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No, you did not read MrBrian wrong because earlier he had said, …

Question by PKCano] “And this would seem a recommendation for the Cumulative Security Monthly Quality ROLLUP.”

Yes. We’re now avoiding being in Group B.

IOW, MrBrian is recommending those in Group B be moved to Group A or S(for Sheep).

Ah, that’s what I thought I read. My issue was that this thread was supposed to be a discussion on whether or not Group B should be continued or not and instead, it seems to jump right to the conclusion that Group B isn’t being continued and gives recommendations based on that instead of just polling people as to what they think before making any recommendations. The fact that there’s several different recommendations throughout only adds to the confusion.

Anyway, not trying to be overly critical, I’m just not sure the title of this thread matches what’s going on in it. It asks a question and it seems there is quite a lot of support for Group B still. Just because GWX is a thing of the past (for now) doesn’t mean everyone has changed their minds about Microsoft. I just hope that we can come to a consensus on the future of ABC before we start recommending people to do this or that. Based on the posts here so far, it seems ABC shouldn’t be going anywhere at this time. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, yes?

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ebrke, HiFlyer

Then indeed, I read it wrong. My bad.

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Of course, it’s why anyone comes here I would imagine. Fair enough, just giving my opinion is all. Reading through here, I’m pretty sure I saw a rather definitive looking excerpt from one of Brian’s posts that said the object is to get away from Group B. I could have read it wrong, though. Giving instructions to everyone that are in opposition to those of Group B seems like more than a discussion, does it not? Maybe it just seems that way, though.

Edit to add: It’s not about not being patient, though. Brian asked for feedback, so I gave him some. That’s all.

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HiFlyer

I think there would be plenty of demand and I would at least make the suggestion that said interest should be gauged before abandoning Group B. It seems this strategy has been around a long time now on these forums, am I correct? It is a valid approach to updating Windows and is, IMO, a LOT easier than doing anything in control panel or fiddling around in the menus of a firewall inserting dozens of IP and web address entries, but first having to go to other websites to read about how to do it and I think that last step is where you’re going to lose a lot of people. IP addresses and firewall settings may as well be Chinese to many regular users. I know a few people like that myself.

Anyway, I think the users here should be asked before doing away with it all of a sudden. I don’t think the reasons as adequate IMO and if I were in Group B, I’d feel like I was left out to dry a little bit. Maybe that’s just me, though.

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ebrke, HiFlyer, Elly, SueW, grayslady

Ok, so I don’t even update really anymore and I’m confused for everyone else. How long did you guys promote Group B as a viable strategy to combat MS’s antics? Avoid certain telemetry patches that are now being recommended for install? That’s confusing. There are numerous users on here who are doing the Group B thing following the instructions laid out on here and are happy with it, so are we now turning our backs on them and forcing them into Group A? That is my concern just from reading through here.

It seems more confusing to tell people to install updates just to go through more steps messing with a firewall and poking around in task scheduler to neuter them. The question then becomes why install it at all at that point? For those who have trouble avoiding updates, is it really going to be easier for them to go poking around in Control Panel and setting all kinds of things in their firewall?

There’s a major flip-flop going on here now; that is confusing as well. Just my 2cents.

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HiFlyer, Elly, MrBrian

I don’t blame you. I have been passively keeping an eye on Linux for years, but it’s only now that it seems to be good enough to give it a try. I think it’ll get better over time and has nowhere to go but up. When a company is so desperate to control what people want as MS seems to be, that’s a huge red flag to me. How much more desperate are they willing to get over time? I feel like I have less control over my PC now than ever before.

Linux is far from perfect, but I am so jaded with Microsoft now that I’m finally pushed to wanting to actually try it. The stars have aligned just right and Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based Linux distros seem to be pretty good systems and only getting better. I’ve never been a fan of Mac, though. Not sure why that is, but oh well. Like you, I haven’t felt like dealing with learning a new OS.. until now. We’ll see what happens.

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I’m not sure what did it with me. Only thing I can think of is I uninstalled a few updates, but that has never turned WU on before as it’s not the first time I’ve selectively removed updates. The ones I removed were KB3021917, KB3068708 and KB3080149. That shouldn’t trigger WU to take on a mind of it’s own. It never did before?

