No more Windows 7 and 8 individual Windows updates starting October 2016 (!!)

[Mr Alpha]

Thank you for posting. Yours and most people's initial understanding of the the term 'critical update' is similar.

I assume we were also equally surprised then when Windows 10 update nags ended up slipped into the Critical Update section?
This indicates similar nag can also be slipped in there in the future, does it not?

When I started seeing driver updates being slipped into the Critical Update section, I thought wow something is critically wrong with existing perfectly functioning drivers?
And when I checked - I found nothing whatsoever 'critical' about it - for a non-gaming rig. A game-specific fix is certainly not a critical update for a non-gaming rig, correct?

It has been widely agreed on the forums for the past 15 years that Windows Update hardware driver updates carry with them a *significant* risk of system instability. So many of us have experienced this first hand that ongoing conclusion was that Windows Update should never under any circumstances be used for anything other than Windows OS (software) updates.

So unless there is something that says there was a change - that Microsoft will stop including unnecessary hardware updates and unnecessary [by every definition of the word] nag updates as Critical Updates - how can we not be concerned that this trend will not continue? Only this time with no option to UNCHECK these non-critical updates that have been slipped in there [obviously] for reasons other than security?

Yes, Microsoft has gotten into the habit of sneaking all kinds of things into the Critical updates section. But that blog post does not say that everything that is a critical update will be in the monthly roll up. Instead it says that the monthly roll up will consist of security and reliability updates. Now, admittedly, it's quite vague as to what Microsoft considers a security or reliability update. They could still end up sneaking all kinds of stuff into the roll up, but that is not what they say they are going to do. In fact, they do say that there will be updates that are not part of the monthly roll up.

Seems to me they may very well still stuff the driver updates and nagware into the critical updates section without them being part of the roll up.

 

[c627627]

That would be great Mr Alpha.
We will find out the hard way if your assumption is correct, I certainly hope it is!

It does ? so what happens to all the suggestions, garbage bin ?

It's a long complicated process but they do take into account suggestions, even if it takes a while to show up. So a version of the Start Menu showed up in Windows 8.1 because of user feedback. It wasn't a real Start Menu. The outcry was sufficient for a need of an immediate Windows Update installed real Start Menu as soon as Windows 8.0 came out. But that didn't happen. So I don't think it's realistic or particularly useful to talk about Microsoft. The only thing that does is help you vent.

We need to look at the big picture. IT professionals on forums such as this one and others share most of Microsoft's views, period (!!)
They supported Metro 100% and did not see what on earth people were complaining about AND STILL DON'T.
And if IT professionals are detached from reality as far as that topic goes, then Microsoft head developers are in space - completely unreachable, regardless of evidence or reality. There is no discussion with IT professionals even on forums about any of what you guys are saying being legitimate complaints.

So there is a world that is SEPARATE, and until and only until there is competition and people flock elsewhere, that will not change.
And guess what, there is no competition. There will be no competition in the foreseeable future.


THEREFORE, what we can actually do is modify Windows 10 ourselves, that is the only topic that can actually have results, that can make Windows 10 actually usable for us.
There is still plenty we can do, but the information is scattered around and not as centralized as perhaps it should be.


This will change in 2023 but until then, if you like to mod Windows, I really don't see why you are not on Windows 8!? It can still be modified to look EXACTLY like Windows 7 if you'd like,
with Windows 10 being there on another partition for you to boot into if you need DirectX 12, if you need it. Or for other testing purposes...
But Windows 10 can still be modded, with one huge time consuming condition: you have to have a list of things that Windows 10 Update resets so that they can be script-reapplied every time a new Windows 10 build is released.

 

[Kenrou]

This might be a very noobish way to look at things but lemme take a gander at it : "Listen to people and do things right the 1st time around instead of spending the next 10 years fixing your mistakes"... Who the hell crapped out the idea that the GUI of a smart phone would look good on a proper desktop, the 0.1% that have touchscreens ? and not even sure if modding Win10 is gonna work out if every update resets system options. /rant over

For a company that has no competition their habit of sneaking stuff and forcing stuff into updates reeks of desperation ?

 

[habbajabba]

Any specific hardware drivers available are ALWAYS from the manufacturer to MS so that they are available to users through the update process. Pray that you can if necessary go direct, bypassing the 'forced' use of windows update. If ms thinks they can force a billion people to start using a subverted version of their OS, linux will become mainstream very quickly. Either that or the actual windows update service will become useless and then deleted completely.

As for updates, there was a bs one aug12 I installed yesterday which gutted Windows Journal. The update itself is not uninstallable which is what worries me. Journal was fixed but as far as I can see the only way to remove something you don't like which can't be removed is to know exactly which files need to be removed and then use a boot disc to get access. Since 10, I think, has that encryption crap, for ms's control no doubt at this point, it will be impossible on ten without using the backdoor key that escaped in the wild recently. Basically, it will take lots of time and resources just to get an update without being reamed in the process. Ten is so new now it will take a while before a hacked version is even available, if ever the way they want to play games with the stuff you buy. If the os's were free and the hardware was cheap I could see it but neither is true.