5 ms·

Windows patch KB 3139929: When a security update is not a security update

78 points by based2 11y ago

spencera 11y ago
"I spent most of the night trying to replicate this behavior -- a blue banner on new tabs in IE11 with "Microsoft recommends upgrading to Windows 10" -- and couldn't get it to trigger. If you can, I'd appreciate your shooting an email with a screenshot to woody@askwoody.com."
- krapp 11y ago
  weird, I just opened IE up and got it immediately: https://imgur.com/o69rzTG https://imgur.com/o69rzTG
  - technion 11y ago
    I get that same ad on a Windows 2012 R2 RDS server. It's interesting having a user in a remote desktop environment log a ticket about a required upgrade to Windows 10.
tkone 11y ago
This is great. Nagging people might actually get them to upgrade to a supported, secure browser. I literally see nothing wrong with this.
- butz 11y ago
  But IE 11 is still supported and "secure" after latest updates.
pmorici 11y ago
Is this the garbage in the system tray that keeps putting up notices about windows 10? or is this something else?
- whyoh 11y ago
  This one shows an ad in IE.
ShinyCyril 11y ago
There's been a huge shitstorm on Reddit about Windows 7 / 8 forcing an automatic upgrade to Windows 10 [1] [2] [3] [4], with many accounts of people going away to do something and coming back to find their PCs had updated to Windows 10 without their permission. However I've not been able to find any stories on this from reliable sources. All I've found so far is a forum post on CNET and a submission on Slashdot [5] [6]. Does anyone know what's actually going on with this? [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/4a5edx/psa_windows_7_computers_are_being_reported_as/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/4a5edx/psa_window... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/4a7bkp/psa_microsoft_refreshes_kb3035583_automatic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/4a7bkp/psa_micros... [3] https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4a0asv/warning_windows_7_computers_are_being_reported_as/ https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4a0asv/warning_w... [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/4a59p4/psa_windows_7_computers_are_being_reported_as/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/4a59p4/psa_wi... [5] http://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/forced-to-upgrade-from-windows-7-to-windows-10/ http://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/forced-to-upgrade-fro... [6] https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/03/12/1634229/windows-10-upgrade-reportedly-starting-automatically-on-windows-7-pcs https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/03/12/1634229/windows-10-...
- degenerate 11y ago
  Whatever is going on, you can stop it from happening. Please get the word out about GWX Control Panel! http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/ http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/ You can turn off all updates, delete the pre-downloaded update cache, kill the tray notifications, etc. - works wonderfully on several machines I tested!
  - whyoh 11y ago
    There's no need to install any 3rd party software. Microsoft themselves provide the switch to disable upgrades to Windows 10: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351 (and you can also simply not install/uninstall KB3035583 aka GWX)
    - 11y ago
robertelder 11y ago
I spent about 3 hours this week doing tech support for my mom over the phone because of Windows 10's aggressive upgrading behaviour. I told her to keep her the best way to keep safe security wise is to make sure the os/browser is up to date, and because Windows 10 keeps asking to upgrade, she went ahead and did so. After upgrading to Windows 10, all network access (wired and wifi) stopped working completely. The worst part of this is that if you can't get internet, you can't even download new drivers to try and debug the problem. We tried a few things, and eventually just did a system restore back to Windows 8, but unfortunately, the system restore didn't work completely and there was more mucking around to try and get the computer into a bootable state. Then, last night, she said the heard the fan making a lot of noise, and looked down to see that Windows had gone ahead and started installing Windows 10 again. Fortunately, wired network access works now, but wifi is still broken. Hopefully Windows will push an update that fixes the wifi access.
m_fayer 11y ago
Microsoft seems to be working hard to keep the forces of the universe balanced. Whatever good will is generated by their foray into oss must be immediately offset by ill will produced by windows 10.
- spdustin 11y ago
  It's just the second law of thermodynamics at work.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
I find this behavior really curious on Microsoft's part. When I originally read that Windows 10 would be the last version of windows I thought it metaphor, but I think Microsoft is really serious, they are no longer interested in producing a standalone operating system for machines. It feels to me like they are dragging their customers into a ChromeOS type world where everything is on the network.
dingo_bat 11y ago
Although force-upgrades are definitely too much, I wonder why such a strong opposition to upgrade t a much better OS in every way? It certainly cannot be privacy, because you can turn off every piece of phone-home stuff. Also, almost every other OS has been doing the same thing for a long time now, so it seems a bit of an overreaction when Windows does it. This sort of no-upgrades policy is what leads to IE6. And the entire world has to suffer because of a few obstinate sysadmins.
- ionised 11y ago
  > It certainly cannot be privacy, because you can turn off every piece of phone-home stuff. No, you can't.
  - dingo_bat 11y ago
    I definitely can! I have options for everything including Cortana to the automatic malware reporting.
    - ionised 11y ago
      Unless you have Enterprise their are still telemetry options that cannot be turned off entirely, and there is diagnostics and usage data not covered by any of the user settings that still leaks from the OS back to Microsoft. If you want to block them as well you need to do it with a firewall rules (like a third party software firewall on whitelist mode).

