - else it would not be the authority other soveriogn nations have to ask for permission first. China and Russia will not even care to mind for this, of course. Of Europeans, I am not so certain.

Real and valid law stuff, Robbins. No conspiration theory at all.

Of this Apple-Microsoft thing you refer to, I know nothing. Never cared for Apple, never.

[Rockin Robbins]

Yes, Apple leaves me cold too. It's essentially a totalitarian police state. And it's not chaotic enough for my taste. In the PC world, there are a million ideas flying around every whichway and you can highly customize your computer as a result. Sure there are things that don't work so well, but that's part of the adventure.

It partially prepares you for Linux, where the possibilies multiply beyond belief. If you demand a strictly regimented world, Apple is your company. I systematically resist regimentation and have no interest in Apple.

Chaos, while disorienting and confusing, opens up possibilities for advancement while regimentation squashes most of them. I embrace chaos as the most efficient method for bringing top quality, lowest prices and user choice.

[STEED]

In a recent Q&A, Microsoft marketing chief Chris Capossela made no apologies for his company’s approach which, he says, is being done to get users to a "safer place" and explained that there are some people out there who “kick the can down the street" and need a push to get the upgrade done.

http://betanews.com/2016/01/14/microsofts-get-windows-10-app-behaves-like-malware/

SAFER PLACE! :huh:

NEED A PUSH TO GET THE UPGRADE DONE! :huh:

The Prisoner - I am not a Number
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0LaT6qVRpg

Clearly we now know the real No.1 behind the red phone..MicroSoft. :damn:

[Skybird]

Such amount of arrogance I can only describe as severly deranged personality.

That psychopathic traits are overrepresented in career-runners of politics and business, is no new find in social sciences - serious.

And yes, such people can be dangerous. Psychopaths have no scruples and do not understand the concept of empathy, and morals. Their biological base equipment that mother nature provided them with, does not include the needed upgrades. Their defectiveness in principle is an evolutional uncompleteness.

[Rockin Robbins]

Such amount of arrogance I can only describe as severly deranged personality.

That psychopathic traits are overrepresented in career-runners of politics and business, is no new find in social sciences - serious.

And yes, such people can be dangerous. Psychopaths have no scruples and do not understand the concept of empathy, and morals. Their biological base equipment that mother nature provided them with, does not include the needed upgrades. Their defectiveness in principle is an evolutional uncompleteness.
And partly because they have no scruples, no limits, 100% commitment, they tend to be very successful. Normal, decently functioning people are even taught to imitate them, envy them and duplicate their "achievements."

Our corporations, labor unions and governments are full of these monsters, who have achieved far more than they should have been permitted. But they are our creatures, produced by our wants and desires, and they feed on us.

They have successfully made us socialists, thinking that private enterprise is evil, conservatives, thinking that government and labor unions are evil, and other groups thinking it is specific groups which are evil. In fact groups are always morally neutral. Their orientation is the goodness or evil of the people who make them up. Evil is an equal opportunity glutton. It cares not whether it inhabits organized crime, organized labor, organized government, organized business, philanthropic organizations, churches, social welfare organizations, schools or police departments. There is no organization so good that it cannot be corrupted to do evil.

So we are all fighting about the wrong thing entirely. Socialists, conservatives, fascists, communists are all completely wrong. The enemy is evil people and they are everywhere. The solution is to make a world where they do not get ahead. Instead we put them in charge of everything and wonder how things went so bad.

[Skybird]

Psychopathic traits in context of the job world are exaggerated extremes of traits needed to survive competition and come out as the winner.

Its just that we let it go way too far. I will not attack egoism, it is necessary and one of the key ingredients of capitalism and free market, also a key evolutionary drive to secure own survival and reproducing. But there is a problem.

The problem is about Paracelsus: the right dose. Too much of anything turns everything into a poison. You can die even of oxygen poisoning, even water poisoning (by drinking, not drowning).

I like Roland Baader's definition of what libertarianism is: "Liberalismus ist keine Religion, keine Weltanschauung, keine Sonderinteressen-Partei. Liberalismus ist einfach die Lehre von der friedlichen Entwicklung der Menschen in einer freien Gesellschaft." - Liberalism (=libertarianism) is no religion, no Weltanschauung, no special-rights party. Liberalism simply is the teaching of peaceful developing of human beings in a free society."A certain egoism necessarily is part of that, else major drives in man would not work well anymore. Like you shall not limit the functions of a hand to only certain activites, while banning all other kinds of movements. Or trying to control the thinking of people. If you nevertheless try that, at best you create loss and lack of skills and abilities, at worst you create fanatics, and their brutal excesses. Those politics and business psychopaths are close to the latter.

[STEED]

A friend of mind was thinking MS was just being a little pushy but after reading that link I sent him he now thinks they are sick. How dare they say I need a push! Excuse me I will make my mind up for myself but MS tactics have been underhanded so no I will not, even if I put the spyware issue aside. As for that BS about a safer place give me a break will you! :hulk:

[Rockin Robbins]

If they are right about needing to push people into a product so bad that they would never choose it for themselves, they are wrong about exactly where they are pushing people. When the veil is lifted they are pushing people completely away from Microsoft!

These people are traitors to the corporation they pretend to serve.

[STEED]

Just checked again and they are up.

Win8.1
Important
KB 3124275 IE11 not needed by me
KB 3109560
KB 3109853
KB 3110329
KB 3121212
KB 3121918
KB 3123479
KB 3124001
KB 3133431 IE11 Flash player not needed by me
KB 890830 Malicious Software Removal Tool

Optional
KB 2976978 this one has been treated as suspect and at the time very little info

Two written off don't use IE11 as for the rest they will remain on hold until I get info what is OK and what not to install. Glad the number of updates is well down on last month.

KB 2976978
This update performs diagnostics on the Windows systems that participate in the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program. These diagnostics help determine whether compatibility issues may be encountered when the latest Windows operating system is installed. This update will help Microsoft and its partners ensure compatibility for customers who want to install the latest Windows operating system.

Well that one is off my updates, just checked the rest no info coming up if any of them should be written off.

[AVGWarhawk]

When your computer becomes nothing but a chore it is time to find something else to do.

[Fubar2Niner]

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/50003/microsofts-edge-web-browser-reportedly-saving-private-browsing-data/index.html?utm_source=ttnewsletter&utm_medium=ttemail&utm_campaign=ttcs


Nice one MS :/\\chop

[STEED]

When your computer becomes nothing but a chore it is time to find something else to do.

Do a 5000 piece jigsaw. :haha:





http://www.tweaktown.com/news/50003/microsofts-edge-web-browser-reportedly-saving-private-browsing-data/index.html?utm_source=ttnewsletter&utm_medium=ttemail&utm_campaign=ttcs


Nice one MS :/\\chop

http://news.yahoo.com/microsoft-edge-browser-apparently-saving-private-browsing-data-022542347.html


MS....Nah, can't be. :rolleyes:

[Rockin Robbins]

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/50003/microsofts-edge-web-browser-reportedly-saving-private-browsing-data/index.html?utm_source=ttnewsletter&utm_medium=ttemail&utm_campaign=ttcs


Nice one MS :/\\chop
I write that one off as a simple software bug, not a designed invasion of privacy. Note that Microsoft owned the problem and said they'd fix it. That is very different from their attitude on their data mining operation, which is "That's what we do. You could always buy an abacus."

It's important that we separate the actual purposeful invasion of user rights from the accidental bugs. This is one of the latter and I'm not worried about it.

I would never use Edge anyway. It's a cell phone app. It's a crippled version of Internet Exploder, and even that is not the best choice of browser to use if you're wanting control over your browsing experience.

My computer is not and never will be a cell phone and I won't be running cell phone apps on it. Edge is just a trojan horse to soften up your resistance to that sub-operating system formerly known as Metro, which is a step back to the DOS days where if you didn't know how to operate a program it didn't help you find out. Metro apps stare at you with no cues visible or available, daring you to do something stupid. Do something smart. Close the cursed thing and load up a real computer app.

[DragonRider]

Firefox :hmmm: Its the one I use :up:

[Catfish]

"The likes of Google (especially the increasingly ubiquitous Chrome browser, increasingly a hub for their services and data tracking) Facebook and Twitter are already snaffling up untold amounts of information about us, while your smartphone is essentially a pocket-sized vault of saleable information about you, and for better or worse the majority of users appear to be taking that in their stride."

"But it becomes something else when the very infrastructure of your computer is keeping tabs on most everything you do and then selling it on to unknown third-parties, as well as potentially storing it on someone else’s servers forever."


This Win 10 is spyware, disguised as an operating system. It can and will disable programs it thinks are illegal or harmful, or whatever some self-appointed microsoft priest regards as such, and it will give your data to the police, government or whatever, if they see fit. It is possible they transfer everything already, without being asked.
I had installed Tor browser just for tests. After two days it was gone, uninstalled. But not by me.

They give all your data to advertising companies already anyway. And those may either bomb you with advertisements, or maybe sue you for using some software they think is illegal, or not to their taste, found on your PC.

They also release your buying habits and what you buy, and how (use a credit?) to other banks. So don't be astonished if you do not get a credit next time, for they may regard you as unreliable or just too poor. It has not have anything to do with reality.

And they clearly state that.


I have made a lot of MCPs, and an MCSE, but i now think i will turn away. This is too much. I never used Linux much before, and the eavesdropping via browser etc. will of course be present as ever. But you got to draw a line.

This policy violates everything i have learned, believe in, and cherish.

[DragonRider]

^Yes That happens Dam it^ :nope:

[Rockin Robbins]

Attention, all of you with Windows 10. I'd like your cooperation in performing an experiment for the benefit of all of us. You know that Windows reserves the right to take inventory of your machine and if it finds anything it doesn't like, it reserves the right to delete it from your machine. Well, maybe you DON'T know that, but you do now.

I have unconfirmed reports that this is not just a right they claim but an action they take--to delete software from Windows 10 machines for any reason they choose. Imagine if Silent Hunter 4 had its way and not only would it fail to start if the SecuROM scanner found Microsoft Process Explorer on your machine, suppose it deleted Process Explorer without telling you and then started up the game. Would you tolerate that? I wouldn't.

I would like a few of you Windows 10 explorers to install the Tor Browser (https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en).

I used Tor Browser back in the day when Spotify wasn't in the United States. I wanted to know what it was all about so I used Tor Browser to tunnel anonymously through the Internet to Birmingham, England, where my connection first hit the light of day. Spotify checked my IP address, saw I was in Birmingham and dutifully downloaded to my machine in Florida, USA. I was using Spotify 18 months before it came to the US and when it became available here I already had my user name and saved playlists. I just "moved" to the US!

Tor Browser is a totally secure browser that blocks all sharing of your information with anyone under nearly all circumstances. Those circumstances that could expose you are told on the website. They specifically say that Torrent Servers are famous for giving up your IP address, be very careful of what browser extensions you use, don't use Flash or Java--things like that. The important thing is that the Tor Browser is not harmful, contains no malware and is of no hazard to you or others. You don't have to even run it if you don't want to.

Now just leave it there without even running it. I have heard that there's a distinct possibility that Tor Browser is on Windows 10's nasty list, just as Process Explorer is on Silent Hunter 4's nasty list. Except that indications are that Windows 10 is uninstalling and deleting Tor Browser from user machines without user consent and even without any notification that Tor Browser is being removed.

If you're willing to participate, please post and let's see what happens in a week! Should be interesting.:woot:

[HW3]

Downloaded and installed Tor 5.5 today. Used default install and security settings. I will keep an eye on it and report back.

[Sailor Steve]

Downloaded and installed.

[Catfish]

Have reinstalled Tor, let's wait and see..

[vienna]

I've installed Tor on a couple of tablets for others in Win 10 since Win 10 came out (and installed the Win 10 upgrade on others with Tor already loaded) and none of them has reported any problems wit Tor or with Win 10 uninstalling or crippling Tor...

BTW, if anyone is so concerned about spying or drawing unwarranted attention to your machines, I will tell you what I tell others who install Tor: the very act of installation may draw attention to you since Tor is widely known and believed to be a means of access to dubious websites and as a means of disseminating data and other content others, including governments, may consider to be of less than legal nature. It is a bit akin to raising a red flag for some who would be interested in knowing who you are and what you are doing; the alleged confidentiality of Tor has reportedly been breached by parties in the employ of some of the security establishments some Tor users seek to avoid; caveat emptor...


<O>

[Rockin Robbins]

Yes, if you're wanting to anonymously do evil deeds with Tor, be warned that the FBI broke the Silk Road case by busting Tor. If you just want to cover your tracks while doing normal stuff, then Tor is a good choice. But for skulduggery, you can assume you'll be found out, probably sooner rather than later.

Where Tor (on higher security settings than you would use) becomes useful is in allowing people in censored countries, including but not limited to China, the Middle East, North Korea, to access the uncensored web.

[DragonRider]

In answer to your question yes Windows 10 will try to remove items it don’t want you to run or
It will prevent these programs running as it should.
So here is a list that I myself have found to ether disappear of fail when running.

