
Don't tell people to turn off Windows Update - Nitishshah700
https://www.troyhunt.com/dont-tell-people-to-turn-off-windows-update-just-dont
======
merricksb
Heavily discussed at time of publication 7 months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14340286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14340286)

~~~
hungerstrike
I see a lot of articles that are dupes, but nobody ever says anything. Just
curious - Are we all allowed to talk about something twice or not? Looks like
plenty of people commented on this posting of the story, so I'm left wondering
- what's the intention of this comment?

I don't see anything in the guidelines about duplicates here -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Are moderators responsible for pointing this out or just regular users? Who
eventually marks something as a dupe? Is it in response to a comment like
this?

Is this actually the most highly rated comment or did mods put it there?

(Again - just curious!)

~~~
merricksb
The site policy about reposts/dupes is explained in the FAQs:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

 _If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we kill
reposts as duplicates. If not, a small number of reposts is ok._

And you can see more commentary on it from dang via this search:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dang%20significant%20attention...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=dang%20significant%20attention%20year&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

Any user can point out that a link is a dupe or has been posted before. It's
helpful for others to be able to see earlier discussions (whether or not it
was in the past 12 months and qualifies as a dupe), and evidently moderators
don't always realise something is a repost until a user points it out.

There are no hard and fast rules about what user can or should comment about
stuff like this, but the mods seem to appreciate it any time people are
helpful.

And when a post is marked as dupe, the mods will push the explanatory comment
(either from them or another user who already pointed it out) to the top of
the thread.

------
mschuster91
> Microsoft needs to make Windows Update better.

Microsoft especially needs to do two things:

1) respect the DHCP settings that tethered devices provide (Android provides
option 43/ANDROID_METERED) and NOT suck every data plan dry when on the road
(maybe would be worth to expose an API to applications "the primary internet
connection is metered, do not suck dry", given how huge any kind of update is
these day)

2) give users the fucking option to only subscribe for security updates and
not for the latest "feature" set. I know many people who disabled Windows 7
auto-updates after every other month MS would re-enable the W10 update nagware
screen. This is way beyond hostile behavior, not even Apple goes this low. I
went Apple once Win8 was coming out, definitely not going back until MS either
gets a grip or makes W10 LTSB (the one on a "stable" track e.g. for embedded
devices, without nagware, ads or other bullshit) available for general sale.

oh, and 3) provide a Windows 7 Service Pack 3 and installation media with all
the updates preinstalled. Having to either upgrade by hand or mess around with
ISOs is not exactly customer friendly.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
> not even Apple goes this low.

Apple goes just as low, OS X asks me every day to update to High Sierra and
the option is only "Later" and it can't be swiped away quickly like a normal
notification.

I ran an iPhone 4 for until the iPhone 7 launch, I used to keep it on iOS7
because after iOS4 rendered my 3G unusable I knew to no longer update. Every
single morning it would ask me to update, which I had to carefully dismiss. It
would always download the update filling up my phone to the brim which I would
have to then manually delete. If my phone was full it would give me another
option offering to temporarily delete apps (Which it claimed would have data
restored from iCloud but I knew they would not).

My Mothers iPad auto-updated locking her out of her painting app (Brushes, as
used by David Hockney), I had to use a dodgy 3rd party app to extract her
documents or they'd be lost for good.

At least Microsoft gives you options to downgrade and supports old OSes,
unlike Apple who stops handing out the encryption keys.

~~~
dvfjsdhgfv
They follow their traditional policy. A huge part of Apple's income comes from
hardware. They will use every method to convince you to continue the vicious
upgrade circle, whether you care about new features or not.

A customer that is satisfied with their current setup is a lost customer. So
Apple's only hope is to make sure the battery is as difficult to replace as
possible - because this component is sure to fail sooner or later.

~~~
stordoff
> A customer that is satisfied with their current setup is a lost customer.

A satisfied customer is a customer who will eventually come back (want
something new, lost or damaged device, or just general wear and tear). A
dissatisfied customer will look elsewhere.

~~~
fileeditview
But this satisfied customer probably wouldn't buy every iteration of the
iPhone. I guess that's what the parent was aiming at.

------
bambax
Here's how Windows Update "works" for me: "installs" an untold number of
patches, does an untold number of reboots, then displays that the update
"failed", and undoes all said patches, with the same number of reboots, to
bring my PC back to where it was before the update.

Failures have generic error messages that don't point to any useful
information from the (abysmally bad) MS forums.

So yes, it is disabled. Once every few months, I try again, and usually get
the same result.

I have multiple backups of everything, so hopefully if WannaCry 2 hits, I'll
survive. Or maybe not, but in the meantime, I'm sorry but I can't spend all my
time watching my PC doing updates that don't update anything.

