Windows 10: What You Need to Know

[Skybird]

For W7 I now have formed the habit to install only program updates like Woodie advised for Explorer, also NET updates. All others I no longer download on the second Tuesday of the month, but let them wait until 2 or three days of the following "second Tuesday", when the next wave of updates would come in. This gives the tech world 4 weeks to assess and report on these updates. 2-3 days before the next month's updates come i8n and the list of updates to check grows longer and longer, I check the old ones one by one, and either install them or ban them. The latter is true for porked and broken updates as well as spyware and door-kickers.

Note that you cannot do this in the usual home-versions of W10, you can delay, but you cannot ban or refuse forever any updates MS decides that you should need to want.

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Edit: oh look, at Robbin's site, I found this: http://www.askwoody.com/2015/consequ...in781-patches/ Seems I am not alone! Coming to my mind is the idea to maybe even stop updating W7 all together, since I do not surf or work in it anymore, only need it as a table on which to play my installed games. the risk of getting hit by malware that way maybe is smaller than the risk that MS poses. The last comment by ITSecGuy are worth tpo be kept on mind:

I have always been selective of patch deployments due to epic failures. Those epic failures being Servers being taken offline even after running them in a test environment. I also probably have more experience reading between the lines on the security bulletins.
A good example of this is KB3105256 the issue in the security bulletin states that in order to the Kerberos (This is the main security mechanism for windows) to be bypassed the following must occur:
“The bypass can be exploited only if the target system has BitLocker enabled without a PIN or USB key, the computer is domain-joined, and the attacker has physical access to the computer.”
In my situation none of the windows machines at home are part of a domain, HOWEVER….my main concern is that Kerberos can be circumvented. This is an update I could skip due to the fact that we don’t have bitlocker turned on, the machines are not on a domain. I have not verified what would happen if you used an automated tool such as metasploit to see if Kerberos could be circumvented across the network. I am however tempted to try this out to see if this can be done, however erring on the side of caution I’ll deploy this to the machines we have here.
The point is that I no longer trust what information is packed into KB/Security articles due to past behavior. Since Kerberos is a fundamental component for authentication I question whether or not this can only be circumvented by the variables presented.
For most of the readers here, the trick is to know what’s deployed on your systems and how these affected pieces inter-operate and that requires research unfortunately and as software complexity grows so does that effort.

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This makes reinstalling W7 a real time-consuming hassle these days. I did - the procedure to check them one by one taught me to hate MS even more. A company forcing me to do like this, deserves to fall and go down in flames. Neal said he wishes them to succeed with W10, once public beta testing is over in 1 or 2 years. I don't.

I tried for many years to balance my dislike for things MS did, with their sometimes good ergonomic design of their software products' user interfaces (while sometimes it is anything but ergonomic...). But that is no more so. Their intentional stepping above all red lines and their door-kicking methods to push W10 and spyware stuff onto my system, has forever changed that. If you enforce your entry against the declared will and the obviously demonstrated prevention methods of the owner of a place, home, system, then this is nothing else but BURGLARY. The keylogger thing is another Stasi thing that I am unforgiving about.

I do not wish this to succeed, because it is an espionage thing as well. These days, when American company leaders are threatened by American laws with up to 5 or 15 years (not sure which number it was, I think 15) in prison when they make known to the public that intel services of the US demanded them to implement "special features" into their software, any statement by such a manager that their software is "clean" and that they refuse to cooperate with the government, becomes a hollow word shell that means nothing anymore. The wide distribution of W10 globally, the known spying it conducts and its notorious phoning home, the Microsoft practices we have seen in the past months and two years, and the publicly announced policy by the NSA that it makes claim for having or getting access to every single installed computer system int he world, leaves no doubt - not even the smallest doubt - where the voyage goes, and that this W10 also is a tool of US policy support. You just have to add together one and one and one. The result necessarily is three. And that is no tinfoiled conspiracy theory, but just plain reason and logic deduction. Rejecting it compares to trying to argue that the US also is not flying drones around the globe with pilots sitting in the American mainland.

Don't be naive, guys. Its no conspiracy theory. Its the real world.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by aanker

Any news on the KB numbers to avoid for Win 7 users? I've read at a couple places not to update Win 7 yet with this months patches.

I'll wait just to be safe - ha! .... isn't that awful? I don't trust MS any more.

That is wise and the most reasonable option we are left with (second only to changing your OS completely).

Just do like I do: install only obvious updates to NET and installed software suites like Office (if you still think you need to use that). Personally, i would get rid of all software suites by Adobe and Microsoft.

