Are Win7 security updates free of “Get Windows 10” tendencies?

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Good question from DOC: Hi Woody — I’m one of those who are happy with Win7, and determined to keep it going and ASAP (as safe as possible) while kee
[See the full post at: Are Win7 security updates free of “Get Windows 10” tendencies?]

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Did anyone ever track down the code/files in for KB3146449 in KB3139929? I know that microsoft didn’t trigger it (yet?), but I’m curious if they removed said code/files or left it in current IE11 updates.

Anyone know?

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Completely agree with Woody about the Security Updates.
In addition I think that none of the other updates are of special concern and all can be controlled as we have seen, either by certain tools or by doing the required configuration which is documented officially but sometimes difficult to find or to understand in all details and interdependencies. This applies to the Gwx updates and to the so called telemetry updates which sometimes come for dual purpose.
Applying correctly the updates is the only guarantee that the experience with Windows Update is reliable and fast enough and the system is maintained secure. Any other procedure providing good experience with WU is just a matter of luck and winning the lottery.

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In other words if you have all your updates installed, you are good to go, now you can check for updates and it doesn’t take forever… but wait in that case you don’t need any more updates because you have them already..

You car is limited to 5 miles per hour unless you are at your destination, then it goes up to 100 mph if you want, except you are there already. And the air conditioner only works if it is cold, the heater only if it is already hot, the fuel cap only opens when the tank is full, the headlights only work if the sun is out. “Upgrade now, we haven’t added those defects to our new car (yet)”.

I’m glad microsoft didn’t design an airplane. Landing gear? You don’t need that, just subscribe to “more fuel quick 365”. “Installing landing gear is unsupported an may cause loss of wings and engine.”

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Don’t forget to add “Wings and engines are deprecated and may be removed in a future version of Wincraft Cloud”.

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…but wait in that case you don’t need any more updates because you have them already.

Bob(maybe)OrNot Please don’t tell me that it was not clear enough that it was about checking for the next round of updates, next month or whenever 🙂
The idea is that if for some reason someone does not trust Microsoft or Apple or Google, there are alternatives and should not use their products at all. I don’t think many end users have all the information, skills and time required to redesign Windows Update and the CBS and use them in a better way than they were originally designed. This does not mean that the design is perfect. We have already found a lot of flaws in the design of svchost.exe and you posted a lot of useful information about the almost endless loop that happens in certain circumstances with the CPU running that process.
I don’t work for Microsoft but I make money implementing and supporting Microsoft and Citrix technologies and I think I have a reasonable understanding of Windows.

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“if for some reason someone does not trust Microsoft or Apple or Google, there are alternatives and should not use their products at all.”

It’s really not that simple.

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“I don’t think many end users have all the information, skills and time required to redesign Windows Update… and use them in a better way than they were originally designed.”

Is what has been happening with all the intrigue, manipulation, and, frankly, sloppiness and haphazardness, regarding Windows Update in the last year how it was “originally designed”? I don’t think so.

Originally and for many years thereafter it was a reasonably accurate, reasonably trustworthy, reasonably straightforward method of updating Windows. But not now.

I myself am a non-techie and I do not have a “reasonable understanding of Windows” but I am a rational, reasonable, careful person and I’m calling a spade a spade.

My intention is not to “redesign” Windows Update, but simply to avoid coming to harm while trying my best to obtain the useful, necessary additions.
This is not something I am doing because I have time on my hands and want to tinker around with it, or because I think I know better than Microsoft. That’s the situation of a lot of people who follow AskWoody.com.

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The whole situation is kind of surreal.

As I said a few months ago in a comment on this site, do those employees of Microsoft who have anything to do with these issues (and schemes) not have a massive case of cognitive dissonance?

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Right on.

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You guys actually say that you partially trust Microsoft and at the same time that you know better than Microsoft (whatever that means because Microsoft is an organisation which supposedly is a well oiled team and not a single person) what to install and what not to install.
The issue as I see it is that you either trust Microsoft or not. There is no mid-ground here. You have to decide one way or the other. Both are fine, but no decision is not.

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@ch100,

“The issue as I see it is that you either trust Microsoft or not. There is no mid-ground here.”

So let’s assume I “trust MSFT” as you seem to be supporting and have been supporting, and we install every update, both security and non-security, as I have seen _you recommend here to avoid Windows update problems_.

