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How to manage Windows 10 notification and upgrade options

Performing the following procedure will not exorcize the installed garbage from your OS, but it should stop the automatic "upgrading" to Vista 10.

Although it involves hacking the registry, "It's actually rather easy to turn off the Windows 10 upgrade function without losing vital regular software updates. Microsoft even has an official document explaining how to do it.

A Redmond spokesperson today confirmed that support page is still valid – its instructions still work even though it was quietly published a few months ago."If you don't have those registry keys, then your system is not infected.

Take note that this does not affect the nasty keylogging, the secret telemetry packets, or the bandwidth wasting file downloading and serving.

Now this is some deep dung.



"Microsoft has issued a warning to customers that new generations of system hardware will be supported only by the latest version of Windows.
The move is to ensure stability for organisations still running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, according to the firm, but may be viewed by many as another measure aimed at forcing people to upgrade to Windows 10."

"Microsoft makes this full-of-fail “clarification” to its Windows support policy. With zero notice, older versions of Windows lose their support status on the latest PC hardware—your downgrade rights have effectively been wrenched from your hands."

"Yes, you read this right: Microsoft is breaking from 31 years of Windows history by refusing to honour its promised Windows lifecycles."

"Redmond, Intel, Qualcomm and AMD have occupied the same room without injury long enough to promise that future products like Kaby Lake (Intel), 8996 (Qualcomm) and Bristol Ridge (AMD) will not be sullied with Windows 7 or 8.1 code."

I wonder how the execs at Intel really feel about this new and unexpected marketing strategy.

"Going forward, as new silicon generations are introduced, they will require the latest Windows platform at that time for support. This enables us to focus on deep integration between Windows and the silicon, while maintaining maximum reliability and compatibility with previous generations of platform and silicon. For example, Windows 10 will be the only supported Windows platform on Intel’s upcoming “Kaby Lake” silicon, Qualcomm’s upcoming “8996” silicon, and AMD’s upcoming “Bristol Ridge” silicon."

I'm thinking there will be many new roadblocks for Linux as well, as Microsoft BORGS the chip makers.

"When I informed [Microsoft tech support] of the Acer machine I was using, the technical support engineer informed me that my machine was not compatible with Windows 10," the reader continued.

Informed that the "only solution was to restore Windows 7", which was no longer resident on the machine due to Windows 10 overwriting it at install, the reader was informed that Microsoft accepts no liability for lost Windows 7 installs that can't be recovered in a rollback from Windows 10."

It's really unfortunate that the US court systems won't discipline the globalist corporations for their anti-trust behavior that is clearly monopolist.

I have to clean up a friend's Windows® 7 installation this weekend.

Based on http://www.infoworld.com/article/302964 ... batch.html I'm adding
KB2976978
KB3135445

and based on https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3123862 I'm adding
KB3123862.

to my Win7 prohibit installation list.

I also remove the KB3086255 update because it breaks the disc copy protection
used by many old programs that require the original disc to be present, which renders them unusable.

I very much like the first user comment on the announcement page.

Aegis: Block all Windows 10 components on Windows 7 and 8

Now it seems we're cooking on a more professional level!

[edit]
It looks like that last spyware update has spawned a little curiosity or is it controversy?

KB 3123862 eerily resembles Microsoft's earlier Get Windows 10 patch

What little we know about recommended Windows 7/8.1 update KB 3123862

KB 3138612 version 1.0, is a new version of Windows Update, destined for Win7 and Server 2008 R2. Microsoft doesn't exactly describe what's new, but it does say that this version of Windows Update supersedes last month's KB 3135445.

BasicallyPure wrote:heartbone, thanks for the info on the VLMC movie creator.
That will be something I can really make use of when that is released.
I have been using the VLC media player for years and I avoid the windows media player completely.

Maybe you'll be interessted in this one too then (as it looks to be the base for VLMC)
http://www.virtualdub.org

And heartbone thanks for your contributions here, even for an XP user still usefull things.

heartbone wrote:
Microsoft has issued a warning to customers that new generations of system hardware will be supported only by the latest version of Windows

thats true, i have bought recently asus x553ma celeron N2840 , No Os installed. https://www.asus.com/support/Download/3 ... h9QOb3/41/ because it was very cheap, i want to use it as an external hard drive plus.
but surprised later that it accepts only windows 10 / 8.1 x64 only, and i don't like but XP only, whats strange is that ASUS provides the drivers for the x64 win10/8.1 only. we can install win7 if we change the OS in the startup cmos to win7 but no drivers available for win7. so i have installed ubuntu x64 which are not supported at all by ASUS. fortunately it is installed successfully when choosing OS win7 in the startup cmos setup
i think this is completely illegal since they force the people to walk in one route only

It only took about 20 years, but Microsoft released a great personal computer operating system with Windows® 7 Professional Service Pack 1 (6.1.7601) on February 22, 2011.
It was too much to expect for Microsoft to improve on it, instead they have been doing quite the opposite.

