Windows Update WTFs


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    For a starter:

    Because unexpected update restarts are the devil's least favorite step-child's least favorite toy, I have of course used gpedit to tell Windows not to download and install without permission:
    0_1495844630599_18409b76-3d54-4e1b-84e0-ce5f213a2d70-image.png

    Except today I noticed this in Windows Update:
    0_1495844707275_acfe24f5-7af5-40cb-a419-f8ea5f624a46-image.png

    Note the difference:

    • gpedit:

    When Windows finds updates that apply to this computer, users will be notified that updates are ready to be downloaded. After going to Windows Update, users can download and install any available updates.

    • Windows Update:

    We'll ask you to download updates, except when updates are required to keep Windows running smoothly. In that case, we'll automatically download those updates.

    :wtf: 🤦 :headdesk:

    It's like they want users to turn off Windows Update entirely.



  • @Dreikin Sounds like the gpedit settings haven't been updated for the new update system...


  • :belt_onion:

    @Dreikin
    Windows 10: Sit down and shut up, it's not your computer any more®


  • FoxDev

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    It's like they want users to turn off Windows Update entirely.

    you realize that if you stopped doing that sort of shit they'd stop fighting you.

    they want you to have an up to date operating system so you are as protected as possible from malware.

    Just set active hours that make sense for you and let the necessary for your security updates to happen.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @accalia said in Windows Update WTFs:

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    It's like they want users to turn off Windows Update entirely.

    you realize that if you stopped doing that sort of shit they'd stop fighting you.

    they want you to have an up to date operating system so you are as protected as possible from malware.

    Just set active hours that make sense for you and let the necessary for your security updates to happen.

    No. There aren't any active hours that make sense because I tend to have long running tasks that I don't want interrupted. I update when I can - at current rates that's several times a month - but I really can't let them decide because they keep doing it at inconvenient moments. It'd be a different matter if most updates didn't require a reboot, or even if I could tell it "auto install any updates that don't require a reboot, but let me decide for ones that require a reboot".


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @accalia said in Windows Update WTFs:

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    It's like they want users to turn off Windows Update entirely.

    you realize that if you stopped doing that sort of shit they'd stop fighting you.

    they want you to have an up to date operating system so you are as protected as possible from malware.

    Just set active hours that make sense for you and let the necessary for your security updates to happen.

    Also, there's not a setting in gpedit for automatically installing security updates only. It's everything or nothing. The correct solution for that isn't changing the meaning of the one option, it's adding a new one.


  • FoxDev

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    I tend to have long running take that I don't want interrupted

    so you want a server OS then.

    So use that, stop trying to fight consumer Windows updates.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @accalia said in Windows Update WTFs:

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    I tend to have long running take that I don't want interrupted

    so you want a server OS then.

    So use that, stop trying to fight consumer Windows updates.

    No, I don't. Consumers do occasionally have stuff they don't want interrrupted. Like media library transcoding.

    ETA: Or long-running strategy games.


  • FoxDev

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    media library transcoding

    Is something I'd farm off to a Linux box somewhere so my PC isn't occupied with it.

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Or long-running strategy games

    I can't imagine spending more than four or five hours in a single session, a timespan that easily fits inside Active Hours.



  • @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    There aren't any active hours that make sense because I tend to have long running take that I don't want interrupted.

    Well we wouldn't want to interrupt your "take".

    If it's a server, then download a server OS. (Or rent one from someone, lots of options.) You're using a consumer desktop system, so suck it up and stop whining.

    Or fix your "take" so it's properly implemented as something like a Windows Service that can recover from being interrupted.



  • I'm only seeing the downloading part. Does it also install those updates automatically and force you to reboot?

    If not this is a case of storm in a teacup. Unless your disk space is living under serious constraints.



  • @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Like media library transcoding.

    How slow is your computer? It ought to be able to do this in close-to-real time. It's also a once-and-done task, unless you're Megapirate McStealsALot.

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    ETA: Or long-running strategy games.

    I've been thinking about this chess move for 82 hours, but then my computer rebooted! If ONLY video games had a "save" feature!


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Rhywden said in Windows Update WTFs:

    I'm only seeing the dowloading part. Does it also install those updates automatically?

    If not this is a case of storm in a teacup. Unless your disk space is living under serious constraints.

    Dunno. The core :wtf: was just the different descriptions, with the last sentence being mere hyperbole.



  • @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Dunno. The core :wtf: was just the different descriptions, with the last sentence being mere hyperbole.

    Then I don't see the big issue.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Rhywden said in Windows Update WTFs:

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Dunno. The core :wtf: was just the different descriptions, with the last sentence being mere hyperbole.

