Dave-H

Just thought I'd mention a rather worrying thing that happened to the laptop of a friend of mine yesterday. It's a Windows 7 Home Premium machine. My friend has automatic updates on, and got the Windows 10 advance notification with the system tray icon. He doesn't want Windows 10, and just ignored and closed any messages that popped up about it. He certainly hasn't reserved a copy or anything like that. Yesterday, he closed down his computer, and was faced with a screen which said "installing 1 update, don't switch off etc.". This screen sat there for literally about twenty minutes, with a lot of drive activity, before the machine eventually shut down. Oh dear, i thought, is this the dreaded Windows 10?! On re-start, thankfully it was still Windows 7, but when I went to look in the update history, the update was recorded as "GDR-DU:Cumulative Update for Windows 10 for x64-based Systems (KB3081424)". The update was reported to have failed, perhaps not surprisingly as it's not a Windows 10 machine! My friend was understandably very worried that this performance would be repeated again the next time he shut the system down. With some trepidation I just re-started, which worked as normal. However, the shutdown button had a shield on it and the hover popup said it would install updates and shut down. The first thing I did to try and prevent the update trying again was to delete everything in the SoftwareDistribution folder, and put Windows Update on notify only. The machine then shut down normally, but the shield was still there on the shutdown button. I then decided to do a system restore back at least a week, which fixed that. When I checked Windows Update, KB2952664 was being offered, which said it was 6.0 MB but seemed to be taking ages to download. Suspicious that this wasn't what it was claiming to be, I aborted the download and hid the update. When I checked against this thread, I found that KB2952664 was stated as being one of the Windows 10 download and install requisites on Windows 7. The other two, KB3035583 and KB2990214, I then found were already installed. I uninstalled them and when they were offered again I hid them too! Strangely there are two hidden versions of KB2952664 listed now. One is a recommended update, the other an optional update. The former is 6.0 MB, the latter 6.1 MB, so presumably they're not exactly the same. So, anyone with a Windows 7 machine watch out, it looks as if updates intended for Windows 10 can get downloaded and attempt to install even though you've shown no interest in Windows 10. This has to be an error but it's a bit worrying that it can happen!

I assume the guy had automatic Windows Updates turned on. It's downloaded the Windows 10 update, and when he re-starts it will install it, and it's probably already gone too far with the installation process for it to be aborted without potentially hosing the whole system. I'm keeping Windows Update in the "inform me but don't automatically download or install" mode, as I always do. I'm going to let it do its thing on my netbook when the time comes, but if I don't like the result I won't let it anywhere near my main machine!

In that case I wonder if it will be offered on the next "Patch Tuesday" next month anyway.

Indeed, they'll be able to trumpet how successful Windows 10 has been, but it'll mainly have been because they pushed it out for free, not only to Windows 8/8.1 users, but to Windows 7 users as well! I do wonder how much potential revenue MS have lost and will lose through not charging existing Windows 8 users for Window 8.1, or Windows 7 and 8/8.1 users for Windows 10. The latter is far more major of course because of the huge number of Windows 7 installations out there. Whatever they said, I don't consider 8.1 to have been a completely new operating system. As its name implied, it looked much more like a service pack for Windows 8 to address some of its many shortcomings! I suppose offering free upgrades is worth it to them to maintain their dominant market share.

The Malicious Software Removal Tool worked fine for me. It took ages, but it always does! There was another out of sequence update today, KB3079904, which is to do with a security problem in a font driver.

Well I have been accepting these updates, on both my Windows 8.1 machines (one 32 bit and the other 64 bit). KB2976978 has now been installed, apparently successfully, three times on both of them! Twice it's installed and then reappeared on Windows Update again a day or two later. So what's all that about?

I'm sure it won't cause any problems, in fact as it seems that rolling back isn't possible without a complete uninstall and reinstall, I'll leave it as it is! I was just a bit thrown when I downloaded it from mediafire and installed it before I realised that it was a beta and not an actual release.

Hell, I thought from xpclient's post that 4.2.2 was a release, not a beta! He should really have said that it was only a beta rather than implying that it was a new release version. I don't normally ever install betas unless there's a good reason to. I guess I'll roll back to 4.2.1.

Well I spoke too soon, because after weeks of working fine the problem suddenly came back again, exactly as before. Needless to say I have no clue as to what might have changed at the point that the error message came back! Once again, the sync appears to actually be working, but it always ends with a red error x on the Sync Center system tray icon, and a "the parameter is incorrect" message logged. I have no intention of wiping the whole thing and starting again a second time, as it took literally hours to rebuild the cache and it obviously didn't permanently fix the problem, so I don't know where to go from here.

Brings back memories this talk about Windows 3.1! I got my first PC in 1993, well after many people here I'm sure, and I never had the pleasure of working on a pure DOS machine, but I can certainly remember when PCs were purely considered to be office work tools, and it was rare to find one in the home. My first machine had no sound facilities (why would you need it on an office machine in those days?) and a 120MB hard drive! This failed quite quickly, and under warranty it was replaced with a (gasp!) 150MB hard drive. This was more than you could ever imagine filling up in your whole lifetime in those days! The machine had Lotus office programs on it, Lotus Organiser address book, Lotus 123 for spreadsheets, and Lotus AmiPro for word processing. It didn't have much else!

I certainly hope that doesn't happen, in case I want to roll back to 8.1, but they could argue that by accepting a free upgrade you have abnegated your previous licence.

The last time they messed an update up like this the update would only install on US English systems. This update does install on my UK English machine (just for information, no help to you I realise!)