Then, after second Tuesday in a month, WAIT. Lock your system so that background internet connections (clock synchronization etc) are also shut down. For W7 users, a tool like XP antispy which i repeatedly mentioned already, makes that a breeze: several dozen registry changes with just clicking a button. And switching them to their former state again with a click on a button. The software has an English interface available.

And not before 2 or 3 days before the second Tuesday of the following month check those updates of the former month, one by one, with a search engine (enter the KB number), and see what the search comes up with on page one.

Chances are that you will not filter out all baddies - but very many of them.

This way, the tech world has had 4 weeks of time to report any news worth to be known about files you then install - or better avoid. Just before the next month's updates come in.

Full autoupdating is not recommended anymore. Microsoft deserve no trust at all anymore. None. Zero.

[aanker]

Thanks Skybird

Thanks for the new numbers RR, much appreciated.

I found and deleted two more that came back I will hide again.

My list prior to today's posts by RR & Skybird

If I've made any mistakes, please let me know so I can edit this post.
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Here's my list of past 'updates' that I've deleted & hid:
KB2952664
KB2976978
KB2977759
KB3022345
KB3035583
KB3050267
KB3055583
KB3068708
KB3075249
KB3080149
KB3083710
KB3090045
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KB3021917 x deleted again
KB3083324 x deleted again
KB2952664 x deleted again
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Over 50% of Windows users are still using Win 7 according to one pie chart I saw.

[Moonlight]

I have it on my hit list.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/...-gb/kb/3021917

[aanker]

Thanks Moonlight

Edit - yep, that KB3021917 took about an hour to delete.

I'm thinking of unplugging this computer from the internet and getting a cheap one to go online.

A BIG Thank You to you gracious people (who are checking this topic only for Win 10 info) for your patience with some of us who want to discuss & share the 'Black Tuesday' updates that are released every month by Microsoft.

This month appears to be a zero install for me and my Win 7 computer including the .NET updates. I'll do like Steed said below and wait until next month to install anything - unless there is breaking news.

[STEED]

I got 15 Important KB's on my list this month and ruled out six of them posted on here and will wait until next month to see how many more pop up as "nasty" along with 7 optional KB's on hold.

Thank goodness I switched off the auto updates.

[vienna]

Just helped someone do the Win 10 major November Update on a tablet; it took a while to download the update and to install, but there have been no problems thus far. The system does seem to have a bit more snap to it, but the big surprise was, after the install, the total space taken up on the C: drive is less than the amount taken up before the update; it appears MS has consolidated and streamlined some of the files...


<O>

[DragonRider]

Originally Posted by vienna

Just helped someone do the Win 10 major November Update on a tablet; it took a while to download the update and to install, but there have been no problems thus far. The system does seem to have a bit more snap to it, but the big surprise was, after the install, the total space taken up on the C: drive is less than the amount taken up before the update; it appears MS has consolidated and streamlined some of the files...


<O>

Thank you for some useful information

[Rockin Robbins]

Review: New Windows 10 version still can't beat Windows 7

Summary:

• Edge is still a crippled browser. No improvements with v1511
• Microsoft is now selling advertisement for your "start menu."
• Improvements aren't. Example, Skype has been shattered into three separate "universal apps." That means cell phone apps that nobody wants. Can somebody please send Microsoft a name they can trademark that means "cell phone apps nobody wants"? Metro Modern and now Universal just are cheezy and lacking punch.
• Sugested comedy: ask Cortana "Hey Cortana, show updates" if you want a good laugh.
• Microsoft's welching on their promise of unlimited free One Drive space forever calls into question all their other promises, such as Windows 10 is free forever.

Windows 10 RTM held out a world of promise. Win10 version 1511 fills in only a few of the holes. Windows 8.1 users (particularly those tied to the keyboard and mouse) have every reason to jump to Windows 10 -- good riddance to bad interfaces. However, Windows 7 customers need to think carefully about the leap to Windows 10 version 1511.

As long as Edge remains so far behind in the browser wars, there's no reason to move to Win10 version 1511 for a better browser. Chrome and Firefox work nearly identically in Win7 and Win10.....
Thus far, there is simply no compelling reason to switch from Windows 7. But the biggest deterrent to would-be Windows 7 upgraders might be trust.

To take one example: While Windows 10 telemetry may be perfectly innocuous, other types of snooping are designed to improve Microsoft's ability to target ads. Microsoft is selling Bing ads based on this newfound Win10 mojo, and we're beginning to see the result. (Remember the ads that appeared briefly in the Weather app?) Those of you who use Chrome should understand the situation intimately.

A second example: While Microsoft says Windows 10 will be free "for the lifetime of the device," the recent reversal in OneDrive unlimited storage has many people wondering exactly what Windows 10 promises have been made and which ones are made to be broken.

