Windows 10

[mubs]

Sorry for being OT. I do support my daughter's Win 8.1, so I can manage. But for my use, there's no way I'd consider it without installing Classic Shell.

Windows 7 will remain supported until January 10, 2020. It left mainstream support earlier this year, so it's no longer eligible to receive non-security fixes or extra features but still has many years of security updates.

From CNET:

Windows 7 users may not realize it, but they actually caught a break. Microsoft typically sets the end-of-sales date for each version of Windows two years after the release of a new version. That means Windows 7's cutoff date should have been in October 2014, two years after the launch of Windows 8. The lack of consumer demand for Windows 8 prompted Microsoft to keep Windows 7 alive longer than expected.

Users who want to continue running Windows 7 on their existing PCs need not worry. Extended technical support will be available until January 14, 2020, when you'll still be able to get security patches, bug fixes and other updates. The same type of support for Windows 8 will run until January 10, 2023.

 

[mubs]

More flogging of a dead horse. From a newsletter I receive, to prevent "Upgrade to Win 10" nagging and auto downloading of Win 10:

Download and run the free GWX Control Panel (webpage). Once it's up, click the two lower buttons: Disable 'Get Windows 10' App (permanently remove icon) and Disable Operating System Upgrades in Windows Update. I discussed this in more detail in a recent PCWorld article.

 

[mubs]

I agree with this bloke here. Apparently the Spybot people have built a tool for disabling telemetry in Win 10, 8.1 and 7.

 

[ddrueding]

I agree with this bloke here. Apparently the Spybot people have built a tool for disabling telemetry in Win 10, 8.1 and 7.

This went well on 10. My main interest is reducing bandwidth consumption, some of my clients are on slow connections.

 

[mubs]

This went well on 10.

Did you actually use the Spybot tool? If so can you elucidate on "went well" please?

 

[Mercutio]

I'll check it tomorrow when I'm at my basically dial-up site.

Apparently, the fall update to Windows 10 has a couple unwelcome behaviors: it re-sets some app defaults back to Microsoft's software AND it uninstalls some security and monitoring tools. I noticed in particular that it removes Spybot S&D but a little research says there's a fairly long list of programs that are removed and not put back.

All of this leads me to question why any of this is as much hassle as it is. I shouldn't have to keep telling Windows I don't want to use Edge more than once.

Another mild issue I've noticed: Windows 10 does not have Easy Transfer any longer. The command line version (usmt) still works, but it's a hassle to use and isn't part of Windows by default. I'm going to go ahead and call this a bad thing.

 

[ddrueding]

Did you actually use the Spybot tool? If so can you elucidate on "went well" please?

Indeed. Downloaded from your link and ran it. The software spelled out the changes it was going to make and I verified the changes were made after hitting the automatic button.

 

[Mercutio]

Indeed. Downloaded from your link and ran it. The software spelled out the changes it was going to make and I verified the changes were made after hitting the automatic button.

Did you look at the Optional settings? There are some additional controls to stop communication with Bing and Onedrive, stopping Cortana and disallowing Office Updates. I'm not sure I understand the motivation for the last one (piracy?) but I ran everything on a vanilla machine and saw that it took care of many of the things I was otherwise doing by hand.

 

[ddrueding]

I hadn't. Thanks for the tip.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm also looking for a way to autmatically set Edge's search to something besides Bing, but as far as I can tell Edge isn't even a tiny bit scriptable. The most I can really do is start it and tell it to go to a specific site.

 

[Chewy509]

I'm also looking for a way to autmatically set Edge's search to something besides Bing, but as far as I can tell Edge isn't even a tiny bit scriptable. The most I can really do is start it and tell it to go to a specific site.

Does this help?
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows-10/change-the-default-search-engine-in-microsoft-edge

Has tips for adding google as a search provider-> http://www.tekrevue.com/tip/google-default-search-engine-microsoft-edge/

 

[Chewy509]

Sorry, misread your post... Apparently MS don't even allow that setting via GPO...

Here is the list of official GPOs for Egde.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt270204.aspx

The only thing I can think of is to watch the registry to see how MS are storing the setting(s), and replicate the registry settings across machines via script.

 

[Mercutio]

The only thing I can think of is to watch the registry to see how MS are storing the setting(s), and replicate the registry settings across machines via script.

I'm aware of the limitations of the GPO (which don't really help on home machines), which is why I was looking at scripting... except that Modern-style apps aren't really scriptable, even from Powershell. It's even kind of a pain in the butt to launch one from a script.
I don't really like the idea of forcing a machine to directly import a .reg file either. If I saw somebody else's software doing that directly, it would definitely get my hackles up. Edge in general just feels very unfinished. Even Domain Admins don't have very much control over it and local user control is cumbersome at best.

 

[mubs]

Sheesh, what a crapfest. Glad I didn't jump on W-10. Thanks for the info guys.

