Windows Update strikes again

[Tethys]

I had the laptop in sleep mode (as I do every night before bed). I do this so because I don't close all my open dev folders and files, I work on them daily.

Well last night, while in sleep mode, Windows restarts itself, several open folders and files. Not sure which ones. OH WELL.

I was so fed up with this issue today I have IGNORED a security warning from a website (majorgeeks) and downloaded a program which I hope will disable windows 10 updates now and PREVENT THE DATA LOSS. Win Updates Disabler v1.4 required me to restart, but I just did a check for updates and it tells me the service is not working properly. It appears the disabler is working properly.

For anyone sick and tired of losing their files because windows update is too STUPID to save your work to a temp file and reopen it after restart (if you dont mind security warning). WHAT A JOKE windows is. WHERE is the microsoft competition!?!?

[slickrcbd]

Well, a developer should know that you should always save your work before walking away from the computer.
Microsoft has decided (with some justification) that users are too stupid to update and has set it up so that they are forced to update.
I disagree with the way they implemented it however. It should never restart without the user's OK if there are logged in users. It is one thing to do an automatic restart if nobody is logged in and the welcome screen is displayed, but quite another when a user is logged in with active applications, even if the computer is asleep.

What they could have done was download the updates, but let the user choose when to install them. Make a pop-up like they did, and keep reminding them once a day, but don't make a forced update without the user's permission. If they don't touch the dialog box, that doesn't mean they don't have anything that will be lost, they could be waiting for a download, a video to encode, or a program to compile. Forcing an end to that process just pisses people off.

What was wrong with "notify me about updates, but let me choose when to install them"?

[Flocke]

WHAT A JOKE windows is. WHERE is the microsoft competition!?!?

HA HA HA, right, OH WELL. Yeah, hard to answer that. I am sick of WIndows for long and am still using it all day. I feal Linux shrilling in my ears and gave several distributions a try and after some frustration on one or another issue I always end switching back to windows. While I hate it so much I became sick of all the linux console freaks but became a windows only programmer. Oh well, one day I will have to update my lovely windows 8.1 system, I fear it coming.

Honestly I wished there'd be better alternatives. The closest for now of the many linux distributions by my feelling is Manjaro XFCE. Beside some minor issues it turned out to work pretty well. I didn't experience crashes and it even keeps updating with no issues after months being offline. To me it solves one of the main linux culprits, the update policy pretty well. And while windows becomes worse each year, in some time I plan to give it another turn.

Oh and I have a mac system here as well, that I used for porting apps. While it looks great I however got shocked how limited on advanced user operations it is. All has to be done in a unique mac way and one is forced to adapt and limit oneself to the stupid mainstream. And when I looked into programming for it, I got even more shocked on the limited coding abilities. And I got shocked for getting charged on the most basic software additions. And my fingers started to hurt trying to adapt to the ill keyboard layout changes on my windows keyboard. Ah well, thats been what triggered me to turn it into a Manjaro install. I've been so close to turn it into another windows machine.

I wished so much Windows 11 was any less control obsessive again.

The forced updates on my Windows 10 work machine hurt me badly as well. You never know when windows might jump in and suddenly reboots the system. Luckily at least the many open browser windows usually can be restored with no problem, usually...
I mistrust Windows for long and never use the sleep mode but use hibernate instead. With the side effect that windows always tends to ask for updates when I am busy doing my work and still when I leave for a pause I might miss the forced updates.


Oh, one silent note on the disable updates I must leave. You never, never, never ever should completely disable updates and keep running an outdated install. Keeping the many recent security breaches in mind this really is a no go. Rather cut your network connection next time.

edit: While rather being a joke, some automatic network disabler actually would be neat I guess, something like https://www.sordum.org/9660/net-disabler-v1-1/ but I fear already downloaded updates would be getting appllied by windows anyhow

[KrazeeXXL]

Win 10 standby and update is driving me nuts for quite some time now. It all started with some update back in '19. PC just wakes up randomly at night for some update which is great for my energy bill.

I've tried all kinds of settings to no avail. Only thing that helps preventing random wake-ups is a forced shutdown job at a specific time.

Heck, sometimes my PC even wakes up from standby when I stand in front of it for some reason. Peripherials like my mice are off, so not sure what's causing it. I'm using Win10/pro and have the updates set to max delay because some of them were really bad in the past.