~~~
imtringued
I had the same problem. Don't waste your time like I did by searching for a
solution beyond reinstalling windows. Reinstallation is the only way.

~~~
mehrdadn
Reinstallation is not the only way. I had this problem on a fresh install on a
VM, meaning reinstalling would have resulted in exactly the same problem. The
only way is to remove it and literally install a _newer_ version of Windows,
i.e. one with the offending update already incorporated.

------
foobar1962
A comment at the end of the article:

>Lost productivity to malware = 0hrs. Lost productivity to windows auto
updates = 28 hrs. Sitting here right now losing time and money to an
unauthorized update. I know how to avoid malware on my work laptop.

That's a bit like how some people (who weren't THERE) think the Y2K-thing was
a non-event: they didn't see all the work that got done fixing things before
the big day.

~~~
youdontknowtho
I don't even know what to say to the guy you are replying to. Holy...just wow.
Can you imagine trying to fix something when some of your users are just
unwilling to let you try anything to fix it?

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Can you imagine trying to fix something when some of your users are just
> unwilling to let you try anything to fix it?

That's what happens when you 1) don't understand the problem you're solving,
and push things that aren't appropriate updates through an update mechanism,
and 2) lose user trust.

~~~
youdontknowtho
Do you really think that they don't understand what problem they are solving?

Compare the number of patches vs windows 7 or the number of cases that require
a reboot since XP...they are working towards a better system. That being said,
I really, I'm not trolling here, think that you can't make users happy in this
age. People have been trained by interactions with crap companies, Microsoft
included, to go from 0 to apoplectic immediately just to get a resolution.
There's no benefit to being a happy user, you won't get your issues looked
at...and there are always issues!

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Do you really think that they don't understand what problem they are
> solving?

 _Yes._ Every single person who turns Windows Update off should be considered
a critical bug, and their use case should be understood and fixed. The fact
that they instead _still_ use it to push anti-features means they still don't
understand why people still turn it off.

If they started, _today_ , focusing heavily on getting people to trust Windows
Update again and leave it turned on, they'd have a massive uphill battle. But
I've seen no signs that that's a focus at all.

~~~
youdontknowtho
Wow, man. Talk about back seat driving. Why do you think that they have spent
over a decade refactoring the operating system into smaller components that
can be installed and updated independently? What about peer-to-peer updating
and all of the updates that not only don't require a reboot but don't require
any user intervention whatsoever?

Something that is an "anti-feature" to you is someone else's (in the case of
windows, several million someone else's) every day must have.

~~~
JoshTriplett
That's not what I'm referring to. I'm talking about things like misclassifying
updates as "important" or "critical" rather than "optional" to get them
installed onto more systems, which makes people stop trusting that
distinction.

------
Grollicus
I think a lot of the hate for Windows Update is because of how slow it is.

I have a Windows machine I use for gaming. Its started about once a month and
whenever I turn it on it is almost unusable for the first 30 minutes because
its checking for updates and installing them. This is totally on Microsoft and
their bloated update mechanism.

~~~
hengheng
Windows machines need to be on for about half a day every week. I know no
other device that needs this kind of attention, apart from helicopter gas
turbines that are best kept slowly spinning.

~~~
mehrdadn
Microsoft thinks just because Google can force-feed Chrome updates to users,
it can do that with Windows too. It doesn't seem to comprehend that an OS has
fundamentally more stringent availability and reliability requirements than a
browser.

For example, my Chrome ("stable") right now just renders most new windows as
completely white -- no address bar or anything else. Because Google decided to
force-feed me a buggy version I never wanted or asked for. So I have to open
2-3 new windows before I get a working one. It's painful but I can still do
that, or use Firefox/IE if all else fails. If this kind of crap happened with
the OS I would not be able to use my laptop at all.

~~~
stordoff
It's also a different install process. Chrome doesn't decide to automatically
close itself to apply the updates, and they are applied fast enough that you
usually don't notice unless something changed. Neither can be said for Windows
- the reboots are often unexpected and the install can be lengthy. If
Microsoft got it closer to Chrome (no forced reboots and applied without
triggering a potential long "Configuring Windows Updates" stage), it'd be much
less of an issue IMO.