(1) Light Scribe used by Nero software
(2) 8 gadget pack used to return the Gadgets back to your desktop (although if you reinstall it will work and windows 10 will keep telling you it is using too many resources)
(3) Epson Scanner controller program
(4) GeForce Experience (windows 10 will cause all types of problems with this one)
(5) Big Fish Games (windows 10 will try to keep shutting this down while its running)

I don’t have many programs running on my system so I can’t comment on any others you might be running.

[andy_311]

I got Tor Browser installed and is set as my default browser had it now for 5 months.In my setting it says the browser is unavailable but it still installed and running.

[Rockin Robbins]

In answer to your question yes Windows 10 will try to remove items it don’t want you to run or
It will prevent these programs running as it should.
How low we have fallen when we think an operating system "should" prevent programs it doesn't like, especially for non-security reasons, from running. There was a time when computing and freedom were nearly synonymous terms. Operating systems were to run and organize the software we installed. It was the job of virus scanners and anti-malware programs to identify malicious programs and give us the choice of removing them, item by item.

Now we expect operating systems to have enemies lists, not even related to legitimate security issues, to remove from your computer. If you work for a corporation with highly sensitive information and choose to use Tor to protect trade secrets you are responsiblew for, Windows may recognize Tor as and enemy to delete it, just as Silent Hunter 4 recognizes Microsoft Process Explorer as an enemy (actually the product of an enemy programmer) and deletes it, in spite of the fact that it has no bearing on software piracy at all. A personal grudge became an intrusion on our freedom and ownership rights to our hardware.

I say operating systems should never remove software from our system. Remember when Apple was under attack when they had a contract dispute with an iOS developer and deleted his software from all iPhones? Apple was forced to back down and pledge never to do that again.

Now we have Microsoft users hypnotically chanting "protect us from your enemies, oh Mi Cro Soft!" I will not cede my ownership rights to a corporation for the purpose of receiving an operating system. They have no right to convert my property to their use without due compensation. I'm willing to negotiate, but my price will be very high. A one-time agreement for one machine will run them about $10,000. That's fair.:D:D:D

[andy_311]

Now we have Microsoft users hypnotically chanting "protect us from your enemies, oh Mi Cro Soft!" I will not cede my ownership rights to a corporation for the purpose of receiving an operating system. They have no right to convert my property to their use without due compensation. I'm willing to negotiate, but my price will be very high. A one-time agreement for one machine will run them about $10,000. That's fair.

I only wish that could be true.
_______________

[Skybird]

Just a heads-up for those people like me who stubbornly do not trust Microsoft do decide in their place what'S good for them. Since yesterday, the automatic update for W7 and W8 to get W10 installed by reclassifying it as a "recommended update", is in the wild. It is a phased release, so do not consider yourself to be safe just because it still has not happened.

It means, if you still do not know, that if you have your Windows 7 update options to accepting recommended updates and treating them like security updates, W10 will automatically be landed and installed on your HD. Nice surprise next morning.

As usual my recommendation is to switch off Windows 7 Updates alltogether and deactivate all known background tasks you can find that frequently contact Microsoft servers - and then to never care for Windows Updates again anymore, never.

On a sidenote, it can be read that the Surfacegate with recent firmware updates for Microsoft machines named Surface, still continues. The last upgrades seem to have been the same desasters, like the ones before that. My condolences to everybody who in good faith has wasted his money on this crap and short time later had a hard crash-landing on the concrete surface of reality, if you pardon the pun.

Rumor says the next generation of Microsoft computers is named "Nemesis".

[Rockin Robbins]

Confirm that yesterday, Windows began rolling out the change of Windows 10 update from optional to recommended. When that changes, and it will be on a different date this quarter for each computer, if you are set to automatically install updates, your computer will do at least a partial install of Windows 10 without any input from you. That means that if they have not already done so, your computer will first download about 5 GB of the entire Windows 10 update.

As we shared in late October on the Windows Blog (https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2015/10/29/making-it-easier-to-upgrade-to-windows-10/), we are committed to making it easy for our Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 customers to upgrade to Windows 10. We updated the upgrade experience today to help our customers, who previously reserved their upgrade, schedule a time for their upgrade to take place,See how helpful they are being? Remember that last October they "accidentally" changed the setting and many who declined the EULA found themselves with crippled computers, unable to go back to Windows 7, 8 or 8.1. Their computers were left riddled with Windows 10 downloaded items (over 5 GB worth!). Their only path forward was a reinstallation from scratch of their old operating system if they did not religiously keep an image backup, as I do.

Your defense is to set Windows Update to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them." And if you haven't already done so, download and run GWX Control Panel (http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/) to innoculate your computer against download and install of Windows 10.

More gory details (http://www.infoworld.com/article/3028897/microsoft-windows/microsoft-signals-renewed-push-to-force-users-onto-windows-10.html) can be found on Woody Leanhard's Woody on Windows blog on Infoworld.com.

Never was invasion of privacy and oppression of valuable customers done with such smiling and cheerfulness. If they were Nazis they would be putting smiley faces on blindfolds for executions. And their apologists would be praising their efforts to make executions such a positive experience. "We updated the execution experience today to help our customers! Thanks to our continuing committment your execution can be a positive experience!:up:"

[Rockin Robbins]

Update: the auto install is out. Here's how it works. Remeber, it is set as a recommended update. When Windows Update runs, the update is checked and will install automatically.

The next time you reboot you will be confronted by a smiling EULA agreement. This is your only option to bail out and it's not clearly stated. Accept the agreement and Windows 10 completes the install with no safe way to stop it. Decline and you stay with your old operating system. But although there is a slyly hidden choice there which most people will ignore because they are accustomed to automatically checking yes on EULA screens, of course Microsoft has a twist in the knife.

From then on, every time your computer reboots the EULA screen pops up. Windows 10 install routines (5 GB of them!) are not deleted and remain fully active. Suppose your teenage son has a power failure and your machine reboots. What are the odds he hits that okay:up: button. I say it's about 110%.

And there is still the October/November problem. Rollbacks didn't work. Computers were left in a shambles, whether they refused the EULA or chose subsequently to return to their previous operating system.

Here's the bad news (http://www.infoworld.com/article/3029613/microsoft-windows/new-details-emerge-about-forced-windows-10-upgrade-and-how-to-block-it.html)and it deserves a very thorough reading. Ask questions if necessary.

[STEED]

Should have set your updates to never check and un-tick those boxes months and months ago.

[aanker]

Thanks again RRobbins, Skybird, Steed, et all. Very helpful info!

Edit:
(No Win10 found)

[Rockin Robbins]

Should have set your updates to never check and un-tick those boxes months and months ago.
Many did and Microsoft, in their eagerness to be our friend, have our backs and protect us, reset the options. The latest version of the GWX update resets your settings once per hour to ensure that your settings will always be to adopt the Windows 10 update if it is marked important. It is. Connecting the dots we can predict a train wreck involving people who unchecked those boxes months ago assuming that Microsoft had any respect at all for its customers. They don't. Merry Christmas everybody!:D

[STEED]

I'm running the latest GWX no Win10 found on my PC.

BTW:

GWX Control Panel
Version: 1.7.2.0
Date: January 24, 2016

http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

[STEED]

KB3123862 looks like Win10 plumbing!

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3030211/microsoft-windows/experts-recommend-dont-install-microsoft-patch-kb-3123862.html

[STEED]

Patch Tuesday for February has landed!

(((RED ALERT)))

Could this be the hit that Microsoft said to kick people like me up the arse and move me on to Win10! :hmmm:

For my Win8.1 I can rule out two straight away.
KB 3134814 (IE11 don't use it)
KB3135782 (Flash Player don't use it)

Below as normal will be put on hold so people like Woody can find the good from the bad.

Important
KB3122651
KB3127222
KB3122654
KB3127226
KB3115858
KB3123294
KB3124280
KB3126041
KB3126434
KB3126446
KB3126587
KB3126593
KB3134214
KB890830 Malicious Removal Tool

Optional
KB3135449
KB3132080

[Rockin Robbins]

I'm continuing my collection of reasons it's just an insane idea to "upgrade" to Windows 10.

I'm working on a computer right now that won't boot. No post codes, no error messages. At first I thought the monitor was bad. Plugged it into another computer--works great.

Removed the disk drive and connected it to a non-UEFI (that stands for "don't you dare try installing anything but Windows 8, 8.1 or 10 here!") Got an error OxOOOO102, file:\WINDOWS\system32\winload.exe. Easy peasy!

Not so fast. UEFI makes it necessary to boot windows in order to boot from an optical drive. You can't do it by pressing F12 for boot options and choosing the optical drive. AND in order to use windows repair from an installation disk you must boot windows on the native machine first. Can anyone see a potential problem here?

Looking for answers but I feel like giving the machine back and telling her she's the victim of her own greed. "Free" operating system......NOT!

With UEFI you can't press delete or any other key to enter BIOS. There is no BIOS. You can't get boot options with F12. With Windows 8 and 8.1 you can revert to using BIOS instead of UEFI. DO IT NOW!!! Not doing it may leave you using a boat anchor instead of a computer.

[HW3]

Update on Tor 5.5 browser install post #609 01/31/16

After latest round of Windows updates - still there and working

After running Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - still there and working

Will continue to keep an eye on it

[Rockin Robbins]

Update on Tor 5.5 browser install post #609 01/31/16

After latest round of Windows updates - still there and working

After running Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - still there and working

Will continue to keep an eye on it
Thank you. Sometimes malicious rumors succeed because we want them to be true, and this one seems like a false malicious rumor so far. Has anyone who tried installing Tor had it removed by Microsoft?

We have nobody yet who has had Tor removed by Windows. Thanks for all who are reporting on this!

[Sailor Steve]

I too installed TOR and it's still there. Ten days so far.

[Onkel Neal]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2016/02/09/windows-10-data-tracking-spying-levels/#42e688af7aa9

Windows 10 Worst Secret Spins Out Of Control

Back in November Microsoft confirmed Windows 10’s worst kept secret: its extensive telemetry (or ‘spying’ as it has been labelled) cannot be stopped. What no-one realised until now, however, is just how staggering the extent of this tracking really is…

Blowing the lid on it this week is Voat user CheesusCrust whose extensive investigation found Windows 10 contacts Microsoft to report data thousands of times per day. And the kicker? This happens after choosing a custom Windows 10 installation and disabling all three pages of tracking options which are all enabled by default.

The raw numbers come out as follows: in an eight hour period Windows 10 tried to send data back to 51 different Microsoft IP addresses over 5500 times. After 30 hours of use, Windows 10 expanded that data reporting to 113 non-private IP addresses. Being non-private means there is the potential for hackers to intercept this data. I’d argue this is the greatest cost to owning Windows 10.

Taking this a step further, the testing was then repeated on another Windows 10 clean installation again with all data tracking options disabled and third party tool DisableWinTracking was also installed which tries to shut down all hidden Windows 10 data reporting attempts. At the end of the 30 hour period Windows 10 had still managed to phone home with data 2758 times to 30 different IP addresses.



I think this explains why my data usage has quadrupled since I started using Win 10. :nope: Even with a 3rd party app, MS keeps transmitting.

[HW3]

Neal, take a look at this article before you take Forbes article as gospel.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/when-it-comes-to-windows-10-privacy-dont-trust-amateur-analysts/?utm_content=buffer24ca0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[d@rk51d3]

Neal, take a look at this article before you take Forbes article as gospel.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/when-it-comes-to-windows-10-privacy-dont-trust-amateur-analysts/?utm_content=buffer24ca0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Great read.

Cheers. :up:

[Rockin Robbins]

That shows how careful we have to be when evauating the state of Microsoft's surveillance. And we have to be careful how we read the second article too. It doesn't say Microsoft isn't doing too much surveillance, it only says that the Forbes article doesn't establish anything.

Your fix for actual tracking is installing Spybot Anti-beacon (https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/). It will multiply the inquiries exponentially, as detailed in the second article. But no connection will be made with the Microsoft servers and no data will be transmitted. That will result in a tremendous decrease in Neal's data usage.

But mind you, if you do the same test in the Forbes magazine you'd conclude that Spybot Anti-beacon actually INCREASED your problem. Your internet bill will prove otherwise. It's not the number of times connections are attempted, it's the amount of data transmitted over a completed connection that increases your data usage.

[Skybird]

Haven't wasted a single 1 minutes-interval with worrying over MS on my rig since Novembre. Saved time well spent! ;)

Taming W10 has turned into a half time job, it seems. I wonder why people invest that time if they do not really need W10.

[Rockin Robbins]

Unfortunately, most people don't waste any time taming Windows 10 or researching its data "sharing." They just download it without a thought and then wonder why the computer store can't fix their computer after a Windows system file is corrupted, or wonder why their data usage has quadrupled and they're paying high data charges all of a sudden. When their computer crashes and won't reboot they wonder why it's impossible to boot their system recovery DVD to restore their system. But they never waste time trying to tame the beast.

And they especially don't spend time deciding if they need Windows 10. They just press the "downoad now" or "download tonight" button and it's off to the races.

The computer I was working on yesterday was never supposed to have Windows 10 on it. But his teenage niece was visiting, using his computer. Microsloth popped up the window with just those two choices and she picked "screw me later." The next morning our victim woke up to a machine that no longer belonged to him.

Windows 10 and the way it is promoted are malware. They don't exist for your benefit. They exist for Microsoft and its paid partners' benefit.

