Comments Locked

34 Comments

Back to Article

  • barleyguy - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    "but Windows 10 Home has only one way to prevent updates from getting downloaded"

    Can't you also just disable the Windows Update service in services? It seems like that would work better with less side effects. (I'm actually planning to do that on my Windows 10 laptop.)
  • ganeshts - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    Yes, looks like that is also a possible option. I have updated the piece with a link to that.
  • blaktron - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    You would be MUCH better off using a firewall rule to block it from checking. Turning off the service can have other effects compared to just turning off updates on Windows 8.

    Basically you need the same solution for both platforms or the data is effectively meaningless.
  • coolhardware - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    Seems like a reasonable solution :-)
  • Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    On my crappy windows tablet, I had disabled windows update service for several months. When I renabled it, I had 80 updates. It got caught in an endless update-crash-restart loop and that was basically the end of that pos. Microsoft garbage at its finest.
  • Swiftnc - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    Likely the virus/rootkit you got because you disabled updates that is interfering with the update process once you enabled it again.
  • barleyguy - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    Stopping windows update service does not prevent security updates on Windows 10. They come in through a different mechanism. (According to the Windows 10 review on this site.)
  • Samus - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    I agree with Microsofts' update model for Windows 10. For the most part, Home users that have historically disabled/not installed updates to Windows were the most vulnerable and infection-prone. Why would your everyday user NOT want Windows updates?

    It's hilarious to say you don't want (free) ongoing product improvements. Very few updates over the last decade have caused problems for end-users. Risky updates are almost always categorized as Optional (such as CPU microcode updates or modifications to how Windows interacts with certain software or drivers) and these are not installed unless you go out of your way to specify them.
  • Steko - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    So I disabled auto-updates in W8 for several years because they got rid of the feature that let you delay reboots indefinitely. So instead W8 would just automatically reboot with one 15 min notice which I found to be 100% unacceptable for a machine I primarily own for coop gaming. Maybe they've fixed it since then but I don't care I manually update once a week and if I get owned because of this so be it.
  • inighthawki - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    I would hardly call it "one 15 minute notice" - They give you three days and it tells you every day how many days you have before that (at least it has a mention of it on the login screen, but I swore it also told you at the desktop at least once a day in advance as well).

    That said - I do not disagree with your reaction. I too would just set the updates to "Notify but don't install" and then do it at my convenience and reboot immediately when I had the chance.
  • Nexing - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link

    "OWNED", that's the precise word for what has happened with W10.
    We've been owned by MS.
    Thank you Steko.
  • Bateluer - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    "It's hilarious to say you don't want (free) ongoing product improvements."

    We want continual improvements. We just don't want them forced installed without approvals and changelogs.
  • Jorsher - Monday, October 12, 2015 - link

    I'm sure my case is a "special" case, but I work in Afghanistan. My options are 1) free internet (a luxury) with a 2gb/week cap 2) paid mobile data

    I should have checked, but didn't realize Windows was updating. It blew through my cap in an hour or two. My only complaint was that it didn't give me any indication that updates were being downloaded, and that I can't set Ethernet as a metered connection.
  • eddman - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    Something must had been wrong with the installation; perhaps a virus or some other program messed up the OS files or registry settings; or you got really unlucky with the timing and got one of those rare bad updates which put the tablet in the loop.

    I've installed windows 7 and 8.1, plus office, plus the more than 100 updates waiting in the list, many times and haven't had such an issue so far.
  • Michael Bay - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    I reinstalled from original release media a lot, and it means getting around 200 updates. Not a single problem, aside from waiting for an hour or so.
    Admittedly, it was usually a clean system I`ve installed to.

    But it doesn`t matter, as the OP was tasked by his herder with slamming MS, not finding a solution for a problem.
  • r3loaded - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    Maybe you shouldn't disable Windows Update in future.
  • Alexvrb - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    Why in the world do people disable updates? Does your PC get used 24/7 for mission critical purposes? If so, don't use a non-server version. If not, just let it install updates at night or something when you don't need to use it.
  • babadivad - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    Personally, I disable auto-updates so I can see what and what's not being updated. I like to look at the list of available updates and choose the ones I want.
  • Samus - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    But at least you DO go in and do them. Almost nobody does if they are disabled. And that's the problem, it creates an environment on the internet akin to vaccinations\heard immunity. The more vulnerable PC's out there, the more vulnerable the general population is to infection, DDoS, etc.