And a third: Microsoft says it will give Win10 users the ability to hold back on patches -- and, further, it promises to start documenting the patches for an anointed subset of customers. But we haven't seen any of the concrete plans, much less followed the results.

All of these are good reasons for Windows 7 users to sit tight and see what unfolds.

No good reason to upgrade. Lots of good reasons not to. My first move after buying a new computer would be to spend $100 and upgrade it to Windows 7 or just forget Microsloth and load up one of the great versions of Linux.

All the bought and sold commentators and reviewers are trying to stampede the low information computer user into thinking everyone has already installed Win 10 and if you haven't you're really some kind of a dork. There's been some of that here. But the truth is that Windows 10 is suffering from very low adoption rates. What's the position according to Marketshare.com? As of 11/16/15:


What's that? Almost twice the number of Windows XP users as Windows 10? Windows 8 and 8.1 users at 13% compared to Windows 10 under 8% of total users? Don't get stampeded into a bad move. Windows 7 is your place to be if you want to run Windows. I don't expect that to change at least for a year. When it does change I expect the best move to be a Linux version.

[DragonRider]

One thing I still find very annoying is that I have to boot up the machine and then restart it
For Windows 10 to fully start all the functions that my board needs to run at full speed.
I am getting sick of keep seeing the error 40 showing on my board.
I know some of you will say it doesn’t matter that that code is showing well I’m sorry but if
You do not have the right code showing at start up you cannot log in to Windows 10 using the
Digit code because you key board has not been recognized properly also part of you ram will not work as it should.
You may even get a system warning about this. Also you sound card and graphics card will not function properly something to do with usb 3.0.
Although saying all of this once it boots up right all is good.
So honestly I think I will expand that blue area on your graph today.


p.s Sorry for the bad grammar Steve

[Rockin Robbins]

Frankly I've found Ubuntu (and it qualifies for the whole family of Ubuntu derivatives) recognizes hardware and just automatically puts it to work, where even Windows 7 can be a challenge with my Wacom Graphire 4 tablet.

[DragonRider]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Frankly I've found Ubuntu (and it qualifies for the whole family of Ubuntu derivatives) recognizes hardware and just automatically puts it to work, where even Windows 7 can be a challenge with my Wacom Graphire 4 tablet.

That's cool.
Just as I was about to uninstall Windows 10 I decided to look into the problem for one last go.
And what do you know its now sorted.

Problem solved for Gigabyte error code D4 and Asus error code 04.
Once you have Windows 10 or 8.1 fully installed restart your system and go into the Boot menu and disable the fast boot option.
Also after loading Windows 10 or 8.1 go to the power options and select choose what the power buttons do.
Click the change settings that are currently available/unavailable and then un-tick the fast start up option.
This should solve the problem

[vienna]

I have found there are various problems with third party hardware and software with Windows 10, but, as newer updates/upgrades are released by MS, a very large number of them are being resolved. A great proportion of problems I have seen are caused by the third party publishers, themselves, by being lax about releasing drivers and/or patches for their devices or software to keep them compatible with Windows 10. The general rule of OS upgrades still applies, no mater which OS you use: if there is a significant upgrade or new issue of an OS, always check the support sites for the third party hardware and/or software you use on your system. There are some things even the most comprehensive of OSs can't possibly cover and third party compliance is high on the list...

What does irk me is how a lot of the larger publishers seem to make it a point of not issuing patches or driver for newer OSs apparently to force existing users to have to go out and buy a whole new version of their product. I tend to keep loyalty with publishers who don't forget their long time users and customers; I tend not to patronize those who are trying to squeeze more money out their customers...


<O>

[HW3]

with vienna.

[DragonRider]

Originally Posted by DragonRider

That's cool.
Just as I was about to uninstall Windows 10 I decided to look into the problem for one last go.
And what do you know its now sorted.

Problem solved for Gigabyte error code D4 and Asus error code 04.
Once you have Windows 10 or 8.1 fully installed restart your system and go into the Boot menu and disable the fast boot option.
Also after loading Windows 10 or 8.1 go to the power options and select choose what the power buttons do.
Click the change settings that are currently available/unavailable and then un-tick the fast start up option.
This should solve the problem

This problem is nothing to do with drivers. The reason this problem arises is because
When you tell window 8.1 or 10 to shut down it goes into a low power sleep mode and
When you power on it just wakes. This is called fast boot and this is what causes the error codes
On Gigabyte and Asus motherboards (code D4 and 04) .
If you follow the above change of settings it forces Window to really shut down so it has to do a
Full boot up on System start hence no error codes are shown