[Skybird]

Windows 10 and the way it is promoted are malware. They don't exist for your benefit. They exist for Microsoft and its paid partners' benefit.

That could have been from me. :)

[STEED]

I see the Optional Feb updates has gone up from 2 to 14. :hmmm:

Will be checking on any news about Feb's updates this weekend. I have no interest in d/l not for a few more weeks.

[Rockin Robbins]

I have no interest in d/l not for a few more weeks.
Nor do I. I don't want Windows follies to rule my life here.:haha:

[Rockin Robbins]

I hear you Windows 10 users! You're using Windows 10 and everything is just hunky dory. Well Merry Christmas because this morning
Windows 10 forced update KB 3135173 changes browser and other defaults (http://www.infoworld.com/article/3032751/microsoft-windows/windows-10-forced-update-kb-3135173-changes-browser-and-other-defaults.html)

The cumulative update not only knocks out PCs' default settings, it prevents users from resetting them



Yes, if Chrome was your default browser guess what? It's now Edge. Using Adobe PDF Viewer as your default? No you're not. Edge has edged it out. Use Photoshop Express, Google's Picassa or Google Photos as your default image viewer? Foolish mortal you now use the Windows cell phone Photo App! Video, music, any media that Microsloth has an app for you now use those apps as your default.


No, it gets better. YOU CAN'T CHANGE THEM BACK! Yup, try it. "An app caused a problem!" You'll learn to hate that error message. One user anticipated the problem and saved a .reg file with registration settings for his chosen default applications. Smart man. But outsmarted by Microsoft. When he restored the .reg file the associations were not restored.


The culprit is Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1511 for x64-based Systems KB3135173. But it doesn't matter. As a loyal Windows 10 user you have no right to refuse to download and install the update. Then you have the right to wait to see if Microsoft is serious here or will actually fix the situation. You are at their mercy......or lack of it.


Why do I recommend shields up against automatic updating of computers from Windows 7 to Windows 10? Microsoft just bolstered my case big time! Windows 10 isn't free and it isn't an operating system. It's malware, spyware, adware. It's a trojan of the first degree. And it isn't free.

Windows 7 users, we're at MS-DEFCON 2, all patches are suspect. Do not install until they are better analyzed. There is nothing urgent in there that you need to have anyway so waiting won't hurt.

[Sailor Steve]

I don't get it. Some time ago I was unhappy because an upgrade reset several of my defaults. I had to go back and reset them the way I wanted. This worked with no problem.

With the latest upgrade none of my defaults changed at all. Not one.

So yeah, everything is fine.

[Rockin Robbins]

Huh I believe that's why upgrades are rolled out instead of going to all users at once. The alarm is put out by early victims and the people not updated yet say e everything's fine. that disarms victims of the future who think the alarm is false.

That is exactly how the GWX debacle panned out. I've installed GWX Control Panel on ten computers in the past two weeks and have appointments for five more. The holdouts are gettin' religion after Windows 10 really did rear its ugly head against their wil

One of these had a visit from their daughter, who was using his computer one morning and the malware popup said "Do you want to upgrade to Windows 10 now or tonight?" Those are the only two options. She didn't realize she could click on the red x in the upper right corner to close the phishing scam, so she pushed the button for upgrade tonight. The owner didn't use his computer until the next morning and guess what? Merry Christmas sucker. Sucks to be you from your friends at Microsoft.

Is it really their heart's desire to make us hate them? This man is now following my advice to buy and install Windows 7. His machine used to be Windows 8 and he hated it.

[HW3]

According to my update history, my machine updated to KB 3135173 with the last update and, everything is fine.

[aanker]

.......... That is exactly how the GWX debacle panned out. I've installed GWX Control Panel on ten computers in the past two weeks and have appointments for five more. The holdouts are gettin' religion after Windows 10 really did rear its ugly head against their wil

One of these had a visit from their daughter, who was using his computer one morning and the malware popup said "Do you want to upgrade to Windows 10 now or tonight?" Those are the only two options. She didn't realize she could click on the red x in the upper right corner to close the phishing scam, so she pushed the button for upgrade tonight. The owner didn't use his computer until the next morning and guess what? Merry Christmas sucker. Sucks to be you from your friends at Microsoft.
......
Yikes! I just purchased a relatively inexpensive (new) HP laptop online with Win 7 Professional 64 bit and SP1 already on it. (they are harder and harder to find )

Right now it is charging, not connected to the internet, and I haven't even turned it on.

My plan is to do the 'first boot', register it... sign in, and immediately disable automatic updates. I should enable the basic firewall too.

Next I'd like to uninstall the - what is it now(?) dirty 12 KB's - if they are installed. I am hoping that the 'Update to Win 10' nag isn't already in the task bar.... arrgh this is scary.

Any advice on how I should proceed? I'm actually afraid to turn it on or do anything until I have some advice... So, I'd really appreciate help on the correct order of steps I should take to do this right, so I don't get tricked into 'accidentally' installing Win 10 please.

Any info could also help other people in the same situation - which is why I posted in this Thread.

[d@rk51d3]

According to my update history, my machine updated to KB 3135173 with the last update and, everything is fine.

Same here. :up:

[Rockin Robbins]

That is good news. Maybe Microsoft fixed it. These people reporting the problem are experts. But it has been Microsoft's habit lately to release bugged updates and then fix them, re-releasing them under the same number. Hope this means nobody else will have their defaults changed to Microsoft apps.

Aanker, the job of defanging Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 is much easier with GWX Control Panel and Spybot Anti-Beacon. Kill the dirty dozen or so, innoculate with GWX Control Panel and shut down the Microsoft servers with Anti-Beacon and you should be good to go.

[STEED]

I hear MS is pushing yet again KB3035583, I should not see it as this is one I put on the hide list.

[Skybird]

Aanker, the job of defanging Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 is much easier with GWX Control Panel and Spybot Anti-Beacon. Kill the dirty dozen or so, innoculate with GWX Control Panel and shut down the Microsoft servers with Anti-Beacon and you should be good to go.
Stay on your guard, do not fall for comfrotable options only. By their record, it is only a question of time until MS will try to deliberately avoid and manouver around GWX control panel. I assume right now it is only some hidden legal implications having prevented them from doing so already now.

As victim/customer of Microsoft, you must be turned into a naked, defenceless and helpless receiver of Microsoft's orders on what you have to accept from them . GWX control panel is a hindrance for that policy. Go figure.

So use GWX contro, panel, but do not assume it is all you need to do, and do not trust in blindly, and re-check time and again. Always keep on mind that Mircosoft knows their OS better than the authors of tools like GWX control panel - or yourself - probably ever will.

[aanker]

Aanker, the job of defanging Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 is much easier with GWX Control Panel and Spybot Anti-Beacon. Kill the dirty dozen or so, innoculate with GWX Control Panel and shut down the Microsoft servers with Anti-Beacon and you should be good to go.

Stay on your guard, do not fall for comfrotable options only. .........

So use GWX contro, panel, but do not assume it is all you need to do, and do not trust in blindly, and re-check time and again. Always keep on mind that Mircosoft knows their OS better than the authors of tools like GWX control panel - or yourself - probably ever will.
Thanks for the advice and reassurance, Rockin Robbins & Skybird. I will remain on guard and as vigilant as I have been with this desktop.

The last thing I wanted to do is flub the initial procedure up and be presented with the, 'Welcome to Win 10 'spyware' (my opinion) OS Screen' on this new Win 7 laptop - that was hard enough to find in the first place!

Thank you very much guys : )

[Rockin Robbins]

Steed is right. KB 335583 is back for its tenth rewrite and reissue. There is no Microsoft summary or even mention that it's back for another go at forcing you to upgrade to Win 10. Every time they rewrite this piece of malware it gets more virulent. Be careful.
Get Windows 10 patch KB 3035583 suddenly reappears on Win7/8.1 PCs (http://www.infoworld.com/article/3037393/microsoft-windows/get-windows-10-nagware-patch-kb-3035583-suddenly-reappears-on-win781-pcs.html)

The 10th version of the Microsoft's much-maligned malware rolled out Tuesday afternoon with no warning or mention

This is impossible to dismiss as a mistake or a blunder. It is a purposeful attempt to take over your computer against your will. Free enterprise is producing a product that people seek out of their own free will and gladly pay their money. This is something much more insidious. If they were doing it to people it would be kidnapping.

[GT182]

MicroSoft keeps on and someone will start a class action lawsuit against them. Taking over your computer is the last straw. I've heard good and bad about 10, but I sure don't want it forced on me. I'll try it on my terms not theirs, and if I don't like it I'll get rid of it.

I'm actually thinking of partitioning my 2T hard drive and installing XP Home again. Yes, just to play SH3 without all the problems. 3A 2 bit simulation running on a 32 bit OS that gave us no problems. It could be a good fix for SH3.

[aanker]

For the benefit of anyone who may go through a similar experience, I want to report on my results regarding my new Win 7 Pro 64 bit SP1 HP Laptop.

After uninstalling all of the extra 'bloatware' HP likes to include on its computers, and running Ccleaner to clean up extra fluff plus performing the Ccleaner registry scan and delete procedure, I went through my list of 12 Win 10 KB numbers and found that none of these potential 'Get Win 10' updates had been installed:

KB3055583
KB2976978
KB3050267
KB3068708
KB3022345
KB2952664
KB2977759
KB3075249
KB3080149
KB3090045
KB3035583
KB3083710

Approx 150 other Windows 7 updates were installed by either the factory or the vendor.

I disabled Automatic Windows updates, set up GWX Control Panel, and will install Spybot Anti-Beacon. I doubt that there will be many more (if any) Important updates for Win 7 in the future, and I don't plan to check, however I do keep an eye on the blogs & forums that typically announce critical updates etc.

So, I received the product I paid for; a new Win 7 Pro 64 bit SP1 HP Laptop without a trace of Win 10 on it.

Lastly, I don't use IE for my browser and I don't intend to use 'cloud based' anything.

Thanks again to Rockin Robbins, Skybird, and Steed (with Win8) who all provided helpful information.

[Skybird]

Just to raise your awareness: you may not actively launch and use Explorer, but it is embedded deeply in Windows and Windows uses it internally, Microsoft in all its lacking wisdom has decided many man years ago to link Windows and Explorer so tightly that none of the two can perform without the other anymore. Explorer will do some things in the background, if you do not use it. You just do not notice it. Except maybe sometimes when you use CCleaner and wonder why there are some bits of temporary Explorer data deleted by CC.

My recommendation is not to run a no longe rupdated Windows 7, but if not updating it, using an alternative OS instead, and use Windows only for the very limited task that you specifically want it for - NOTHING MORE. In my case, I only (must) use it as a game-launching platform. When I switch from surfing to game, or vice versa, I reboot to the other OS first.

Do not install "recommended" Windows updates anymore for W7, only research for "security" updates. And beware that there is no guarantee at all that Microsoft sooner or later will push its GWX crap under the label of security updates too, like they have moved them from "optional" to "recommended" already.

---

I plan to go for two platforms by the end of this year. One gaming PC with any form of Windows, used only for games-launching, and a laptop for anything else: surfing, text/word editing, emailing. The laptop will become fully encrypted and will use something like TOR or similar.

All that MS then gets from me, is my save games. Well, these they can have, if they want them. :O:

[STEED]

Best to set updates to (NEVER CHECK FOR UPDATES) and un-tick the two boxes below as well. Carry out patch Tuesday search manually and note down what has been released but do not update, keep a eye on the Net like..

http://www.askwoody.com

http://www.infoworld.com/blog/woody-on-windows

For example Feb updates check note and only update a few days before March updates so you can filter out the nasty ones and as Skybird states only security updates forget the optional updates.

[HW3]

A new Windows 10 update rolled out March 1 version 1511 KB3140743.

[STEED]

Win10 KB 3140743 causes problems.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3040403/microsoft-windows/bad-windows-10-xbox-one-controller-forces-microsofts-hand.html?nsdr=true


Watch out folks MS is trying to get you on Win10 again!

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3040069/microsoft-windows/deja-vu-all-over-again-microsoft-reissues-kb-2952664-kb-2976978-kb-2977759.html?nsdr=true

I spotted two and now hid them.

[Catfish]

An 'operating system' that needs more attention to be kept under one's control than it gives people advantage to work with, is a bloody nuisance and nothing more. :shifty:

[STEED]

Posting a few questions for a friend as his Win7 has now died, he said he is going to buy Win10 but due to MS being the way they are these days will only use it off line, he has his eye on a Acer Aspire CB3-111 11.6-inch Chromebook Laptop (See link below) so to the questions..

He understands to a point its OS is based Linux kernel so he should not have any bother from MS?

Is it worth buying just mainly for the Internet?

According to the details else where from a shop that is selling a bit cheaper you have to log in to your google account which he has not got, so he will have to set up a google account from here? https://accounts.google.com/signup

Is it east to pick up and understand and plug it into a monitor screen?



http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-Aspire-CB3-111-11-6-inch-Chromebook/dp/B00NWHUXIC/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1457091075&sr=1-1&keywords=Linux+laptop

[Skybird]

Sorry, cannot comment on your questions, but a basic consideration: it'S Google. Google Datakraken Inc. Is that needed: to replace Windows 10 with Google Chrome?

