Microsoft silently preparing your PC for Win 10

It is not helpful to advise users to turn off Windows Updates or even set to Notify. I'll explain why I believe this more than ever now:

Because of a misguided decision to not issue a SP2 for the most popular OS in history, Win7 is so heavily patched that even lacking a single Optional Update can cause a major program, OS function or piece of hardware to not function correctly. The only way to be sure that you have the total, completely patched OS is to accept all Windows Updates (except Bing).

Since we mainly see problems with Windows Updates here, it can distort our view to believe that they are erroring and bricking installs all over the place. But this really only affects about one out of every million Updates so it is likely that most consumers will never experience a problem with Updates. I keep about a hundred installs up for friends and family and have never had Updates themselves cause issues.

Granted, those posting in this thread are savvy enough to know how to deselect Updates they don't need or want, but beware descriptions which don't explain in enough detail what all is fixed or patched by it. Some Updates that are needed are mistakenly queued under Optional, as are drivers Win7 wants as the first driver-complete OS.

It doesn't help assure users after we had TP build 9876 brick hard drives after a Power Up in Sleep switch was affected. I lost two drives to this, one of which was only recently repaired after months of effort. TP can also be buggy enough to affect it's continuous use causing me to reinstall Win7 recently, although I'm back to using TP now for a total of 5 out of 6 months.

So let's deal with these issues in a calm and level-headed manner befitting the stature of these forums, so that when the TP Builders review threads like this they find them useful instead of sensational.

Nobody realizes how bad a dual boot can go until bad stuff happens
For that matter a windows update that over rights an existing install I'm no longer a fan of that type of install,

If it's a clean install sure,
But if hardware issues occur as Greg and I have seen first hand it goes badly
Mine wasn't as bad as Greg's because 10 was on an expendable hdd which is why I was using it
Mother board not able to send wake command
How else would I know that

Now I know and now I reject until better Minimal system requirements are disclosed by M$ which they have not done yet.

Greg, your experience with the bricked harddrives shows again that running a pre-beta version on the iron is not such a good idea. If you run it in VM, those things cannot happen and if the virtual system is bricked, it is easy enough to roll in a backup.

gregrocker said:

ThrashZone said:

For that matter a windows update that over rights an existing install I'm no longer a fan of that type of install,

I must have missed this one. When did that happen?

Windows old folder... but either way win-10 coming through the windows update system is not my preference and hardly clean especially on a ssd.

The question should be Why remove the separate downloadable = Upgrade advisor same as win-7 had ?

Not quite as straight forward as adding all of these other updates well before 10 is even close to stable.

If I had more than dual core I'd lean towards VMware too but I don't want to push my systems harder than the my graphic's programs are already doing

This is what Ed Bott has to say about the matter:

I've seen a handful of people trying to spin this update process as a sneaky move on Microsoft's part, but I have a hard time seeing this as adware. It is, instead, perfectly targeted advertising, offering a free upgrade to a product currently running on the system where the ad is being displayed.

There are no hidden costs (aside from those incurred by the download itself) and the upgrade isn't going to be installed without your explicit consent. It can't, because there's at least one license agreement (and probably several) you're going to have to click through.

Get Windows 10: Microsoft's hidden roadmap for the biggest software upgrade in history | ZDNet

I hate that site but a good article :)

ThrashZone said:

I hate that site but a good article :)

Ed Bott is a very good man. He always publishes very factual and balanced articles.