Windows 10 Discussion Thread and Information

Security Bulletin Summary for March 2017

Windows 10 build 14393.953 released for PCs and Mobile


For Anyone Interested:

Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for March 2017

Published: March 14, 2017
Version: 1.0

Microsoft Lifts "Spying" Components in Windows 10 for Chinese Government Version - https://www.techpowerup.com/231799/...-in-windows-10-for-chinese-government-version

Deeply disturbing IMHO - "the company did say telemetry and data collection was so deeply embedded on their operating system that removing them would break it at a fundamental level"

Never mind disturbing, how do we get a real non-compromised Microsoft download of this version of Ten and just switch the language from Chinese to English!?

Also wondering how it would react with non-chinese updates. Baby steps for a better Windows

I'm sure we'll find out. Interesting story about changes to Ten. Lots of things will change before 2023...
It's actually in our interest to have more people use Ten instead of 8 before 2023.
It's almost six years away. Maybe corporations will flex their muscles by 2023 and there will be an American version of Ten without privacy issues?

There was someone here posting years ago about negotiating a license for Windows XP for a huge number of PCs for a large Hospital System. The order was so large that Microsoft agreed to remove online interaction which has the ability to disable Windows XP keys Microsoft mistakenly or correctly determined to be illegitimate. And that version of Windows XP, once activated with a key could never be disabled.

I believe the story was that the Hospital System IT guy in charge said 'sure we'll place an order if you agree to compensate us for all costs associated with a hospital computer being deactivated as a result of a mistake by Microsoft servers.'
Microsoft instead removed this "new" feature from Windows XP, just for them.


They can do whatever they want.
They will do *a lot* of good stuff to Ten, lots of good changes before 2023. Ten will be nothing like it was when it was released a couple of years ago.
I am not worried about the switch to Ten, we are not seeing a rapid pace of changes yet because 2023 is so far away and there is zero reason to switch from 8 before then for many companies/people.
But they'll start to worry as we approach the date, this story is first of many, one would hope?

Wonder how much of this is set in stone : https://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2017/03/windows-7-8-ryzen-kaby-lake-support/

Kenrou said:

Wonder how much of this is set in stone : https://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2017/03/windows-7-8-ryzen-kaby-lake-support/

Click to expand...

Its been mentioned before and with M$ track record of forcing Win10 on people I would think its pretty final. As the article mentions there are (apparently) workarounds, but they are a pain. It just seems like bad business to me. Kind of like a softdrink company forcing everyone to the nee products by removing sweetener from all the others. You would think that M$ would want a diverse product/customer base. I guess the cost of supporting an older OS is far greater than the customer loss.

The real kick in the teeth is that what most people like is simply the shell/UI in Win7. It would seem possible to give customers what they want while still keeping Win10 under the hood. A simple option like that might resolve many complaints. All complaints seem to fall into 3 categories : 1) its not Win7/8.1 2) Cortana/spyware 3) Forced Updates. It would seem to be real simple to solve these issues and pure stubborness not to.

Thanks for that info.
It seems that both installs and updates worked on Kaby Lake all this time?
Why would they wait to implement hard blocks instead of having them up from the get-go... It appears there'll be a way to manually do Windows 8 on KL, I guess that's good news.

Windows 10 privacy

As usual FYI...






Introducing three new things that will empower customers to be more informed about their privacy in Windows 10.

Microsoft’s April Security Update Blocks Windows update in 7 and 8.1 for new CPU :

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/mi...windows-update-in-7-and-8-1-for-new-cpus.html

More info on the updates here :

http://www.myce.com/news/microsofts-april-security-roll-blocks-windows-update-7-8-1-new-cpus-81856/

They are talking about uninstalling the ENTIRE April 2017 monthly security roll-up to get Windows Updates going again.
Can a single update responsible for blockage be uninstalled and which one is it? Otherwise, what's the point of uninstalling the entire monthly security update...

April 2017 security update (KB4015546) and April 2017 roll-up (KB4015549)

So I haven't read anything about this yet but what is the purpose of uninstalling the entire set of updates?
So you can continue to get updates, which if you do, your ability to get them will immediately be disabled again?
That part needs clarification.

Basically every time you want to use WU you need to uninstall these 2 so it works properly again, get all the other updates 1st then re-install these 2 (or the updated versions) to stay completely up to date which will then break WU until you decide to do this all over again, say once a month or so. I assume the monthly roll-up is mandatory that they had to come up with something like this make sense ?

Thank you. This is how to keep a brand new system updated ↑
I would do this if I ever get a new system before 2023.

And they're likely to do the same for all the new CPU's from now on so... yeah...

So I wrote this for my notes, but FYI my Skylake April 2017 updates have different KB numbers, is that because KB numbers are unique to Kaby Lake / Ryzen?



For systems with Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Ryzen 2017 or newer CPUs running Windows 8:
April 2017 security update (KB4015546) and April 2017 roll-up (KB4015549) must be uninstalled *before* running Windows Update or you will get an UNSUPPORTED HARDWARE error message after running Windows Update.

This is because newer CPUs are officially only supported under Windows 10... but there is no reason to apply a hard block on all updates, which is what Microsoft did in 2017. By uninstalling these two updates, you are removing the hard block and allowing your Windows 8 system to be updated.
This must be done each time you run Windows Update until Windows 8 reaches End of Life on January 10, 2023.

Windows 8 Update > [bottom left] Installed Updates > Uninstall April 2017 security update (KB4015546) and April 2017 roll-up (KB4015549).

Funny thing is that M$ says this is a "Known issue" and "is working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release"...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb...7-windows-server-2008-r2-sp1-update-kb4015546

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb...7-windows-server-2008-r2-sp1-update-kb4015549

Wow. Why would they say that, on an official page...
Windows 10 only support was officially announced way before anyone had these CPUs...
This just adds to customer confusion.

We can talk about whether people really need the instructions that work only under Windows 10, but it's not like Windows 8 will magically be included for full support for all instructions, ever.
You need to run Windows 10 for that.



What does "working on a resolution" mean if there is no code support for Windows 8? This is just about us taking risks and force installing updates because they work for most things we need them for... but we know we'll never get all instructions to work outside of Windows 10.

User-Made Patch

GitHub user Zeffy has created a patch that removes a limitation that Microsoft imposed on users of 7th generation processors, a limit that prevents users from receiving Windows updates if they still use Windows 7 and 8.1.

This limitation was delivered through Windows Update KB4012218 (March 2017 Patch Tuesday) and has made many owners of Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Bristol Ridge CPUs very angry last week, as they weren't able to install any Windows updates.

Microsoft's move was controversial, but the company did its due diligence, and warned customers of its intention since January 2016, giving users enough time to update to Windows 10, move to a new OS, or downgrade their CPU, if they needed to remain on Windows 7 or 8.1 for various reasons.....

Click to expand...

User-Made Patch Lets Owners of Next-Gen CPUs Install Updates on Windows 7 & 8.1