I plan to do something like this myself later this year or early next year. My plan calls for searching a notebook that is as naked as possible, and then exclusively install Linux on it, killing anything Microsoft or Google on it.

[Skybird]

And this nicely illustrates why enforced updates are such a bad idea.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3040403/microsoft-windows/bad-windows-10-xbox-one-controller-forces-microsofts-hand.html?nsdr=true

I have had quite some broken updates from MS in the past, until some years ago already I decided to not install just everything anymore just because it was recommended or optional. And that was even before Win8.

[Skybird]

An 'operating system' that needs more attention to be kept under one's control than it gives people advantage to work with, is a bloody nuisance and nothing more. :shifty:
Exactly. Not to mention the enormous time investment you need per month to constantly stay updated on the news situation and study all the research blogs.

Its hilarious.

[STEED]

March 9th 2016

Admins all over the world are waking up to an unwelcome development: Microsoft has snuck a Get Windows 10 malware variant onto their customers' systems.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3042397/microsoft-windows/admins-beware-domain-attached-pcs-are-sprouting-get-windows-10-ads.html

Looks Like MS think they can do as they please. :hmmm:

[Skybird]

http://www.askwoody.com/2016/windows-10-upgrade-starting-automatically-and-it-happened-to-me/

Its not considered to be polite to tell people that one told them so - but I told you so. It was just a matter of time until it would happen.

MS will do all it can to enforce people to submit to W10. The only way is to block all MS conneciton links to the system - BY STOPPING UPDATING via MS servers ALLTOGETHER.

As I explained earlier - I got updates sneaked onto my system even with Windows Uodate set to "off" as long as I had other background tasks running that automatically connect to MS servers by routine, clock synchronization, internet connection validation during booting and so forth.

Note that infamous update KB 3035583 now has been moved from "recommended" to "important".

In case of newly installing W7: DO NOT UPDATE the freshly installed W7 via online connection to MS, but use a manually downloaded older KB file archive with KB files of an older age (older versions of KB number files), untick all the known critical entries, and do not update beyond summer last year or so. Then switch off Windows Update once and forever, and deactivate all MS background tasks you can identify that by routine connect to MS servers. If you let MS not into your system via the frontdoor, they will break through the window, and if you lock the windows, they will try the cellar, and if that is sealed, they will climb thro9zugh the chimney. So barricade that freaking chimney, dude!

Needless to remind of this, but you need a dual boot system with an alternative OS, if doing like this. Using this kind of no longer security-updated Windows 7 for work or surfing, is dangerous - DON'T. Its a game- or needed-software-launcher - not more.

[Rockin Robbins]

And it continues to get worse as Microsoft apparently thinks it has nothing left to lose and is going nuclear. Embedded in one of the normally safe security upgrades is (http://www.infoworld.com/article/3042155/microsoft-windows/windows-patch-kb-3139929-when-a-security-update-is-not-a-security-update.html), you guessed it, Windows 10 upgrade malware.

Microsoft buried a Get Windows 10 ad generator inside this month's Internet Explorer security patch for Windows 7 and 8.1

If Microsoft's documentation is correct, installing Patch Tuesday's KB 3139929 security update for Internet Explorer also installs a new Windows 10 ad-generating routine called KB 3146449.They are desparate. Desparate people are dangerous. Embedding malware in the operating system opens it up to piggy-back malware that will do much worse things. Be on the lookout for really vicious piggy-back malware using the holes opened by Microsoft's own malware.

If Microsoft doesn't come to its senses we may all be forced to use Linux or OSX this time next year, whether we like Windows or not. We are witnessing a corporate meltdown and it could melt us down with it.

A new list of updates (http://techne.alaya.net/?p=12499) which serve only to "help" upgrade your PC against your will. The top one is the security update above. I'd use your discretion against that one. Parts of it are a legitimate security update. Other parts of it are Windows 10 upgrade crap. As of this moment there are no exploits in the wild running for the weaknesses patched in the security update. That is subject to change, of course. This list also has a list of Microsoft servers used to "update" your computer to Windows 10. Those are blocked by Spybot Anti-Beacon, but blocking them in your router is a much more secure way to block them. In that case you are responsible for keeping the list current though.

[Skybird]

Unfortunately, they will not melt down, but get away with their ways. Too many people out there not caring, not knowing, not giving a damn for anything. And the younger user groups have been raised in a Zeitgeist of not being bothered by being constantly nannied and overseen. It's all just "cool".

Machines will not need to take over the future by force. They just need to let mankind have its ways to stop thinking all by itself. The question "Why?" will become more and more unpopular. Only question will be "How to press the button?".

The signs for this kind of inner rottening and degeneration are written everywhere on the walls these days. MS's polices are just one of so many symptoms. Too many to list them all.

[STEED]

Wow MS strikes again...

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NZvlOQyRFpk/hqdefault.jpg

Microsoft upgraded users to Windows 10 without their OK

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3043526/microsoft-windows/microsoft-upgraded-users-to-windows-10-without-their-ok.html

A wave of forced Win10 upgrades hit over the weekend. Here’s how to treat infections

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3043656/microsoft-windows/first-aid-for-forced-windows-10-upgrades.html

Democracy and freedom of choice have gone to the wall when it comes to MS. :o

[Aktungbby]

Thx for the informations , i'm planing to leave Win 7 and upgrade to Win 10

THANKS for the informations! I'm planning not to upgrade my Win 7 to Win 10; and the more they constantly harass me: especially the 'bandwagon approach' ie "10,000,000 have switched" (why not U?): the stiffer my resolve!:Kaleun_Mad:

[STEED]

THANKS for the informations! I'm planning not to upgrade my Win 7 to Win 10; and the more they constantly harass me: especially the 'bandwagon approach' ie "10,000,000 have switched" (why not U?): the stiffer my resolve!:Kaleun_Mad:

Wow clearly that chap.....:o

If I went with Win10 like my friend I would never ever connect it to the Internet, the open door for MS. As for going on the Internet I would purchase a different OS that is not Windows.

[Skybird]

The nice thing about my beloved Assetto Corsa simulator coming to consoles is that it reduces the already small number of games I still need Windows for, by one. :yeah: Its the most-played game/sim over here.

[STEED]

Wow 3 more optional updates and MS will beat last December's 40 optional updates. Bet there is a few Win10 plumbing in that list I just checked.

[Skybird]

This illustrates better than most other facts that MS now is a gang of malicious skunks.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/17/microsoft_windows_10_upgrade_gwx_vs_humanity/

As it says somewhere:
"The language of the counter-malware industry is more appropriate than the language of enterprise IT for GWX. (...) The (...) patch constantly “mutates” – it is frequently revised to contain a new payload.(...) Windows Update considers each revision to the patch to be a new install instance. So every time Microsoft changes the KB2952664 update nomenclature, all previous attempts by the user to block the update are invalidated. Many users are unaware that uninstalling either KB3035583 or KB295266 only uninstalls a single revision of the patch; later, the patch can reinstall itself using an alternate revision number due to the fact that KB2952664 is being cached in C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download. A filtered registry dump on our test machine revealed there were more than 80 registry entries relating to the installation of ‘583 and ‘664"

Malicious skunks. And that is a polite way to describe them. I hope their company headquarter and divisions go up in flames, nobody needs companies doing like this.

Note that the GWX patch does not make you invulnerable to the described problem. If you put all your trust into it, its just a question of time before you impact on the concrete ground of reality.

[STEED]

Malicious skunks. And that is a polite way to describe them. I hope their company headquarter and divisions go up in flames, nobody needs companies doing like this.



Sky, did you send MS a Xmas card using similar words I highlighted in bold? :hmmm:

[STEED]

I am clean for the moment just have to wait and see what their next move will be after June when they stop the free give away of Win10.

[Skybird]

Did I sound as if I care sending postcards?

Their policies stink to heaven, and I want them to go away and disappear and clean the market of their stinking, rotten presence. Their mere existence and the way in which by Windows being an indispensable precondition for launching most payware software, is to our all's disadvantage.

When in the late 80s Video 2000 appeared, it was the by far superior video standard: better image quality over VHS, and turning cassettes. But it had no chance against inferior VHS which by then already dominated 75% of the market and was consuming Beta and what else there was from early video standards. Its the same with Windows, it occupies the market and all software producers obey to MS's demands, just that you do not only deal with inferior quality, but also with policies that in my view overstep the red lines towards punishable misconducts. You see, if in a yera or so I buy a new system with latest hardware for updating my gaming rig, I will need to accept this rotten heap of skunk poo named Windows 10, since W7, as reported has been banned from running on latest hardware - hardware that from a certain "newness" on has been designed to block W7 and W8 and only allow W10. And that pisses me big time. There are still a couple of titles I need to launch via Windows and that I cannot compensate by migrating them to a console, like Assetto Corsa from summer on.

Monopoles always suck. Always.

Except for the monopolist.

[Gerald]

I had the W10 on one of my computers, but when I noticed the updates and apps that did not work so I switched back to W7 64-bit.

[Skybird]

And the latest strike by MS against W7 users:

"
I’ve been reading about people claiming their Windows Updates on Win 7 systems are now taking hours and even days.
I decided to do an experiment.
I’ve just now done a Windows update operation on a Win 7 x64 Ultimate test VM that was mostly up to date, and while I didn’t wait hours, I logged some 25 minutes of svchost core time just to get to the point where the list of available updates showed. Half an hour to wait!
I hid several updates (notably NOT including the latest update to the Windows Update process itself) and entered the “Downloading updates…” phase, where it sat for an additional half hour.
What’s special about all this? I’m watching CPU, disk, network, and DNS activity, and doing screen grabs.
For the lion’s share of the time both before and after seeing the list there’s absolutely nothing happening except a tight loop on one core in a svchost.exe process. NOTHING. I saw DNS entries resolved then half an hour of tight loop before being able to see the updates. Then, an additional 25+ minutes of tight loop time was actually chewed up before any downloads/installs started to happen. The last server name before the tight loop that was resolved to an address wasctldl.windowsupdate.com (http://ctldl.windowsupdate.com/), and the first one after wasdownload.windowsupdate.com (http://download.windowsupdate.com/).
This must be intentional. It must be intended to aggravate or penalize people who do updates manually, and make people with older systems – worst, those with 1 core – suffer the most. My Xeon-based workstation is stupid fast, so waiting through 45 minutes of tight loop CPU time before even seeing the updates is an amazing, incredible, gargantuan waste of resources. During that time there was no significant disk activity at all, and none of what little there was didn’t seem related to anything to do with Windows Update!
I can’t help but think others would call this “tin foil hat” stuff, but by gosh we’ve been doing updates a long time. I don’t know about you but I’m so familiar with how my systems run that I can easily tell if something’s not right.
"

http://www.askwoody.com/2016/the-windows-update-takes-forever-problem/

Blow up to hell, MS. Just rethinking it, I will not go into W10, instead give up on gaming that needs Windows. Suckers like these shall not be rewarded.

In German law, Nötigung/coercion is a punishable offense.

[mapuc]

This is my first comment in this thread

Have read some of the comments and they so to say scare me.

I have an about 6 year old computer-Vista basic

Very weak graphic.

I know that I during the next year or so have to buy a new computer and I presume the Computer I buy have WIN10 and not WIN7 which I heard is the best.

Markus

[Skybird]

This is my first comment in this thread

Have read some of the comments and they so to say scare me.

I have an about 6 year old computer-Vista basic

Very weak graphic.

I know that I during the next year or so have to buy a new computer and I presume the Computer I buy have WIN10 and not WIN7 which I heard is the best.

Markus
Get a gaming rig, and W10. Try to get W10 free or cheap, do not waste money for this gangster company. Follow the web-spread advices, and use it ONLY for game launching. NOTHING ELSE.

Get a smaller secondary rig or laptop/notebook for surfing, work, perosnal pics and work files, data storage, onlöine shopping. Use another OS for all that, Linux, Apple, whatever. Anything seems to be better than Microsoft.

Do not use Microsoft services. No cloud computing or data storage. No google Chrome, Google software, Facebook, Adobe. Do not make them strong by spending money for their malware.

If you want to invest m oney into for exmaple Steam, download the steam client for Linux,and do the transaction from your Linux Steam acciount, then bootr intio Windows. Do not do banking or money stuff under Wndows. Do not accept to compromise perosnal important data under W10 of any kind - it will get read out, promised. Buy under Linux what you want to have for Windows, and then isntall and use unde rWindows. But do not buy under Windows. Linux allows to buy or download windows format files which then can be read under Windows. Easy transfer via usb stick.

Today I first time ever heard about Linux Trail. A highly encrypted OS that is stored on a USB file, and gets disconnected from the computer everytime you do not need it anymore. It is said it is Snowden's OS of choice. Maybe Robbins has more info on it. In the past it seems it was difficult to manage and install, but the newly released version they write is more user-friendly.

I also read that that the malware threat is slwoly but constantly growing for Linux as well. Linux elitists do not want to hear that, but I think reality soon will knock them out. Currently there still seem to be no payware security software worth the money for Linux. Maybe it will change over the course of this year. Linux security slowly creeps on the agendas of the manufacturers for sure. And most servers in the Windows world run under Linux already anyway - and help to spread malware aiming at Windows. And increasingly - slowly - aiming at Linux, too.

