Here's how I distinguish between suspicious updates and ones that are trustworthy:

"Update for Windows 7" = requires research to find out exactly what it does.
"Security Update for Windows 7" = safe, 99.999% of the time; once in a while, these types of updates cause some new problems, but they only patch existing system components.

And the "blurb" is always the same for every update: generic, vague, and never actually says anything useful. For instance, with KB 3112148 that I just got yesterday, if you go and do a google search for it, the top result is this page. Once you scroll down past the push for 10, you see "Install this update to resolve issues in Windows." Wooooow. That's super-descriptive.

But, if you click + Details, and read the KB article, you find out a TON more info.

And FYI.. 3112148 was one that was listed as "Update for Windows 7", which required research. I decided I wasn't going to bother with that one since honestly... I don't care about new time zones/DST rules outside of the US. Just like the other 17mb update that updated the currency symbol for.. Libya. Don't care.

edit: Of course, MS did mention that they plan to give less details about what updates actually do, so there will likely come a time when updates just outright cannot be trusted. For now, they still seem pretty easy to spot (and for now, refer to my color-coded list, version 4 to see which ones to avoid if you want nothing to do with 10).

2990214 isn't required in order to get that switch that prevents OS upgrade though. Group Policies are literally just a more-intuitive front-end for the registry, but only if the rules are already installed.

From MS themselves:

To suppress this offer through the registry, specify the following registry value:
Subkey: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
DWORD value: DisableOSUpgrade = 1

the notification icon can be suppressed through the Windows registry:
Subkey: HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade
DWORD value: ReservationsAllowed = 0

But... as we saw with the big November update for 10 (basically, SP1 even though they won't ever call it a SP), it ignored the previous settings for privacy options (most of which are set in the registry) and put them back to defaults, so there is absolutely no guarantee that some update won't come along that resets those registry keys back to ones that technically allow the upgrade and the nagging about it.

It's easiest altogether to just avoid the entire list of updates to avoid. And even easier than that.. is to just turn updates off entirely, especially if you are basically just a crunch-only rig.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

So...
I think I have a path by setting 7 not to allow the update process to take off.
And now I am told that MS will probably circumvent that anyway.

I am just leaving the Windows Update service disabled until something stops working and I am forced to deal with it further.

Maybe by then there will have been a class action lawsuit successfully litigated that forces MS to see the light of freaking day.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."

Honestly at this point, having had to go strip unwanted services from, and run antibeacon on, my Win7 dev machine, it looks as though Win10 is going to end up easier to deal with bolting down.

Since I have a fair bit of electronics and potentially valuable software development going on, it's amounting to apparent industrial espionage. They really need to not do that...

---

"Living by the wisdom of computer science doesn't sound so bad after all. And unlike most advice, it's backed up by proofs." -- Algorithms to live by: The computer science of human decisions.

Another 'suspicious' update KB3112336. Here's the 'More Information', I'm going to pass on it and assume it is another brick in the Highway to M$ Hell......

"This update enables support for additional upgrade scenarios from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10, and provides a smoother experience when you have to retry an operating system upgrade because of certain failure conditions. This update also improves the ability of Microsoft to monitor the quality of the upgrade experience."

[edit] my bad........already discovered and listed.

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"Sour Grapes make a bitter Whine." <(0)>

Here's how I distinguish between suspicious updates and ones that are trustworthy:

"Update for Windows 7" = requires research to find out exactly what it does.
"Security Update for Windows 7" = safe, 99.999% of the time; once in a while, these types of updates cause some new problems, but they only patch existing system components.

That is exactly my philosophy on it too. And more than half the time, I decide I don't need a recommended one, even if it's not related to forcing you into 10.

---

David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Another 'suspicious' update KB3112336. Here's the 'More Information', I'm going to pass on it and assume it is another brick in the Highway to M$ Hell......

[edit] my bad........already discovered and listed.

Sort of.. I knew of the one for win7, but didn't find out about the KB number for the same update for 8.1 until a few days later. Yes, technically that one has already been mentioned in this thread, but I don't yet have it in my handy list. Next update that gets released, I'll add this one to the list like it should be.

I don't know about anyone else, but I keep that specific post bookmarked so I can easily refer back to it.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

A little off topic, but still at M$ expense........

---

"Sour Grapes make a bitter Whine." <(0)>

Reverted from windows 10 on 4 desktops because of many problems ( mostly because NVIDIA.com GPU drivers were killed and internet access lost). Windows 10 supplied NVIDEA drivers disable SETI GPU use.
Waiting for
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/os2-blue-lion-to-be-the-next-distro-of-the-28-year-old-os/
My most favorite OS, OS/2, to make a comeback to see how it works.
I am not smart enough to get SETI to work with a GPU under LINUX :-(

...as a general rule Nvidia drivers supplied by MS only have the graphics part of the drivers....