    Then I don't see the big issue.

    There isn't one! Well, unless you're an admin for a bunch of computers and didn't realize that exception existed. But I'm not, so 🤷 .


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @RaceProUK said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Is something I'd farm off to a Linux box somewhere so my PC isn't occupied with it.

    Don't have one of those right now.

    @RaceProUK said in Windows Update WTFs:

    I can't imagine spending more than four or five hours in a single session, a timespan that easily fits inside Active Hours.

    Not every one is the same. I, for example, could completely fit that within my "active hours" for the weekend, which would be outside the active hours for the work week. I'd rather not have the computer reboot in the middle of a game because I got up to grab a snack.

    /me checks

    Oh hey! They updated active hours to a max of 18 now! That I can deal with. 12 was too short.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    If it's a server, then download a server OS

    Not a server.

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Or rent one from someone, lots of options.

    Not enough money nor bandwidth for that currently. (Maybe soon though - it's going to cost us about $750 for them to extend a high speed line (with data cap :sadface: ) out here, but then I might be able to get up to 100Mbps.)


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    How slow is your computer? It ought to be able to do this in close-to-real time.

    Currently an i7-2600. A Ryzen 7 real soon now.

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    It's also a once-and-done task

    I wish. My quality setting is high and causing me space pressure on my phone. Since I stupidly bought a phone without expandable memory, that means I either need to delete stuff or re-transcode to a lower bitrate. Or buy a new phone, but that costs money I don't have and retranscoding is more convenient.



  • @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Not a server.

    If it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. If you're doing a server workload, it's a server.

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Currently an i7-2600. A Ryzen 7 real soon now.

    If your i7 supports Quick Sync, and your video transcoding software uses it, you'd be a fool to switch to an AMD CPU. Because it's mega-fast at the video encoding stuffs.

    Then again, if you have a NVidia card and are using NVENC, that's about as fast. Plus your i7 might be too old to have Quick Sync, I dunno, I'm too lazy to look that shit up.

    The real point is: you're a fool to turn off automatic updates. You're not just hurting yourself, you're hurting all the other random people your computer's going to hurl exploits at after it's pwned. If automatic updates are incompatible with what you're doing, you need to change the "what you're doing" part. It's not something you can compromise on.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    More importantly, the same update is still stuck at 0% downloaded. This happened to me a week or two ago as well, although it eventually succeeded (maybe after a full reboot? I don't recall). Anyone have a clue why that might be?


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    If it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. If you're doing a server workload, it's a server.

    It does not quack like a duck. It has some duckish things occasionally, but it's still not a duck.

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    If your i7 supports Quick Sync, and your video transcoding software uses it, you'd be a fool to switch to an AMD CPU. Because it's mega-fast at the video encoding stuffs.

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Plus your i7 might be too old to have Quick Sync, I dunno, I'm too lazy to look that shit up.

    Looks like it should; that's the generation it was introduced. However, I'm talking about music transcoding.

    That's neat though. I didn't realize my CPU had that.

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    The real point is: you're a fool to turn off automatic updates. You're not just hurting yourself, you're hurting all the other random people your computer's going to hurl exploits at after it's pwned. If automatic updates are incompatible with what you're doing, you need to change the "what you're doing" part. It's not something you can compromise on.

    No. I try to keep up to date, but until "active hours" changed from only allowing 12/day to 18, I could never trust it to not mess something up, because my schedule changes by more than that over the course of the week. And I'm not going to change the active hours every day just because they had a shitty restrictions on it.


  • :belt_onion:

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Anyone have a clue why that might be?

    Did you try the troubleshooter? (Not trolling, it's actually relatively useful now.)



  • @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    However, I'm talking about music transcoding.

    ... now I've moved on to "how fucking tiny is your phone memory?"

    Although there's still a lot of "how fucking slow is your computer?" leftover because transcoding music is trivial for a computer. You'd be done in a few hours.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    ... now I've moved on to "how fucking tiny is your phone memory?"

    128 GB


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Although there's still a lot of "how fucking slow is your computer?" leftover because transcoding music is trivial for a computer. You'd be done in a few hours.

    🤷 I'm hoping the new computer will be able to do it that quickly.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @heterodox said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Did you try the troubleshooter? (Not trolling, it's actually relatively useful now.)

    Nope. Trying it now..



  • @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    No.

    Yes.

    Just last week there was an exploit that came out of nowhere. Yes, it had been patched about 2 weeks previously, but what if the next one the CIA has been holding on to had only been patched 2 days before being spotted in the wild? What if 2 hours? What if 0 hours?

