Windows 10?

[rlg118]

Back in the '70s, if I had told you that

a.) In the future you would carry a device which could track your every move,

b.) That you would willingly do so, and, furthermore,

c.) That you would pay for the privilege of doing so,

you would have called for the men with the butterfly nets.


And now we all act like "How the hell did that happen?"

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

[Ernesto75]

Originally Posted by rlg118

As far as I know, WinX Home users cannot delay updates. If you have Home, and you want to delay the update, you need to upgrade to Pro (at a cost of about a c-note), and then change your Update settings from "Current Branch" to "Current Branch for Business". Then you can delay feature updates supposedly for up to a year. (Windows Secrets says that it defers feature updates until Microsoft declares them "ready for business deployment," which typically occurs about four months after the Current Branch release.)

I started out with version 1607 last spring, but was given the 1703 Creator's Update almost right away. I made sure my C: drive was fully backed up, then I let 'er rip. Haven't had any problems with it. The new Fall update contains a number of security features, but I will let others be the guinea pigs for this one.

I am sorry to disagree, but even with the Pro version , it is very difficult to delay.

I have the Pro version, and even if I configure the upgrades to a further date, when I want to shutdown the offered choices do not include a delayed upgrade.
This happened yesterday: I had configured the new upgrade two days from now; after configuring I checked whether it was accepted, and it seemed Okay.
When I shutdown the machine I could only either accept an immediate upgrade or put on sleep which is what I did before shutting down for good.
This morning I had to lose fifteen minutes waiting for the upgrade to finish.

They really don't care what we want.

[Ernesto75]

It seems a new malware is on the air.

The source is the FBI: it attacks essentially networks.
According to the FBI the source of this malware is located in PyongYang.

It tries to gain access to high-security machines.

It seems this new malware has two objectives:
- stealing highly critical data;
- extracting money.

Its name is "Hidden Cobra".

I noticed one or two websites which seem infected: when on VEF, if you click on some pictures nothing happens but you cannot download; if you want to be able to download you must click on the picture a new time and then all hell breaks loose.

If you are well protected try and see.

I do not know if this is the same malware but it is worrying.

[solarbear]

If you must use win10, spybot anti-beacon blocks the POS from Dialing home...or out

https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/

[rlg118]

Well, I have WinX Pro, and I have not as yet been offered the 1709 update. My wife's laptop (running WinX Home), on the other hand, was given that update last night while I was doing monthly maintenance on it. (She's not too computer-savvy, so she leaves the technical stuff to me.)

At first, 1709 refused to update (error code 0x8024a105), which gave me a chance to back it up, thankfully. I left it on overnight, and, finally, 1709 was in.

With the exception of the shortcut arrows reappearing and a "People" icon on the taskbar (both of which I got rid of), I haven't noticed any difference. Stay tuned...

[seagal99]

I did a updates check yesterday but it just keeps checking left it for 6 hours and was still checking so did a forced shutdown, might try again tonight and leave it checking and go to bed.

[rlg118]

Well, I went and did it.

I downloaded the Windows 10 Upgrade Assistant, and, after ensuring that I had a good backup, let it fly.

There were a couple of "oh,shit" moments...

At one point I got the familiar



but it managed to proceed after a scary "Attempting to Recover" message.

The worst was the "Working with updates 100%" screen



on which it was stuck for over two hours. I unplugged all USB devices (that being one of the possible solutions) and waited... and waited. Finally I forced a shutdown (eek!) and rebooted. After showing "Please wait" for a minute it rebooted normally, and finally I got the "Hi! We have some updates for you!" screen. Eventually all was well, with one little hitch...

I lost the ability to disable the touchpad (which I never use) when connecting a mouse. It turns out that because I had set my network to "metered connection", some of the drivers did not download. After clearing that setting and rebooting, all was well. There were a few settings that I had to redo, but that was no big deal.

If all goes well, I'll run Disk Cleanup to get rid of the old installation files in a week or two. Eventually, I'll do a complete clean reinstall so I'll have a clean 1709 installation.

[seagal99]

Still not got the updates after a few more tries.

[Ernesto75]

At this moment there is a problem for users of Windows 7 who wish to get an update.

This is due to a problem relating to a single file on Microsoft's servers.
Microsoft is currently working on this.

There is a simple work-around:
- you change your system date to before december 3d (date < 03/12/2017) simply, so you can download the last update for Windows 7.

[buttsie]

The latest batch are rated important not critical

Microsoft's December Patch Tuesday a real yawner, so far
By Woody Leonhard, Columnist, Computerworld | DEC 12, 2017

https://www.askwoody.com/

Unless you use Internet Explorer or Edge, there’s very slim pickin’s in the patch pile this month.

No need to apply any of the updates immediately, and every reason to sit back and see if mayhem ensues.

Other Microsoft Products

Internet Explorer 11: 13 vulnerabilities, 9 critical, 4 important
Microsoft Edge: 13 vulnerabilities, 12 critical, 1 important

source ghacks via askwoody

https://www.ghacks.net/2017/12/12/mi...-2017-release/