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

...as a general rule Nvidia drivers supplied by MS only have the graphics part of the drivers....

It's true. All drivers supplied by MS are just the bare basics for it to function, and doesn't come with all the extras that you actually need/want.

Friend of mine had a laptop with a GTX680 and was just getting drivers from Windows Update and his games kept crashing or being really laggy. I told him to go to nvidia and get the actual driver bundle from there, and it fixed the crashing problem and got a lot more framerate out of it.

Turns out.. a lot of games need the PhysX drivers/framework, and that isn't supplied by Windows Update.

And in this case, neither are the CUDA and OpenCL frameworks.



The problem is... 10 doesn't want you to have any control over anything because "MS knows what's best for you. All hail your overlord." Yes, there are things you can get that are supposed to let you have control over graphics drivers... but it doesn't work half the time, especially if you have multiple GPUs.

I really hope MS changes their mind about being so controlling and actually tries to attract tech-savvy power-users...but I know they won't. *sigh* It's really a shame.. I was really looking forward to the cool stuff of 10...but that lack of control and all the spying... no thanks.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

Welcome to the new world of the duumbed down?

Or at least to the proprietory world of the corporate dumb-you-down?


IT is what we allow it to be....

Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Welcome to the new world of the duumbed down?

Or at least to the proprietory world of the corporate dumb-you-down?


IT is what we allow it to be....

Martin

So you want some third party to support a different third party's hardware and put a warrantee of fitness on it? Facepalm. Talk to legal.

---

I've just been busy for the past 2.5 hours to try to update the driver for the Intel HD Graphics GPU in my mother's Lenovo laptop and given up in disgust.

Windows states that there is a problem with the driver it installed itself and that I should update from the manufacturer.
The manufacturer points to a driver that is a month older than the Windows supplied drivers, but that I cannot install due to a problem with validation.
The Intel driver that I tried cannot install due to it being incompatible with the hardware, because Lenovo has possibly changed the hardware.

Totally removing the driver and then rebooting the system results in the Windows installed driver being put back immediately during or after the reboot. I cannot go back to Windows 8.1 either because the 29 days of trying out have been over (yes, it's not even a month).

So far I truly hate Windows 10, especially the new Start menu, because where is the Search? Not there. Yes, it's there under right-clicking on the Start button, but not on left-clicking. The latest updates had also re-enabled several 10s of the privacy settings.

I've also noticed that the battery of the Lenovo goes down quicker with Windows 10 than it did with 8.1, e.g. I took it off the mains, put it on the table, opened the lid, started it up, put in the password and when the desktop arrived (not even fully loaded yet) it was down to 98% already. After the 2.5 hours of fiddling, it was at 47%.

And then I didn't even start any CPU intensive programs, just Windows windows and menus. They sold this as an entry-level model for students, but that student then shouldn't be going to school all day, or at least have the opportunity to plug-in wherever they sit, because before you know it the battery's dead. They shouldn't travel too far on a train/bus either.

In comparison, I took my smart phone off the mains at 7 AM, I've been using it for quite a couple of things since then and the Radio Caroline app has been streaming music to me all day since 8 AM, but the battery of my phone is at 86% full. (It's 14:29 now)

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Is it just me or is Win10 slower than Win7? On my GTX970 it takes around 5 mins longer doing APs on W10 than on W7, I've installed the latest Nvidia drivers.

Other than this I'm very happy with Win 10 :)

For the Intel driver: have you looked to see if any of the manual install options are available under Windows 10? I had several failures with Intel's automated installer (which falsely claimed the hardware wasn't compatible) but successes with either the setup program extracted from the .zip download (same version), or by following the manual instructions in the ReadMe files (also extracted from the zip).

Yes, have tried all those. Problem there is though that through the FAQ on it, there isn't a real manual driver for Windows 10 available, only for Windows 7/8/8.1, but even with the 8.1 driver it balked, saying validate trouble.

Now, if only I could figure out why the Windows installed driver is having problems, but it doesn't really say what's wrong with it either. And I don't see anything wrong with it, it's not as if I am setting that thing up for BOINC use. Brrr, rather not, the days of using a Celeron to crunch are long past for me. :)
(although it would be interesting to see if that Intel HD can do OpenCL, but then I truly need different drivers).