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I haven’t been here long, but I can see that you often go the extra mile to let people know what Windows is doing and inform the lesser techies among us here. You’re always respectful to others when giving out your advice as well which is a huge plus, too. Well deserved, Brian!

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MrBrian

Yeah, I remember reading that post before now that you mention it. I guess that’s two people in the camp that have personally seen it happen in W7.

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It’s getting to where I think it’ll be easier to just shut down WU for good and join Group W, if this is how things are going to go from now on.

Beware: I had my WU service disabled in Services and before that, it was set to never check for updates and yet, yesterday I saw that WU had re-enabled itself. It changed it’s setting from disabled to Automatic (Delayed) and had started itself and I never use that “Delayed” setting ever for anything. It doesn’t appear to have installed anything and I’m not sure what could have triggered it, but it happened. Make sure you keep checking on it every now and then.

I can’t wait to get on Linux. I am still reading up on Unix/Linux stuff and doing preparation-oriented research and I will buy a fourth HDD so I can run Linux on it’s own drive and VM Win7 on the same drive by restoring the Win7 backup image straight into the VM, but hopefully I won’t need it much in short order. It’s amazing how anyone continues to sing MS’s praises in any way at this point. I never thought I’d be so passionately wanting to get off Windows now. Only a few months ago, I was a loyal MS customer that didn’t think twice about trusting them unconditionally with my PC and data. My how things change quickly sometimes.

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walker

“The telemetry stuff is 99% hype or FUD and if not desired, can be easily avoided and this was confirmed many times by @mrbrian‘s research and results published here.”

It’s hype and FUD based on what evidence? Do you know exactly what is being collected and therefore know for sure that people shouldn’t be concerned?

Microsoft themselves have admitted to collecting data on the following things:

– how many hours people spend using Windows 10 every month

– how many minutes people spend using Edge a month

– how many questions are asked of Cortana

– how many Bing search queries per W10 device vs prior Windows versions

– how many photos are viewed within W10 photo app

– how many hours people spend gaming on Win10

– how many hours Xbox users spend streaming through W10 PCs

It seems to me people have valid reasons to at least question MS’s actions and, if they so choose, not trust them with such privileges and stop them from having access to personal information about what you do on your PC. The malware-style GWX campaign started all this. It’s their own fault.

“My best advice is this: Listen to others’ input, especially their reports about their own actual experiences, but make your own decisions based on your knowledge. Beware of others trying to tell you what to do.”

From Noel, this is correct and it also includes Microsoft; it does not exclude them. It also includes forcing people to do things they don’t want to do in addition to being wary of those trying to tell you what to do.

I’ve used “unsupported configurations” for years now with no issue and used XP past the EOL date for almost three years. Matter of fact, I was a naive group A user until I was about to switch to Windows 7 and found out what they did with GWX malware. I then got a Windows 7 gaming rig only to find the Windows Update didn’t work which is how I found Woody in the first place for KB3153199. Fixed that, then installed updates only to have two of them corrupt Windows Update and not allow further installation of patches (cannot install errors) which I had to (with some help) fix manually which brought me to Woody again and then to these forums. Now, I see bad patches are commonplace; I choose to avoid them and reject Microsoft’s claim over my PC and it’s data mining practices as much as I can. They can’t even be blindly trusted with updates anymore.

I can’t understand the idea that people should just blindly submit to MS even after the events of the last year or so.

[Edited by Woody. Please note – these are very valid concerns, as are ch100’s. Personal affrontery only detracts from the argument.]

I have Microsoft DS disabled, don’t have a printer so all that is disabled and I have port 445 (among others) blocked several times over. A good tool to do this for those that aren’t technically inclined is Windows Worms Doors Cleaner 1.4.1. It doesn’t install anything, it’s just one file that runs and will allow you to easily close the following ports manually: 135, 137-139 and 445. It will also disable UPNP and SSDP services and will close the Messenger exploit if applicable (mine is disabled in services already). Handy little program to close off these ports for you if you so desire.

