Another week, another bunch of Windows 10 machines punched by a patch

There are three certainties in life: death, taxes and duff patches from Microsoft. So, yes, some Windows 10 users have found their PC unhappy following Tuesday's patch shenanigans. A helpful forum posting from one of Microsoft's loyal MVPs concerning the arrival of KB4532693 for Windows 10 1903 and 1909, and KB4532691 for 1809 …

[elDog]

Anybody else tired of having their Windows 10 system wake up in the middle of the night for updates?

This has become ridiculous. I'll put my box to sleep and turn out the lights for some well-deserved sleep and then be startled awake at any hour of the night/early morning by screen flashing on. The fan starts whirring and the disk lights are all blinking like it's a party. Ahhh. MS has decided that it knows better than me how to run MY machine.

In the olden days you could prevent updates or defer them. That ability was curtailed.

Then you could go through a bunch of hoops and disable something called the UpdateOrchestrator. No longer.

I'll give WuMgr a try now.

I know, Linux....

[Robert Carnegie]

Re: plus quoted title = "The title is too long". I hadn't seen that happen before.

Does it stop doing it if you tell it that the Internet connection is metered - charged by use? Mine basically is, and I told Windows that, and I don't seem to have these problems.

[cosymart]

Re: Anybody else tired of having their Windows 10 system wake up in the middle of the night for....?

There's your problem right there: "put my box to sleep". I do a shut down, no chance of shenanigans from Microsoft or any one else :-)

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Anybody else tired of having their Windows 10 system wake up in the middle of the night for....?

I do a shut down, no chance of shenanigans from Microsoft or any one else :-)

Yup. Well, apart from the shenangigan that the Updater will have already downloaded updates and there'll be the lil orange power button of Damocles. Which has 3 options. Update and Shutdown. Update and Restart, and Sleep.. From which it may or may not awaken. But then you'll have to ignore nag messages and sneaky attempts to update anyway because installing a borked update is waaay more important than whatever it was you were doing.

Which in this case seems best avoided if installing important security updates means MS uses some insecure login and bollockses up what ever settings you'd applied in a vain attempt to secure your.. I mean their system in the first place.

[Baldrickk]

Re: Anybody else tired of having their Windows 10 system wake up in the middle of the night for....?

"shutdown /s /t 0" just typed into the start menu will happily shut down your machine in that case, bypassing the update steps.

[Anonymous Coward]

@elDog - Re: Anybody else tired of having their Windows 10 system

How about good old shutdown ? With fast computer we have these days, booting the computer shouldn't take long.

[Terry 6]

Re: @elDog - Anybody else tired of having their Windows 10 system

And saves a bit of energy too, I presume.

[elDog]

Re: @elDog - Anybody else tired of having their Windows 10 system

Appreciate your suggestion. Too frequently a total reboot (shutdown) is necessary in the World Of Windows (WOW).

My SOP is to get 20-50 apps running in windows on 2-4 monitors. I really don't want to restart each of these apps and reposition them since MS is incapable of updating the OS bits without requiring a full reboot.

For those of you that open your lappie and run 2-3 programs in a session, a reboot might be OK.

[Roland6]

Re: @elDog - Anybody else tired of having their Windows 10 system

>My SOP is to get 20-50 apps running in windows on 2-4 monitors. I really don't want to restart each of these apps and reposition them ...

There must be a third-party app that handles all that for you by now, its not like multiple desktops area recent phenomenon...

Likewise it would be nice if Office actually saved current state when forced to shutdown by Windows...

[robidy]

Re: @elDog - Anybody else tired of having their Windows 10 system

Check the uptime...shutdown is hibernate. shutdown -t 0 -s is shutdown.

[Snake]

Re: Windows 10 system wake up for updates

Look, I know I'm going to get downvoted, but why do people on this website instantly bash Windows 10 without doing basic research to find that there are easy solutions to their problems???

You don't have to go far at all to stop Windows 10 from waking up for updates - IT'S ONE SETTING.

Power Options > (current active power plan) plan settings > Change advanced power settings > Sleep > Allow wake timers

and then set your choice of options. That's it, problem solve-ed.

[Zarno]

Re: Windows 10 system wake up for updates

No more wakeup timers for me, thanks! Seeing as the lappy lives in a neoprene sleeve, that could get expensive as it heats itself to reflow...

Just for reference, this is going through the "control panel" path.

Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options

The power and sleep settings dialog opened from the shart menu would be "additional power settings" on the right side > (current active power plan) plan settings

I dislike how there's now 5 ways to get to the same setting, each seemingly a bodge by a different group/department.

