Lifehacker: Pause updates, with a nod to SMBGhost

Topic

New Reply

David Murphy at Lifehacker gets it. Were I you—and this is what I do, too—I’d make sure I’m using at least Windows version 1909. I’d then use its abil
[See the full post at: Lifehacker: Pause updates, with a nod to SMBGhost]

2 users thanked author for this post.

Microfix, Elly

Reply | Quote

Replies

Woody- appreciate your work very much, but encouraging to do patches for May and even April that have caused BSOD, folder losses etc. just because there have not been large number of bad reports(though enough) is a mistake.  I don’t have time to restore a disc image every month if any updates mess up my machine.  So all of the ones with problem  reports listed in many other publications I hide.  And now encouraging Windows 2004 without additional testing is a mistake as well.

Reply | Quote

Per Woody

Yes, you need to install updates sooner or later. But you don’t have to do it immediately after the patch is released.

Don’t see Woody encouraging anyone to adopt 2004 immediately…

Waiting to apply updates is a balancing act. Don’t want to be cannonfodder for testing… but don’t want to dawdle so long that you meet up with malware that exploits the security holes that patching would have fixed.

Different people, assessing their own skills and needs, choose to apply updates differently. Woody watches the overall situation carefully, including reports of bugs, fixes, and exploits, and makes changes in the DEFCON system accordingly. There are always people that read what he has to say in his summary of the current situation, and decide to update or not from there. However, DEFCON ratings attempt to steer us through the area of least risk (but there is never an area of no risk).

Some people here do advocate for immediate application of updates, but not Woody. For Windows 7, @Canadian Tech is successfully supporting people not updating at all. For W10 that isn’t really possible… so charting your best course, given the information available is what we are all doing, one way or another. Even if a bug is not fixed, it probably has fixes identified if its been around a few weeks, so you won’t be totally lost if something happens, making it a safer time to update.

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

5 users thanked author for this post.

rontpxz81, satrow, woody, Alex5723, Microfix

Reply | Quote

rontpxz81 wrote:

encouraging to do patches for May and even April that have caused BSOD, folder losses etc. just because there have not been large number of bad reports(though enough) is a mistake… And now encouraging Windows 2004 without additional testing is a mistake as well.

I  honestly feel bad about recommending an update that can move your files and re-arrange your desktop (the temporary profile bug), but we know enough about it and have ways to recover, so the lesser evil is to install, being cognizant of the problems and their solutions.

As you can see, the March patches are now becoming important.  You do need to patch sooner or later.

As for upgrading to Win10 2004 – heavens no! I hope I didn’t leave anyone with the impression that I’m recommending an upgrade so early in the unpaid beta testing cycle.

 

2 users thanked author for this post.

rontpxz81, Elly

Reply | Quote

I’ve installed the March 2020 patches & got lucky with no problems.  However I have an issue with April 14, 2020 kb4549951- in searching Google I found too many reports of problems from different sources. I don’t have the skill or time to do proposed complicated fixes if there is a problem nor restore a disc image on a large drive- and I’m not rolling the dice and hope I get lucky.

Reply | Quote

woody wrote:

As for upgrading to Win10 2004 – heavens no! I hope I didn’t leave anyone with the impression that I’m recommending an upgrade so early in the unpaid beta testing cycle.

The first sentence of your blog post links to an article that says, “It’s time to update to the latest version of Windows — version 2004“. And that link is, “How to Install Microsoft’s Big Windows 10 May Update Right Now”.

Reply | Quote

The article also says “All you have to do to stay safe is make sure you’ve installed the latest updates for Windows 10”, so it’s not consistent. Either way, it’s not Woody’s article so it hardly equates to “Woody says install 2004”.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

2004 is a latest update for Windows 10, so it can be read that way.

1 user thanked author for this post.

bbearren

Reply | Quote

I apologize for the question but how do I set the Group Policy Editor to do updates 365 days?

Thank You

Reply | Quote

There is some information on Windows Update settings in AKB2000016. Screenshots below the Sections.

3 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, numike, woody

Reply | Quote

numike wrote:

I apologize for the question but how do I set the Group Policy Editor to do updates 365 days?

Thank You

If you run Pro version (home doesn’t have Group Policy) then you don’t need Group Policy as you can defer quality updates up to 30 days and feature updates up to 365 days via Windows update settings – Advanced Options (or select a date)

In Group Policy go to Administrative Templates – Windows Components – Windows Update – Windows Update for Business

Reply | Quote

Home users can use the registry editor to delay updates.