------
BlackFly
Windows update worked a lot better for me when there was the notification of
updates. I shut my computer down every day, so I would update my computer
every Tuesday when I turned it off.

Now, they have completely broken my work flow for staying up to date. There
are no "active hours", if my computer is on, I am using it. No, I don't want
you downloading updates without my permission, I am actually trying to use my
internet without latency and bandwidth issues.

I understand I am not the majority of users, but it is very clearly the power
users that understand windows update that are creating blog posts on how to
disable windows update, so maybe to avoid the cobra effect Microsoft should
cater to such power users even if the majority of people aren't going to use
those features.

As it is, for me, a more effective work flow would be to disable automatic
updates and just check every Tuesday when I don't actively need my internet or
mind my computer rebooting. The problem is, I am fallible. If only there was
some way to remind me.

------
throwaway13337
Security fails when a large percentage of the your customers think it's too
painful to use.

That's a failing of your software, not the customer.

OSX and Chrome gets it right. It's possible.

~~~
romanovcode
I don't get it. How is updates painful? You do not have to restart your PC
when they show up, just like on MacOS - you can click "Restart Later".

~~~
throwawayReply
Windows is far more painful.

Firstly, it'll keep prompting even if you choose "restart later".

Secondly, unlike most linux environments, it doesn't perform the updates which
take effect next restart, it actually performs the update next restart.

That means if you find yourself needing to restart forgetting you've updated,
you can find yourself suddenly having to wait a very long time before your
computer is usable again.

They often take multiple 'restarts' to apply, typically you might have to wait
the first shutdown, then when it boots back up it'll be "applying updates",
then it'll restart _again_ having done those updates. Occasionally you'll even
get a third restart.

That's compared to 'nix applying the updates but them not having taken effect
until a restart which isn't normally noticeably slower than any other restart.

~~~
youdontknowtho
They actually take a long time because people put them off. Catch 22.

~~~
masklinn
I generally allow rebooting after each update is downloaded. I haven't had any
case where it _did not_ take a long time, and putting off the reboot until
after a second set of updates has downloaded doesn't seem to make it
significantly worse.

------
krylon
> Sometimes, updates will annoy you

Unfortunately, that is an understatement. If you are using a Windows computer
at home, it's one thing. If you are responsible for a company network of 80+
clients, Windows updates (pre Windows-10, at least, I have no experience with
Windows 10, yet) are a little bit like Russian roulette.

It's one thing if an update breaks third-party software; I suspect this
usually means the third-party software did some questionable things begin with
or is just crawling with bugs (I am looking at you, Siemens!).

But if Windows updates break functionality like, say, communication with a
WSUS, or booting properly (I could go on and on and on...), it is my
responsibility to at least do some research how this month's update may affect
my users, instead of blindly installing anything Microsoft throws my way.

I wholeheartedly agree that keeping systems up to date is very important. But
unless Microsoft gets its act together and makes updating as painless as on,
say, Debian or CentOS, I am going to have mixed feelings on the subject.

------
taspeotis
I think it's great that Microsoft are pushing updates but it's slowly wearing
me down. Keep in mind I'm 100% on board with getting security updates out as
broadly as possible as fast as possible.

But for the last two days Windows Update has gone rogue and started gobbling
up CPU. GOG Galaxy has gone nuts as well, I uninstalled it but I can't
uninstall Windows Update. I can't even _stop_ Windows Update, it'll go into
the "Stopping" state but ... no dice.

It's like literally everything is coming for my CPU [1] for updates updates
updates. It's a 6700K so there's 8 threads at 4GHz being used 60%...

I'll probably re-install Windows 10 over the Christmas break and cross my
fingers.