The days of innocence definitely are over for computer and internet.

Avoid Microsoft, Google and the like. They are profiling monsters and datakrakens. That includes Chrome.

[Jimbuna]

I am clean for the moment just have to wait and see what their next move will be after June when they stop the free give away of Win10.

They'll continue as they have been doing but add a link for payment.

I wonder how many who have resisted so far would actually click on such a link :)

[AVGWarhawk]

They'll continue as they have been doing but add a link for payment.

I wonder how many who have resisted so far would actually click on such a link :)


I can not move to Windows 10 on my work computer. Can't click that link!

However, when I shut down the power off has the ! stating there are updates to install. The update is Windows 10. :shifty:

[Jimbuna]

I can not move to Windows 10 on my work computer. Can't click that link!

However, when I shut down the power off has the ! stating there are updates to install. The update is Windows 10. :shifty:

Go on, find a way to click on the link. You know you want to :)

[STEED]

I can not move to Windows 10 on my work computer. Can't click that link!

However, when I shut down the power off has the ! stating there are updates to install. The update is Windows 10. :shifty:

They may have you by the...:shifty:

[STEED]

Mystery continues with Microsoft's unidentified patch KB 3103709
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3047038/microsoft-windows/mystery-continues-with-microsofts-unidentified-patch-kb-3103709.html

Got Win8.1 yellow alert.

:hmmm:

[HW3]

Mystery continues with Microsoft's unidentified patch KB 3103709

Microsoft has pulled that update. See post number 7.

http://www.eightforums.com/windows-updates-activation/74431-updates-kb3103709-kb3115224-should-i-install-these.html

[Rockin Robbins]

I can not move to Windows 10 on my work computer. Can't click that link!

However, when I shut down the power off has the ! stating there are updates to install. The update is Windows 10. :shifty:
Welcome to the Brave New World. Work computers were supposed to be exempt from forced updates but..... Microsoft.:timeout:

[AVGWarhawk]

Welcome to the Brave New World. Work computers were supposed to be exempt from forced updates but..... Microsoft.:timeout:

The programs I use should work fine with 10. There is one program I know with certainty will not. IT needs to work on that. But yes, we are basically feeling the pressure now to install 10 via MS constant ! when power off.

[STEED]

The programs I use should work fine with 10. There is one program I know with certainty will not. IT needs to work on that. But yes, we are basically feeling the pressure now to install 10 via MS constant ! when power off.

N0.2
You are a member of the village, You are a unit of sociality. :stare:


The Prisoner (1968)
Episode 16
Once Upon A Time

[AVGWarhawk]

N0.2
You are a member of the village, You are a unit of sociality. :stare:


The Prisoner (1968)
Episode 16
Once Upon A Time


I'm going back to pencil/paper and rotary phone. :D

[STEED]

I'm going back to pencil/paper and rotary phone. :D

:haha: :)

[aanker]

Quoted: "And the latest strike by MS against W7 users:
I’ve been reading about people claiming their Windows Updates on Win 7 systems are now taking hours and even days.
I decided to do an experiment.
I’ve just now done a Windows update operation on a Win 7 x64 ....... "
I can verify this. My new Win 7 64 bit SP1 laptop was updated by the vendor. After I got it I thought I'd do an update check. Nothing happened for approx 25 minutes and I shut her down. I tried again on a couple other days with the same result, nothing. There is a long list of installed updates just prior to when I bought it, nothing after, and none of the 'dirty 14' are installed.

I doubt there will be any more Win 7 updates in the future worth installing.

Both of my Win 7 computers have Updates set to manually check... auto updates disabled, the GWX Control Panel Monitor is enabled, and the Microsoft servers are shut down. My computer 'Time' is synced with a different service.

Thanks to this Topic, I'm 'Win 7' happy : )

[STEED]

What is that fart smell in the air? Yes it's the come back patch the 11th version of KB3035583...Get Windows 10 installer. Yes the bad fart was expelled from MS's rear end yet again yesterday afternoon. Talk about pressure salesman on your door pointing a gun in your face.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3048152/microsoft-windows/microsoft-re-releases-kb-3035583-get-windows-10-installer-again.html

[Rockin Robbins]

What is that fart smell in the air? Yes it's the come back patch the 11th version of KB3035583...Get Windows 10 installer. Yes the bad fart was expelled from MS's rear end yet again yesterday afternoon. Talk about pressure salesman on your door pointing a gun in your face.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3048152/microsoft-windows/microsoft-re-releases-kb-3035583-get-windows-10-installer-again.html
And think about it. This again demonstrates that Microsoft believes that Windows 10 is so terrible that nobody will voluntarily buy it, even for $0.00. If you don't believe anything we've been saying about how bad it is, for God's sake, pay attention to what Microsoft says through their actions.

Windows 10 is so bad that you have to be forced to take it for free. If they could sell it they would. There would be huge kickoff parties, Internet forums crammed with joyful Microsoft lovers, lines streaming from the doors of stores hours from opening with news crews covering the craziness of Windows 10 mania.......but we have none of that. All we have is a desparate company pointing a gun at us and askng us to pretend we're enjoying the experience. I think they're hoping that Stockholm Syndrome kicks in so we start saying nice things about them.

Not gonna happen from this guy!

All this bizarre thuggery from Microsoft proves that they are a defacto monopoly which needs to be busted up into tiny autonomous pieces so market forces again force them to excellence. It worked for Ma Bell and Microsoft needs a little "tough love."

[vienna]

A bit of a heads up regarding a problem I ran into on a tablet running Win 10: the tablet began to run rather lethargically, so I went to the Task Manager to see what was running and observed a high amount of CPU usage from a process called the Windows Shell Experience Host; this process cannot be ended, so I went online to see if there were other reported cases; there apparently is a problem regarding this process and it not only affects overall performance, it also seems to cause problems with some graphics cards; the solution is very simple and all you have to do is go to Settings -> Personalization -> Colors, find the Accent Color switch, and change it to OFF; on the tablet I did this on, the CPU usage dropped to 0%...


<O>

[Skybird]

What is freshly angering me is that Microsoft has talked hardware manufacturers into artificially blocking high performance hardware - to be bought in the near future - from being able to run W7 or updating W7 on such machines, even if in principle the hardware/system could run W7 perfectly and is fully compatible. This is to enforce buyers of high end hardware (gamers) to go W10 even if technically they would not need to do that at all.

The lousy quality of Windows 10 updates so far, causing troubles and troubles and then more troubles for millions of users who are unable to avoid these updates since it all is not remote-controlled and enforced from the distance, also is - well, obviously it is not enraging at all. The masses stay silent for the most, and obey. Microsoft gets away with it so far. Most, absolutely most people still reject to turn their back son Microsoft.

I would say they do not deserve anything better then. My sympathy is zero. You get what you are willing to arrange yourself with.

I checked what leaving Windows completely would mean to me. I only launch games under Windows these days, nothing else anymore.
Played games over here these days are The Hunter, ETS2, Fallout 4 (already dying out again, its overplayed for me), Assetto Corsa, Raceroom Racing, sometimes Tennis Ellbow 2013, and then NHL 16, sometimes Golf, sometimes FIFA and NBA 2K. Steel Beasts and Flight Simulator I have not touched in ages.

NHL, NBA and FIFA, not played often anyway), are all PS4. Assetto corsa I will move to console as well in June when it is released, I have all trust in the team when they say they will do the migration without any losses in feeling and realism. ETS2 and Tennis Ellbow also are available for Linux (I think even ArmA is for Linux, I think I read somewhere, its surprising to read that some major titles are on Linux now these days). The loss of Fallout 4 I can live with. I will lose The Hunter and Raceroom, both losses are sad, I play both titles a lot. Still - the losses are somewhat limited. Regarding chess I can get along with what is on Android, for my laid-back needs at least.

No, I do not really need Windows.

For the same reason I may not want to embark on the Oculus any time soon. I would need it only in the racing titles, and if Assetto goes PS4 for me, I would take Sony's goggles.

[Rockin Robbins]

Taking inventory for me on any games I play, Silent Hunter 4, check! Borderlands 2, check! Unreal Tournament III, check! Kerbal Space Program, question mark. Counterstrike Source, check! Counterstrike Global Offensive, check! Kayodai Mah Johg, check! Big Jig, check!

I don't need Windows. At all. It's a fine position to be in. It means I can play the Windows game with nothing to lose. Interestingly, Fallout 3 won't run under Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 but will run under Linux! Yuk, yuk, yuk!

Now, similarly to the slimy hardware deals that make new machines not compatible with Windows 7, UEFI is not for customer protection, it's to keep competing operating systems from running on new hardware. Linux already has the fix and I'll bet that fix will be applied to Windows 7 after the fact. And I'll bet Microsloth will sue to keep it from being used. That will open the door to antitrust prosecution and congressional action against Microsloth as a monopoly.

Bring it on! Where's Europe's gumption lately? In the 1990's they carried the torch against Microsloth and its bundling of IE with the operating system. Get back on that horse you on the other side of the pond! Microsoft isn't going to reform itself.

[Skybird]

Bring it on! Where's Europe's gumption lately? In the 1990's they carried the torch against Microsloth and its bundling of IE with the operating system. Get back on that horse you on the other side of the pond! Microsoft isn't going to reform itself.
Government's desire for establishing total surveillance and total vulnerability of citizens in the face of the allmighty state, and Microsoft's desire for total system hijack and customer profiling and dependence, go hand in hand, I fear.

Maybe, not even unlikely, the first have ordered the latter to make W10 the way it is meant to be. I indicated this possibility to Woody once, I saw him agreeing and saying that he also thinks that the US government/NSA most likely has demanded Microsoft to do what it does. Mind you, it is announced NSA policy to enforce the NSA'S ability to get access to every computer device in the world, private smartphone as well as company mainframe.

Reference to be made to the FBI vs. Apple showdown.

P.S.
Unreal, eh? :D I recall my own wild years with the series, since the very first Unreal there has been. I become 50 next year. Maybe I should give it another shot before it is too late. :D

[STEED]

Get back on that horse you on the other side of the pond! Microsoft isn't going to reform itself.

Got any tanks bombers tactical nukes you have laying around the place if so send them my way and I will blow MS off the planet. :)



I become 50 next year.

Stop giving out your personal info Sky you know they will sell it to someone. :) :03:

[STEED]

A friend I know bought a laptop Win8 over a year ago and from day one turned off the updates and has never had a issue. He thinks all these updates are BS and they muck up your OS. :hmmm:

[STEED]

I thought I'd do an update check. Nothing happened for approx 25 minutes and I shut her down. I tried again on a couple other days with the same result, nothing.

I doubt there will be any more Win 7 updates in the future worth installing.



I met up with a friend at the weekend he too is on Win7 and has been unable to do any security updates from MS for the last month. Anyone here can throw some light on this?

[STEED]

Sent to Woody.

http://www.askwoody.com/

snippet near the end -

Microsoft’s clumsy, desperate, visionless push to get PC users to adopt dumbed-down mobile-oriented apps purely for their own commercial benefit; the unrelentingly persistent, unethical, and highly deceptive way they’re trying to trick less tech-savvy Windows 7 and 8.1 users into “upgrading” to Windows 10; and their insistence on reducing user choice and control over Windows have all left a very bad taste in my mouth.

[Skybird]

I met up with a friend at the weekend he too is on Win7 and has been unable to do any security updates from MS for the last month. Anyone here can throw some light on this?
Right there: --> http://www.askwoody.com/2016/the-windows-update-slow-issue-there-is-a-definitive-answer-less-a-definitive-solution/

Cannot claim I understood it really. That private users are expected to gain knowledge of SUCH stuff by now, shows how insane things have become.

[Rockin Robbins]

I am taking a different road from Skybird for two reasons: there are legitimate security updates in the updates and there is a flurry of Windows attacks out there taking advantage of the fact that many are totally opting out of the update process.

Hold it while I put on my Skybird hat.......okay. But I am running a laptop on Windows XP since February. There have been NO PROBLEMS with incursions. I am running Zone Alarm firewall and Avast anti-virus, along with an occasional Malwarebytes scan and it's clean! Predictions of XP death have been greatly exaggerated. It works as well as the day it was made.

But for 7 I am taking Woody's advice. Defend myself, exclude carefully chosen updates and proceed with updates when found safe. Since I don't need it, Windows 7 is disposable as far as I'm concerned so experimenting with it is a harmless exercise. And I can remain relevant on what the lay of the land is like for normal users. So on March 27, with my updates turned off, guess what happened?

http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa293/RockinRobbins13/screenshot.438_zpsrhtgkje9.jpg (http://s196.photobucket.com/user/RockinRobbins13/media/screenshot.438_zpsrhtgkje9.jpg.html)

Cool! Let's take inventory with GWX Control Panel. Is the GWX application installed? NO! Amazing! That is what KB3055583 IS! The only thing that changed was that operating system upgrades were turned back on. But with GWX not resident on the machine that can't happen. Windows 10 installation files are not on the machine. This shows that GWX Control Panel can fight pretty well and I was still safe in spite of the 13th (?) return of KB3055583. We've been plagued by that piece of malware for a year and for now we need not fear the beast.