78 points by based2 11y ago

"I spent most of the night trying to replicate this behavior -- a blue banner on new tabs in IE11 with "Microsoft recommends upgrading to Windows 10" -- and couldn't get it to trigger. If you can, I'd appreciate your shooting an email with a screenshot to woody@askwoody.com."

krapp 11y ago
weird, I just opened IE up and got it immediately: https://imgur.com/o69rzTG https://imgur.com/o69rzTG
- technion 11y ago
  I get that same ad on a Windows 2012 R2 RDS server. It's interesting having a user in a remote desktop environment log a ticket about a required upgrade to Windows 10.

tkone 11y ago

This is great. Nagging people might actually get them to upgrade to a supported, secure browser. I literally see nothing wrong with this.

butz 11y ago
But IE 11 is still supported and "secure" after latest updates.

pmorici 11y ago

Is this the garbage in the system tray that keeps putting up notices about windows 10? or is this something else?

whyoh 11y ago
This one shows an ad in IE.

ShinyCyril 11y ago

There's been a huge shitstorm on Reddit about Windows 7 / 8 forcing an automatic upgrade to Windows 10 [1] [2] [3] [4], with many accounts of people going away to do something and coming back to find their PCs had updated to Windows 10 without their permission. However I've not been able to find any stories on this from reliable sources. All I've found so far is a forum post on CNET and a submission on Slashdot [5] [6]. Does anyone know what's actually going on with this? [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/4a5edx/psa_windows_7_computers_are_being_reported_as/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/4a5edx/psa_window... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/4a7bkp/psa_microsoft_refreshes_kb3035583_automatic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/4a7bkp/psa_micros... [3] https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4a0asv/warning_windows_7_computers_are_being_reported_as/ https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4a0asv/warning_w... [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/4a59p4/psa_windows_7_computers_are_being_reported_as/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/4a59p4/psa_wi... [5] http://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/forced-to-upgrade-from-windows-7-to-windows-10/ http://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/forced-to-upgrade-fro... [6] https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/03/12/1634229/windows-10-upgrade-reportedly-starting-automatically-on-windows-7-pcs https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/03/12/1634229/windows-10-...

degenerate 11y ago
Whatever is going on, you can stop it from happening. Please get the word out about GWX Control Panel! http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/ http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/ You can turn off all updates, delete the pre-downloaded update cache, kill the tray notifications, etc. - works wonderfully on several machines I tested!
- whyoh 11y ago
  There's no need to install any 3rd party software. Microsoft themselves provide the switch to disable upgrades to Windows 10: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351 (and you can also simply not install/uninstall KB3035583 aka GWX)
  - 11y ago

robertelder 11y ago

I spent about 3 hours this week doing tech support for my mom over the phone because of Windows 10's aggressive upgrading behaviour. I told her to keep her the best way to keep safe security wise is to make sure the os/browser is up to date, and because Windows 10 keeps asking to upgrade, she went ahead and did so. After upgrading to Windows 10, all network access (wired and wifi) stopped working completely. The worst part of this is that if you can't get internet, you can't even download new drivers to try and debug the problem. We tried a few things, and eventually just did a system restore back to Windows 8, but unfortunately, the system restore didn't work completely and there was more mucking around to try and get the computer into a bootable state. Then, last night, she said the heard the fan making a lot of noise, and looked down to see that Windows had gone ahead and started installing Windows 10 again. Fortunately, wired network access works now, but wifi is still broken. Hopefully Windows will push an update that fixes the wifi access.

m_fayer 11y ago

Microsoft seems to be working hard to keep the forces of the universe balanced. Whatever good will is generated by their foray into oss must be immediately offset by ill will produced by windows 10.

spdustin 11y ago
It's just the second law of thermodynamics at work.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

I find this behavior really curious on Microsoft's part. When I originally read that Windows 10 would be the last version of windows I thought it metaphor, but I think Microsoft is really serious, they are no longer interested in producing a standalone operating system for machines. It feels to me like they are dragging their customers into a ChromeOS type world where everything is on the network.

dingo_bat 11y ago

Although force-upgrades are definitely too much, I wonder why such a strong opposition to upgrade t a much better OS in every way? It certainly cannot be privacy, because you can turn off every piece of phone-home stuff. Also, almost every other OS has been doing the same thing for a long time now, so it seems a bit of an overreaction when Windows does it. This sort of no-upgrades policy is what leads to IE6. And the entire world has to suffer because of a few obstinate sysadmins.

ionised 11y ago
> It certainly cannot be privacy, because you can turn off every piece of phone-home stuff. No, you can't.
- dingo_bat 11y ago
  I definitely can! I have options for everything including Cortana to the automatic malware reporting.
  - ionised 11y ago
    Unless you have Enterprise their are still telemetry options that cannot be turned off entirely, and there is diagnostics and usage data not covered by any of the user settings that still leaks from the OS back to Microsoft. If you want to block them as well you need to do it with a firewall rules (like a third party software firewall on whitelist mode).