 

[LunarMist]

I think it's time to buy a few 8.2 copies. Maybe eventually 11 will be better or at least the degenerax of 10 better understood.

 

[mubs]

I wonder if I should upgrade from 7 to 8.1 for two reasons: longer support, and some of you here saying it's much faster than 7.

I think it's time to buy a few 8.2 copies. Maybe eventually 11 will be better or at least the degenerax of 10 better understood.

Good to see somebody else thinking like I did.

 

[mubs]

Apparently MS updated their privacy policy and things are a wee bit better now.

 

[Clocker]

I have Win7 Pro on my little personal server (J1900 with 8GB RAM) that will also be Folding with a GPU.

I plan on using it as a Plex server as well. All the content on the server will be pre-encoded on my main machine before being dumped to the server to allow Direct Play, so minimal CPU will be required.

I'm on the fence as to letting it do the Win10 upgrade or not. Any opinions on what I should do based on the planned usage? I'm tempted to give in and and just let it go rather than to try fighting the 'forced' Win10 upgrade.

 

[mubs]

If you use the Spybot tool linked above, you won't be forced and can forget Win-10 even exists. On the other hand, if you don't care about the privacy of what lives on it, maybe just given in and go with the flow.

 

[Stereodude]

So my new work PC is a Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro with Windows 10 Home. I'm not a big fan. It's better than 8.1, but that's not saying a lot. I'm pretty sure I'll be putting Classic Shell on it.

 

[Stereodude]

Is there any way in Windows 10 land to go from Windows 10 Home to Windows 10 Pro with a reinstall? I know 7 had Anytime Upgrades, but 10 doesn't seem to have them.

 

[Stereodude]

So the $99 upgrade was in the Microsoft store. Trying to get this Yoga 3 Pro set up for my new job has proven challenging. Getting it with Windows 10 Home when it needs to join a domain wasn't too smart (not something I did).

 

[Mercutio]

I'm almost positive that you can upgrade with Windows 10 Pro media as well. I'm not sure why Microsoft ended the Upgrade Anytime program. It's really useful for making images since I can set my baseline at Home and switch based on the product key I need to deploy rather than create multiple images (which, granted, is trivial to do, but it takes up a lot of disk space).

 

[Stereodude]

So this Yoga 3 Pro running Windows 10 Pro churns endlessly at around 30% CPU from Antimalware Service Executable tied to Windows Defender Service. Is this normal? I haven't seen anything like it in Windows 8 or 7.

Edit: Well, after doing it for most of the day it finally stopped and the CPU usage dropped to basically 0. No idea what was going on.

 

[Chewy509]

In case you haven't seen this elsewhere: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/1...e-pushing-windows-10-to-machines-with-win7-81

TLDR; Microsoft are re-enabling the Windows 10 update that will automatically install Windows 10...

 

[LunarMist]

In case you haven't seen this elsewhere: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/1...e-pushing-windows-10-to-machines-with-win7-81

TLDR; Microsoft are re-enabling the Windows 10 update that will automatically install Windows 10...

Mother*******!

 

[sedrosken]

Damn. This isn't going to be a very popular decision.

 

[CougTek]

Microsoft's leadership doesn't seem to care much about the company's popularity these days. Or anyone else's opinion either.

 

[Mercutio]

Somebody had to be the fall guy for Ballmer.

 

[ddrueding]

Random Win10 glitch. I'm going through this stack of MS Surface books and ran into one that, on first startup after unpacking, went straight to a user prompt without any username being offered. Multiple reboots did the same.

Thinking that this was either a corrupted install or a used unit, I grabbed a Win10 USB key connected and rebooted. Strangely, instead of taking me to the boot options or anything else, it just booted like it should have the first time; prompting for locale and username.

 

[Mercutio]

Thinking that this was either a corrupted install or a used unit, I grabbed a Win10 USB key connected and rebooted. Strangely, instead of taking me to the boot options or anything else, it just booted like it should have the first time; prompting for locale and username.

I have that happen every once in a while off a sysprep install. Usually I can bring up task manager and restart the stuck process.

 

[snowhiker]

I agree with this bloke here. Apparently the Spybot people have built a tool for disabling telemetry in Win 10, 8.1 and 7.

This went well on 10. My main interest is reducing bandwidth consumption, some of my clients are on slow connections.

Indeed. Downloaded from your link and ran it. The software spelled out the changes it was going to make and I verified the changes were made after hitting the automatic button.

Did you look at the Optional settings? There are some additional controls to stop communication with Bing and Onedrive, stopping Cortana and disallowing Office Updates. I'm not sure I understand the motivation for the last one (piracy?) but I ran everything on a vanilla machine and saw that it took care of many of the things I was otherwise doing by hand.