So I'm taking Woody's advice in his last MS-DEFCON update (http://www.askwoody.com/2016/ms-defcon-3-get-patches-installed-except-for-a-couple/). Go ahead and update. First fire up GWX Control Panel as I did and set all anti-update options properly. Then fire up Windows Update. Find and hide KB 3139398 (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3139398), the Windows 7 and 8.1 USB driver fix; and KB 3139852 (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3139852), the kernel mode driver patch. Those aren't spyware, they're seriously broken security updates.

Now apply security updates only, for Windows as well as any Microsoft applications. Reboot. Run GWX Control Panel and reerect any fences that were opened by updates.

Take a deep breath and wait until next month.

Is it perfect? No. But you are protected from Windows 10, which continues to be exposed as a deeply flawed operating system, and with Spybot Anti-Beacon you are still protected from built in spyware. For now.

This gives Microsoft time to find and see the wizard, kill the Wicked Witch, return to the wizard and get a brain. This looks like a company that will accept a medal as a substitute for a brain and die happy. I wish them well in Valhalla.

[Rockin Robbins]

Another very interesting thing. I just checked my list of hidden updates. It was entirely empty! Microsoft has taken it upon itself to say "you don't want to hide those updates. Here let me install them for you! I won't tell you I did it. No need to thank me! I've got your back! Trust me."

Thank you Microsoft for again demonstrating why you are so despicable. A once great company is now the Keystone Cops, Colonel Klink, Barney Fife and Handsome Jack, all rolled into one comical evil character. It's better than a movie!

[STEED]

Any help with this one...

Friend of mind has bought a new win8.1 laptop and after going though what was installed by the factory found one bad one. KB2976978 classed as Win10 nagware installed on Nov 11th 2014, he came across some advice on removing it as their was not right click option to remove it, anyway he tried this different method and was told it was vital and part of the OS that can not be removed.

Should he panic like hell or think he got off lightly, it looks like part of that feed back crap as well. Where should he look to close down all this feed back crap on his laptop? I advised turn off updates check them your self and hold off for a month so he gets the good ones and not those bad ones. Also told him to get GWX and Spybot Anti Beacon as well.


Footnote

On a lighter side I have noticed prices of laptops and desktop win8 have gone up costing up to £50 more than win10. Seems to me sales on win8 are better and retailers have seen this and stuck the prices up. :hmmm:

[Skybird]

I am taking a different road from Skybird for two reasons: there are legitimate security updates in the updates and there is a flurry of Windows attacks out there taking advantage of the fact that many are totally opting out of the update process.

Hold it while I put on my Skybird hat.......okay. But I am running a laptop on Windows XP since February. There have been NO PROBLEMS with incursions. I am running Zone Alarm firewall and Avast anti-virus, along with an occasional Malwarebytes scan and it's clean! Predictions of XP death have been greatly exaggerated. It works as well as the day it was made.

But for 7 I am taking Woody's advice. Defend myself, exclude carefully chosen updates and proceed with updates when found safe. Since I don't need it, Windows 7 is disposable as far as I'm concerned so experimenting with it is a harmless exercise. And I can remain relevant on what the lay of the land is like for normal users. So on March 27, with my updates turned off, guess what happened?

http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa293/RockinRobbins13/screenshot.438_zpsrhtgkje9.jpg (http://s196.photobucket.com/user/RockinRobbins13/media/screenshot.438_zpsrhtgkje9.jpg.html)

Cool! Let's take inventory with GWX Control Panel. Is the GWX application installed? NO! Amazing! That is what KB3055583 IS! The only thing that changed was that operating system upgrades were turned back on. But with GWX not resident on the machine that can't happen. Windows 10 installation files are not on the machine. This shows that GWX Control Panel can fight pretty well and I was still safe in spite of the 13th (?) return of KB3055583. We've been plagued by that piece of malware for a year and for now we need not fear the beast.

So I'm taking Woody's advice in his last MS-DEFCON update (http://www.askwoody.com/2016/ms-defcon-3-get-patches-installed-except-for-a-couple/). Go ahead and update. First fire up GWX Control Panel as I did and set all anti-update options properly. Then fire up Windows Update. Find and hide KB 3139398 (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3139398), the Windows 7 and 8.1 USB driver fix; and KB 3139852 (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3139852), the kernel mode driver patch. Those aren't spyware, they're seriously broken security updates.

Now apply security updates only, for Windows as well as any Microsoft applications. Reboot. Run GWX Control Panel and reerect any fences that were opened by updates.

Take a deep breath and wait until next month.

Is it perfect? No. But you are protected from Windows 10, which continues to be exposed as a deeply flawed operating system, and with Spybot Anti-Beacon you are still protected from built in spyware. For now.

This gives Microsoft time to find and see the wizard, kill the Wicked Witch, return to the wizard and get a brain. This looks like a company that will accept a medal as a substitute for a brain and die happy. I wish them well in Valhalla.
Please, whenever you quote me with "Skybird says shut down all updates for W7", also include my warning to do so without leaving most use of W7 behind as well and to use an alternative OS via dual boot or second system. I do not say you should not update W7 while using it for your everyday surfing, work, and anything else you do with it. Minimise your use of W7 as much as you can, for reason's sake. In my case that means to use W7 exclusively for launching a simulation or game - AND NOTHING ELSE anymore.

Also, a fully patched professional security suite and a tightened W7 system are mandatory as well. I update daily my Malwarebyte'S Antimalware (payware), my G-Data Internet Suite (payware), I frequently immunize with Spyware S&D, and shut down several background online-connecting tasks via XP-antipsy. There is also Spyware Beacon and GWX monitor running.

Also you do want to maximise all security-relevant settings of Explorer, since it is embedded into W7 and is used by W even for Windows-related tasks that have nothing to do with surfing. Seal it off, and forbid it anythign to do or to run or to download - push the prohibition policy to the max for Explorer.

Do not have more stuff installed under windows than what you absolutely need it for, in my case: certain games. No browser. No email client. No text editor. No nothing. NOTHING. Do all that use via another OS installation. That implies you must also not worry to get Adobe updates (PDF, flash player, both of which are notorious nightmares since years), Google updates, or any other security-breaching stuff known for being notorious security disasters. Java RTE - oh mein Gott rette sich wer kann...

If doing like this, you reduce the risk of new malware finding you via W7. The best protection against Microsoft is not to use Microsoft stuff. Or better: its the only trustworthy protection.

If you do not use games, immediately deinstall Windows and wipe the HD, then throw the DVD into a shredder. I hope I will one day be ready to give up on games, and then happily will cut my last remaining wire to MS.

[Rockin Robbins]

And for anything but games and some very specialized software used at a high level, switching to Linux will leave you not missing Windows one bit. Even my astronomy photographic program, Deep Sky Stacker, works perfectly under Linux. GIMP will do most anything Photoshop will. Open Office or Libre Office are great replacements for Microsoft Office. Steam runs great. Firefox and Chrome run great. E-mail programs are decidedly BETTER than Windows.

That is why Microsoft is pushing UEFI and other harware schemes to force you to use Windows. They know they cannot compete and you're going that way some day. They're closing the door before you get to it. If they do it now you won't complain. Once you get there it's a done deal. Don't worry. The Linux guys are smarter about getting on hardware than Microsoft is in keeping Linux off.

How about a little cell phone astrophotography? It's my LG G4 with about 50 stacked frames, plus calibration photos processed with Deep Sky Stacker. Streaking at upper right and lower left are caused by the camera not being at thermal equilibrium. While taking the photos the camera either expanded or contracted enough to distort the corners. This is just the cell phone clamped to the cheapest digital tripod I could find (<$10.00)--no tracking, no trix.

http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/aa293/RockinRobbins13/ZIPPYMONSTER/Jupiter%20Etc%2003052016_zpseovh20cd.jpg (http://s196.photobucket.com/user/RockinRobbins13/media/ZIPPYMONSTER/Jupiter%20Etc%2003052016_zpseovh20cd.jpg.html)
http://goo.gl/photos/9TaztTcrxbAPFDZ8A

[STEED]

Steve Gibson's Never10 vs. Josh Mayfield's GWX Control Panel

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3049165/microsoft-windows/steve-gibsons-never10-vs-josh-mayfields-gwx-control-panel.html


BTW: New GWX is out v.1.7.3.1

http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

[STEED]

Hi Folks you know I posted about a friend getting a Win8 laptop he has told me he got a email from Windows welcome to win8 and would he like to know more about upgrading to win10. How the hell did they get his email? This is news to me as I have never come across such a thing.

Welcome to Windows 8.1
This is an email to help you get the most out of Windows. It will help you get familiar with Windows – to do more, more easily, than before.
If you’ve opted out of receiving email, this is the only email that you will receive other than mandatory communications.

[vienna]

It's possible any number of ways. Did he buy or acquire the laptop online? Probably had to give his email address to do the buy; the seller could be a "partner" with MS who shares info (mailing lists, etc.) with MS. Did he send in a warranty card or something of the sort? Again, if it had an email address on it, MS could have gotten it that way. Seriously, the average internet user should have more concern about the non-governmental collection and sharing of data than they do of any government agencies; in point of fact, the governments don't have to exert much effort on an individual level to find out about us - all they have to do is go into the various commercial, educational, and other databases and mine away. People would be surprised how easy it is to assemble a rather detailed picture of their lives with data not in the government reach...


<O>

[STEED]

It's possible any number of ways. Did he buy or acquire the laptop online? Probably had to give his email address to do the buy; the seller could be a "partner" with MS who shares info (mailing lists, etc.) with MS. Did he send in a warranty card or something of the sort? Again, if it had an email address on it, MS could have gotten it that way. Seriously, the average internet user should have more concern about the non-governmental collection and sharing of data than they do of any government agencies; in point of fact, the governments don't have to exert much effort on an individual level to find out about us - all they have to do is go into the various commercial, educational, and other databases and mine away. People would be surprised how easy it is to assemble a rather detailed picture of their lives with data not in the government reach...


<O>

Just been speaking him about did he have to use his email on setting up anyway he did say he bought it online from amazon uk so as he had no other dealing with MS I would assume that will be a one off email. I suggested if he gets more just block them, just shows how everything can be got hold of these days.

[Catfish]

Since big companies like MS have a deal with their nation's secret services, there is not much that remains private, or anonymous.

And then there are the companies themselves, which sell your data , metadata and buying habits.

Certainly all to make you feel secure and well-cared for.

May have its advantages, ask your GCHQ if you harddisk fails, maybe they have a backup.

[Rockin Robbins]

There are also random e-mails sent out to interest groups, for instance people who have registered a version of Windows. Most copies of Windows bought from retail outlets are pre-activated, but membership on any Microsoft website or its affiliates could subject you to random e-mails from Microsoft and/or affiliates.

Check that e-mail to see if there is an opt-out link. Opt-out links are kind of self-contradictory. If the company is unscrupulous, going to the site and opting out is just telling them "Yup! This here is a genuine real e-mail site. Bombs away there bub!"

However, I think that if this is a Microsoft e-mail, opting out is likely a legitimate operation. Then again, they DID just reset my option to forbid operating system upgrades...... I'd still opt-out.

[STEED]

Check that e-mail to see if there is an opt-out link.

Had a look at the email it contains links to how to do this and that along with video links and near to bottom Win10 sales pitch. No opt-out links found and no we did not try any of the links. I said just keep a eye on it and see how you go, probably was a one off welcome to win8 run of the mill emails.

[Aktungbby]

JUST came into the mancave after breakfast to find my computer upgrading to WIN 10 without my say-so; I quickly killed the computer and the modem and the computer then announced restoring itself "to my previous system"-10 minutes of my life wasted there! Message came back: "upgrade incomplete". These buggers are getting awfully pushy. I especially don't like the band-wagon 'everyone else' approach to their marketing. My wife's new laptop has WIN10 so it's not like I'm without recourse to total joy...just not on my mancave's computer just yet, thanks . :arrgh!:

[STEED]

JUST came into the mancave after breakfast to find my computer upgrading to WIN 10 without my say-so; I quickly killed the computer and the modem and the computer then announced restoring itself "to my previous system"-10 minutes of my life wasted there! Message came back: "upgrade incomplete". These buggers are getting awfully pushy. I especially don't like the band-wagon 'everyone else' approach to their marketing. My wife's new laptop has WIN10 so it's not like I'm without recourse to total joy...just not on my mancave's computer just yet, thanks . :arrgh!:

That is why I turned off auto updates use GWX and Spybot Anti beacon. MS has stuck a gun in everyone's head and pulled the trigger without giving a toot about their actions. Being offered Win10 is one thing but to have that forced on to you is a whole new ball game.

[Aktungbby]

YIPES they just tried it again...must be the BORG! I'm being assimilated!

[STEED]

YIPES they just tried it again...must be the BORG! I'm being assimilated!

Did you delete the - $WINDOWS.~BT folder

Get the GWX control panel

http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

[STEED]

Roll up roll up get your win10 patches yet again..

