How to avoid being "upgraded to Win 10" against your will:

[dencorso]

Thanks for the heads up!

 

That's my take, too: any and all ill defined WU updates ought to be considered intrusive and meddlesome, and hence refused.

 

1st post updated accordingly.

[TELVM]

Microsoft admits error, after some Windows 7/8.1 PCs began Windows 10 upgrade automatically

 

 

"As part of our effort to bring Windows 10 to existing genuine Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 customers, the Windows 10 upgrade may appear as an optional update in the Windows Update (WU) control panel. This is an intuitive and trusted place people go to find Recommended and Optional updates to Windows. In the recent Windows update, this option was checked as default; this was a mistake and we are removing the check."

 

 

 

[NoelC]

How many new Windows 10 users did that "mistake" snare, I wonder?

 

The rumblings are that further updates for older operating systems will be cumulative...  Have you heard that as well?  Will such updates include an accumulation of all prior Optional and Important updates?

 

Setting up for the cumulative update process could be what all these Windows Update improvements are about.  If that's what the Windows Update changes have been about all along, it looks like I was wrong in assuming I should allow them.  Hats off to dencorso for seeing the landscape clearly sooner, and making the decision to exclude all of them in the original post of this thread.

 

If you've ever hidden an update at all, I guess what to do next should be a no-brainer - the arrival of the first cumulative update will define the moment when all updates must be ceased, because in it will be the very things you've been hiding, and nothing new will be delivered without that bad baggage.  I guess we should thank Microsoft for making it clearer when to stop updates entirely.

 

As a test I tried shutting off all Windows Updates on my Win 8.1 setup by setting the Windows Update service to Disabled for a few days.  Nothing bad happened.  Only thing was I got a complaint through the Action Center from Windows Defender that parts of it had grown out of date.  That was kind of interesting because on Win 7 it seems that software will fall back to downloading things on its own if the Windows Update service doesn't help.  Anyhow, Defender might have to go by the wayside and another, more trustworthy package considered.

 

I'm sure Microsoft feels that switching to an update process that will defy the expectations of existing Windows 8 and 7 users will up the ante and make the value proposition tilt in Microsoft's favor, bringing more people up on Windows 10. 

 

For me, since my primary reason for avoiding Windows 10 isn't because of anything technical - I have a dandy Win 10 test system setup that works fine and even looks good - it's about the change in philosophy toward users and the growing uncertainty about what Microsoft will do.

 

Microsoft openly demonstrating more contempt for users certainly doesn't help me love them more.

 

-Noel

[Tripredacus]

I believe that any PC where the user chooses "Recommended Settings" in OOBE, or where the OS uses an XML and specifies ProtectYourPC 1, will automatically get this. Of course we have seen instances where sometimes the GWX update shows up as being Important as well.

[submix8c]

MS says (re:Windows10) "Sorry, not sorry. All your PC's *must* belong to us. But we got busted. "

 

Aaand now I have to revisit the "blocked" list I collected on 10/2/2015.

 

In response to jaclaz' comment here -

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173752-how-to-avoid-being-upgraded-to-win-10-against-your-will/#entry1104674

It was grand when IBM sent you Update Tapes for their Mainframe OS' with all the associated documentation and let *you* decide. Businesses would have dumped them ASAP if they were forced to upgrade (automatically) thus breaking (e.g.) the JES (Job Entry Subsystem), bringing them to their knees. Lawsuits galore. (Remember that MS "kind of" absconded with DOS.)

 

Guess I should mention that my Bro "helps" with problems at a place he sometimes works at (he learned from me/us) and some of the gals there had asked "Should I click on this pop-up?" - Response - "NONONONONO! It'll install Windows10!" Apple - OSX / MS - WindowsX and yep, going the way of Apple... I think I'll switch to Linux.

Edited October 16, 2015 by submix8c

[NoelC]

Augh  what to do with the current crop of 20 important and 1 optional updates that have shown up this week.  My system is stable, currently running fine for 2 weeks straight.  I already see some in there that need hiding. 

 

-Noel

[BasherClavain]

Hi all,

 

Thanks for all the effort that's gone into establishing what's going on with these updates.

 

I have found this site, and a couple of others, to be very useful in controlling the updates that bring Windows 10 automatically.

 

I too struggle with the balance of making sure updates still work generally, while at the same time trying to avoid unwanted code running on my systems.

 

Part of me wishes I'd never moved off Windows 7!  The more I read though, the more I am inclined to think about skipping Windows 10.

 

From the experience you all have here, please can you tell me how much you trust the error reporting and error management outbound flows now?  Do you think Windows usage telemetry can be collected through other mechanisms meant for other genuine purposes?  Further, how would a user find this out?  (If they don't have their own lab, for instance!)

 

Thank you also for keeping the list up-to-date.

 

Regards,

 

Chris.

[NoelC]

Personally, given Microsoft's "holier than thou" stance on almost everything lately, and ESPECIALLY their aggressiveness at pushing GWX down our throats, I wouldn't put it past them to hide all kinds of things in port 443 communications.  Only thing holding them back is that there are countries with privacy rules that would make Microsoft execs international criminals.  Nothing says that for those countries windows isn't "a little different" under the covers.

 

My firewall blocks all that, and guess what?  My system is stable and runs fine.

