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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Windows 10 won't let you delay or prevent Windows automatic updates from installing.

nanarchy said:
Wyrdness said:


It's only hard if you want it to be, even something as simple as 2+2 can be hard for someone who refuses to understand, simple logic is some people want to be safe beforehand to see if new updates don't conflict with their hardware or any software and the past is the reason why.

yep and that very behaviour is what makes malware spread so easily. malware writers rely on people like yourself that are slow at patching, they don't need to discover new vulnerabilities, they just reverse engineer the patch and they have a way to compromise a large volume of users that thinks they know better and can wait for a few days or a few weeks or what usually happens they never get aorund to doing it at all until something happens. You are far more likely to have issues from not patching than patching.

That may be true, but the comparison with anti-vaxxers is just plain nonsense. Unlike humans, computers that have already been patched with security updates don't risk still being susceptible to the exploit it patched. So people who choose to take the risk only risk their own system.

What's more, vaccines go through extensive clinical trials for *years* before the public are expected to get vaccinated, in a process that is highly regulated by governments. On the other hand, MS can push out a patch within hours of learning of a problem, and it's entirely possible for that patch to have unintended consequences for large numbers of people. It's for that reason that many people will wait before updating, so that if there are issues, they can learn of them beforehand.



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SvennoJ said:
nanarchy said:
Wyrdness said:


It's only hard if you want it to be, even something as simple as 2+2 can be hard for someone who refuses to understand, simple logic is some people want to be safe beforehand to see if new updates don't conflict with their hardware or any software and the past is the reason why.

yep and that very behaviour is what makes malware spread so easily. malware writers rely on people like yourself that are slow at patching, they don't need to discover new vulnerabilities, they just reverse engineer the patch and they have a way to compromise a large volume of users that thinks they know better and can wait for a few days or a few weeks or what usually happens they never get aorund to doing it at all until something happens. You are far more likely to have issues from not patching than patching.

You're exaggerating too. You don't get infected right away if you miss a few patches. I'm up to date again, it took 6 hours to download the 125 patches I was behind, plus a 15 minute 'restarting' sequence afterwards. It still works, looks the same, and according to windows defender my laptop is still fine.
Well almost up to date, apparently it skipped 7, more to update. Now it hangs on preparing to install, I guess it will work eventually.

That's another reason I turned off auto updates. I'm trying to edit videos and the hdd becomes extremely busy from auto updates. At least that was my experience in windows 7. With 3 or 4 updates a week that's just too much nuisance. Since I don't use the pc that much, yet do want to move it around, everytime I shut it down or turned it back on it had to finish installing updates, making a simple move take forever.
Just put a gentle reminder on the taskbar, that's all I want.


Always use separate disks for programs with huge io-load. If you are working on a laptop, buy an ssd and use an external drive for raw data, if needed. If you have a pc, go with ssd per default. 



And this is the single reason that would stop me from upgrading to Windows 10 even if I otherwise intended to upgrade. In practice it doesn't matter though, because I'm not planning to upgrade any time soon. Not a big fan of the changes, a lot of them decrease usability on regular computers.

And just for the record, my biggest gripe with forced updates is that I know I can't trust them. Even though it's called automatic updates, it could be just about anything, really. I believe Apple has removed software from iPhones without their owners' consents, and MS has used them to basically advertise Windows 10. And then there's of course the possibility of buggy updates that break things, but that's not my primary reason to dislike forced updates.



I don't mind, I update my SO every day, so now I don't have to worry about that xDDD. Windows 10 can't be worse than Windows 8 (at least I hope so). I will upgrade my SO, I will gladly take the risk.



Never had any problems with 7/8 and always auto updated so doesn't bother me, What i'm more bothered about is if 2 years down the line I want to install Windows 10 on a new PC weather they make me install windows 8 then upgrade to it or are they planning to upgrade our product keys to Windows 10?