All four offered updates installed fine here. No ill effects noticed so far!

A friend of mine has a Windows 7 Home Premium laptop, and he's had the "Get Windows 10" icon appear in his system tray. He asked me "do I want Windows 10" and I told him to wait until I'd tried it! I'm used to Windows 8/8.1 so it won't be such a shock to me as it will be for him who's used to the Windows 7 GUI. I've registered an interest in the Windows 10 "upgrade" on both my netbook and my main machine. I'll try it on my netbook first, which is very under-powered, as apparently from what I've read Windows 10 has efficiency improvements that should help on less powerful machines. I'll be doing a full ISO backup first of course so I can hopefully roll back to 8.1 if necessary!

Had a reply here. Looks like it may be a more general problem.

Thanks, I suspect that confirms it. I have posted to the two MS forum threads I asked about this on last year. Hopefully we can get clarification as to whether this facility is now officially dead.

Well I finally came around to the conclusion that it was the name "Archive" for the shared folder on the server that it didn't like. Not because there's anything wrong with it as a name of course, but possibly because I had been syncing using the same share name (of course) on all three of my server's operating systems. I think what may have happened is that something got corrupted on the Windows 8.1 client, possibly character cases or something, which resulted in the client no longer being happy with the share root name on Windows 8.1. I had noticed that depending on which machine I looked on, and on which OS, it was sometimes "Archive", sometimes "ARCHIVE" and sometimes "archive"! I completely deleted the whole sync partnership again, including deleting the CSC folder, and then re-synchronised my folders using only Windows XP on the server (which is the OS I still most use there) and I removed the shares on Windows 8.1 and Windows 98SE on the server. So far so good, the problem hasn't returned.

The XP Event Log links seem to have died again now. They all now seem to produce - "404 - File or directory not found." Have MS finally switched off the context sensitive online help for XP? I think they may well have died exactly a year after EOS, they've certainly not been working for a while now.

I just installed BlackWingCat's version of KB3037572 and KB3023211 (they're combined together in a single installer). No untoward effects so far (touch wood!) My internet security program flagged it as a suspicious file, as it did when I installed his other modified updater files in fact, and I had to switch it off temporarily, but no other issues.

I've installed all the offered updates for this month from Microsoft Update, and done the six .NET updates too. No problems so far, fingers crossed!

Hi again jaclaz! I had already followed the instructions on that link, in fact most of the references on the web to this sort of problem point to it! It didn't do any good unfortunately. The one puzzling thing was that adding the registry entry appeared to do absolutely nothing. It's supposed to re-initialise the cache, and then be deleted. In fact nothing happened at all when I re-booted after adding it, the cache remained exactly the same, and the registry entry was still there too! The article is for Windows XP of course, not Windows 8.1, although my research seemed to indicate that it should still work. I did find one suggestion to clear things by adding the FormatDatabase entry elsewhere, in HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CSC\Parameters, instead of HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurentVersion\NetCache. This just resulted in a rather frightening BSOD on startup saying KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_FAILURE, so I swiftly backed out of that! Just to give the exact setup, the server has a drive on it called "Archive" which I have shared, under that name, on Windows 8.1 and Windows XP. I used Offline Files on the client netbook to synchronise some folders on that drive, both on 8.1 and XP on the netbook. This worked fine for many months, until this error message started happening on synchronisation on the client, but only on 8.1, not on XP. Anyway, I've now tried some more tests. I have now removed sync for all folders and files except one single file on the archive drive, which is in the root of the drive. The error message is still appearing. I have now tried sharing another drive on the server, and again synchronising just one file in the root again as on the first drive. That drive syncs with no error message. So I now have two entries in the sync partnership, both syncing just one file, one of which works and the other doesn't! This indicates to me that the problem is actually on the server, with something about the Archive drive or its contents causing the problem, but I can't for the life of me see what it could be. The sharing of the two drives is set up identically. They are both FAT32 formatted drives. Any suggestions gratefully received!

So has no-one any experience of this at all? I should now mention that both the client and server machines have Windows XP installed on them as well as Windows 8.1, and offline files works perfectly on Windows XP on the client, and it doesn't matter whether the server is on Windows XP or Windows 8.1, in both cases Windows XP on the client works fine and Windows 8.1 throws the error. I am therefore assuming that the problem is on the client machine and not on the server. I've now tried de-synchronising all the synchronised folders on the client in Windows 8.1, leaving just one file synchronised on the client, which is in the root of the shared drive on the server. I'm still getting the "parameter is incorrect" message when I synchronise.

Which is why I said "All both those updates appeared to do...."! I'm well aware that all sorts of changes could have been made behind my back. Good or bad remains to be seen. I've now been on my main machine with Windows 8.1, and only KB3022345 was offered there. No reboot was required after the update as it was on the netbook, so I guess it was KB3048043 which needed that. No popups saying "Windows 10 is Ready" on the main machine as yet!

All both those updates appeared to do (well presumably one of them) was to add a shortcut to my start menu called "Windows 10 Technical Preview". Clicking on it just opens up the Windows Update page, and checking for updates shows nothing! Goodness know what all that was about!

LOL! Well, after I posted my last message, I fired up my Windows 8.1 netbook, and a popup appeared in the top right hand corner of the desktop saying "Windows 10 is Ready"! Surely not, I thought, and when I clicked on it Windows Update opened offering two optional updates, KB3022345, and KB3048043. The former is 383 KB, the latter 612 KB, so neither of them is going to be a new operating system! I'll install them and see what happens........... I thought Windows 10 wasn't supposed to be out until much later in the year.