So my Win 10 Pro 1909 at home and office were force-upgraded to 2004 without any recourse (or even me knowing), other than my being able to roll back to 1909 for the office workstation, for now, owing to encountering show-stoppers.

 

Today I went to "defer feature upgrade for 365 days" for the other PC that took the journey to 2004 (standard practice in "defensive computing") , and only to be confronted with this rudeness:

 

https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/237087/windows-10-pro-users-can-no-longer-defer-windows-updates

 

And they pushed that through during the height of the Pandemic so it flew under the radar for most, I dare say.

 

Here stupid me was thinking with B***y being preoccupied with humanity's health and welfare while partaking in a little creative asset division  ... there'd be a wee less fervour in screwing the helots and a little more embracing of public-mindedness, good-will open source etc ...

 

Forget Nuance.  Redmond should join the rocket race and blast the exec team to Mars!

 

P.S., https://redmondmag.com/articles/2020/07/06/windows-10-deferral-mix-up.aspx

 

So maybe the IT gurus frequenting this forum can shine a light in this jungle for us peasants on how we can minimize disruption by hacking out a path in "Group Policies" and similar swamps.  No wonder my own father, a retired decades-long SAP programmer, finally ditched Windows and bought himself a MacBook.  The way he told me (and my mom) the other day that he had "always wanted a Mac" was not unlike someone "coming out of the closet" in days of yore ... .

 

But there is nothing funny with these never-ending shenanigans from Redmond.

 

And you Dragonistas - good luck to you (and to me)!

Is this below a working "guide"?  Has anyone implemented it for their 2004 and up?  Of course, the path of least resistance is just to lie down and let MSoftie have its way.  Close my eyes and "enjoy" the ride?  

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-removed-the-defer-feature-update-setting-in-windows-10/ 

 

Tips or dibs?  I'd appreciate it.

 

Actually I would close my eyes if I could.  Even pay a ransom - not asking the Softie to bring flowers or any of that "uppity" nonsense.  Just not to trash the house and break the furniture after doing "what comes naturally"!  Too much to ask, folks? 

 

Cupertino is not exactly known for giving you choices.  But do they force their way on your machine to "upgrade"?  Does Android drag you up the versions kicking and screaming?

 

What happened to your body machine, your choice?  

Registry tweaks?  But it says that it won't work once your version is deemed "EOS'd", like the 1909 last week.  Anyone knows of a reliable registry hack?

How about consulting Softie for official help on civil defense?

 

Walkthrough: Use Group Policy to configure Windows Update for Business

 

... Set up a ring

 

Really, "set up a ring"?  Who is gonna help the defenseless peasants working from home?  Marines? 

If you had so massive problems with Windows 10 updates as it sounds you're probably one of very few users experiencing this.

Through many years now we've updated all Win10 machines in our company in a timely manner and didn't have a single showstopper I know of.

Yes, my old machine wouldn't get the 2020.4 update because of an incompatibility with the rather antique graphics card, but if you're using a 7 years old workstation for development it's your own fault IMHO.

Meanwhile, I got a new machine and all the updates went smoothly and without any hiccups.

 

Just my 2ct...

 

Sounds as if your illustrious company, Crypto-certified partner of M$ (folks get blasé these days about Gold), maintains a harem of Windows boxes that make themselves available to day-and-night, ad lib intercourse with the cyber b^lly from Redmond, and sing to you each morning, fulfilled and satisfied.

 

Well we are happy for you!  May it continue to gratify and whatever "floats your boat" ...

 

On the other hand, is it so outlandish that a shy peasant somewhere, someday, may decide to lock the shack for a few months and politely decline the lord's entry?  What do they have to do?  Call in the National Guard?  

 

 

 

Go on taking personal responsibility for ... using a "7-year old workstation for development".  The debate here is not whether you believe "your skirt was too short".

 

In your own case, did Redmond force an upgrade on your vulnerable workstation and brick it?  If it did and you want to convince the world that it was your fault for "seducing Redmond with 7-year-old hardware", then what can I say?  I hope you got some diamonds, "diamond-partner"!

 

Is it no longer permissible to even keep one's PC at a cyber-equivalent of "arm's length" from Redmond's unnatural instincts?  