    You're still a fool, and you're going to make a lot of people's lives difficult sooner or later. Just stop tinkering with shit and use the OS as it shipped.

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    I could never trust it to not mess something up, because my schedule changes by more than that over the course of the week.

    What could possibly even be messed up?

    First of all, unless the patch is a super mega critical OMG emergency, Windows gives you 72 hours notice before it reboots. So you can't pause the transcoding even for a minute in a 72-hour period to do a quick reboot?

    The software you're using to transcode doesn't support having a queue of work? You can't just shove it in your Startup items? You can't just go a commute without having EVERY SINGLE MUSIC TRACK AVAILABLE MUST LISTEN TO ALL RIGHT NOW THAT WOULD BE HUGE EMERGENCY!

    I think you're just stretching and reaching to find excuses here, because they're ridiculous. Turn on auto updates. Stop tinkering. Use your computer like a normal person. You're turning off an important safety feature for utterly trivial reasons.



  • @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    I'm hoping the new computer will be able to do it that quickly.

    Surely even your horribly slow i7 can transcode more music in an hour than you could listen to in a week. Hell, a horribly slow i3 could do that while still playing Skyrim at 60 FPS. I'm still not sure how that justifies disabling automatic updates.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    The real point is: you're a fool to turn off automatic updates. You're not just hurting yourself, you're hurting all the other random people your computer's going to hurl exploits at after it's pwned. If automatic updates are incompatible with what you're doing, you need to change the "what you're doing" part. It's not something you can compromise on.

    To address this very directly: I don't want to. I want to keep the most automatic setting I can and I only lower it when it causes me problems. If I could have a setting that said:

    • No-restart updates are downloaded and installed automatically,
    • All others are downloaded automatically, and installed no later than 1 week later,
    • Important security updates must be installed within 24 (or 48) hours, or else the internet connection is turned off

    and

    • Active hours could be more than a single timespan, and customized by day (especially weekends different from weekdays)

    and

    • Update downloads could be paused (online gaming on a crappy connection)

    I'd be happy. That's what I want: some control over downloading and restarting, but still as automatic as won't cause me problems.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Windows gives you 72 hours notice before it reboots

    The last time I saw that notice it was only like 10 hours, IIRC. But that was a while ago, so either I missed how to do that way back when, or that's newer than the last time I looked at it.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    I'm hoping the new computer will be able to do it that quickly.

    Surely even your horribly slow i7 can transcode more music in an hour than you could listen to in a week. Hell, a horribly slow i3 could do that while still playing Skyrim at 60 FPS.

    I suspect it's held back by storage speed, not CPU speed.


  • :belt_onion:

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    That's what I want: some control over downloading and restarting, but still as automatic as won't cause me problems.

    Well, right now it's not causing you problems if you're stuck on 0% downloading; this is a purely hypothetical problem. 🚎


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Just last week there was an exploit that came out of nowhere. Yes, it had been patched about 2 weeks previously, but what if the next one the CIA has been holding on to had only been patched 2 days before being spotted in the wild? What if 2 hours? What if 0 hours?

    I'd be fine with them having stuff like that automatically turning off the internet connection within a certain amount of time (with warning), but leaving the system up long enough that if it happens when you're not there you still have time to come back and save anything you neglected to save before it restarts.

    With the 72 hour grace period, that's (now) fine with me. More than enough time for even my longest of tasks.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    To assuage everyone: since it seems like Windows now has more reasonable timing on active hours and delayed restart (compared to what I recall, perhaps incorrectly), I will now turn automatic updates back on.

    Because that's what I said I wanted, isn't it?


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @heterodox said in Windows Update WTFs:

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    That's what I want: some control over downloading and restarting, but still as automatic as won't cause me problems.

    Well, right now it's not causing you problems if you're stuck on 0% downloading; this is a purely hypothetical problem. 🚎

    Speaking of which...

    0_1495900552560_02dd5034-ff52-4256-9a4c-2666d2b15198-image.png


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    @heterodox said in Windows Update WTFs:

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    That's what I want: some control over downloading and restarting, but still as automatic as won't cause me problems.

    Well, right now it's not causing you problems if you're stuck on 0% downloading; this is a purely hypothetical problem. 🚎

    Speaking of which...

    0_1495900552560_02dd5034-ff52-4256-9a4c-2666d2b15198-image.png

    It actually did some maybe useful stuff after that. Retrying the download again now...



  • @Dreikin Updates are hard. Designing a policy for updates is hard. What you suggest might be fine for you, but considering that most people use their computer to check email, turning off the internet "for a short time" is just as bad as a forced reboot.