Always love your posts, Noel. I read through most of the posts on here and yours are definitely among the most refreshing to read. No bias, no cheerleading, just the truth. It’s hard to believe that there are still so many loyal M$ cheerleaders around here who seem to think M$ can do no wrong and all they do is right and no one should ever alter or complain about anything they do. It boggles the mind and I’m just glad there are more than enough sensible people here to offset them.

I will be switching to Zorin OS 12 Ultimate very soon and will likely post my experiences switching over. I will be running Win7 in a VM, though. I’ll be doing a lot of stuff I’ve never done before and it’s exciting. Hopefully, it will convince others to take the plunge. I’ve done a lot of research on how to install my programs on Ubuntu and Wine seems to be MUCH better than it used to be. Unix doesn’t look too hard though it does seem a bit pretentious and unnecessarily confusing with some of the commands when compared to DOS.

Anyway, I’ve decided to make the switch to Linux because I really just can’t trust MS anymore and cannot look the other way with all this garbage they are doing. It’s even more disturbing to me that there are still loads of MS supporters (cheerleaders) who praise MS no matter what they do even in these times; THAT is scary. As for me, it’s time to make the leap. I’ll be doing that thread when I get around to doing the actual leaping soon. Microsoft just can’t be trusted anymore and that’s sad.

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HiFlyer, Noel Carboni, Bill C., Elly

Your testing above was interesting and only validates what I already found to be true by using it for all these years; it improves system performance.

With regards to the registry, I have used CCleaner to clean out my registry for YEARS and have never done backups of the registry. Reckless perhaps, but I’ve never had an issue (ever, not once in all my years with Windows have I ever had a registry corruption or anything like that) not even when the program was way back in the 1.x versions of the software. I will say that I never allow it to fix issues automatically and prefer to go through each entry and delete it manually so I know exactly what I’m deleting. If I don’t know what something is, I don’t do anything to it though I have never had that problem.

Recently, the only things it found were related to MKVToolNix which is just a video editor I was messing around with. It left behind about a dozen registry keys that were now useless, so the question then becomes is this supposed to happen? Is uninstalled software supposed to leave all kinds of garbage in the registry and if not, why shouldn’t it be removed? I will say that those who aren’t irresponsible about installing third party software willy-nilly probably have nothing to worry about over the long run, but there’s still going to be garbage in the registry that shouldn’t be there at all.

When I used XP and had just found out about CCleaner in my search to find an easier way to clean out all the temp files on my PC which I kept up with pretty well, I ran it for the first time on the registry and it found a LOT of stuff in there. My PC was old and slow (no malware or adware though) which led me to try it and after the first reboot, my PC booted faster and ran smoother in every aspect. Ever since then, I’ve kept it around though I don’t clean the registry that much; maybe once every 2-3 months and I never let it delete registry entries on it’s own. It is always done manually so I know what it’s deleting.

Anyway, I don’t foresee any problems with the registry becoming damaged. I’ve been using it since I had that old PC that was going on 10 years old that was in such bad shape that I had to keep the cover off the side because the processor fan stopped working and was waiting as long as possible before I replaced the whole thing a long time ago. If it could make that thing run faster at all, it must be doing something right. So, I’ve been using it through three PC’s now including this one and have had zero problems/all benefit from it’s use.

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AlexEiffel

I use CCleaner to clean out the registry every now and then. I don’t install a whole lot of software, but it’s nice to get all the unneeded stuff out of there. I still use it because I have noticed a difference after running it when I exclusively used XP up until the end of last year. It does seem to keep old systems running faster for longer in my experience and does affect boot time if there’s enough clutter in there. Besides, it can’t be a good thing to have a huge pile of entries in there that are no longer needed for anything. It’s just more unnecessary work the PC has to do.

I actually just ran it this morning and the only things that ever come up are entries left over from uninstalling software. I have never once had the registry become corrupted or damaged in any way from doing this, but as I mentioned, I have certainly noticed speed improvements if there was a lot of stuff to remove. If I’d never noticed any real difference or benefit, I would have stopped using it a long time ago. Clutter is never good on a PC. Oh, and it’s also an outstanding temp file etc.. cleaner. Does an outstanding job. It really is a nice little utility.

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Noel Carboni