Oolite Bulletins

Leaving aside the bloody WX nagware <spits>, Windows Update itself is bordering on malware lately. It starts to check for updates, then drops into a horrible loop which burns-up one processor core, often eating RAM too, whilst doing nothing. Plenty of examples on google and various forums, plenty of fixes on offer, which unfortunately don't seem to work for everyone - certainly not for me and other users that I'm aware of. Even MS's own fix doesn't work! Some users have watched it do this for hours on end without any result - no updates! I've seen it run for over an hour before giving up, and on an older machine with limited hardware, it can cause real problems! No way to stop it either except a restart. It's almost enough to drive a man to join the Penguinistas!

Anyone else getting this, and more importantly, does anyone have a fix that works?

Mrs_Smivs has a Windows laptop (Win 7) she uses for her work as a teacher and the updates drive her mad constantly. The poor old lappy is a bit weedy so she emphatically does not want to go to Win 10 in case it can't cope. Every time she starts it, it starts to try to 'upgrade' her, and the annoyance is palpable.
Every time this happens she gets more annoyed, I chuckle a bit more and probably get closer to an untimely end.....

This may be of interest to La Señora, Smivs. The usual caveats apply, of course!

That link just tells me that "Javascript is disabled," which I knew already (NoScript). Oh, I see. Its a Microsoft website. No, I doubt that'll help much. And no, I'm not even going to temporarily allow MS to run code on my machine, even if it's in a browser's "sandbox".
Microsoft upgrade woes? I think I'll just relax here on my ice floe and chomp on herring-flavoured popcorn.

I may have found a fix - it only went into a loop for 25 mins, and is now installing 96 updates.
It seems to be a problem with svchost.exe when it's searching - but that's all beyond my ken.

Of course, the fix may have nothing to do with it - it may have simply decided to run this time.

Just to make it simple for everyone: if it's not a laptop you're dragging from public hotspot to public hotspot, those updates are 95-99% useless. A desktop behind a good router, with a better browser than IE6/ActiveX, shouldn't necessarily be updated, unless you know a specific update would help you (that's mainly the 1% of them).
Even that specific laptop, can be actually configured decently secured (at least firewall wise, and of course, wireless wise) to not require them lots of useless updates.
A decent email/browser policy nowadays will also put aside any need for an anti-virus program -- they don't make them the way they used to -- hehe.
Of course, YMMV.

"IE" ... that's a phrase I have to struggle to remember the meaning of. Is it something like "there should not be a monoculture of OS plus browser with hugely distributed holes (when identified) ; therefore, regardless of your OS, one should never use the OS's default browser ; in the case of a Windows machine, ie IE".
A little strained, but you get where I'm coming from. Of all the people in the world using the same OS as me, (A few hundred thousand to a million) many will be using one of 8 browsers other than the one I installed as an alternative to the OS's default browser. Making for a target area of a few hundred thousand installations, most of whom will be on different mixes of security updates. (I do my updates by dividing the list 3-ways in terms of [sort parameter], and installing the updates one-third a week.
An attack writer will target the largest audience they can. So, don't be in that target profile. Simples.

<sighs>

On the subject of GWX, I noticed its system tray icon is gone on my machine. Permanently, I hope.

As for Windows Update, I've never had a bit of trouble with them.

CaptSolo wrote:

On the subject of GWX, I noticed its system tray icon is gone on my machine. Permanently, I hope.

As for Windows Update, I've never had a bit of trouble with them.

You didn't qualify - you could mean "Always had a lot of trouble!"

Updates are for times like now. Stuck at the airport because of bad weather at the minesite - for the last 3 hours!

But then again substandard WiFi...

SteveKing wrote:

Updates are for times like now. Stuck at the airport because of bad weather at the minesite - for the last 3 hours!

But then again substandard WiFi...

Times like this are perfect for an ancient yet awesome piece of technology: books. Cheap, small, robust, lightweight, no Wifi, no battery, no updates, no bugs, no viruses, ...

...and a great way to recycle all those old trees.

Smivs wrote:

...and a great way to recycle all those old trees.

Exactly - trees absorb atmospheric CO2; cut them down, squash them, make them into books, and all that CO2 extracted from the atmosphere gets safely shelved away. Then grow more trees, rinse, repeat.

Much as I love books, making paper from trees ain't exactly good for the environment. It is improving, but it still ain't good.

True - even though paper is made from commercially farmed timber (when it's not made from rags, or grasses, or older paper), it does tend to require a lot of bleach. But it's probably less bad for the environment than digging up oil and turning it into Kindles.