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WoodenPints said:
Never had any problems with 7/8 and always auto updated so doesn't bother me, What i'm more bothered about is if 2 years down the line I want to install Windows 10 on a new PC weather they make me install windows 8 then upgrade to it or are they planning to upgrade our product keys to Windows 10?


you dont need to install windows 7/8 again

your old key will become a windows 10 licence key (home, pro, oem, retail dependant on the old version ofc)



endy.G said:
WoodenPints said:
Never had any problems with 7/8 and always auto updated so doesn't bother me, What i'm more bothered about is if 2 years down the line I want to install Windows 10 on a new PC weather they make me install windows 8 then upgrade to it or are they planning to upgrade our product keys to Windows 10?


you dont need to install windows 7/8 again

your old key will become a windows 10 licence key (home, pro, oem, retail dependant on the old version ofc)

Thanks That was what I thoguht but I searched for it but never found any definite answers.



My worst-ever virus experience came from when I received my Dell laptop after they had it in their repair depot for more than six months, and I neglected to download and install updates before going on the internet. My computer was rendered virtually unusable and it took me days to figure out how to fully excise the virus. Automatic updates, on the other hand, have never been more than a minor nuisance for when it needs to install upon either turning off or turning on my computer.

So I think I'm fine with this, since I've had autoupdate turned on for years and its never given me any grief.



Smart move on Microsoft's part. Constantly evolving to keep peoples PC's safe from security vulnerabilities is very important and not being able to skip over/worry about crucial updates is awesome. As someone who has actualy used Windows 10 for the last 5 months I can assure you it's the best OS Microsoft has ever released.



SvennoJ said:
nanarchy said:
Wyrdness said:


It's only hard if you want it to be, even something as simple as 2+2 can be hard for someone who refuses to understand, simple logic is some people want to be safe beforehand to see if new updates don't conflict with their hardware or any software and the past is the reason why.

yep and that very behaviour is what makes malware spread so easily. malware writers rely on people like yourself that are slow at patching, they don't need to discover new vulnerabilities, they just reverse engineer the patch and they have a way to compromise a large volume of users that thinks they know better and can wait for a few days or a few weeks or what usually happens they never get aorund to doing it at all until something happens. You are far more likely to have issues from not patching than patching.

You're exaggerating too. You don't get infected right away if you miss a few patches. I'm up to date again, it took 6 hours to download the 125 patches I was behind, plus a 15 minute 'restarting' sequence afterwards. It still works, looks the same, and according to windows defender my laptop is still fine.
Well almost up to date, apparently it skipped 7, more to update. Now it hangs on preparing to install, I guess it will work eventually.

That's another reason I turned off auto updates. I'm trying to edit videos and the hdd becomes extremely busy from auto updates. At least that was my experience in windows 7. With 3 or 4 updates a week that's just too much nuisance. Since I don't use the pc that much, yet do want to move it around, everytime I shut it down or turned it back on it had to finish installing updates, making a simple move take forever.
Just put a gentle reminder on the taskbar, that's all I want.

Auto updates in win 7 can be scheduled for whatever time you like, it doesn't have to happen while you are working. Win7 also only updates once a month not 3 or 4 times a week. (patch tuesday), only time you get extra is ciritical out of band patches which happen once every few months.

Part of my job is around security and patch management for large organisations. I am in a constant battle with people that have the same dated view on patching.  I usually have to dig through their outages reports over the last few years to demonstrate how wrong their views on patching is. It constantly amazes me the amount of IT people that are out of touch with modern practises. Litterally yesterday I had to drag out the outage reports for an issue that has plagued a company for 5 years, affecting thousands of people and all because there IT people advised them it is safer not to update even though their was a known patch for their issue costing hours of downtime for thousands of people every month.

Another large research place I was at last week was in an absolute mess, they could not actually apply the latest security fixes as their systems were so out of date that it wasn't possible to apply it without applying 100's of patches first. It cost them hugely in overtime and downtime. Another one 2 weeks ago with an organisation that hadn't been updating their SAN firmware or switch firmware and we found the cause of their outages for the last 12 months was a bug that was fixed 3 years ago.

Nearly all of the biggest worms and viri on the internet have relied on peole not patching as they exploit old vulnerabilities.