 

I've seen a dweeb from Microsoft trying to say that blocking communications is some form of usage agreement violation.

 

Microsoft's new slogan:  Be Evil.

 

You might find this interesting:  https://technet.microsoft.com/library/mt577208(v=vs.85).aspx#BKMK_MoreUTC

 

-Noel

Edited October 16, 2015 by NoelC

[JorgeA]

I read that Technet article. Note the incisive questions put forth at the bottom of the page by a user who's obviously familiar with the inner workings of MS Support. Note especially his final three questions:

 

11. Why does usage of the Windows Feedback app require the full level of telemetry? Why isn’t the enhanced level sufficient?
12. Why is this information only available in the TechNet documentation and not in the consumer documentation on the Windows website?
13. Why is this procedure not mentioned in the Privacy Policy?

 

He goes on to write:

 

Please understand that while I would like to trust Microsoft I’m worried about the potential for abuse, even more so considering the lack of details and secrecy – there is no way the vast majority of users is ever going to read the TechNet documentation but I feel that the fact that a Microsoft engineer could access their computer, probably freely and without the user’s knowledge or explicit consent (considering the full level is the default setting that cannot even be changed during OOBE, which I feel makes your wording that a device needs to opt in to the full level false and misleading, since at this point in time you actually need to actively opt out from it), I see a considerable deficiency in Microsoft’s attempts to build much-needed trust... I would find this very unfortunate because I understand your desire to gather usage data to the means of fixing issues and creating a better user experience and because I find the rest of the TechNet documentation quite elaborate and detailed but it fails at precisely the one point where I would see the greatest need for elaboration and clarification. At the very least I feel users should be made aware of this not only on the consumer documentation of telemetry but also during OOBE. Ideally, this procedure should also be fully documented (also at a technical level) for experts and privacy advocates to comprehend and users should be able to not only confirm or deny an engineer’s access request before it occurs but also to trace any and all of the engineer’s actions should they accept the engineer’s access, with the possibility to cancel this access at any time. If this cannot be given, I find the default setting of telemetry to the full level inappropriate.

 

He then goes on in all sincerity to ask that his concerns be forwarded to the appropriate circles. Good luck with that -- his comment is dated October 5 and there is as yet no reply, let alone the "answers to my questions specifically" that he requests. But he rightly concludes:

 

This is a ticking time bomb and I hope Microsoft realizes this.

 

Good luck with that.

 

--JorgeA

 

P.S. I do wonder what kinds of circumstances he has in mind that would allow such deep access to a user's PC by Microsoft engineers.

 

[dencorso]

[helpdesk98]

Microsoft admits error, after some Windows 7/8.1 PCs began Windows 10 upgrade automatically

 

 

"As part of our effort to bring Windows 10 to existing genuine Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 customers, the Windows 10 upgrade may appear as an optional update in the Windows Update (WU) control panel. This is an intuitive and trusted place people go to find Recommended and Optional updates to Windows. In the recent Windows update, this option was checked as default; this was a mistake and we are removing the check."

As of this morning the box is still checked on my the system that I use at work.

[NoelC]

Admitting something and even promising to fix it doesn't put a time frame on the actual fix.

 

-Noel

[JorgeA]

You might find this interesting:  https://technet.microsoft.com/library/mt577208(v=vs.85).aspx#BKMK_MoreUTC

 

Another set of observations, that I'd like to throw out there for commentary:

 

I can't claim to understand everything that's in that TechNet article (in particular, references to "Windows provisioning" and "MDM" leave me scratching my head), but to my non-expert eyes it really doesn't look like there's much in there that we are not already familiar with. Most of it simply goes over the privacy settings in the UI, with details on how to accomplish the same things in Group Policy or in regedit. You may find other stuff that's not already been covered in MSFN threads or in the blogs out there (please let us know if you do).

 

One aspect that puzzled me is the existence of two seemingly distinct references to telemetry settings. If you go to the "Feedback & diagnostics" heading and scroll down a little to below the "based on these settings" chart, you'll see that it tells you that, while you can't set the telemetry level to Security via the UI, you can do that in Group Policy. So far, so good (well, if you have more than a Home edition of Win10 anyway). But then if you scroll way down to the section, "Manage your telemetry settings," it states clearly there that the "Security" level of telemetry is available only for the Enterprise, Education, and IoT Core editions.

 

Even after reading on from there, it's not made entirely clear whether the level can be set to Security via regedit in other editions. But either way, on the face of it this section appears to contradict what the same article says under the "Feedback & diagnostics" section. Are they talking about two distinct types of telemetry here, or did the writer of the TechNet article goof?

 

Maybe you guys can interpret what's going on here better than I can.

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

I have an update on the above post:

 

The two references to telemetry settings that I mentioned there, refer to the same exact setting in the Group Policy Editor. And adjusting its value to 0 (no telemetry) is "applicable to enterprise and server devices only." To be precise, you can set it to 0, but the description says that the setting will be treated like a 1.

 

I assume that using regedit would not yield a better result.

 

--JorgeA

[Glenn9999]

Since I don't see a reference, GWX Control Panel may be of interest to the people here.

 

As referenced in the article here: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2993851/windows-pcs/microsoft-antagonizes-users-with-intrusive-new-windows-10-upgrade-tactics.html