[Snake]

Re: @Zarno

Actually, if you have a laptop you probably have the battery icon showing on the taskbar (if not, I'd recommend that you do by right-clicking on the taskbar, going into Settings, and modifying which icons display permanently in the System Tray).

Anyway, if you have the battery icon and want the Power Options control panel, simply right-click on that battery icon and left-click on that selection in the pop-up. 5 seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Windows 10 system wake up for updates

Yes, there are solutions. But maybe the default should be not updating when asleep. Jumping through hoops to make your computer less annoying is annoying.

[Snake]

Re: shouldn't have to jump through hoops

The only logical deduction one must come to is that Microsoft decided to optimize Windows 10 for business use: the system has a default of not allowing automatic update reboots between the hours of 8AM to 5PM, typical business hours.

Microsoft could/should ask each individual user, during initial setup, for their usage pattern - home or business - and then change the active hours for disabling auto reboots accordingly (business hours for work, night hours for home as most people will use their personal machines after work, with a reminder-override after too many days of failing to reboot if you haven't done so).

Maybe they'll get a clue and implement this in later builds in order to help with user issues.

[Roland6]

Re: shouldn't have to jump through hoops

>the system has a default of not allowing automatic update reboots between the hours of 8AM to 5PM, typical business hours.

Seems a reasonable default - I've not tried the "Automatically adjust actives hours for this device based on activity"

I've actually disabled "Restart as soon as possible..." and enabled "show a notification when your PC requires a restart to finish updating". If you disable notifications, you can get into a state where Windows is showing a long list of updates but no indication of how to force their install because it is no longer flagging that a restart is necessary.

With build 1909 you can delay the restart so that it happens outside of your active hours, rather than just delay it for 15 minutes, so W10 is starting to get some useful/user friendly features.

[robidy]

Re: Windows 10 system wake up for updates

Most lose credability with they threat to move to Linux.

Maybe a simple one liner response "Go on then, I dare you"...there'll be excuses.

[Cave-Homme]

Re: Anybody else tired of having their Windows 10 system wake up in the middle of the night...

Not a problem for Windows 10 Pro. At one point I even deferred feature updates for 365 days.

[John_3_16]

Re: Tired of having their Windows 10 system wake up in the middle of the night for updates?

Telemetry, my friend. That is simply M$ spyware (sorry), Win 10 phoning home to tell Mom & Dad everything you have done on the computer since last night when it last called home. M$ expected you to be sound asleep since the computer reported you were not actively visiting your favorite porn site.

Win 7 to Win 10 telemetry spyware is definitely not new. Only change is Win 10 has now hardwired it into the OS so stopping it breaks the machine just like their updates. Anyone watched congress for the last few years pick their boogers in open session & wipe them on each other's backs? Yeah. This is the world we live in now.

Sad. Almost enough to make the end of the world look good.

[Snake]

Re: Tired of having their Windows 10 system wake up in the middle of the night for updates?

Then turn off and remove a lot of the Windows 10 telemetry.

First, download and run Windows 10 ShutUp, from the link I provided earlier in this thread.

Then, go to

Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Task Scheduler > Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Windows > Application Experience

and disable any telemetry programs that you see (deleting them only seems to get them reinserted back in on the next major update. I can't guarantee that not happening even when Disabled, so go in and check ocassionally).

Note that you must re-run ShutUp after every major Windows 10 update, as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

One reason why they "forced" updates...

So your machine is more secure and so you cannot complain when you are compromised due to not applying patches...oh! wait!

[MrDamage]

Re: One reason why they "forced" updates...

If they don't force the updates, then that leads to "It was always asking to be rebooted after updates, so I switched them off. Anyway, can you tell me why my computer isn't working?"

[Anonymous Coward]

*Your* machine?

No, once you install Windows 10 it belongs to M$.

[Version 1.0]

Let's take a holliday cruise

Here's your room sir, don't worry about the water on the floor, the ship is being patched at the moment, the patches that were applied yesterday caused a small problem but it will be fixed after we set sail. Oh wait, there's water in the ceiling light fixture, don't worry I'll report that and it will be patched before we arrive in Hawaii. Please note that the small print in your vacation contract states that we are not responsible for water damage to your luggage.

[Anonymous Coward]

BSOD for me last night

I downloaded updates and chose to 'update and shutdown'. Upon starting later, checkdisk was running for some reason and then BSOD as the update couldn't finish.