    I bet a fine beer that the same assholes that don't vaccinate their kids are the same people who don't install Windows updates. LOL.
  • Nexing - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link

    I believe the same people that force market their products, OWNing their customers on progressive encircled environments are quite similar to people who tend to distance from others, people who tend not to look others in the eyes, less share a smile, and often treat people as assholes...
  • rtho782 - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    I have a personal PC at work I browse the internet on and play games on. The connection is unmetered but it's 1mbit on a good day and I share it with 3 other guys.

    I disabled Windows updates because I'm behind two nat devices anyway, the PC has nothing of value on, and when one of the PCs connected decides to do updates (there is still no peer to peer WU system for a small private LAN that I'm aware of) it makes the connection utterly unusable.

    Keeping Steam and GPU drivers updated is enough drama as it is!
  • ZeDestructor - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    Funny you mention peer to perr updating.. Windows 10 adds that as part of it's update process, and unlike the FUD being posted by people about it using your data, it has an option to only share updates across the LAN (which IMO should have been the default)
  • Solandri - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    I disable it because I've lost a couple hours of work before when the computer updated and rebooted by itself, without giving me a chance to save my work. Granted this was in the XP days and I get the impression Microsoft now gives you a lot more warning and options to defer updating. But once bitten, twice shy.

    I also had an incident where I needed to get a time-critical email sent ASAP while on the road. This was before smartphones so I tethered my laptop to my phone, then spent the next 15 minutes trying to get that email sent because Windows immediately saturated the entire 30 kbps bandwidth trying to download an update.

    Updates now go through when they're convenient for me, not whenever Windows Update feels like it.
  • jamyryals - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    Interesting issue. You guys should post more stuff like this. I'm sure you run into odd-ball things like this pretty often between all the editors.
  • setzer - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    Ganesh, for testing it's more useful to disable the Windows task scheduler itself. It solves the windows update problem as well as idle tasks.
    You will need sysinternals psexec.
    Then run psexec -s -I services.mmc from an elevated command prompt and stop the task scheduler service.
  • DarkXale - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    Windows RT includes the same API to detect metered networks that Windows Phone (Android / iOS) apps have. When you enabled the 'Metered' setting - you were doing the equivalent of telling a Phone that it was using 3G/4G. Netflix detected it and adjusted by reducing the stream quality.

    Basically, issue caused by using a setting in a non-intended manner.

    It does appear Netflix doesn't handle it ideally though (Shouldn't crash, and really it should inform you why the higher quality options are not used or disabled)
  • Gigaplex - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    "When you enabled the 'Metered' setting - you were doing the equivalent of telling a Phone that it was using 3G/4G. Netflix detected it and adjusted by reducing the stream quality."

    Except all you're really doing is telling that it's a metered connection. Netflix shouldn't be assuming that it's a 3G/4G connection and reducing stream quality without any way to override that decision. The purpose of the metered connection setting is to tell the OS that the user may be charged for the data usage, so the app should use it wisely. If the user explicitly wants high quality streams on a metered connection, hey, it's their money and Netflix should allow it.
  • ZeDestructor - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    Common case vs all applicable cases. One is much, much more common, and the app optimized for that (in a rather poor way, I must admit...).
  • sorten - Friday, October 9, 2015 - link

    Imagine that; an app that honors the system settings ;)
  • JStellato - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link

    I wrote a program that just disables and enables updates at will. You cannot just disable the Windows Update Service, because they got clever and also added remediation in the task scheduler under microsoft and windows updates, so those have to be disabled, as well as bits service. I block them with the hosts file just to be safe.

    http://jjstellato.bigcartel.com/product/windows-10...
  • Gigaplex - Saturday, October 10, 2015 - link

    BITS is used for more than just Windows Updates.
  • Yaina - Saturday, July 17, 2021 - link

    On my crappy windows tablet, I had disabled windows update service for several months. When I renabled it, I had 80 updates.
    https://divyanet.com/netflix-mod-apk/
  • Richard42 - Friday, September 24, 2021 - link

    Hey, thank you a lot for sharing this article with us. I can’t say how grateful we are to read this. Also, I would love to share it with my friends and family, who are interested. I hope you will publish such articles in the future as well. It’s so helpful. Goodbye!

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now