The Windows 10 Resistance Thread

[alms]

So in effect IF you want to keep any MS OS that is still within it’s free update cycle, updated you will HAVE to let all the telemetry changes be part of that, i.e. allow MS (and partners) to data mine your PC. It is not up to discussion or end user preferences any more. We can no longer have both an updated OS and one free from spyware stuff, it’s that simple.

Not quite: if there’s software that can switch off a number of telemetry, privacy-related and data mining features under Windows 10 - unless MS goes out of their way to prevent that on older versions of the OS - then you can expect that such software either already has the capability to do the same on Win7 and 8, or will have it soon.

It is also possible that software has or will have the ability to remove or disable the telemetry updates after the roll-up updates are applied - and that is assuming Microsoft themselves don’t provide mechanics to disable at least some such things, e.g. through group policy.

Of course a majority of users doesn’t know/won’t care about such things, but realistically, for everybody else this just makes our life more miserable, but it’s very doubtful that it will specifically result in more users upgrading to Windows 10, especially now that the free offer is over.

Hence why the beatings will continue…

If one’s aware of what MS have been up to for the past year or so, and is still using Windows, there really is no reason to hurry up and switch to an alternative OS.

And I don’t think it’s very productive suggesting that there is an urgency to do so: it will just be perceived as acting as scaremongers and/or MS haters which just makes people tune out and stop listening.

[ZakG]

Not quite: if there’s software that can switch off a number of telemetry, privacy-related and data mining features under Windows 10 - unless MS goes out of their way to prevent that on older versions of the OS - then you can expect that such software either already has the capability to do the same on Win7 and 8, or will have it soon.

It is also possible that software has or will have the ability to remove or disable the telemetry updates after the roll-up updates are applied - and that is assuming Microsoft themselves don’t provide mechanics to disable at least some such things, e.g. through group policy.

Of course a majority of users doesn’t know/won’t care about such things, but realistically, for everybody else this just makes our life more miserable, but it’s very doubtful that it will specifically result in more users upgrading to Windows 10, especially now that the free offer is over.

Oh yeah, i was just meaning for Windows 7 and 8 users that don’t want telemetry stuff. I do not expect to find i suddenly have Windows 10 due to these bundled updates coming our way, just the spyware stuff that is already part of Windows 10.

If one’s aware of what MS have been up to for the past year or so, and is still using Windows, there really is no reason to hurry up and switch to an alternative OS.

And I don’t think it’s very productive suggesting that there is an urgency to do so: it will just be perceived as acting as scaremongers and/or MS haters which just makes people tune out and stop listening.

Maybe? Reading through some of the latest posts in the sevenforums thread, and ones they link to, it seems the feeling is that it is now much harder, maybe impossible to keep the spyware stuff of your 7 and 8 installs. I don’t think users of those OS yet have tools to help them do that or tools that can monitor and block that? It may well come, and until it does i can’t start to recommend for people with 7 and 8 (that wanted to avoid 10) that Windows Update is safe to use, even after the period for the free Windows 10 offer is over. MS have shifted the goalposts again, and we are all the losers currently, if we don’t want outdated insecure OS or OS full of spyware. That’s not a great choice to find oneself in really, and they did not have to do it for the technical reasons we’ve been given. I don’t know what else to think?

I’m one of those unique Linux users that has loved using MS OS for ages. Probably if MS had not fallen to the Dark Side of the Force™ i would still be a happy MS user. I’m very happy my experiences with Linux Mint have been great so far, and it came at the perfect time in relation to MS going full Dark Side on us, but yeah i do still use XP (for example) and it is a great OS with a near perfect GUI (not using the default obviously!).

Sadly the truth of the matter seems to be if you are a home user (i understand corporate/business users have ways around it) of a current MS OS, you face an increasingly difficult task in keeping your data private and not data-mined. The launch of the Xbone was really the writing on the wall in terms of what MS was interested in, and now they are working to retrofit that vision in all versions of their still supported OS. It sucks, and it has killed my ability to stay a happy MS user. They lost one customer, and for what?

[DanMan]

This must have been their plan all along. Remember on how many devices they expected Win10 to be? Not even close. But if it had come to pass, the amount of <Win10 users would have been much smaller, so they could have treated them as they pleased, amirite MS? Now they might get some more bad press about it. No sweeping We’ll see. At least we keep getting all the bad Win10 features. Thanks MS.