 

Finally, your videocard may have been only 7 years too old, my fax modem is still on 2006 driver and based on 1964 Xerox core technology, which itself traces lineage back to Alexander Bain of 1843 fame.  Does that give Redmond license to f*** it up with a feature upgrade I did NOT ask for? 

 

Sure, Softie is entirely within its corporate pregorative to make a world-wide announcement that it no longer wishes to support a technology pre-dating the Civil War on its 21st Century, forward-looking Windows platform.  Then those who still choose to coddle Bain's dinosaur can elect to deal, or not deal - accordingly.  

 

But no.  It enters.  It xxxxs.  And it smashes the chandelier just for kicks.  All in a day's work to "teach your computer to be a better computer".

 

Clearly present-day Redmond understands consent very differently.  Perhaps learning from the same dictionary as the old Red army.

 

P.S., it was actually a relatively simple fix for the fax modem (incidentally rolling back to 1909 did not repair the damage Redmond inflicted), which I was able to handle, once I enaged in a little scrimmaging by squeezing out time I didn't have while being on-call.  Nevertheless, as they say, it is the principle. 

 

Anyhow, thanks for chiming in, Martin/Mav.  I thought you had solutions!  But I suppose someone has to jump in and defend poor, innocent MS who otherwise has very little means at its disposal. 

 

Anyway, I am giving the setting "metered connection" a whirl.  We shall see.

Wow - you're really taking it personally.

In that case what keeps you from leaving that devil M$ altogether and switch to Linux (seeing that Apple is even more restricting than MS, I guess Mac isn't an alternative either)?

 

mav

 

Now you asked the million € question, Mav.

 

Unfortunately not every little birdie has what it takes to fly the Cult coop.  Some are stuck on the plantation, croaking and venting, bemoaning their own lack of ambition and ... incapacity.  

 

Linux ... does that mean a return to GREP and SUDO and all that piping goodness during my X-Windows days as a summer research student in the 1990s?

 

In the real world, even though my EMR is delivered over Citrix (which supports Linux?), and EHR is interfaced through Chrome (and works on Chromebooks, including its "SDK Server Dragon"), some of my hold-overs such as that fax modem are only supported through my EMR on Windows, possibly Mac.  But not Linux, of which I am fairly certain.

 

But I am starting to see that keeping the fax modem is looking more and more "anti-Darwinian".  But as "fetishes" go ... I can't yet relinguish my 6+ year-old Blackberry Classic because of that keyboard.  Bits and pieces have their values.

 

Anyhow, it could be worse.  I could have been stuck to real albotrosses such as M$ Word, Excel, or Outlook for plying a living.  Some are flogged harder than others and put up with it that's for sure.  Everyone has to find their "sweetspot" between the perks and the welts.

 

To me personally, AutoHotKey has considerably blunted Redmond's fifty shades of BS.  So as to allow the peasants to chafe under the yoke a little while longer.

 

 

 

 

 

@ax: my sympathies. I seem to be lucky: Windows 10 Pro on my SurfBook3, but I can pause updates (at least, it says that they are paused).

@ax What happened to your body machine, your choice?

Lawsuits because of security bugs. MS does not want to have to test and maintain security bugfixes for too many old OS versions and configurations. Macs, on the other hand, have far less diversity.

 

--

 

As for the guy who says that it is unusual for the latest updates to have problems: I could only wish!  I had to go two restore points back today because the updates broke things.  The security podcasts I listen to are constantly talking about updates breaking stuff, even as they fix security holes.  It's standard practice to delay updates for anything except drive-by and remote access vulnerabilities by at least a week.  But then you have to keep your ears open for security fixes that need to be fixed RIGHT NOW.  That's what an IT department is for - doesn't help us individual users.

-------------------------

DPG15.6 (also DPI 15.3) + KB, Sennheiser MB Pro 1 UC ML, BTD 800 dongle, Windows 10 Pro, MS Surface Book 3, Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU @ 1.3/1.5GHz (4 cores, 8 logical, GPU=NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 with Max-Q Design.

That confirms for us that Apple sadly still rules the roost in the Desktop arena.

For we only have Apple, and Bad Apple (aka Microsoft).