Anti-Beacon seems to work. Maybe too well. Been a while since I performed a windows update so figured I should do one now. Windows Update no longer works. Hit start button, type "windows update" in search box and run the tool. Click "search for updates" and it just sits there forever "checking for updates". Is there some particular thing I need to re-enable to get windows update working again?

Also, the script mentioned earlier in the thread has been updated with two new KB update numbers. 3112343 and 3112336. I don't re-run the script I just un-check those KB updates then perform the update.

 

[ddrueding]

Anti-Beacon seems to work. Maybe too well. Been a while since I performed a windows update so figured I should do one now. Windows Update no longer works. Hit start button, type "windows update" in search box and run the tool. Click "search for updates" and it just sits there forever "checking for updates". Is there some particular thing I need to re-enable to get windows update working again?

Also, the script mentioned earlier in the thread has been updated with two new KB update numbers. 3112343 and 3112336. I don't re-run the script I just un-check those KB updates then perform the update.

I don't have access to my previous install, but I just installed Anti-Beacon on my current machine and enabled every option. Windows Update still works for me.

 

[Tea]

Windows Update no longer works. Hit start button, type "windows update" in search box and run the tool. Click "search for updates" and it just sits there forever "checking for updates". Is there some particular thing I need to re-enable to get windows update working again?

That's just Microsoft's downgraded update service. Welcome to 2015. The Windows Update servers have frequent timeouts these days. There is no error message, you just sit there for anywhere between a minute and a day watching it say "checking for updates". There is nothing you can do about it except wait and try again later. You can cancel the update attempt and restart, if you like. Sometimes that works , but probably just because the Windows Update server happened to reset itself at around the same time. Or you can reboot: same deal.

Yes, it's a crappy, unreliable service now where it used to be much, much more reliable, but what can you do?

 

[snowhiker]

That's just Microsoft's downgraded update service. Welcome to 2015. The Windows Update servers have frequent timeouts these days. There is no error message, you just sit there for anywhere between a minute and a day watching it say "checking for updates". There is nothing you can do about it except wait and try again later. You can cancel the update attempt and restart, if you like. Sometimes that works , but probably just because the Windows Update server happened to reset itself at around the same time. Or you can reboot: same deal.

Yes, it's a crappy, unreliable service now where it used to be much, much more reliable, but what can you do?

This. Unfortunately.

Used to be it would take maybe 60-90 seconds to determine what updates I needed and compile a list for download. Not anymore. I tried multiple times waiting 5-10 minutes but nothing. Figured it was borked and forgot about it for a while. I tried again, minimized the update box and forget about it. Checked it 20-30 minutes later and it finally found the updates I needed and queued them for download. Second machine took over 10 minutes also.

I guess if you aren't on Win10 your QOS does down.

 

[Tea]

Sometimes it works practically instantly.

Sometimes it takes ages.

Sometimes it doesn't work at all.

Rule Clint applies.

 

[timwhit]

That's just Microsoft's downgraded update service. Welcome to 2015. The Windows Update servers have frequent timeouts these days. There is no error message, you just sit there for anywhere between a minute and a day watching it say "checking for updates". There is nothing you can do about it except wait and try again later. You can cancel the update attempt and restart, if you like. Sometimes that works , but probably just because the Windows Update server happened to reset itself at around the same time. Or you can reboot: same deal.

Yes, it's a crappy, unreliable service now where it used to be much, much more reliable, but what can you do?

I've seen the same, but only on Windows VMs. I refuse to run such a shitty OS on a daily basis. On any decent OS you can change your update repos to something more reliable.

 

[Chewy509]

Surprised no one has linked this yet:

https://theintercept.com/2015/12/28...r-microsoft-probably-has-your-encryption-key/

Note: Only applies to home users, corporate users with Pro/Ent versions on a domain don't need to worry if they are not using a Microsoft linked account. (Note: The issues still do apply if you're using Azure AD services, or have federated your domain with Microsoft, as they'll have a copy of your AD).

 

[Mercutio]

I've seen the same, but only on Windows VMs. I refuse to run such a shitty OS on a daily basis. On any decent OS you can change your update repos to something more reliable.

There's nothing stopping you from running a local WSUS server or or a third party tool that emulates it. I linked to a tool that will mirror the complete content of Windows Update for any selected products in the Toolbox thread I post to occasionally. Tannin being a screwdriver shop owner, I figured he'd jump all over that.

 

[ddrueding]

Surprised no one has linked this yet:

https://theintercept.com/2015/12/28...r-microsoft-probably-has-your-encryption-key/

Note: Only applies to home users, corporate users with Pro/Ent versions on a domain don't need to worry if they are not using a Microsoft linked account. (Note: The issues still do apply if you're using Azure AD services, or have federated your domain with Microsoft, as they'll have a copy of your AD).

I've never set up a Windows 10 machine using a Microsoft account. Didn't have a good reason before now, just sounded like a bad idea.