    I think the sanest policy is probably:

    1. All non-reboot causing updates get downloaded and installed in the background. If the update requires an app to quit, the update can wait until the user quits.
    2. Important, but not security related updates can get put off indefinitely.
    3. Important security updates that require a reboot should disable specific components until the update is applied, while providing a sensible explanation as to why the component is disabled. "Windows Update has downloaded an important security update, and Internet Explorer has been disabled until the update is installed." Depending on the severity, maybe some "overrides" should be allowed.

    It really just is the worst thing ever when you fall behind schedule (or just need to print a thing and leave the office in a hurry), need Windows to work, and it decides on its own that it isn't going to. Maybe some of us never fall behind, but most of us do.


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    How long have these options been there?

    0_1495901406563_b4440e7b-b468-4491-af68-9574c9e2cfce-image.png

    I know I'm already TR:wtf: in many people's minds in this thread, but just how massive a one am I for not knowing about them? Have I been the whole 100% complete real :wtf: all along?


  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    @Captain said in Windows Update WTFs:

    @Dreikin Updates are hard. Designing a policy for updates is hard. What you suggest might be fine for you, but considering that most people use their computer to check email, turning off the internet "for a short time" is just as bad as a forced reboot.

    I think the sanest policy is probably:

    1. All non-reboot causing updates get downloaded and installed in the background. If the update requires an app to quit, the update can wait until the user quits.
    2. Important, but not security related updates can get put off indefinitely.
    3. Important security updates that require a reboot should disable specific components until the update is applied, while providing a sensible explanation as to why the component is disabled. "Windows Update has downloaded an important security update, and Internet Explorer has been disabled until the update is installed." Depending on the severity, maybe some "overrides" should be allowed.

    It really just is the worst thing ever when you fall behind schedule (or just need to print a thing and leave the office in a hurry), need Windows to work, and it decides on its own that it isn't going to. Maybe some of us never fall behind, but most of us do.

    Yeah, I'd be happy with that.

    Although it looks like (now) I can do something like that, so yay!


  • FoxDev

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    I know I'm already TR:wtf: in many people's minds in this thread, but just how massive a one am I for not knowing about them? Have I been the whole 100% complete real :wtf: all along?

    MS doesn't advertise this stuff very well unless you're watching loads of tech blogs and news sites like Ars Technica. Most users will never see those options, simply because they have no idea they're there.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Not a server.

    If it quacks like a duck, it's a dock. If you're doing a server workload, it's a server.

    And therefore must pay Microsoft a minimum of $882 for the server license, and $40 for any device (or user) that even thinks about looking at it.

    Because throwing money at stuff is how we get things done.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @blakeyrat said in Windows Update WTFs:

    now I've moved on to "how fucking tiny is your phone memory?"

    App partition is 3gb, user is 9gb, wish it were reversed, because it does have a nice SD card waiting to be used...


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    How long have these options been there?

    Not very. I didn't get them until around "creators" update.


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @Tsaukpaetra said in Windows Update WTFs:

    Microsoft

    0_1495931976946_6adc9b57-ee01-4abe-99d7-36cb10736580-image.png



  • @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    except when updates are required to keep Windows running smoothly critical fixes/security updates, but people panic when they see "critical" and "security", so we didn't want to use those words



  • @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    It'd be a different matter if most updates didn't require a reboot, or even if I could tell it "auto install any updates that don't require a reboot, but let me decide for ones that require a reboot".

    keep an unsaved notepad file open. blocks the auto-restart pretty effectively



  • @Dreikin said in Windows Update WTFs:

    If I could have a setting that said:

    No-restart updates are downloaded and installed automatically,
    All others are downloaded automatically, and installed no later than 1 week later,
    Important security updates must be installed within 24 (or 48) hours, or else the internet connection is turned off

    this is actually pretty good



  • @Captain point is that it should be a cascade

    1. non-reboot
    2. non-security
    3. critical.

    for each a dropdown with
    dl&install automatically
    only dl, ask to install
    ask to dl&install

    and for the last one only "restart automatically" or "disconnect and prompt to install & restart".
    ± the current soft & hard time limits for those options, +the active hours scheduler


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Tsaukpaetra said in Windows Update WTFs:

    App partition is 3gb, user is 9gb, wish it were reversed, because it does have a nice SD card waiting to be used...

    Why do some manufacturers do that? One of the best things about my current phone is that it has a single 24GB partition (as well as the capacity to take an SD card) and that's made the experience relatively good. It sure beat my previous phone, which had a 1GB app partition… 😖


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @sh_code True non-reboot updates ought to be installed automatically with the only options for preventing being those linked to metered network connections (assuming an ordinary user perspective; group policy could have more control).


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