For the second time this month, Microsoft pushed out three optional patches to grease the skids for Windows 10
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3050556/microsoft-windows/microsoft-re-releases-patches-kb-2952664-2976978-and-2977759.html

[Rockin Robbins]

Roll up roll up get your win10 patches yet again..


http://www.infoworld.com/article/3050556/microsoft-windows/microsoft-re-releases-patches-kb-2952664-2976978-and-2977759.html

Who would have thought that Groundhog Day was a prophetic movie?:/\\!!

[aanker]

Who would have thought that Groundhog Day was a prophetic movie?:/\\!!
One of my all time favorite films now has a bad taste because of KB305 & KB303 (5583) et.al (when I have KB patch numbers memorized, it's bad.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aktungbby YIPES they just tried it again...must be the BORG! I'm being assimilated!

[Rockin Robbins]

Well, Aktungbby, the theme of this thread is that assimilation is not inevitable and you can successfully resist.

[Rockin Robbins]

Windows 10 continues its slow march to desktop domination (http://betanews.com/2016/04/01/windows-10-usage-share/)
http://betanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Marching-boots-768x510.jpg

With undisguised admiration for Microsoft's thuggish campaign to dominate you, this author extrapolates current "adoption" rates to predict Windows 10 majority in two years' time. He has failed to consider a couple of factors:


The low-hanging fruit, the low information basic users, have already been picked. What is left is us power users who insist on control of our own systems. We paid our money to build what we want and will not compromise.
If Microsoft means what it says (itself very doubtful) the "free" "upgrade" to Windows 10 will end in July(? Who actually cares?). After that, forced upgrades are not a voluntary contract and under the Interstate Commerce Act (in the USA), as an unsolicited delivery, users have no obligation to pay for it and can keep it or dispose of it for free, no questions asked.

My money is on 2020 before Windows 10 nears the market share of Windows 7. Microsoft could hasten that by sabotaging Windows 7 through the upgrade process to make it an unusable operating system. Never rule that out as a possibility. Remember Windows XP, which I continue to use on a laptop with no problems whatever and it remains untouched by malware after being online continuously for three months.

Unless Microsoft buys a vowel I'll be a Linux user when the options run out and Microsoft is very busy "dominating" the market. They make Darth Vader look like a hero.:D:D:D

[STEED]

I would not be taken back if MS said they would extend the free offer. They are making a mess of the updates for Win7/8 willfully only time will tell but for the moment lets call it being sloppy.

[Rockin Robbins]

Here's the dilemma. If Microsoft starts charging for Windows 10, which is overpriced as is :D:D, then forced upgrades will no longer be possible. Only forcing an unwanted free "product" can be tolerated. Forcing someone to buy a product is against the Interstate Commercial Code unless your name is Obama. Then you can be forced to buy overpriced insurance that you don't need so the people who do need it but can't afford it can have it provided for "less."

But for Microsoft, that would put them in conflict with the law and people would push the issue.

So look for Microsoft to trot out their "Popular demand has been so great that we are continuing to provide Windows 10 for free for the next six months. Or a year. It doesn't matter. As soon as they charge even $10 for the piece of trash growing market share is over.

[Skybird]

Windows 10 continues its slow march to desktop domination (http://betanews.com/2016/04/01/windows-10-usage-share/)


With undisguised admiration for Microsoft's thuggish campaign to dominate you, this author extrapolates current "adoption" rates to predict Windows 10 majority in two years' time. He has failed to consider a couple of factors:


The low-hanging fruit, the low information basic users, have already been picked. What is left is us power users who insist on control of our own systems. We paid our money to build what we want and will not compromise.
If Microsoft means what it says (itself very doubtful) the "free" "upgrade" to Windows 10 will end in July(? Who actually cares?). After that, forced upgrades are not a voluntary contract and under the Interstate Commerce Act (in the USA), as an unsolicited delivery, users have no obligation to pay for it and can keep it or dispose of it for free, no questions asked.

My money is on 2020 before Windows 10 nears the market share of Windows 7. Microsoft could hasten that by sabotaging Windows 7 through the upgrade process to make it an unusable operating system. Never rule that out as a possibility. Remember Windows XP, which I continue to use on a laptop with no problems whatever and it remains untouched by malware after being online continuously for three months.

Unless Microsoft buys a vowel I'll be a Linux user when the options run out and Microsoft is very busy "dominating" the market. They make Darth Vader look like a hero.:D:D:D
But lets not forgfet that new, hiogh performing computer hardware as used by power gamers will not tolerate W7 anymore, at least will block updating W7 or will interfere with it: an according alliance between manufacturers and MS has been sealed by MS some time ago. Possible that a guy likme me, if his current rig brakes, will need to embrace W10 then.

Which for me means to then run to separat systems. I currently do not even add funds to Steam wallet under Windows anymore but only under Linux.

A gaming rig will then only be used for gaming - AND NOTHING ELSE. EVERYTHING ELSE then will be done not just under a different HD and OS on the same machine, but a separate laptop with Linux.

When that time comes, and no perosnal data can be fished off by MS from my game rig, my major concern then will be the obviously disastrous quality of the OS itself, its mess-creating updates, it's many failures with KB updates often even increasing the mess.

Some mon ths ago it was announced that a huge law suite was beeing formed against MS over these things. I wonder what has happened to that. And I doubt it has big chances anyway.

[Rockin Robbins]

Somebody have me committed before I hurt somebody! I just built a Windows 10 computer.:wah:

And the client PAID for Windows 10 OEM. $65 or so, about $30 less than Windows 7 OEM used to be.

To atone for my crime, I convinced my brother to do a dual install of Ubuntu 16.04 and Windows 7. He's actually having a good time with it and told me he can see the day when he won't want Windows on his machine at all. If he can get NASCAR 2003 to run in WINE, he'll happy.

[STEED]

Don't want Windows 10? Good news -- the nagging will end soon

http://betanews.com/2016/05/05/dont-want-windows-10-good-news-the-nagging-will-end-soon/

On one hand I say good but on the other hand I have no trust in MicroSoft who no doubt have got a nasty rabbit in the hat to pop out after July.

[Rockin Robbins]

Confirmed:
Microsoft Says It Will Stop Pestering Users to "Get Windows 10" in July (http://www.pcworld.com/article/3067117/windows/microsoft-says-it-will-stop-pestering-users-to-get-windows-10-in-july.html)

Why? Well, because when you sell it, you can't force someone to use it. The price for Windows 10 Home will be about $110, which is silly because I just bought Windows 10 OEM for $65. Actually my client did. I handled it with gloves and sanitized my hands after burning the gloves.

Having tricked all the people they could into "upgrading" Microsoft will disable and eventually remove the GWX (Get Windows 10) software from millions of victims over the next year, they say.

I've been checking out Ubuntu 16.04. It's brilliant. Plays Silent Hunter 4, Borderlands 2, Counterstrike: Global Offensive and hundreds of other top games. Its Microsoft Office freeware alternatives truly are ready for prime time. Heck, if you use Spotify, all your music is being served to you by Ubuntu powered computers at Spotify. The server market is completely dominated by Linux computers.

All that's left is for Microsoft to complete its very public and humiliating suicide so that commercial enterprises will start supporting Linux to a greater degree. As for you, the public, all you'll notice is that things get much better. Windows will not be missed, any more than CPM, GEM, Deskmate, Amiga Intuition, or OS/2. Microsoft has jumped the shark.

[Skybird]

Unfortunately, Robbins, what we hope and what really wqill be, are two different things. Linux OS shares on globally operated platforms have dropped from around 1.8 to 1.5 percent, some statistics said that i read two or three days ago. Habits are difficult to kill, main business is conservative, and the young people simply do not care due to lacking own experience to know it better. That Linux will blossom and grow, is being predicted since at least 15 years now. While there are more games for it available now, number of users have not fundamentally changed over that time. They remain low, and I do not expect them seriously to grow significantly.

So I recommend to leave Windows alone and to try Linux - but I have no illusions about the chance of success in such appeals.

But let nobody later complain that he could not have known it better.

[Skybird]

A good analysis of the promise that GWX10 nagware attacks will end end of June. The autzhor doubts it, for more insightful arguments than I do - but me doubts it as well.

https://www.petri.com/will-microsoft-really-end-windows-10-upgrade-offer


My theory is that the end of the promotion is a ceremonial gesture aimed at its PC maker partners. These firms were stung by the free upgrade because it gave users a reason to skip a new PC purchase during a time in which the PC industry was already hurting. And consumers responded in droves, sort of, by not buying new PCs. We’re now in what we hope is the tail end of the worst downturn in PC history.
The thing is, forcing customers to pay for the Windows 10 upgrade doesn’t really change anything. One must think that the vast majority of people out there who were going to upgrade a working Windows 7/8.1 PC to the uncertainty of Windows 10 have already done so. Which is what makes this whole thing so strange. If Microsoft cared about customers, it would have ended the notifications by now. And if it cared about PC makers, it would never have taken this unprecedented step to harm their sales in the first place.
Ultimately, we need to view the software giant’s strategy through the lens of its Windows 10 pledge. If Microsoft can hit 1 billion active Windows 10 devices within 2-3 years, it will have succeeded. So the Windows 10 Upgrade Offer will stick around as long as it is helping Microsoft achieve that goal, and not a day longer.
That day, currently, is scheduled for July 29. And yet I still wonder if that holds.



Anyhoiw, I could not care less for all this - if there would not be the problem of that Microsoft has successfully formed alliance with hardware producers that certain CPUs that are of "modern performance" and thus are especially attractive for gamers, will be blocked via arhcitecture and software measurements from either unning lower versions of Windows, or not allowing older versions of W7 to access Windows Updates. If things are going very badly - and with Microsoft's anti-customer agenda you should never say never - it could happen that you buy yourself a new system with good gamer components, want to install W7 on it to use the latest hardware for your games - and findmout that you cannot and must use W10 instead. The point is - this is not about incompatability between OS and hardare, but it is an additonally added, intentional blockade.



If I were not already pissed completely, when i read the above I would have gotten pissed at the latest.

Possible I end up buying intentionally older generaitons of hardware as a new system, capable to launch games and sims via W7. If that makes sense! :dead: It is fascinating what idiotic scenarios their queer policies make me to consider as realistic alternatives.

[Buddahaid]

...Anyhoiw, I could not care less for all this...

Word count would tend to contradict that sentiment. :arrgh!:

I'm still getting along fine with the new order. We train each other. No really I'm fine. I feel much better now......

[Rockin Robbins]

What he means is that although it is a very interesting topic, since Microsoft's antics have no consequences for him, he's not concerned about their actions. He is simply an interested observer with exit strategies fully implemented.

Frankly, by the time exit strategies become necessities, the exit from Microsoft will be very easy and not a concern, even to those not interested right now.

We're speculating and discussing for the fun of it, not because we sense disaster. Microsoft is too trivial to cause disaster. If Spotify doesn't think Microsoft is necessary, then we're safe.

[Rockin Robbins]

A good analysis of the promise that GWX10 nagware attacks will end end of June. The autzhor doubts it, for more insightful arguments than I do - but me doubts it as well.

https://www.petri.com/will-microsoft-really-end-windows-10-upgrade-offer





This guy needs to buy a brain. PC sales tanked on the publication of Windows 8 ("Your computer is now downgraded to a cell phone! Let's party!"). The release of Windows 10 for "free" was an attempt to revive Windows as something cool, worthy of a party such as was legitimately thrown with Windows 95. It failed miserably, needing coercion to get anyone at all to adopt it.

What's needed is not to downgrade a PC to the status of a cell phone, but to UPGRADE cell phones to the status of PCs. We need much better hardware than cell phones presently have for about $200 less. Then we need a family of devices, like docks which you plug your cell phone into and it hooks up to your home monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers and disk drives (not limited to only that) to become a killer desktop computer using a killer desktop interface (not Windows 10). The $450 cell phone needs to be equivalent to the $450 desktop computer.

Microsoft's modern apps (or whatever they're calling them today) need to die screaming, never to be seen again. That means Edge needs to die as it is a cell phone app.

What needs to happen is the desktop computer becomes a niche market for folks like me, power users, system builders and gamers, in favor of a beefed up and fully capable cell phone which senses whether it's being used alone or docked to desktop components, automatically changing to the gui of your choice.

[aanker]

May be of interest...

It took two days and nights of watching and checking the green Updates bar, but I was finally able to get Microsoft Update to scan my relatively new Win 7 Pro laptop (mentioned earlier in this topic). I recently installed a basic OEM version of Office 2003 on it that includes, Outlook 2003, Word 2003, & Excel 2003 (because I like them). I wanted to see if Microsoft would offer SP3 for Office 2003 (that is not supported anymore).

This trip to Microsoft was partly because a few days ago I stumbled on a Topic on a site that lists all the Win 7 & Win 8.1 Updates to avoid if you don't want Win 10 or the Microsoft 'snooping' Updates installed. They have made a script to run but I didn't use it because I didn't want to uninstall IE even though I don't use it. They do have 'the list' of KB number's though.

After two days, Microsoft Update finally finished playing their waiting game and offered 144 Updates. Among them were several for Office 2003 to bring it up to SP3 and more. (I was shocked! )

I sorted out the KB's I didn't want using their list and successfully Updated. ( I did have the 'GWX Control Panel' on and in 'monitor mode'). After Updating I scanned again a couple more times and finished updating the few new KB's that always show up after a big update but didn't need to wait which was nice... and a little strange too - lol.