I had some hope for ChromeOS.  But it looks as though it is happy to settle for being "just for kids".  It may be defeatist to think in such a way - but I concede I am too old for "generic Linux" ... although your mentioning Emacs in the other thread brought back memories.

Can't blame my dad for defecting to the "good apple" (missing a bite out of it notwithstanding), even well into his retirement.

Updates are bad enough. But why is it necessary to "activate" using a Microsoft account every time I use Excel or Word? And when was this introduced?

it's bad enough the increasing amount of small delays and hangups that occur with DPi without finding that the last document you were working on has now been automatically saved to a Microsoft server.

Is there a practical alternative to MS Word if you have to use voice recognition software?




-------------------------

New PC expected next week...

You can hold back the updates. I did what you did initially and found the same that, ultimately, Windows would take control over this again at some designated point in the future, although unknown to to you when exactly.

 

It angered me because I then ended up with a completely unusable system when it crashed during the process (it engaged in a never-ending system restart loop), which took me a long and agonising time to fix. I also had things I needed to do urgently that I couldn't do now that my machine was incapacitated by the unwanted update. And knowing how dependent I am on having a working system, I certainly didn't want to risk the kind of issues that can come with new updates that have not been tested thoroughly enough, never mind those that crash my system altogether. So I needed that control.

 

I've long forgotten how I did this, so the best I can do is re-search and point you in the broad direction of what worked for me to properly overcome this annoying issue.

 

My chosen method involved setting the target feature update. This will ensure that you receive any updates up to and including that target version e.g. 2004 as normal, but Windows will not exceed it to a newer update version.This article gives you several methods of doing the same thing, so you can pick the one you prefer:

 

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/159624-how-specify-target-feature-update-version-windows-10-a.html

 

* Be sure to check out the versions still supported by Microsoft here in the Windows 10 release information list.

 

An alternative method, which I haven't tried, is this:

 

https://www.ubackup.com/windows-10/disable-windows-10-update-registry-8523.html

 

It seems a bit blunt to me, but it depends on what you want. With the former, you can adjust it over time so that you always remain an update or two behind the newest, without ever being completely out of date or unsupported, and hopefully ironing out some of the early adopter issues that often appear with the newest updates. This one appears to just stop all and every update altogether, though I could be wrong without trying it first.

 

Obviously, take great care doing this - backup, create restore points, and know how to reverse changes before you start! I'm no tech guru, just your regular layperson and this is what worked for me. I hope it works for you too.

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing, bee9.

In fact I did go down the route of setting "TargetReleaseVersion" and "TargetReleaseVersionInfo" in Windows Registry based on a ComputerWorld article a while ago (which was recently updated by author).  It did stick, whereas specifying "metered connection" had no effect really.

However, the tutorial link you shared above from Tenforums seems to be by far the most clearly laid out and most detailed, also with up-to-date comments.

With year-end approaching, I might need to update the PC to "turn the leaf" on imposed legacy.  We will see how far my milege goes.

A quick update, FWIW:

With AskWoody.com recommending 21H2, and also because 21H2 has been appointed the basis for the next "LTSC" release for Enterprise, which leads one to wager on its relative stability, I bit the bullet and moved workstation above to 21H2.

Sure enough the usual Windows Update channel fails over and over, even after I disconnected/uninstalled fax modem and unplugged every USB device except mouse and keyboard.

Even picking the first/default option on the Windows 10 ISO page (as recommended by AskWoody) fails miserably.

Only by going through the "Create Windows 10 installation media" and "Download tool", which was what Lunis had to do to upgrade to Windows 11, I believe, did I manage successfully to update the workstation to 21H2.

 

But once updated, and everything plugged back, my heirloom Chandelier lit up without fuss.

Thank you Lords of Redmond, for thy favour and kindness so as to allow a humble sharecropper to plow another year ... in relative tranquility ... knock on wood.

P.S.,

Updating my main home PC, an HP Z2 Mini G3 running on i7-7700, from 2004 to 21H2 through the usual update channel, was just drama-free, as one should expect.

 

The workstation, a Lenovo P320 running on E3-1245 v6, really has essentially the same processor, other than 16 GB of ECC as opposed to regular RAM.  I suspect the culprit might be that the P320 runs "Windows 10 Pro for Workstations", which came preinstalled and not something I'd have chosen ...