What is your response to the _fact_ that if we did that, at some point, Windows 7 and 8.1 users would have been FORCED into a W10 upgrade against their wishes? Or at least _trapped_ into an update box?
And don’t tell us “anyone who got the W10 upgrade chose to do the upgrade’. Not true, plenty of users were blindsided by sneaky, ambiguous tactics that led them down a path they really didn’t want to go. And you know what that led them to?

It led them to Info-World, Askwoody, Josh Mayfield’s GWXCP and other solutions.

So, with all due respect, telling people here they should install all updates after 3 weeks or so, and that they should “trust” MSFT to take care of their machines, is disingenuous, at best.

“Applying the updates correctly”…

So if I had applied every update “correctly” up until last month when the May updates were released and it took 2 hours to search for the May updates, what was I supposed to do?
The new WIN32sys update that would fix the “long” Update process was contained in the May updates (just like last month)…and if we waited 3 weeks to sort things out, we would had to have 2 hours, every day, of a search for updates with CPU spikes and fans running endlessly?

Honestly, there’s NO way anyone could defend MSFT’s behavior here, or, be critical of ANY user trying to avoid the obvious problems MSFT has created and still is creating with updates. And there’s no way we can “trust” MSFT when, we have to “apply updates correctly”.

Anyone on auto updates, has been whipsawed for many, many months, at least, if not years. And telling any user to “apply updates correctly” is diametrically opposed to you telling us that MSFT is a “well oiled team”.

I respect your technical knowledge, ch100, but your MSFT bias is obvious.

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It is very simple, if you think that Microsoft has become too sneaky and this is beyond bearable, then stop installing ANY updates. Set the configuration to Never check for updates and you also avoid the scanning for updates which is CPU intensive. I can tell you that a lot of organisations use this configuration because their management does not allow downtime and while I do not agree with this practice in the technical sense, it is done in many places for business related reasons.
If you decide to update, then you have to understand that all or a large part of the updates are part of a system with interdependencies between them and are meant to work together to a large degree. If you need to confirm what I say, please download a 180 days trial version of one of the Windows Server operating systems, install WSUS and you will see very much the whole picture and how one single security update can supersede 29 other previous updates which can be either security updates, or critical updates or recommended updates. If the chain is broken at some point and there are multiple similar chains, then you have a scanning problem and this is why svchost.exe runs for hours for many people.
KB3153199 and similar patches that were proposed here, fix broken trees of superseded updates by effectively removing from calculations all the previous patches, now superseded correctly. But one patch cannot fix all problems, this is the issue and it explains why it works for many people, but not for all.

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I mostly trust the old Microsoft, the one that made XP. Vista, I see where they were going but PC makers put it on slow PC without enough ram (SP1 was a must, and fixed a lot). Windows 7 was great, vista but cleaned up, windows 8.0 was a giant mess, 8.1 + some updates was barely tolerable, with actual good under the hood fixes (vs 7) but the interface was trashed, windows 10 broke some of those under the hood fixes, and the UI just continued windows 8.x’s mindless wandering to “different is good”. The newer microsoft I want to trust, but they are making it impossible.

Microsoft figures windows 10 doesn’t have to be good, they just need to tell us enough times to convince everyone. If they don’t like it tell them harder.

Windows 10:
privacy? who knows. “please have that live mic hooked up all the time, also we need to learn your handwriting”

updates install now: “hope what you were working on wasn’t important, reboot. Also from now on we will never mess up an update again, you can tell from our track record and our reduced update testing”

“your ad blocking was getting our of control, here, use edge with no features or ad blocking, also please take this unique tracking number so we can track you”

“we’ve disabled safe mode via F8, when you need safemode because you can’t boot normally: just boot normally and press shift on the restart button.”
“we didn’t disable F8, uh… windows 10 is just, uh… too fast, yea that’s it”
“ok so you say you can’t boot normally to get to safemode so you can fix the problem so you can boot normally… ok we hope your problem results in 3 consecutive bad shutdowns, then we will try to fix whatever that problem was (hope we don’t make it worse), then after they you may boot into safemode” (come back tomorrow after we try 15 times to fix your computer not keeping a log of what is done and now it’s more broken)

“we kinda hid system restore in windows 8.x, now with windows 10 we’ve crippled it (just some) so that window 10 runs slightly faster, that’s what you wanted right?”

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