Windows 10 - The Force is rebooting me

[Bizman]

Thanks Pudgie. Guess I'll have to do the Registry hack too after next Patch Tuesday. One might think it'd be a clever thing to do right now, but I want to see the threat in action for professional reasons.

[Pudgie]

Update:

After WindowsUpdate made 4 trys this is what I have found so far:

KB 3035583 is installed & I have the nagware showing up in Notifications (the Get Windows 10 icon).

The following WindowsUpdates have repeatedly been blocked and have shown up as failed installs (these same updates were also blocked when KB 3035583 was not installed):

KB 3068708----MS Telemetry
KB 3097966----Windows Update Standalone Installer
KB 3042058----Update Default Cipher Suite Priority
KB 3080149----MS Telemetry
KB 3121212----MS16-008: Security Update Windows Kernel (have to look this 1 up to see if Win 7 kernel is being updated to Win 10 kernel).

MS consistently tries to install these updates & they keep getting blocked so I went & hid these 5 updates to stop the nonsense.

As of this time there are no new updates showing up.

Stay tuned.................

 

 

[Gman]

Getting rid of the GWX Win10 installer nag thing isn't difficult for most users here, but by and large, I'd say 3/4 of the PC users out there even if shown the directions after googling how to do it, wouldn't get it right OR wouldn't consider doing it as it's that "computer code magic stuff" or whatever.  Geek Squad and other places are LOVING this right now, as there have been more than a few cases of Win10 bricking PCs doing the auto update on its own.

Also, consider businesses that are running older versions of Windows because they are using finicky other software/hardware things with those systems specific to their company - you know the types of things I'm talking about, and they are numerous.  What happens when Win10 just starts installing on all of those?  Mark my words, that'll be a big story if/when it happens.  Already it's growing just from home users who have PCs/Software that isn't working great with Win10 and having a surprise upgrade.

Not to mention, the loss of personal photos, lost loved ones videos/etc, being lost on bricked PCs due to Win10 auto updating/installing and then bricking - can you spell class action suit, as there is no price that can be put on stuff like that.

Also, there have been reports that even with the Get Win10/GWX stuff completely disabled, some PCs are being "upgraded" to Win10 from older versions of Windows if they have auto updates enabled.  When challenged about this, Microsoft's answer was "just turn off autoupdates".  Great, so no automatic security updates then.  Linus Tech Talk specifically went into all that last night on their WAN show, the video for which should be up today some time, with screen shots/proof of this happening to people. 

[Gman]

Lastly, you would think out of the gate MS would have their own flagship flight sim , FSX, work with their new Win10 OS.  It's improving now, but for a long time there were frequent complaints from many FSX users that it wouldn't work in Win10.

[Pudgie]

Update:

Concerning the "Get Windows 10" nag icon:

I didn't read down far enough to see the registry hack to apply to block KB 3035583 so I have applied this registry mod & have rebooted my box........all came back up fine and the Get Windows 10 nag icon is officially GONE!

So far, so good.

I'll post if something changes but so far all is going well.

 

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/MS16-008

Looks like this is how MS is accessing to do the Win 10 install.................

FYI.......................

 

[Chalenge]

Lastly, you would think out of the gate MS would have their own flagship flight sim , FSX, work with their new Win10 OS.  It's improving now, but for a long time there were frequent complaints from many FSX users that it wouldn't work in Win10.

The Steam version went SOL for a little while this last holiday, but it's back up and running now. Same was true of Train Sim by the same company.

[Pudgie]

Also on the issue of using the Group Policy Editor in Win 7 Home Premium SP1 to shut down the Win 10 Upgrade & Nag Icon:

I had tried to do this earlier but the path does not exist to access the Group Policy Editor (typed gpedit.msc in Search but got no hits) so it appears that the Group Policy Editor can't be accessed in Home Premium..........

I'll assume that this is available in the Pro series and up.

FYI.......................... ....

 

[Chalenge]

Yeah, only in Pro since Win 7 I think.

EDIT: There is an installer available for the Home version, but since it does not come from Microsoft I am hesitant to link to it.

[Bizman]

Yes, GPO is an enterprise admin tool, Home version users have to directly modify the Registry despite all of the risks. I've played with Registry settings before and I will do it in the future, but there's many more risks than in using admin tools. I'm talking about incorrect instructions, misunderstanding, typos, inadequate backups...

I'm concerned about what Gman wrote. There's a gazillion of small businesses without a professional administrator using a Home flavour Windows. Just last Thursday I visited a small beauty shop whose originally Win7, now 10, laptop had a corrupted user profile. That has been a surprisingly common problem lately. I've learned that a system restore usually cures that. In this case, however, after the reboot I got an error message that the restore had failed and no modifications had been done. Fortunately the process managed to fix the profile, though, allowing the user to backup their Gift Card list.

What would Microsoft say if that kind of cases weren't that easily fixed? "They should have got an enterprise level version of Windows and a qualified tech to take care of it"???

EDIT: As Chalenge says, I too recall that we used to install an admin pack from somewhere when I was on a course. I can't remember the details, though, so no links from me either.

[Chalenge]

I think the ONLY smart course of action is to start moving all libraries and the hidden user profile sections (installed lists from the user profile) to a second drive. I'm going to keep saying it, because this is only going to become a more frequent problem. If you do that then a Windows reset will fix everything with very little loss of data, if any.

[Bizman]

Smart indeed. I doubt that none of my business customers were capable to do that, not the beauticians nor the cad engineers and the rest in between. A nice little batch file might help, but I can't code and even if I could there'd be a handful of businesses within my reach.

[Pudgie]

Bizman & Chalenge,

The only reason why I did this is due to my curiosity w\ MS actually putting a couple registry hacks out in a KB article that would defeat their purpose to get Win 10 installed on as many computers as they could so I wanted to find out if the registry mods they listed were real & would work.

As far as me getting around in the Windows registry & making the mods this ain't my 1st time diddling around in there so I wasn't worried about making any mistypes concerning registry language.............

 

You will also notice that I didn't post the process of how to go about entering these registry mods in the registry and I'm not going to either...........for the same reasons why y'all ain't gonna post the link to the Windows admin pack.

 

Just gonna post if the mods actually work or not.

So far they show to be working.

I'll post if I detect any changes.

 

[Chalenge]

Smart indeed. I doubt that none of my business customers were capable to do that, not the beauticians nor the cad engineers and the rest in between. A nice little batch file might help, but I can't code and even if I could there'd be a handful of businesses within my reach.

I understand. It's just that I think this would save you a ton of time on service calls AND your customers would think you were miraculous for saving all their data.

There will always be some programs that just get along better in the Programs folder, but for those others there is no reason they can't move unless you just don't have a drive.

[Bizman]

To add to my previous post: Even if I could code an easy-to-use batch it would be to no avail since people only call me after they've got into trouble.

@ Pudgie: I wasn't worried about you  . But figure if someone copied the advice on e.g. the General Forum and titled it "Get rid of the annoying 10 nag", adding some instructions and explanations of his own, using no punctuation or capital letters as we've seen some posters do... How many bricks would there be?

[ghi]

I just  did what this guy is suggesting step by step and disabled automatic updates; I don't know if is going to work and keep me away from forced update to 10;