[1] [https://imgur.com/a/8hZXE](https://imgur.com/a/8hZXE) (Windows Update is
_Service Host: Local System (3)_ along with _Update Orchestrator Service_ and
_Remote Access Connection Manager_.

~~~
yummy
I've used W10 since it's release (August 2015) on many devices, and it only
keeps getting worse. There's no way they do this unintentionally. At work I
primarily use Linux, but also have a W10 laptop for testing. I'm used to the
fact that the OS can eat all of your CPU and SSD (50-100% SSD usage for 30min?
WTF is it doing?), you have no idea when it stops and you have no control over
it. Last time I was unable to use the laptop for a good hour. Sometimes
longer.

------
Silhouette
I normally have a lot of time for Troy Hunt, but on this one I'm not sure I
agree with him.

If Windows Update provided only essential updates for security and stability
by default, and if it did so transparently so everyone could see exactly what
was being done and why, and if it did so with minimal interruption to the
user's real work, he would have a decent argument. But none of those things is
the case.

Look at the comments on the article, or here, or on countless other forums
since the Windows 10 fiasco started. Heck, look at Troy's own acknowledgement:

 _I 've had Windows Update make me lose unsaved work. I've had it sitting
there pending while waiting to rush out the door. I've had it install drivers
that caused all manner of problems. I've had it change features so that they
work differently and left me confused. I've had it consume bandwidth, eat up
storage capacity and do any number of unexplainable things to my machines._

I've seen those things too, and more. I've seen unfortunately timed updates
cripple a sales team right before a crucial demo, months in the making, that
was supposed to close a £1M deal... in a small business that closes perhaps
2-3 such deals a year and relies on them to pay everyone's salary. Not much
point worrying about encrypted filesystems if your business went bust already.

The fundamental problem here is that _Microsoft is no longer trustworthy_.
They have demonstrated, repeatedly, that through both negligence and malice
they will break systems that install their updates. The Microsoft that some of
us trusted back when we bought our Windows 7 machines is not the Microsoft of
the past few years, but we're stuck with those machines now, so we have to
find the least risky path forwards taking into account as many potential
problems as we can. It is far from clear to me, on the evidence to date, that
accepting all of Microsoft's updates by default is safer than rejecting all of
them by default.

------
sshagent
Initially Windows 10 felt fresh and nice, combined with all the other 'nice'
things Microsoft have been up to...i was happy. Being able to ssh from windows
cmdline...excellent stuff. But...

...with every stupid update, and after every boot up Windows insists on
settings, programs and games it wants you to have. Should i have to curate my
own powershell script to disable and remove some of the shit that gets forced
on me. I paid for my OS, why do i get to suffer like this. Microsoft please
sort this out, you're pushing me away. You know, looking at the Steam for
Linux game list now, we're getting close to a point where the Gamer in me
might see an opportunity to leave.

------
thijsvandien
I just hate the moving platform that Windows has become. Windows 7 did plenty
of updates already and they could take forever or incidentally break
something, but an installed system would essentially stay the same. As of
Windows 10, anything can happen at any time. You install a system, do nothing
and the next day it has Candy Crush on it. (Yes, you can fiddle with the
registry, but WTF??) New functionality is pushed and with it, default behavior
changes. The most annoying one that comes to mind was default printer
management. From one day to the next, the default printer started changing.
Every time there is one more thing to remember to turn off or work around, but
it won’t be enough, because at a random point in the future, Microsoft will
decide you want it differently. Sometimes they ask—Edge opening to show some
release notes and conveniently using the opportunity to offer to make itself
the standard browser—but not using the standard browser in the first place
already pisses me off and that question is really one too far. Recently a
family member clicked the wrong button, making Firefox disappear, resulting in
a panic call because they “lost” their bookmarks, logins, etc. /rant

There are many improvements since Windows 7 that I can appreciate, but those
practices—together with the increasing privacy violations—are a complete
shame.

------
Grollicus
On the other hand python virtualenvs, npm, docker containers almost never get
updated and people almost religiously fight for the ability to freeze packages
at specific versions.

------
finnthehuman
Well, yeah, obviously a bad idea. But the real question everyone in "security"
should be asking themselves is "if the idea of having better security is such
an easy sell to even the vaguely-clued-in, what have we implemented so poorly
that people still use insecure practices? Or go out of their way to disable
security?"

The article's point here is that no matter how much windows update might suck,
you still need to use it. And that's the problem with security people in
general. It's not like they "think their shit doesn't stink" it's that they
everyone must put up with whatever level of stench because security is just
that important. Which gives them zero incentive to reduce the smell. They'll
probably just blame the developers for fucking up the distribution mechanism
the same way they blame developers for having the temerity to write bugs.

Unfortunately, the impression I get is that "the security community's" answer
is that users do things like disabling windows update because security hasn't
been sanctimonious enough towards the unwashed masses, and we should just get
on with taking away all of end users' control over their systems for their own
good.

------
yellowapple
It continues to amaze me that Windows is so terrible at system updates when
pretty much every Linux distro out there has done it in a more-or-less sane
way since day 1. openSUSE doesn't require sitting at the shutdown and startup
screens for hours when I install a single update. Ubuntu doesn't forcibly
reboot itself if I leave it unattended. CentOS doesn't disguise new "features"
and nagware as critical security updates. Slackware doesn't burn through my
mobile data constantly downloading updates. Even Android seems to do a better
job than Windows, and Windows Update alone has existed for longer than Android
has at all.

If Microsoft knew how to do system updates in a way that wasn't an absolute
fucking pain, then I'd be a lot less tempted to just turn off automatic
updates on Windows.

------
stordoff
If Microsoft et al. want me to leave Windows Update enabled, they either need
to push way less updates (security updates only track) or at least make the
install process faster (which would probably be helped by not pushing new
features). Losing two days of progress on a video encode[0] due to a reboot
when "you aren't using your PC", or pulling out my laptop to do something
time-critical to be greeted with 20 minutes of configuring Windows updates,
means I'm turning it off ("download and notify to install" Group Policy
setting). These are real problems; malware is only a _potential_ problem
(largely mitigated by keeping offline backups).

[0] Fairly ridiculous x265 settings on a laptop CPU, as I'm not keeping the
source files so want to ensure optimal quality.

------
orf
You see a lot of this kind of thing in HN threads as well, (including using
older unmainted/vulnerable browsers), where there is presumably a subset of
users who have very strong feelings about automatic updates and are also blind
to the security implications of disabling them.

Keep your machines and software updated with the latest patches people. Keep
your parents and non technical friends machines updated with the latest
security updates. Don't ever tell them to disable it because your heavily
customized windows 7 setup broke a little bit one time after a huge windows
update.