Not sure what it is with this OS. But hey, at least I got the notification a couple of days ago to update to Win11. Yea nah dude. Not doing that.

The latest gimmick is external drives spinning up for whatever reasons multiple times a day. I just love that explorer popping up all the time for whatever reasons. /s

Ah well, first world problems I guess. But annoying nonetheless.

Otherwise it's working fine so far. No slowdowns over time due to registry cluttering like it was the case with win 7 and rarely any crashes if at all.

[Flocke]

Heck, sometimes my PC even wakes up from standby when I stand in front of it for some reason.

Hey Krazee dude, use hibernate mode instead of sleep and this issue is gone!

Keeping it in sleep mode is exactly for the matter of allowing windows to turn it on for maintenance whenever it feels is a good time. E.g. to check updates, scan system for viruses, hdd defrag or ssd trim calls, or to collect the many diagnostic tracking, and what so ever more there is....
With some luck you find some triggers in the 'Aufgabenplanung' task planning menu as well.

[slickrcbd]

Have you tried telling Windows you have a metered connection or following any of this advice:
https://www.groovypost.com/howto/defer- ... 0-updates/
Here's how to disable the updates, but you'll have to manually enable the service once in a while to do updates:
https://www.cleverfiles.com/howto/disab ... ws-10.html

This might be beneficial as well
https://www.groovypost.com/howto/managi ... t-options/

If you do block it, this might be useful:
https://www.groovypost.com/howto/create ... indows-10/
but you'll also want to create a script to enable the update service (use that sc command) and reboot the computer, then you click on that shortcut and update. Remember that you won't get all the updates at once, but you'll get a bunch to download and force a restart, then you'll have to wait a bit after the reboot before checking again to get more.


Oh, and Windows 11 won't help you with updates. As far as I can tell, Microsith of Borg has not changed that aspect of Windows at all for the Home edition. I haven't had much experience with the Pro version of Win11 yet. I just got the notification that I have the option to update to Win11 on my Win10 pro computer last night but I need to free up some disk space.

[KrazeeXXL]

Just found out that fast startup was enabled. A bit odd since I recall having it deactivated a couple of times. Perhaps that's the culprit. At least I remember seeing that as a reason for multiple restart-related issues in the past. Probably have to check that now every time after a major update was applied.

Heck, sometimes my PC even wakes up from standby when I stand in front of it for some reason.

Hey Krazee dude, use hibernate mode instead of sleep and this issue is gone!

Keeping it in sleep mode is exactly for the matter of allowing windows to turn it on for maintenance whenever it feels is a good time. E.g. to check updates, scan system for viruses, hdd defrag or ssd trim calls, or to collect the many diagnostic tracking, and what so ever more there is....
With some luck you find some triggers in the 'Aufgabenplanung' task planning menu as well.

The activation timer setting is off for quite some time. But I switched hybrid standbymode and resting state (not sure if that's the old sleep mode) again. Perhaps it'll work out. I've tried all kinds of options before to no avail, sadly. Automatic trim and defrag are deactivated as well.



Just went through the jobs and deactivated edge update and some garmin leftovers and pretty much anything that could trigger. We'll see if that works out. Thanks for the replies guys. ^^ (sorry for hijacking the thread Tethys)

[Tethys]

No worries my friend. Any info that cures the disease of Windows Update is a welcome antidote

[slickrcbd]

You know, the forced updates wouldn't be as much of an issue if they did not do the forced restart and would only trigger when the computer was idle for more than 10 minutes, plus would stop when you started using the computer again so it didn't slow it down.
They could simply set the "update windows and shut down/restart" instead of doing the restart autocratically and interrupting whatever you had open.
I know the philosophy is "save your work before walking away from the computer" but that doesn't help if you are downloading something big overnight, compiling overnight, or having the computer monitor something overnight.

[KrazeeXXL]

I think, yea more I hope that I found the solution to the explorer issues. And now I feel a bit silly because I had this stuff deactivated for decades at this point. It's the drive indexing...

There's also a LowDiskSpaceCheck function which may have been responsible for the spin ups. However, I had to create a new registry entry and now is testing time.