The EFF doesn’t like it either: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/windows-10-microsoft-blatantly-disregards-user-choice-and-privacy-deep-dive

[ZakG]

Well one result has been a huge uptake in interest in Linux Mint (can’t say about other distro’s as i don’t follow them). The activity on the forums and people specifically saying they are there due to the ‘hard-sell’ and spyware nature of Windows 10 has been noticeable these last few months especially.
And with Linux (Mint or other) we do have an option other than bending over the barrel

[alms]

@ZakG: I’m not sure what the situation is currently - then again the changes will only become effective in October 2016.

[shu]

The activity on the forums and people specifically saying they are there due to the ‘hard-sell’ and spyware nature of Windows 10 has been noticeable these last few months especially.

Yup. I always used windows operating systems, but now that Microsoft decided to try and take over the PCs of their customers I realized that I have no future with Windows.

So four weeks ago I first tried Arch Linux, then Xubuntu and now settled with Ubuntu 16.04 with Cinnamon 3 as desktop environment. There were a bunch of small problems and a bit of googling involved, but so far every problem was solvable. The desktop itself is great, it’s very customizable and has some nice features. And the applications I used in windows are more or less all available (Thunderbird, Firefox, Keepass, SublimeText, Blender, Gimp, Inkscape, etc…), so no problem there.

I still dual-boot into Win7 for some games, but that (and cross-platform development) is the only reason why I use Windows now.

[ZakG]

And maybe this will help some people in terms of the Windows 7 update taking ages issue:

W7 not updating? - Windows 7 Help Forums

Mine had been ok until maybe a fortnight ago when i last did a few, then today it just took 2 hours giving the ‘Checking for Updates’ message. Anyway that thread and solution fixed the problem. It took about 2 mins to check for updates and is now downloading them fine

[alms]

FWIW not seeing any trouble (touch wood), neither 3172605 nor 3179573 are installed.

[ZakG]

Interesting. I found a few other references during my search for a solution, but at that link was the most upto date, decided to use that and those two updates in particular. Before they were installed it looked like i was having the effect many people talked about and was mentioned earlier in this thread.

It might be possible you have one of the other older ‘fixes’ to the issue (which seemed to be mostly about replacing one specific file (can’t remember the name of it right now)? Anyway this was new to my Windows 7 systems, and a search of my issue on those forums shows quite a few ‘new’ people with the problem, so i will link the general forum at sevenforums for a wider look (and hopefully solution) around the issue:

Windows Updates & Activation - Windows 7 Help Forums

What do Windows 8 users do? Is there an ‘eightforums’? Aha! There is

http://www.eightforums.com/windows-updates-activation/?

I decided it prudent to start to check Updates again. We are past the ‘free’ hardsell of Windows 10, and before we loose control over individual updates (the change coming in October) this might be a good window to update what you can, while you can?

[ZakG]

Rather than edit that first post (again!), i have three more Windows 7 updates to maybe add to the avoid list:

KB3102429
KB3107998
KB3118401

Info taken from SummGuy’s post here:

http://www.sevenforums.com/windows-updates-activation/399824-updates-avoid-2.html#post3277206www.proxy.com.de/index.php?q=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zZXZlbmZvcnVtcy5jb20vd2luZG93cy11cGRhdGVzLWFjdGl2YXRpb24vMzk5ODI0LXVwZGF0ZXMtYXZvaWQtMi5odG1sI3Bvc3QzMjc3MjA2##post3277206

[ZakG]

(tiny windows 7 update, on updating!)

So all the remaining family PC’s on Windows 7 are now updated as safely as they can be (cause who knows what sneaky bits of code are in them right?). All of them were having that same ‘checking for updates’ taking forever issue, and all of them were fixed by those two updates i mentioned above.

Following the tech threads around all that, and it seems many IT types that are wanting to avoid the spyware (current and pending) are advising that once people have their Windows 7 upto scratch, to burn an image of it to use as a fail-safe as we go forward into the Brave New World MS is sending us down. That seems like a really, really good idea.

[BillButNotBen]

For those of us who didn’t upgrade to windows 10, is there a simpler way to avoid all the backported privacy issues on win 7/8?

It sounds like they’re adding a lot of the privacy issues/functionality into older versions of windows as well as 10, but I’m too lazy to check every update and keep up with issues.

I know there were some tools for win10 that were supposed to make it easy to tweak privacy options etc… have they now been ported to win 7/8 as well?

A quick google leads me to Spybot Anti Beacon which seems simple and is from a brand I know… anyone tried something https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/

[ZakG]

Well currently i only have 11 ‘optional’ updates in my pending box to go through and double check. So on my Windows 7 installs all the updates listed in the first post and the few extra’s just up above have all been successfully ignored/removed (if sneakily installed during the dark times) and hidden.

