Anybody else seeing big downloads in Win7?

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I’ve received several interesting messages over the holiday weekend. This one, from BR, intrigues me. Are you seeing somthing similar? Hi, Woody,    I
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I use “connection dispatch pro” (always on) and also use pay as go data and haven’t noticed any unexplained activity / data loss so far. win7 64bit.
If that changes I’ll post back here.

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Would it be possible that the windows update service has been updated and as a matter of course is using the machine as a tor source for others on the network segment? Usually, when MS has an aging OS they tend to blend in feature sets of the new OS. That might explain that large pull down of data. Not sure where that data source would live on a local machine. It might be possible that Win10 is being pulled down to your machine and then you will be upgraded without warning or consent as others have experienced. I’d be really curious as to the patch base you have in play as well as if you’ve noticed the date stamps of modified files around that time frame you noticed the downloads occurring.

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One of the obvious reasons other than downloading Windows 10 would be malware trying to communicate with its server. Maybe BR should rule out this potential cause first. Or the svchost process is actually the same under which WU runs, thinking primarily about BITS in which case it would indicate an attempt to download the Windows 10 upgrade files.

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Watch your Resource Monitor to see what files are being written.

-Noel

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Check for hidden folders in the root of your C: drive ($WINDOWS.~BT and $WINDOWS.~WS). If your computer is downloading the Win10 install bits, that’s where they would be.

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My svchost that is not WU related but active today is superfetching: http://i.imgur.com/8Ap5E2w.jpg

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BR stated the GWX Control Panel isn’t showing anything different, the Control Panel would absolutely detect those “hidden” folders.

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That’s quite correct.

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