Ridrok

Just to share my "server" Win 7 ultimate with no more windows update running. It's a busy server with lot of things running on it 24*24 including my visualized Linux router, minecraft server, 3 teamspeak servers, apache with many virtual hosts including my public small company web site...

Personally, I did disable Winupdate on my 2 win 7 Ultimate and 2 win 8.1 core 6 months ago and seeing how things goes I then now think about deleting these services for good. It's a long run for me personally being an IT Infrastructure Architect specialized in AD and clients deployment, but if we face the truth about MS now, this service + bits are the most useless things on Win 7 and 8.1 at home. (And I enjoy deploying 1000+ Win 7 pro with Office 2010 currently in a big company )

No I did not know 11.12 was released and I use MSI afterburner to manage the fan on the graphic card. I understand the "if it works, don't fix it" strategy, but it's really a way to be outdated. I tend to do the same, but I always try new versions and revert in case of problem or I would be still using Win XP on this PC. NoelC, when (and if) you install driver >= 15.11, if you select "AMD Settings" it will remove the Catalyst control center and replace it with this new application. Personally for the moment I prefer to not select it and Catalyst Control Center is kept.

Please note that AMD Crimson 15.11 driver is also working perfectly on Win 8.1 x64 with Aero Glass for Win8.1+ 1.4.0.200 x64. I have a R9 280X. Edit: And since I saw I was using an old version, I just updated it and Aero Glass for Win8.1+ 1.4.1.240 x64 works fine too. I develop with SlimDx and no problem, I play WoW and no problem with these 15.11 drivers.

I still do not understand how you get this 10586.x version I have all updates installed and it's still 10240. It's not that I want to update it absolutely, but it's a VM I use to know Win10 as much as possible. See by yourself (Win 10 Pro x64):

Hello, Back in topic, I have a "little" problem cleaning-up a Win 8.1 core. I removed nearly all patches since April 2015, but one refuse to uninstall and I can't find a way to remove it. "KB2976978 is required by your computer and cannot be removed" kind of message when I do a Wusa /uninstall /kb:2976978 /norestart Any help appreciated. It's not so important since I block the connections on my internet router, but I would like to cleanup this box too so it does stop contacting sqm.telemetry.microsoft.com:443 so often. Ridrok

Hi, I did run the Windows update on my VM Windows 10.0 10240 Pro to check. But no TH2 patch, it is still a 10240 version. How did you install this evil TH2? Maybe when it will be on Windows update, it will may be not reset all settings? Ridrok

All versions of Windows I use are retail boxes editions. This is my applications server running Win7 Ultimate in DMZ (I couldn't not afford buying a server edition). Not patched since April, Winupdate disabled, running 24*7, last rebooted one month ago because of power supply failure and no plan to reboot it anymore. My main PC running win 8.1 std (pro was too expensive) with same configuration: winupdate disabled and no patches since April: So it seams we are fine with retail boxed editions since they are permanently activated, probably OEM are too, I will check when a client bring me a PC for repair. Edit: Forgot to say that all known URL (http or https) are blocked at my router/squid proxy so no license checking can be made by these hosts. Ridrok

Thank you for sharing this NoelC. With updates from Mai until now, Win 8.1 smells like a Win 10 in privacy aspect. I did not check personally for a month since I came to the conclusion that the only viable solution was: 1) to disable Win Update service (and bits service to free memory used for nothing) 2) to remove all updates since April 2015. I have a quiet Win 8.1 (with aeroglass, Classic Start Menu, Opaque TaskBar, SwiftSearch...) and am happy with this to develop software, encode video, play WoW.... Sure I understand you in checking all possible solutions because I don't feel comfortable in having a fixed version which will age forever, and can't switch easily to Linux since I mainly develop for Windows platforms and playing with Wine is just not a good solution. But since I lost my trust in MS now, I really feel trapped with a hope one day an OS like and compatible with Win 7 will emerge. My 2 cents. Ridrok

From what I remmember, the "core" version of Windows 10 is just a sort of Windows without interface made to run on very small devices like Raspberry Pi. Edit: with link: http://ms-iot.github.io/content/en-US/Downloads.htm Edit2: Grr, misred the 1st post, this is "IoT core", then I don't know better what Windows 10 core is.

Personally I don't fear this. For one, we payed Win 7/8, they can't just deactivate it for the reason we don't install patches since April 2015.

About the Windows 7/8.1/10 keys and activation: When you reserve Win10, MS creates a new Win10 Home or Pro key for the current computer and keep it. When you actually upgrade you Win7/8/8.1, the new key is used to install/activate your Win10 and I can ensure you it's different from the original win7/8/8.1 one. I know this because I extracted my Win10 Pro key after I upgraded my Win7 Ultimate, to have it if I ever want to install Win 10 Pro again. Of course, the Win 7 key was back after roll-back. So there is no reason for Win10 upgrade to invalidate your Win7/8/8.1 key. Ridrok

I don't know if many notice this, but advertisements about Windows 10 always only show 1 thing: always the same wallpaper, and only the start menu open, nothing else. If it was configuration awful window + calculator + the Win10 about box, it would be a good anti-advertisement

Let MS supports only their crapOS 10, let them kill themselves, enjoy it

If that can be useful to anyone, I have one of the first I7 ever made, 12gb DDR3 RAM, Win 8.1 x64 on a 256gb Plextor PCI-E SSD with tonnes of applications mainly to develop. The applications I develop sometime require a bit more memory than the free one I have with VS/sygwin loaded, so I did setup Windows to use a fixed 4gb pagefile on the SSD to accomplish this. Simple. -- My Linux Gentoo on the same PC also has a 4gb swap partition for same use on Linux -- So my advice is simple: 1) set it fixed size to be sure the place is allocated once for all and on a fast drive if you really require this memory space (and make it contiguous if you use a HDD) 2) Set the size to what the programs you run may require, no need to match physical memory size which became irrelevant with the memory we can now put on motherboards. Do you care if Windows cannot dump its full memory in case of crash? I am not, I don't develop FOR Microsoft, I develop WITH Microsoft products. Ridrok