Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Brooke on May 24, 2016, 11:20:01 PM
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Sneaky, unwanted "upgrades" of people's computers to Windows 10 are -- amazingly -- getting even worse.
The latest is a dialog box that will schedule your computer for upgrading even if you click the red "X" box in the upper right.
There is a little application by Gibson Research (a very reputable outfit) called "never10" that will disable upgrading to Windows 10 in a safe manner and allow you to reverse the decision later if you so choose. It just sets all the settings to disallow the update and deletes the Windows 10 preparatory files that were sneakily downloaded probably without your even knowing it. If you want to change all the settings back to allowing Windows 10 upgrade, it will do that, too. It requires one button click to accomplish either choice -- so nice and easy.
Here is where you get it:
https://www.grc.com/never10.htm
At home and at my company, we have previously set things manually to preclude Windows 10, but with increased underhanded activity going on, I decided to run never10 on my home computer, and it found things that I missed doing it manually. Tomorrow, I am having never10 run on all computers in the company, including our mission-critical computers that run our production equipment. I might also send out a suggestion to customers to run it on computers that run the equipment they purchased from us.
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Steve Gibson! Awesome guy. I've been using his SpinRite for years now.
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Steve Gibson! Awesome guy. I've been using his SpinRite for years now.
Yeah, I love that guy, too. He's done some things that have been very useful to me: Shields Up since back in the earliest days of firewalls, keeping the latest version of TrueCrypt available to the world, as well as informing folks about the true status of that project before the founders were sort of forced out of it, and now never10. :aok
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Thanks Brooke!
On my computer it said there's some 6,500 bytes of Win10 data in 8 files & folders. What I found a little distracting is that it didn't tell which and where they are. However, knowing the quality of Gibson's other programs, I felt safe to remove them.
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I added that to my "Hints and Tips post (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,71591.msg4998528.html#msg4998528) as well.
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Cool! I've avoided doing any updates for a while because my almost total lack of PC time lately hasn't allowed me time for doing all the homework needed to pick out the unscrupulous ones. And that's like zapping the borg with your phaser! Won't work long! This oughta help! There hasn't been a single thing I've heard about Win10 that I'd touch with a thirty-nine and a half inch pole. YMMV.
Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
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(http://m.memegen.com/i645ot.jpg)
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Thanks Brooke!
On my computer it said there's some 6,500 bytes of Win10 data in 8 files & folders. What I found a little distracting is that it didn't tell which and where they are. However, knowing the quality of Gibson's other programs, I felt safe to remove them.
On some of our machines, it was more than 5 GB of stuff and more than 15,000 files. One machine was more than 20,000 files and 7 GB of stuff.
The program doesn't list them, but in the web page for never10, Gibson says that the files are in a hidden directory created by gwx.exe.
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How safe is this to use?
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I had zero files. been following skuzzy's instructions since day one :banana: :banana:.
semp
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How safe is this to use?
Very safe.
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I used it on two computers, works great and fast. Now I don't need to watch for the dreaded KB3035583. :aok
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Thank you Brooke. The nag is gone.
Terry
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Thx Brooke,
My wife's laptop upgraded on the weekend,I managed to roll it back but I couldnt get rid of the upgrade notice.
The link you provided did the trick and remove an incredible amount of junk that win 10 left behind. Next thing you know they'll want to move the OS to a cloud and you wont be able to use your comp without accessing the clouds.... I think it should be called Gategate........ :devil
again thx!
:salute
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Thanks Brooke :salute
My AH system is windows 7 ultimate and I have never seen the nagware that I've seen on my other win 7 computers so I thought I was safe. I ran this utility and got the message that windows 10 upgrade was enabled on the system. It's not now. So if any of you are not seeing the nagware run this anyway. you may be surprised as I was.