The site with all of the KB's in a huge spreadsheet is helpful however this site sorts the KB list down to the 'bad ones' which makes it easier to sort through, in case you want to keep IE etc.

Here's the link and the Big KB numbers list in case you can't access their site:
'Script for Win 7/8 to block all telemetry updates and Windows 10 upgrade components'.

https://voat.co/v/technology/comments/853510

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Script details:
"Block 197 bad hosts, change windows update to check/notify (do not download/install), disable automatic delivery of internet explorer via windows update, disable ceip/gwx/skydrive (aka onedrive)/spynet/telemetry/wifisense, disable remote registry, disable 31 scheduled tasks, disable windows 10 download directory, remove diagtrack, sync time to ntp.org, hide/uninstall 50 kb updates"

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Here's their KB list updated to May, in case you can't access their site:

KB update - description:
KB971033 - -update for windows activation technologies
KB2882822 - update for adding itracerelogger interface support
KB2902907 - description not available, update was pulled by microsoft
KB2922324 - description not available, update was pulled by microsoft
KB2952664 - update for upgrading windows 7
KB2976978 - update for windows 8.1 and windows 8
KB2977759 - update for windows 7 rtm
KB2990214 - update that enables you to upgrade from windows 7 to a later version of windows
KB3012973 - upgrade to windows 10
KB3014460 - update for windows insider preview / upgrade to windows 10
KB3015249 - update that adds telemetry points to consent.exe in Windows 8.1 and Windows 7
KB3021917 - update for windows 7 sp1 for performance improvements
KB3022345 - update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry
KB3035583 - update installs get windows 10 app in windows 8.1 and windows 7 sp1
KB3042058 - update for cipher suite priority order (contains winlogon spying elements)
KB3044374 - update that enables you to upgrade from windows 8.1 to windows 10
KB3046480 - update for migrating .net when upgrading to later version of windows
KB3058168 - activate windows 10 from windows 8 or windows 8.1, and windows server 2012 or windows server 2012 r2 kms hosts
KB3064683 - update for windows 8.1 oobe modifications to reserve windows 10
KB3065987 - update for windows update client for windows 7 and windows server 2008 r2 july 2015
KB3065988 - update for windows update client for windows 8.1 and windows server 2012 r2 july 2015
KB3068708 - update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry
KB3072318 - update for windows 8.1 oobe modifications to reserve windows 10
KB3074677 - compatibility update for upgrading to windows 10
KB3075249 - update that adds telemetry points to consent.exe in windows 8.1 and windows 7
KB3075851 - update for windows update client for windows 7 and windows server 2008 r2 august 2015
KB3075853 - update for windows update client for windows 8.1 and windows server 2012 r2 august 2015
KB3080149 - update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry
KB3081437 - august 18, 2015, compatibility update for upgrading to windows 10
KB3081454 - september 8, 2015, compatibility update for upgrading to windows 10
KB3081954 - update for work folders improvements in windows 7 sp1 (contains telemetry elements)
KB3083324 - update for windows update client for windows 7 and windows server 2008 r2 september 2015
KB3083325 - update for windows update client for windows 8.1 and windows server 2012 r2 september 2015
KB3083710 - update for windows update client for windows 7 and windows server 2008 r2 october 2015
KB3083711 - update for windows update client for windows 8.1 and windows server 2012 r2 october 2015
KB3086255 - september 8, 2015, security update for the graphics component in windows (breaks safedisc)
KB3088195 - october 13, 2015, security update for windows kernel (reported to contain a keylogger)
KB3090045 - windows update for reserved devices in windows 8.1 or windows 7 sp1 (windows 10 upgrade elements)
KB3093983 - security update for internet explorer: october 13, 2015 (ie spying elements)
KB3102810 - windows 10 upgrade elements
KB3102812 - windows 10 upgrade elements
KB3112343 - update for windows update client for windows 7 and windows server 2008 r2 december 2015
KB3112336 - update for windows update client for windows 8.1 and windows server 2012 r2 december 2015
KB3123862 - updated capabilities to upgrade windows 8.1 and windows 7
KB3135445 - windows update client for windows 7 and windows server 2008 r2: february 2016
KB3135449 - windows update client for windows 8.1 and windows server 2012 r2: february 2016
KB3138612 - windows update client for windows 7 and windows server 2008 r2: march 2016
KB3138615 - windows update client for windows 8.1 and windows server 2012 r2: march 2016
KB3139929 - security update for internet explorer: march 8, 2016
KB3146449 - updated internet explorer 11 capabilities to upgrade windows 8.1 and windows 7
KB3150513 - may 2016 compatibility update for windows
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Hope this post helps someone.

[Fubar2Niner]

May be of interest...


Hope this post helps someone.


Many thanks aanker, indeed it does :salute:

Best regards.

Fubar2Niner

[Skybird]

Views that I share, regarding why not wanting to get in-locked in Microsoft's business model anymore:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/06/thoughts_on_the_new_microsoft/

Users may know the phrase "once a system got corrupted, it must be considered corrupted even after just repairing it instead of reinstalling it: because you can never know for sure that you really got all bugs squashed indeed".

Its the same with trust. Trust once (or many times!) abused is trust gone forever. Its better not needing to trust Microsoft, so why wanting to get oneself into a position where one must - and is at their mercy? Their service record in their "as-a-service" model of business and the world, is terrible, imo.

[aanker]

Well, I agree that MS is not to be trusted. I'm installing updates that are Important and not on the list of KB's to avoid.

When these two Win 7 computers eventually die, other operating systems like Linux will be advanced enough to handle anything. According to RR he can run just about anything now.

I like Win 7, it is the best OS that Microsoft has made, imo. I also like Office 2003, the best Office product, imo. Nothing is in 'the cloud', it's on my HD's.

Not that I'm doing anything wrong, but the Gov't has to do a little extra work to see what I'm doing. Yes, they can read all of my posts and emails, watch me on social media etc. Let them.

I openly fight against the NDAA that has gone too far, imo, and firmly believe in Benjamin Franklin's wise words to our Republic many years ago:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

I'm with you Skybird.

[HunterICX]

Updated the PC at work which was running Windows 8 to Windows 10. At least I can work with the damn thing now after getting rid of some of the annoying feats like those tiles in the *:o* start button and crap they cramped onto the taskbar I don't need. (and simple things like the calculator no longer take up the whole screen!)

So I'd say at least from my PC at Work perspective it's an improvement.

[Rockin Robbins]

Updated the PC at work which was running Windows 8 to Windows 10. At least I can work with the damn thing now after getting rid of some of the annoying feats like those tiles in the *:o* start button and crap they cramped onto the taskbar I don't need. (and simple things like the calculator no longer take up the whole screen!)

So I'd say at least from my PC at Work perspective it's an improvement.
Yes, if you got sucked into the Windows 8 trap there's only one way to partial usefulness and that's Windows 10. There are still a few legitimate Windows 7 OEM packages out there for about $65, which I think is money well spent. I've done that for three customers when I built them a computer and all were very happy.

You have to manually activate the software by calling the 800 number, but it's a straightforward and simple process that takes about five minutes. Then you have Microsoft's last REAL operating system.

[STEED]

Is Microsoft forcing Win7 customers to upgrade to Win10?

Timely question from KC:

Have you heard of Microsoft forcing Windows 7 users to upgrade to Windows 10? It seems to have happened on my home computer yesterday.

Every recent case I’ve seen involved clicking “Yes” at some point – at least on an End User License Agreement.

I haven’t seen a screenshot of the new EULA, but I suspect it’s sneaky – it asks you to accept the EULA for Win10, without explicitly saying that you’re giving permission to upgrade to Win10.

The “Get Windows 10” notifications are now all over the place – some ask you to click, in order to upgrade; others will just upgrade you unless you click on a small link that’s buried in the text. It’s a deceptive practice that’s beneath Microsoft – right up there with the Scroogled ads.
Anyway, now that you’ve upgraded, you’re in good shape. You can roll back to Win7 if you like, and at any point in the future if you decide you want Win10, you’re already approved for a free upgrade.



http://www.askwoody.com/2016/is-microsoft-forcing-win7-customers-to-upgrade-to-win10/


I would not put anything pass MS the sneaky underhanded so and so's. :hmmm:

[aanker]

Thanks Steed, I see we're at 'DEFCON 2' now .... So far, 'GWX Control Panel' and vigilance are fending off the sneaky 'so & so's'
MS-DEFCON 2:
Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have
an immediate, pressing need to install a
specific patch, don't do it

-
Nice find Onkel Neal, Thanks!

[Onkel Neal]

How to stay on Windows 7 & 8 forever: here's how to stop the Windows 10 upgrade notifications (http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-stay-on-windows-7-8-forever-stop-upgrade-notifications-3614204/)

In just a couple of months, Microsoft's free upgrade offer is due to end but we're all waiting to see if that actually happens. If it does, those Windows 10 upgrade notifications might cease. But of course they won't: Microsoft will simply want to you pay to upgrade after 29 July 2016.

[Aktungbby]

Anybody heard about Windows 11 yet?:shifty:

[STEED]

Anybody heard about Windows 11 yet?:shifty:

Yes..


https://memecrunch.com/meme/BFNZF/obey/image.jpg?w=400&c=1

[Rockin Robbins]

Windows 10--the New Coke of the 2010's

[STEED]

Bloody Heck I just got a ear bashing from a mate on the phone! :eek:

Don't blame me for what Microsoft did! :confused:

Between the colourful language and ranting to kill Microsoft it seems his Win7 has been downgraded to Win10. I can't give a fuller account as he said he was going out to the pub to drown himself in beer before he put the phone down. :huh:

[STEED]

Just got off the phone my mate is going to try to upgrade back to Win7 some time today.

[Skybird]

Anybody heard about Windows 11 yet?:shifty:
Its known since years that there will be no Win11, and that Win10 will be the last Windows release Microsoft did. At least that is their announced policy and plan. From then on it is only a cloud service, with pressing people to not only store data and software in the cloud, preferrably Microsoft servers, but the OS of POCs itself also will be a service stored and on every sytem start accessed and download via the cloud.

Shytti times ahead, I say. Total dependency and total vulnerability, combined in one solution.

Even worse: MS has signed alliances with hardware manufacturers that latest new high performance chips and hardware will be blocked via codes and onboardf sofrware (ROM) to work with lower OS than Win10. That means the hardware is not incompatible with W7 or W8, but it is artificially blocked to work with W7 or W8.

Shytti solutions from a shytti company. To hell with MS. May their HQ and server centres go up and burn down in flames. Maybe this would get people start using their brains again - but I would not bet on it.

It also has a terribly deep-rooting political implication, because the IT infrastructure of the world basing on a company's good will and its policies and never a publicly legitimized board of dirctors of said company is the most perfect coup d'etat that I can think of. If this system is in bed with the already corrupted poltical establishement, freedom and "democracy" are being turned into alibi propaganda stunts completely.

People get what they deserve. And I cannot see many deserving real freedom anymore. serfdom is much more what most people suits well these days. And they like it. The saying goes that everyone has his price. If that is true, most people can be had ridiculously cheap.

[Rockin Robbins]

It doesn't really matter. People and companies will always exist which insist on independence as the only true security. That means having total control over what software is allowed to run on their machine. It means that all data must be locally stored - - no cloud. These people will be provided with access to suitable hardware and software simply because it will always be profitable to do so. The only question is who will do that.

The latest generation of AMD motherboards are very friendly to Windows 7 and they aren't slouches for speed either. Even with a Windows 10 install you can have one key access to the BIOS. During my little trip to the dark side I was very encouraged by the amount of freedom I could retain even with the Kryptonite Windows the poor customer insisted on.

[GT182]

Last month I had to take my computer to my local MS store to get 8.1 repaired and have a virus removed that no antivirus software I have could find and remove. They had my computer for a weekend and when I picked it up they said they gotten everything fixed. I got it home and fired it up only to find they upgraded my computer to Windows 10.... WITHOUT my permission. That was their so called fix. So back it went and after suggesting a lawsuit they rolled it back to 8.1 with no fix.

A friend of mine that runs a mom and pop autoparts store had his 2 store computers running Windows 7 automaticly upgrade to 10 after starting them one morning. No asking if he wanted to upgrade or not... it was done without his permission.

[HunterICX]

A friend of mine that runs a mom and pop autoparts store had his 2 store computers running Windows 7 automaticly upgrade to 10 after starting them one morning. No asking if he wanted to upgrade or not... it was done without his permission.

From what I've red and seen it myself on my work PC the latest ''Upgrade to Win 10 pop up'' will give you 10-13 minutes to decline or else it takes it as a Yes and goes ahead upgrading. (best part is the decline button is hidden in the ''more info'' button)

So if your friend leaves that computer running the whole day there's a fat chance that might've happened.

http://betanews.com/2016/03/13/microsoft-installing-windows-10-without-consent/

If you don't want to update to 10 you should just get rid of that KB update that installed that ''Upgrade to Win10'' Pop up and chuck the Windows Update from automatically to off. It's stupid you have to do that but as you're forced to do so as Microsoft doesn't take a clear NO for an answer you're left without a choice really.:nope: