Microsoft Abandons Windows 10’s Constant Forced Updates | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Abandons Windows 10’s Constant Forced Updates

howtogeek.com

38 pointsel_duderino19 comments

If this is true, it represents the single biggest olive branch Microsoft can send to Windows 7 diehards like myself short of just continuing to develop Windows 7 until I die.

I must grudgingly admit I'm still very suspicious of W10 but with this, if it turns out to be true, will cause me to take another hard look at my decision to jump to Lubuntu instead of W10 shenanigans.

Edit: Wait a sec, this is just the update pause not update refusal being extended to Windows 10 Home users...after a while they do force you to update anyways. Nevermind then.

I work in factory automation, half of the machines there are still on WinXP. The idea to switch a system that auto-updates, sending a whole production facility into a full stop is laughable. That legacy rope your most loyal customers where depending on microsoft, its now strangling your very movement.

In the long run, i can some compatability layer beeing developed, so legacy customers can cut out microsoft. Its just not a reliable partner anymore.

> In the long run, i can some compatability layer beeing developed, so legacy customers can cut out microsoft.

Like Wine or Crossover (~= Wine with support)?

Generally the right approach to this in the enterprise is to use WSUS, and then using GPO to prevent Windows from trying to get updates from the Internet, limiting it only to the updates that are approved in WSUS.

Separately I'd have to ask why if your production facility is dependent on these machines that they would be Internet-connected in the first place.

Because customers do not listen to your instructions, and when something is broken, will take a thrown lan-cable and a router, and mess it up more.

>Separately I'd have to ask why if your production facility is dependent on these machines that they would be Internet-connected in the first place.

Anecdotally, I did some for-cash IT work at a trophy engraving store about a decade ago. Small shop, maybe 7 employees, they had about 6 different cnc machines of varying sizes but only one of each type.

One of the machines was a vinyl cutter that was about 4mx4m, being run by a windows 98 computer. Not windows 98 SE, the original. The manufacturer of the table had gone broke some time between the two and never released an updated driver, and it seemed it was not possible to bring the driver forwards to 98 SE, let alone xp or 7.

A new machine would have cost them something like $50,000, basically 1-1.5 employees, so they just stuck with windows 98. That machine had internet connectivity too because it was just plugged into the company network (of like 7 computers) so that it could get the job files from a shared drive, and since the company network provided internet, it had internet.

I guess the point is these companies don't get paid to keep stuff up to date or to be secure, they get paid to make trophies or whatever. They look on cyber attacks in largely the same way they look on someone driving a truck through their front wall. It might happen, their margin isn't good enough for them to spend money on preventative measures for such a specific problem, and they don't know anyone it's happened to anyway.

There are unfortunately plenty of cases (and raging threads on various forums) of people doing this, and finding that eventually Windows updates itself anyway. Part of the problem was the new "Dual Scan" GPO which defaulted the way you didn't want it, part of the problem is that Windows 10 Professional doesn't behave like Enterprise (and people are used to "Professional" being suitable for business historically). There are of course options and workarounds but people only tend to get burned once by this sort of thing.

On factory automation machines you should be using LTSC, not Windows 10 Home.

Should. Lots of shoulds there, honest to god, im not choosing that system. I warn them, that warning gets acknowledged, and then the "system" we always use is used. Which can be anything.

For that kind of environment Microsoft provides embedded versions of Windows.

As much as I hate this behavior in most versions of W10, I believe a production facility should be running the LTSC version which certainly supports full manual updates.

install LTSC

It was one of the largest motivating factors when switching of windows to linux/mac.

That lack of control where the computer randomly decides to restart when gaming during odd hours.

Set network on metered mode, but computer decides to reboot while you are still inputing with mouse, and keyboard is so passive aggressive.

All for some random update that is just so important.

The worst part is even if you aren't there - it doesn't do all the work while you are away. It intentionally saves some work for when you log in so that you are forced to watch all the great work its doing instead of what you actually wanted. Its extra fun on those big updates where this part can take over a half hour.

The effusive status messages when it does this really adds to the "watch all the great work it's doing" effect.

"Hi ... We've got some updates for your PC ... It should only take a few minutes ... We should be done with your PC really quick ..."

I always found "Your data is right where you left it" mildly threatening. Like is there a reason it wouldn't still be there? Should I be worried?

I mean, there was that one time: https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/10/06/microsof...

My Win10 PC has been pestering me about the latest feature update(s) for months now but they repeatedly fail because of some generic driver error, which I briefly tried troubleshooting in vain. So every now and then I get to watch my PC rollback yet another failed update.

It should not have taken them this long to figure out that forced updates are not something most users want.

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