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I used it on both of my office computers...not gonna get windows 10 now :rofl
Thanks Brooke :salute
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Thank you for a second time. Today a customer called that her computer had upgraded no matter what. I rolled back to 7 and ran Never10 from my stick. Checked Windows Update and lo and behold, there still was the no-kb labeled "install 10" ticked. Unticked and hid that one. Rebooted and all was fine and clean.
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Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for the heads up on this! On my desktop it has stopped attempting to upgrade and, besides that, seems to have sped up in general with web pages coming up noticeably faster than before.
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Just for giggles I d'ld it & ran it on my box.
Never10 reported back that Win 10 is already disabled on my computer.
Another mode of proof that the MS-provided registry tweaks do work.
:aok
:salute
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They're really getting aggressive at Microsoft: A couple of days ago I ran Never10 on a customer's computer which had already announced the download being ready and starting to install. The ad returned the same evening and has nagged since. Yippee ki-yay, Redmond!
Issue solved: As the Never10 site says, "Never10 does NOT prevent the installation of Windows updates, including the infamous Get Windows 10 (GWX) update KB3035583".
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By the way, to get rid of and disable the GWX.exe program (the "Get Windows 10" program) that MS likes to install on your computer, you can do this.
Uninstall update KB3035583. To do this, go into Windows Updates, search for kb3035583. Uninstall it. Go into "recommended updates", right click kb3035583 and select to "hide" it so that people don't mistakenly select it to install again later.
Rename the folder "c:\windows\system32\gwx" from "gwx" to "gwx-screwoff" or something. You might have to change permissions on the folder to rename it.
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Brooke, that update will not stay hidden. Just FYI. You will have to remove it if you allow Windows Update to run on its own.
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,71591.msg4998528.html#msg4998528 is my post talking it and how to get rid of the unwanted updates. There is more than one.
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Because of this:
"Never10 does NOT prevent the installation of Windows updates, including the infamous Get Windows 10 (GWX) update KB3035583".
I created a scheduled task to run never10.exe every several hours each day (since it is so quick, it doesn't take any resources to do that).
If you want to do this:
-- Go into control panel
-- Click "administrative tools"
-- Double click "task scheduler"
-- On the left, click "task scheduler library"
-- On the right, click "create task"
-- In "general" tab, name it "run never10" (or whatever you want)
-- Enable "run with highest privileges".
-- In "triggers" tab, click "New..." button.
-- Click "daily"
-- Click "repeat task every"
-- Instead of "1 hour" type "2 hour" or "3 hour" or whatever you want
-- Click the "ok" button
-- In the "actions" tab, click "New..." button.
-- Click the "Browse" button and go to wherever you have the program never10.exe and select it.
-- In "add arguments (optional)", type the word "disable" (no quotes -- just the word)
-- Click "ok" button
-- In the "actions" tab, click the "OK" button at the very bottom.
You now have "run never10" task set up to run every 2 hours (or whatever) each day in your list of tasks.
To test it, right click on it in your task list and select "run". Make sure no dialog boxes or error messages show up. If it works, you won't see anything pop up (as it runs silently and takes only an instant to complete).
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Update: I don't know what exactly the customer had seen, since there was no GWX.exe running or present.
Anyhow, I decided to always check the Windows Update settings after using Never10 and at least uncheck the check box for "Give me recommended updates the same way I receive important updates". Opting that single tick out has proved to be the most effective way to keep our household computers clean as well as many others. Some "critical" updates seem to put the mark back, so the setting has to be checked every once in a while. Or, a more scary scenario, Microsoft forces the setting to be altered. They can do it and they have done it before along with a forced security patch. Just today I cleaned one Win7 computer of the 10 crap, noticing that the recommended updates were chosen. It wasn't too long ago that I did a fresh install for it, so either there's some flaws in my install routine or MS has changed the setting back to defaults.
A serious question: Does the other check box "Allow all users to install updates on this computer" mean that Microsoft is free to do that? I've been in the belief that it means non-admin local users.