Here are the settings I use (but, set via settings as above because I have Pro)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UpdatePolicy\PolicyState
FeatureUpdatesDeferralInDays dword:0000005a  (that’s 90 decimal)
QualityUpdatesDeferralInDays dword:0000000f   (that’s 15 decimal)

Byte me!

Reply | Quote

Also see the third screenshot in #2177791 in AKB2000016 – I think they need to be set there also.

1 user thanked author for this post.

pHROZEN gHOST

Reply | Quote

PKCano wrote:

Also see the third screenshot in #2177791 in AKB2000016 – I think they need to be set there also.

Windows 10 is such a mess.

Byte me!

Reply | Quote

I made a Macrium backup (in case 2004 went bad), and decided to give it a try. On my Lenovo Legion Y540 15-IRH, it seems to be doing fine right now. I had a couple of “can’t find” warnings but it was easy enough to go to “my computer” and point to the files. Hopefully it stays smooth.

Reply | Quote

 

What I wonder is if there are any tools that would automatically reapply the update referral to X number of days later after an update is installed. It would be useful.

I, of course, forgot to re-enable deferrals. But I caught it before the updates were applied, and followed instructions I found online to remove a pending update.  (Delete the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download folder contents, enable the deferral in the Windows Update settings widget, and then stop and restart the Windows Update service.)

I very much wish that I didn’t need to remember to re-set the deferrals every time.

Reply | Quote

Are you referring to Deferral, available only in Win10 Pro?
Or are you referring to Pause, available in Home and Pro?

If you have Win10 Pro you do not have to reset Defer Quality Updates, the reset is automatic.
Only Pause has to be reset.

Reply | Quote

Pausing is what referring to. I want to be able to automatically pause after restarting after updates. I forgot to do that last time, after installing the May updates when we were at DEFCON IV.

My experience doesn’t match what you say. I have Windows 10 Pro, and I’ve had the quality updates deferral set to 28 days (and the feature updates set to 265 days) since I got my computer back in March. Yet, when I woke up this morning, I saw that Windows had downloaded the June updates (the quality update and the .NET update) and wanted me to restart to apply them, or it would automatically restart during inactive hours. That is why I had to learn how to stop a pending update, using the instructions I included above.

And it is why I came here, hoping there was a way to prevent this from happening in the future. The obvious solution to me would be some program that would automatically Pause updates after a successful update. The logic doesn’t seem difficult: check the current version number on boot. If it is higher than the previous on-boot version number, modify the registry to pause updates to the latest date possible,  and restart the Windows Update service.

Reply | Quote

I don’t get it.  I mean, I understand what he’s saying, but I learned to rely on drive images more than two decades ago, and I don’t have a need for pausing or deferring updates.  Those two features are much like Libraries/Special Folders; I learned to rely on dedicated partitions too long ago, and don’t have a use for them.

This is the only issue I’ve had with Windows updates, back in mid-July, 2015, and I cleared that up with drive images.  Dedicated partitioning made that task pretty simple.  My OS partition is only 100GB, and an image restore takes about 6 minutes.

I’m not saying that everyone should do as I do, or that everyone could do as I do.  But I and some other AskWoody members don’t have a reason to pause or defer updates, and we jump on ’em as soon as they’re made available.  If I have issues with an update, I’ll gladly share the experience here.  But that one five years ago is the total so far, and for me, that one wasn’t that big of an issue.

As for 2004, I’ve been steadily kicking the tires, and so far, the only thing I’ve found is that it is noticeably, measurably quicker than 1909, which I don’t consider an issue at all.  My motherboard/CPU are 2013 vintage, and my laptop goes back to 2011.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

Reply | Quote

What’s to “get”? Windows updates have a higher risk of issues (as shown by actual reports) than many of us are willing to tolerate. You choose to take that risk–we don’t, and neither Woody, Susan, nor now David Murphy recommends that we do so. Heck, this time, not even Microsoft recommends you do so, as it’s preventing 2004 from automatically installing on most computers. And even you admit that you’ve been bitten once before.

I expect that most of us who deliberately came to AskWoody (and not Windows Secret users who moved over) did so because of that MS-DEFCON system. We had trouble with a Windows update once, and decided we wanted to do all we could to prevent that happening again, while still keeping our computer reasonably up-to-date. So that is what we do.