~~~
Anarch157a
Security patches are a good thing, but reseting privacy settings, reinstalling
Candy Crush Whatever/Cortana/Skype, re-enabling spy/adware, changing the UI
EVERY.DAMN.TIME. is definitelly not good.

There are so much abuse people can take before they start considering the
actual malware a lesser evil than Microsoft's malware-like OS.

My Windows box is running 10 LTSB with wuauserv disabled. I keep zero
important stuff there, most of my gamesaves are synced with cloud servers from
the game's developers (Overwatch and Elite: Dangerous) or from the store
(Steam and GoG), so I can wipe it out any time with no real losses.

The important stuff (taxes, documents, pictures, etc.) are all on a notebook
running Debian that is mostly kept cold.

Speaking on Debian, Microsoft could learn a LOT from them. Specially with
regards to the strict policy of not adding new features to a stable version.

~~~
Feniks
One of the best things about LTSB is cumulative updates. I get 1.5Gb of
security and bug fixes every month or so that quietly installs in the
background. Like it was in Win7. And when its done it just sits there waiting
for me to MANUALLY push the restart system button. Without ever nagging about
it.

Honestly regular Windows is a fucking joke.

~~~
Anarch157a
> I get 1.5Gb of security and bug fixes every month

That's a joke all by itself. Not even a rolling release distro like Debian
Unstable or Arch produce that volume of patches in a whole year...

Windows has two major problems in regards to updates:

1\. It's utter inability to update files that are currently open by programs.
All Unix and Unix-likes can handle deleting/moving/replacing open files
gracefully by keeping a reference to the old file in memory. Windows can't, so
the only way to update the most used DLLs is by rebooting.

2\. It's a monolithic system, with so many cross dependencies, it's almost
impossible to make small, punctual updates of independent packages. Hell, Unix
was 23 years already when Windows NT 3.1 was finally released, MS used to
develop and sell Xenix, yet they learned nothing from those.