Windows Update not working
Windows Update remains at "Checking For Updates" indefinitely...
Warning: Windows 7 computers are being reported as automatically starting the Windows 10 upgrade without permission.
Prevent Windows 10 "You must adopt a protective stance to prevent your Windows 7 system from becoming something you do not want."

My assessment is that the Windows® Updates service, even if it starts working properly, is no longer a dependable way to keep your Windows® 7 installation secure.
As a matter of fact, for the majority of Win7 users, their computers are LESS secure when using the Windows® Updates service.

Henceforth, you'll need to evaluate the offered updates and decide which to manually download and install, or wait for the professionals to issue their reports.
That's what I'm currently doing with the recent updates offered on March 8, 2016.I've added KB3090045 to the nagspyware list based on Woody's 10/7/15 post.
I've added KB3139929 to the nagspyware list based on Woody's 3/9/16 post.
"Many people -- present company included -- feel that putting an ad generator inside a security patch crosses way over the line. In fact, you have to ask yourself if there are any lines any more."

Last week I read on a web page that Microsoft's trusted partner Mc Afee was now pushing some Microsoft Windows 10 nagspyware updates through their anti-virus updates.
Unfortunately, I have been unable to relocate the page which contained that juicy bit of information, so I could not verify it.


Shame on those terrible system admins who are blocking your free upgrade to Win10!
http://core0.staticworld.net/images/art ... e.idge.jpg

Good luck.

heartbone wrote:Windows Update remains at "Checking For Updates" indefinitely...

At work I have to use Windows 7 on an old laptop.
The issue you mention drained my battery faster than acceptable, and the cpu fan was running constantly.
Solved this by writing an app that checks if the update service is running.
If it is running the service will be killed. (happens at least 8 times until Windows 7 finally gives up)

Now the battery live is good, the fan is quiet and I can check for updates when I want to...

In case you encounter the unbundled KB3146449 separately from KB3139929, just consider it yet another update to avoid.

heartbone wrote:

Code: Select all

These are the current March 2016 Windows® 7 Professional x64 updates to be evaluated.
KB3118401 KB3121255 KB3135983 KB3135988 KB3135996 KB3138910 KB3138962 KB3139398 KB3139852 KB3139914 KB3139929 KB3139940 KB3140410 KB3140735
After 25 years of patching Windows®, I doubt if any of these are really necessary.

OK, I've got it all sorted out as of yesterday.

I haven't checked the security news today, because I don't intend to do any further operating system updating until sometime in late summer, say in about a half year.
I'm tired of looking into this Microsoft Windows® Update madness.
Anyhow there are plenty of folks out there who have never, ever updated their vanilla Win7 installs, and run without any problems.
So unless there's a mandatory security update needed due to a newly discovered exploit, I'm sure that going six months or more between OS updates will be fine.
Especially with a good system backup.

One of the 14 updates listed above, KB3139929, was immediately flagged by the experts as malicious.
Once a computer has been upgraded to .NET 4.6.1 (KB3102433), then update KB3135996 becomes obsolete and is replaced with KB3136000.
Also KB3118401 and KB3121255 both are for .NET 4.5, and are made obsolete with the .NET 4.6.1 installation.
The final result is 11 more updates that seem OK at this time. In my XP past, I used to decline every single .NET update ever offered by Windows® Update.
I regularly declined to download and install and reinstall updates to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of megabytes of bloatware that I never needed for any application that I used.
Finally in 2012 I got involved in the MADDEN NFL 08 modding community, and only then did I need to install the .NET bloatware in order to run the community written game modification software.
Hopefully over time I can persuade some of them to switch to a more sane program development environment. One that doesn't require hundreds and hundreds of megabytes of bloatware to be installed to be able to run a simple one megabyte program.

No matter what, now that .NET 4.6.1 is up to date, I'm going to continue with my tradition, and intend to never install another .NET anything update on my system.
My next planned updates update will be late August to early September.

♣ Happy St. Patrick's Day! ♣

Windows Update Client for Windows 7: June 2015
After reading that Microsoft page detailing update KB3050265, I certainly grok why it's on the nagspyware lists.

But after reading this page, All you need to know about Windows telemetry, upgrades , I feel a need to highlight the override switch which is documented there.