My Windows 7 works fine, gets updates (really just windows defender updates recently) and does not seem to be doing extra phoning home activities (that i can see in my firewall etc). Ultimately all the heavy lifting was done by other people that i used to compile the list here, and it is not much extra work to do what i have done manually. I never did let windows do automatic updates so those settings have not changed, but atleast now my Windows 7 installs have all the up-to-date security updates. The blind push for Windows 10 era might be over, but i’m not letting my guard down.

Meanwhile Linux Mint is becoming the family OS of choice for non gaming stuff.

[alms]

A quick google leads me to Spybot Anti Beacon which seems simple and is from a brand I know… anyone tried something https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/

Nope, the free version is outdated, and those functions have been integrated into their paid AntiVirus product. Someone has mentioned this:

https://bitbucket.org/matthewlinton/ancile

^ haven’t tried myself or researched it, you could still take a look at the source I guess. Or follow a guide such as:

How to stop Microsoft from gathering telemetry data from Windows 7, 8, and 8.1

Which should cover more or less the same ground.

The problem with cumulative updates is that it won’t be possible to uninstall and block the Telemetry and Privacy related updates like we’ve done so far, however Monthly Rollups shouldn’t be deployed before October 2016, so I’m not sure there’s any way to prepare for those until they are in the wild?

[ZakG]

‘Windows patches start getting cumulative for 7, 8, 2008, and 2012’:

http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2016/10/windows-patches-start-getting-cumulative-for-7-8-2008-and-2012/

The end of your control over your MS OS.

[alms]

Oh BTW, check your x:\Windows\Logs\CBS folder.

I had gigabytes of logs in text format, that may have dated back to the time when Windows Update was terribly slow. Technically the OS has a logrotate-like mechanism that should be splitting off and then compressing the old logs, using makecab. However, that program fails if the file is larger than 2 GB.

I certainly had that one file, which seemingly prevented compression of newer files too. For peace of mind, I simply 7-zipped every old log, however, it’s probably safe to delete as well.

[ZakG]

All good on that front (128 Mb and 94Mb on the two Win7 machines running here). I did see the first of these ‘cumulative’ rollups for Windows 7 today:

KB3188740 - .NET framework Quality Rollup @ 5.7MB

KB3185330 - Security Monthly Quality Rollup @ 119.4MB

That stuff is not going on my machines. I believe that during all this MS bullshit period i came across people that were taking these rollups and dissecting them, to repack them without the spyware W10 stuff. So i’ll be keeping an eye on all that and possibly taking that kind of path as we go forward.

Spartacus might have been crushed by the might of Rome, but his spirit will always live on to inspire those facing oppression, no matter the form it may take.

[DanMan]

I’ve no intention of installing that pile of dung either.

[TechnicalBen]

Guess that means it is time to buy £50 worth of stuff and get the “spare” PC up and running with Linux on a permanent bases.
Did some trade overs of hardware with friends and family and got about a 75% build ready for “free”, just need a PSU and some ram, possibly a new SSD and I can mirror my current build but in Linux. Yeah, no upgrade, but it is for “free” and I can keep legacy stuff on this Win7 machine. Moving over will be painful as it is, and some software will be lost, but I’ll boot up 8 on the laptop for Sketchup when I occasionally need it.

[alms]

I believe that during all this MS bullshit period i came across people that were taking these rollups and dissecting them, to repack them without the spyware W10 stuff. So i’ll be keeping an eye on all that and possibly taking that kind of path as we go forward.

Oh, that would be interesting. Keep us posted too?

Spartacus might have been crushed by the might of Rome, but his spirit will always live on to inspire those facing oppression, no matter the form it may take.

IME usually Spartcus gets crushed by the power of convenience (a process that sometimes takes time) and peer pressure.

I’ll boot up 8 on the laptop for Sketchup when I occasionally need it.

Does it not run well enough with Wine?

Main reason to keep in touch with Windows after a bad break-up is a clean, lean install used simply to play games which have no Linux port, and/or do not perform satisfactorily there. At that point it can be Windows 10 as there will be no data to acquire as, even if you don’t trust Microsoft, AFAICT it won’t read Linux file systems (FTR it is complaining that I have encrypted volumes in a file system that isn’t NTFS, so at least I think it is referring to the Linux partitions and it doesn’t understand them; would be pretty amazing if they added native ext4 support, wouldn’t it be?)

Hardware that isn’t supported/isn’t supported well can also be reason, Linux usually does better than Windows with old hardware, but as good with new or specialist stuff. And, let’s see, weird applications. Let’s not forget virtualization for non-gaming-related stuff.