It ridiculous how inept they are handling updates. If they ever ask me how to
do it properly, I'd advise them to throw the whole idea of Windows in the
trash and start again from a BSD (or maybe buy Solaris from Oracle). Slap an
improved WINE for partial, best performance compatibility and a full VM for
lower performance, full compatibility. It worked well for Apple while
transitioning from "classic" MacOS to MacOS X, it could work for MS, as long
as they don't screw it up completely.

~~~
orf
> It's a monolithic system

FYI, Windows is anything but a monolith - especially the kernel. It's heavily
built around services and message passing.

Whereas actually Linux _is_ a monolithic kernel (granted, the ecosystem on top
is not so much).

------
dvfjsdhgfv
I actually agree with the person commenting the original article:

> The "security updates" situation reminds me of organized crime's protection
> racket: Either pay us to "protect" you or bad things will happen. In the
> case of automatic "security" updates -- and not just Microsoft's -- we're
> compelled to pay in computers and programs that are corrupted with unwanted
> new behaviors. If you don't accept those, well then your computer will be
> insecure. So "pay up" or else.

------
Grumbledour
The thing I don't understand is the insistent nagging and it's persistence
that a restart NOW is really needed and then often forcing you to restart.

This all worked perfectly on windows 7. It downloaded in the background and
would install whenever I restarted the system myself. No nagging, ever. Of
course, I get why some people might have problems with automatic downloads or
automatic installation on restarts, but I feel it was still worlds apart from
the current windows 10 behavior and a good compromise between staying up to
date and getting annoyed. So why has this actually changed? Why does it need
to nag all the time now and force-restart in the middle of the workday? Who
gains form this?

------
stephengillie
In the newest AWS Workspaces images, Windows Update is disabled. I'm having to
enable it manually on newly-deployed Workspaces. (Probably a bug that will get
reverted on their next refresh.)

------
SAI_Peregrinus
The biggest issue is reboots. They interrupt workflow. They stop the user
using the computer for several minutes: the updates are applied after the
reboot instead of being applied and then switching to the new binaries, the
user has to save all their work manually, the user has to restart their
applications manually, and the reboots often make new updates available
requiring further reboots... Reboots are a DOS attack. Don't DOS attack your
users.

The same goes for "feature" updates that break the existing workflow.

------
betimsl
Tell them to install a better OS.

------
jchw
Having used a Chromebook, I hope someday desktop operating systems can become
as easy to update. All you really ever have to do is restart and things are up
to date. Mostly similar with Android on the Google Pixel phones. Google is
oddly ahead of the curve with making updates really painless.

Of course, inconvenient or not, it's pretty hard to deny that disabling
updates is a stupid proposition.

------
oliwarner
Holy fuck, CNET actually tells people to turn off Windows Update?!

I'm starting to think published tech advice should be treated like legal or
financial advice. If you give out stinkers like this and they turn out to be
violently harmful to its readers, you are liable for it.

Microsoft doesn't get off free —they've been cocking this up consistently— but
turning off WU is antivax level stupidity.

------
sus_007
A Windows Insider Here, and while I'm enjoying the Ubuntu Subsystem on my
machine, I somewhat regret opting in. I hate waiting for hours just for
getting some negligible updates & patches for Windows Defender AV or a
software I don't use like Paint 3D, Mixed Reality Viewer, etc . Still, I like
showing off my fancy terminal to other Windows noobs.

~~~
slfnflctd
I'm pretty happy with dual booting. Restarting the machine into a solid Linux
distro on a modern machine takes maybe 30 seconds (often quicker restarting
back into Windows), and it's nice to get MS out of my face for a while. The
whole subsystem thing always seemed like the worst of both worlds to me.

------
ScottAS
# of times I've lost Valuable data because of malware: 0 # of times I've lost
valuable data because of Windows Update: ~10 # of times malware has made my
computer unbootable: 0 # of times windows update has Made my computer
unbootable: 2

------
nofilter
Last I checked, even if you wanted to, you couldn't turn off Windows Updates.

~~~
kachurovskiy
Windows Update likes to kick in when I'm playing online, making fps drop to
10. Tried all the buttons to make it ask before downloading stuff but it
didn't help. My last punch was disabling the Windows Update service.

~~~
pooper
Please don't disable windows update for gaming. There is a gaming mode (which
really ought to be called normal mode) which should help. The only other
stipulation is you must keep your computer plugged in, turned on, and
connected to the Internet as much as you can so windows can do its thing while
you're not using it.

~~~
bschwindHN
Windows: it's like a small child you have to take care of. They're lucky
gaming is most popular on Windows, otherwise they've got zero going for them.

------
Necromant2005
For those who uses windows primally for gaming in its home protected network,
it's better not to update windows forever, because a new patches and fixes
only make windows slower.

------
pawelkomarnicki
I find the Windows Update in windows10 pretty good :-) Not as good as OS X
update mechanism, but it's miles ahead of what we had in previous Windows :-)

~~~
JensRex
I'm reading this tread and thinking "am I the only person who's not bothered
by Windows Update?" It just does whatever does, and occasionally asks me to
reboot, which I do. And life goes on.

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Feniks
If only Microsoft could separate feature updates from security and bugfixes...
Oh wait they can! They are!

I'm using Enterprise LTSB. Solid as a rock. Windows as a service: they haven't
done anything since 1607 that I want.

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asdsasds
As a Sys admin i can say only F __YO(( very much: \- delay windows update by 2
days \- see what happens \- ohhh no 1% users blue screen 10% auto update on \-
watt for final path \- still blue screen of dead \- wait for new windows path
\- install on 10% more machine do snapshots \- wiat for new pathes \- install
on 10% machines \- ok its now works without issue \- install on 100% PC