While I do have backups, they aren’t something I want to have to use. I’d much rather the update just work than to have to go through the hassle of restoring a backup. Most backup solutions require at least some hassle to get up and running again. Even my solution–where I’ve cloned my SSD partition to my hard drive and set it up where I can boot off the hard drive in an emergency–takes time to get me back to normal operation. I still have to stop the update from applying again and get my partition copied back to the SSD, then make sure it’s working. And then I still have to eventually apply the update anyways.

I’m glad you want to risk it. We need people willing to test. And you’re doing it in a real world scenario, not on some special “guinea pig” machine. So reporting whether you have issues is great.

But I don’t get why you need to tell us every time that you’ve never had any issues, and seemingly question why the rest of us would rather wait. The actual problems are reported every time, and Woody and Susan both explain their rationales in telling us to wait. And now we keep finding other places saying the same thing–showing they’ve been bit before, too.

You’re lucky. You may have a system that is very close to the ideal that Microsoft builds for. Or you may just have never gotten bitten yet, same as those people who say not to run antivirus. Either way, your experience is not everyone’s experience. The fact that even more people are siding with Woody and Susan suggests that the problem is only getting bigger.

1 user thanked author for this post.

rontpxz81

Reply | Quote

anonymous wrote:

What’s to “get”? Windows updates have a higher risk of issues (as shown by actual reports) than many of us are willing to tolerate. You choose to take that risk–we don’t, and neither Woody, Susan, nor now David Murphy recommends that we do so.

It’s rather simple:

woody wrote:

Were I you—and this is what I do, too—I’d make sure I’m using at least Windows version 1909.

He’s not me.  Woody, Susan, David Murphy et al. may all be in agreement, but there is no singular answer in how to deal with Windows Updates.  I separated from the experts many years ago for the simple reason that the techniques I have been using, literally since Windows 95, are still easy, safe and bulletproof.  Having recent drive images stored offline enables recovery from any PC problem, whether updates/software/malware/hardware failure.  Deferring updates offers no protection against a failed hard drive.

anonymous wrote:

And even you admit that you’ve been bitten once before.

And if you had follower the link and read the thread, you’d see that I solved that little difficulty using drive images.  No big deal, it’s just being prepared.

anonymous wrote:

We had trouble with a Windows update once, and decided we wanted to do all we could to prevent that happening again, while still keeping our computer reasonably up-to-date.

I want to keep my machines fully up-to-date, and that’s what I do, without dodging updates.  And again, I’m not saying that everyone should or could do as I do, but some other members here use similar methodology with similar success.

anonymous wrote:

I’m glad you want to risk it. We need people willing to test. And you’re doing it in a real world scenario, not on some special “guinea pig” machine. So reporting whether you have issues is great. But I don’t get why you need to tell us every time that you’ve never had any issues

Because I have said that I will install updates as soon as they are made available, and I will report any issues I might have.  The broken DISM five years ago was something that I was able to correct in a couple of hours using drive images, and I don’t consider that a serious issue—no black screen, no BSOD, no missing profile, nothing.  Everything worked with the exception of DISM, I could put off correcting it until I had time, got it corrected, re-installed all available updates, and everything was once again copacetic.

While my particular application of the methodology may be considered unique, I am by no means the only member of AskWoody who employs that methodology to very good effect.  @DRW in this very thread has installed 2004, as has @b.

It’s a matter of being prepared.  Those of us who are, are not putting anything at risk.  For those who aren’t, the MSDEFCON system is a useful alternative.  It’s just that it’s not the only alternative.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

1 user thanked author for this post.

rontpxz81

Reply | Quote

While I agree with the importance of doing disc image backups for various reasons (hard drive failure especially), I don’t have time to restore a 2TB C drive on a regular basis for frequent problems caused by buggy updates.

However, for the average non-tech skilled user, having to do repairs for buggy updates can be difficult to impossible.  If too many reports of system problems with an update, I hide it.

You have been lucky on updates for your system, and having the skills to repair problems.

Reply | Quote

anonymous wrote:

I want to be able to automatically pause after restarting after updates

You can do it by modifying the registry and rebooting, but the changes aren’t easy – they are in the form of a timestamp.
If you want to see what values are used, look at the “Pause…” values in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings.
You need to have a pause set for the values to be available.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

The information resource here is useful as many want to know:

• Are the Windows update problems just me or are they everybody?
• Has a problematic update been recalled?

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender
offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1992 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox116.0b3 MicrosoftDefender

Reply | Quote