Couldn't rewind the patch, system restore, fix startup... anything. Delete partition and reinstall :(

Thanks for that M$ -_-

[Snake]

Re: BSOD for me last night

Were you running any aftermarket AV products? Those are the known update-killers, it seems.

[Roland6]

Re: BSOD for me last night

Were you running any aftermarket AV products?

It does seem if you have AVIRA antivirus installed you have a much higher chance of things not working afterwards. [ https://www.computerworld.com/article/3527271/february-win10-1903-and-1909-cumulative-update-causing-desktops-to-disappear.html ]

[John_3_16]

Re: BSOD for me last night

AV's are very efficient these days at stopping malware. If your AV is stopping the updates then that could be a warning that Win 10 has been crossed over by M$ to the dark side! Just say'n.

[Camilla Smythe]

Just here for the downvotes.

Why does Linux never spend more than 5 minutes updating itself and is happy to hold off on reboots on the extremely rare occasions one is required. I mean... last time I moved up a version number that only took 15 minutes and I didn't really notice any difference. What are they doing wrong?

[Snake]

Re: Just here for the downvotes.

Use Windows 10 ShutUp and very conveniently deactivate update auto reboots

https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

[Anonymous Coward]

100% CPU usage and getting hot

On startup I now have Windows search indexing a laptop to the point of thermal shutdown, 95 deg C being the last logged CPU core temperatures

Paused indexing and it now 'works' but what a pile of steaming excrement W10 is

[Baldrickk]

Re: 100% CPU usage and getting hot

I had this before - but with Windows 7.

Turns out that the disk was on the way out and was spewing SMART errors. Something about that broke the indexing, and the PC became completely unusable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows, the Boeing of operatng systems

Boeing, the Windows of airplanes

[Snake]

Interesting that you say that

http://9buz.com/content/uploads/images/October2014/windows_10%20_we_finally_fixed_everything_9buz.jpg

[Conundrum1885]

Re. Interesting that you say that

Should really be an opt-out for indexing.

Also could this be why my other 10 laptop kept randomly powering off hard? CPU was running hot.

I did the thermal paste fix etc and cleaned the fan which helped but it still happens.

Could be a bad worn out heat pipe but can test this with an infrared thermometer: if the pipe is bad

the CPU end will heat up but not the other.

[robidy]

Re: Re. Interesting that you say that

Or a finger if you don't have that gizmo.

[Conundrum1885]

Re: Re. Interesting that you say that

Oh, you could do that.

Also as I found out IR thermometers are calibrated by emissivity. In order to get an accurate reading you need to use a black body ie piece of graphite.

The laser is actually a good test: if it shows a visible dot this could indicate a possible surface issue.

[John Arthur]

Re: Re. Interesting that you say that

Local Disk C: (or whatever your OS is on), right click>Properties>untick "Allow files on this drive etc..."

Works for me

[Steve Kellett]

Dead drives...

I have a mate complaining that the most recent Windows 10 upgrade has resulted in none of the disc drives installed on his 13 year old machine being accessible as it removed or disabled the drivers for all older drives.

I'm in the even the work machine dual boots to Linux" camp for primarily this sort of reason.

[ecofeco]

After doing almost 1000 updates

It sounds to me like outdated BIOS and drivers.

[gurugeorge]

Hahaaa idiots. I use Linux and Mac none of this.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about KB... 244 - the joyous break UEFI and bitlocker patch in the same bunndle???

oh the f****g joy... but none of this is as bad as if you are running almost an entirely HP environment and have applied patch KB.... 244 (the UEFI patch from the same patch tuesday, now withdrawn by M$) and have had to spend the last few days manually unbitlockering things....

[Anonymous Coward]

SaaS

Microsoft installing patches without permission ranks right up there with that guy that cuts me off right at the light because he didn't want to wait in the turn lane on the annoying-crap-i-have-to-deal-with scale. Maybe I'm just a pre-millenial with a sense of property ownership, but to me, an operating system isn't service. It's just software. The fact that MS can't make it robust enough and have to patch it every month doesn't change that.

[Conundrum1885]

Updated BIOS

And several problems fixed themselves. I had to do some pretty extensive clenching when it "seemed" to brick itself after a reboot but after a 5 second wait it powered on minus being able to boot which was a 25 second fix in enabling "Both" in the HDD options.

I even took pictures this time in case anyone else runs into a similar issue.

Incidentally brightness control issues after a screen replacement are a well known problem and generally BIOS update will help.

Still waiting on a cursor-o-doom fix for my Craphard Hell laptop with the perfectly good battery (RIP)