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and then M$ do this...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/15/microsoft_sneaky_about_pushing_windows_10/

Sooo glad I went Linux 3 years ago! I have to support win 10 for work and frankly it's a pain in the arse - even a Mac has to be better...

and then M$ do this...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/15/microsoft_sneaky_about_pushing_windows_10/

Sooo glad I went Linux 3 years ago! I have to support win 10 for work and frankly it's a pain in the arse - even a Mac has to be better...

Greetings,

From Micro$oft's blog:

"Windows Update is the trusted, logical location for our most important updates, and adding Windows 10 here is another way we will make it easy for you to find your upgrade. Before the upgrade changes the OS of your device, you will be clearly prompted to choose to continue."

Yeah right! A choice to continue but NOT a choice to back out and not accept the upgrade, unless you know to click the red "X". But then, Micro$oft can disable the red "X" and not allow the window to be killed. Sneaky little bastards. :|

Keep on BOINCing...! :)

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

I'm updating the list. I just did a clean 8.1 install on a laptop today and found a bunch of the 8.1 version of a lot of the ones I only knew about for 7. So.. time to add them to the list.

"updates to avoid list", version 5:

(Red for 8.1, Blue for 7, Green for either/both):

KB 2952664 - Labeled a compatibility upgrade for upgrading Windows 7, its purpose is to "make improvements to the current operating system in order to ease the upgrade experience to the latest version of Windows".
KB 2957026 - This update makes feature changes and improvements to the Windows 8.1 Upgrade notification in Windows 8 or Windows RT. After you install this update, the upgrade will be more discoverable and faster.
KB 2976978 - A compatibility update for Windows 8.1 and Windows 8 which "performs diagnostics on the Windows system [..] to determine whether compatibility issues may be encountered when the latest Windows operating system is installed.
KB 2977759 - This update performs diagnostics on the Windows systems that participate in the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program. These diagnostics help determine whether compatibility issues may be encountered when the latest Windows operating system is installed. This update will help Microsoft and its partners ensure compatibility for customers who want to install the latest Windows operating system.
KB 2990214 - Does the same as KB 3044374 but on Windows 7.
KB 3021917 - Does the same as KB 2976978 but on Windows 7.
KB 3022345 - Update to enable the Diagnostics Tracking Service in Windows (Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1)
KB 3035583 - This update installs the "Get Windows 10" notification on Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8.1
KB 3044374 - This update for Windows 8.1 enables systems to upgrade from the current operating system to a later version of Windows.
KB 3050265 - This update makes improvements to the Update client to increase scanning speed, and to improve the upgrade to later versions of Windows. Also provides the registry keys to disable upgrading to 10.
KB 3050267 - Same as KB3050265 but for Windows 8.1.
KB 3065987 - This article describes an update that contains some improvements to Windows Update Client in Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (note: some google results suggest this may be part of the win 10 nagware upgrade, but it hasn't been confirmed)
KB 3065988 - Same as KB3065987, but for Windows 8.1.
KB 3068708 - This update introduces the Diagnostics and Telemetry tracking service to existing devices.
KB 3075249 - This update adds telemetry points to the User Account Control (UAC) feature to collect information on elevations that come from low integrity levels.
KB 3075851 - This article describes an update that contains some improvements to Windows Update Client in Windows 7 and also resolves an issue in which certain Windows Update operations fail when you install (KB3065987) on Windows 7 Embedded editions.
KB 3075853 - Same as KB3075851, but for Windows 8.1.
KB 3081954 - This update ensures users can continue using Work Folders when upgrading from Windows 7 to 10. Also adds telemetry points to Work Folders for Asimov telemetry pipeline.
KB 3080149 - This package updates the Diagnostics and Telemetry tracking service to existing devices.
KB 3083324 - Windows Update Client for Windows 7 - August 2015.
KB 3083325 - Windows Update Client for Windows 8.1 - August 2015.
KB 3083710 - New Update Client for Windows 7. No further details about it. (It is suspected this new client downloads other updates in this list in the background without any consent or notice of doing so.)
KB 3083711 - New Update Client for Windows 8.1. No further details about it. (It is suspected this new client downloads other updates in this list in the background without any consent or notice of doing so.)
KB 3102810 - Improvements to the New Update Client provided by KB3083710
KB 3102812 - Improvements to the New Update Client provided by KB3083711
KB 3112343 - Improves the Update Client when upgrading from 7 to 10 and provides MS with feedback on how smooth the process was.
KB 3112336 - Improves the Update Client when upgrading from 8.1 to 10 and provides MS with feedback on how smooth the process was.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)