My PC woke up again of course this night which then woke me up. I think it's back to forced shutdown at a specific time. So sick of this.

edit:

You know, the forced updates wouldn't be as much of an issue if they did not do the forced restart and would only trigger when the computer was idle for more than 10 minutes, plus would stop when you started using the computer again so it didn't slow it down.
They could simply set the "update windows and shut down/restart" instead of doing the restart autocratically and interrupting whatever you had open.
I know the philosophy is "save your work before walking away from the computer" but that doesn't help if you are downloading something big overnight, compiling overnight, or having the computer monitor something overnight.

Just had the second dotnet update this week. After the installation I always get a prompt where it's asking me if I want to restart and apply the update now or later. But I'm not sure at this point if I have activated anything to get that prompt.

I feel some duality when it comes to updates. Usually they annoy me. It's like when picking up my phone and getting the notification multiple times a week that there are 50+ updates available. It's just *sigh* ^^ and I should probably de-install some apps.

On the other hand, nothing is worse than no updates. Ok, correction there is something worse and that's botched updates. And Windows had quite a few in 2020 and early 2021.

[slickrcbd]

My PC woke up again of course this night which then woke me up. I think it's back to forced shutdown at a specific time. So sick of this.

What's waking you up? If it's the light from the monitor, just about every monitor I have ever seen has a manual off switch or button, you can try using that when you go to bed.
If it's sound, turn off the speakers.
You shouldn't have to do this, but that's Microsoft's wisdom that nobody would care if their computer turns on in the middle of the night, ignoring a million college students in dormitories who might mind their screen making light when they are trying to sleep.

[Flocke]

When it is in hibernate / "Ruhezustand" mode, the only chance to wake up again is some bios trigger, like "Wake on LAN" or by keyboard and mouse events. I remember I had times when my PC suddenly wake by false detection of my mouse till I switched something in BIOS.

Another source could be a defective PSU. I remember I had fun with my BeQuiet one. The main issues I had with it is that sometimes I had to try countless times to turn it on again, and other times on shutdown it turned on again just a moment later. I think I had some random wakeups with it also.

[slickrcbd]

I recall that the wake on mouse could only be disabled with a USB mouse, not a PS/2 one.
I couldn't find a BIOS option in an HP desktop 10 years ago, nor could 25 other techs.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... d9ab4059cd

[KrazeeXXL]

What's waking you up? If it's the light from the monitor, just about every monitor I have ever seen has a manual off switch or button, you can try using that when you go to bed.
If it's sound, turn off the speakers.

I started using standby mode so that I don't have to turn off things manually. Perhaps I became too convenient and lazy
But since it's a function of the hardware I paid quite a bit of money for, I'd like to be able to use it to its full extent.

When it is in hibernate / "Ruhezustand" mode, the only chance to wake up again is some bios trigger, like "Wake on LAN" or by keyboard and mouse events. I remember I had times when my PC suddenly wake by false detection of my mouse till I switched something in BIOS.

Another source could be a defective PSU. I remember I had fun with my BeQuiet one. The main issues I had with it is that sometimes I had to try countless times to turn it on again, and other times on shutdown it turned on again just a moment later. I think I had some random wakeups with it also.

Thanks for the input, Flocke. My BIOS is pretty clean at this point. I never had wake up on LAN activated and generally disabled a lot of stuff. I reactivated c6-states which made my system a bit unstable in the past regarding OC but so far it hasn't helped.

PSU is an interesting point. Funnily enough it came to my mind yesterday before reading your post. So, thanks for the re-affirmation that this might be an issue.

Turning the PC on, can take a bit of time nowadays. Sometimes it's one press of the button and another day it takes multiple times.

I'm still using my Seasonic SS-760XP2. I got this one in September '15, so maybe it's time to replace it. I think it's rated 100k hours MTBF, though that doesn't mean much. This thing ran a lot of hours, esp back then when I was using BOINC and OCed heavily.

I've also some trouble with my old and trusty 390 recently where the PSU might be the issue. But then again, the GPU is a couple of months older and nearly 7 years old at this point. I re-applied the thermal paste every year and even replaced the pads on the memory and the VRMs this time.

Kinda hard to find out which one of the both components need replacement - probably both.

[Flocke]

Seasonic? The SEASONIC FOCUS Plus 550 Gold is the one I acquired little more than 2 years back to replace my defective BeQuiet one.
On the other hand I have a 13 year old 385W Enermax PRO 82+ still running perfectly. Amazingly even with maybe 10 years of massive overclocking it's still rocking stable.

Hard to tell what is causing your issues, but it sounds rather strange to me. Therefore indeed it might be a hardware issue.