Newsletter Archives

• Windows 10 nag for Windows 7 makes an appearance

  Posted on March 21, 2019 at 08:49 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  

  Lawrence Abrams at BleepingComputer has the full story.

  As I warned in Computerworld yesterday, the currently optional (but soon to be pushed) patch KB 4493132 carries with it the lovely retro payload shown above.

  Per Abrams, KB 4493132 “installs an executable that will be run daily on Windows.” The executable is sipnotify.exe and it’ll show the notifications starting on April 18.  sipnotify.exe is triggered by two new scheduled tasks. There’s a hook so Microsoft can “modify the message and templates shown at a later date.”

  See the BleepingComputer report for full details.

  Will the “Do not remind me again” checkbox work? My guess is that MS will come up with some mealy-mouthed way to override it, probably by altering the notification at some point…. “You said don’t remind you with that notification, but this is an all new, improved notification and our new machine learning routines said that you would really want it…”

  Somebody remind me of the definition of a Potentially Unwanted Program.

  UPDATE: I’m getting notes from various people — including JR Raphael, via Gregg Keizer (Hi, JR, Gregg!) — that KB 4493132 now appears as checked and Important in Windows Update, at least on some machines. @abbodi86 now notes that the nagware payload won’t be offered to Professional, Enterprise and Embedded editions of Win7.

  Windows News KB 4493132, Seven Semper Fi

• Microsoft issues KB4493132 Windows 7 SP1 support notification

  Posted on March 20, 2019 at 04:54 CDT by PKCano • Comment in the Forums

  For those of you wondering how you will get the nag for Windows 7 EOL, Microsoft has released KB4493132 on March 19, 2019.

  @Cybertooth asks

  Windows Update is offering my Windows 7 box a patch released yesterday, KB4493132:
  Does anybody know anything about this update? A search here at Woody’s showed no results. Even a Web search via DuckDuckGo turned up nothing.

  KB4493132 is available through Windows Update if you want notifications during the next year that Windows 7 will reach end of support on January 14, 2020.

  After 10 years of servicing, January 14, 2020, is the last day Microsoft will offer security updates for computers running Windows 7 SP1. This update enables reminders about Windows 7 end of support. More information about Windows 7 end of support can be found here.

  This update is available through Windows Update. If automatic updates are enabled, this update will be downloaded and installed automatically. For more information about how to turn on automatic updating, see Windows Update: FAQ.

  Hiding this patch is suggested for those of you who don’t want multiple reminders during the next year.

  Details (which are few) in Computerworld. Seven Semper Fi!

  Windows News, Windows Patches/Security KB 4493132, Win 7 EOL notification, Win7, Win7 EOL