"After reboot, you can set a group policy in the Pro or Ultimate version or a manual registry tweak in either one version of your operating system. The tweak goes as follows, and it will prevent Windows from offering any OS upgrades. This is essentially an enterprise feature ported for home use."

Of course spreading awareness of that technical feature, and actually trusting Microsoft to honor the new OS setting (if I knew what it actually meant), are two different things.
For now I think that I'll continue with my current practices, but inform others of the option.
__________________________________________________________________________________

This was published yesterday.

"216 Important updates are available even with Service Pack 1 installed, and you'd have to be crazy to connect to the Internet without installing those patches first.

But that's not the worst of it.

Just getting to that screen took more than eight hours, thanks to a bug that was documented last fall in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 3102810: Installing and searching for updates is slow and high CPU usage occurs in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

"Slow" does not even begin to describe the glacial pace at which Windows 7 works before even displaying the list of available updates.

There is a workaround, as I discovered. Download two updates before starting the installation process, KB3083710 and KB3102810, and copy them to a USB flash drive. Install Windows 7 with SP1 and leave the network cable disconnected. Install those two updates from the flash drive before connecting to the network and running Windows Update for the first time, and you can cut that horrendous delay down to a matter of a few minutes."

This is a friendly reminder that the first suggested update in the update fix, KB3083710, is on the no install list.
If it's truly necessary to install it for the fix, then consider an uninstall of it after the updates have finished.

It was said that the March 8th update ( KB3139852 ) resolves the long CPU loop delay. I'm cant verify, however others has confirmed the check only takes about 5minutes instead of 8+ hours.

Thunder93 wrote:It was said that the March 8th update ( KB3139852 ) resolves the long CPU loop delay. I'm cant verify, however others has confirmed the check only takes about 5minutes instead of 8+ hours.

It looks like you are right Thunder93, now it only takes minutes.
Although for some reason Woody is still telling us to hold off on KB3139852
(http://www.askwoody.com/2016/ms-defcon- ... -a-couple/),
I don't have a problem with it. Especially since it's a "kernel mode driver patch" update.

Old habits die hard.
Since WU showed me a new list, I checked the latest round of updates.
4 new ones, nothing malicious and nothing necessary.

Now the new system is back in the box, awaiting next month's UBUNTU 16.04 LTS.

Although UBUNTU should gain a lot of new users, from what I'm reading Mint and Mac seem to be the winners so far in the ongoing GWX catastrophe.

No promises on how long it will work, but after watching dozens of Win7 boxes get force updated I discovered an interesting way to block the win10 conversion.
Just rename the GWX directory to NOWAY_GWX. This works even if it has told you it's going to update regardless.
When it decides to do the force update, it will panic and after a reboot or two, it will go back to being Win7.
At this point you can start yanking out the KBs that cause the problem.

Microsoft won't give up that easily, but it will buy you some time.

I really liked Windows 7 a whole bunch. Windows 10, I like twice as much.

My primary desktop-PC, I avoided upgrading from Windows 7, for several months. It wasn't because of rumours about Windows 10 and Microsoft spying. I've kept up with all the rumours spreading over the Internet. Long before the official Windows 10 release, to this day. Nothing I've read was substantial, or even appeared to be done by knowledgeable folks.

Reason why I avoided Windows 10 on my primary desktop-PC was because of my abandonware security not compatible with Windows 8+.

How I stopped Windows 10 coming in on me automatically. I used registry tweak, as also detailed on 'How to manage Windows 10 notification and upgrade options' - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351

Block the upgrade to Windows 10 through Windows Update, DisableOSUpgrade = 1.

If you installed the GWX component – Disable 'Get Windows 10 app (notification area icon)' via registry, DisableGWX = 1.


I've never experienced Microsoft releasing an update that reverts the registry tweaks.
--

When I upgraded finally my Desktop-PC to Windows 10. I have seen how fast it runs. Like it was stated by Microsoft, I noticed the Windows 10 runs faster than Windows 7 on the same machine. Boot-time was faster, with and without UEFI booting. System performance, everything is much snappier.

First upgrade to Windows 10 was back when it initially released. I've upgraded a slow-running (clean-state) Netbook of mine running Windows 7 Starter. I've noticed a big difference in system performance since upgrading to Windows 10.


Let's hope when the time comes that people can't have Windows 10 Free upgrade, people don't start regretting their decision.

Windows 10 is securer, and it's faster than running Windows 8.1, or 7 on the same machine. Two very good reasons right there to consider Windows 10.

I'm not easily intimidated by stuff I read over the Internet. I have giving Windows 10 a fair chance, I see different features I really like, .. such as ' Casting '. I'm not a fan of Cortana on desktop-pc, I've disabled this.