her PC is configured to never update anything ever
I hope it’s airgapped then – have to keep up with patches in this online world. (I know the patching experience sucks, but horrifically out of date machines are how this stuff spreads….)
I hope it’s airgapped then – have to keep up with patches in this online world. (I know the patching experience sucks, but horrifically out of date machines are how this stuff spreads…)
There is a trade-off involved. I don’t think she could have recovered from the kind of problems I experienced this week-end.
I’ve had a Windows update break Internet connectivity. How do you recover from something like this without driving to her place?
And should the update change the settings, she is likely to experience this as her PC being broken. It is bad.
I manually run some updates when I visit and I have plenty of time to deal with the consequences. I do not update zip utilities. Honestly, I should probably just remove Java entirely… will do so next time around.
Jamessays:
It’s really hard to disable updates in Windows 10. My co-worker was trying to run something overnight, and Windows decided it needed to reboot. Took multiple attempts to tell Windows to really, really disable auto updates.
Have you tried Linux? My mom is quite happy with it. She mostly uses the browser, and I do the updates when I visit her.
In software companies of my experience, the “A” team create pieces of cool software, deliver, and then move on to a new project. It is left to others to patch and create updates. The biggest problem is not necessarily the quality of the coders, but the fact that those who are patching have little to no experience with the code base they are patching.
Leonsays:
Ah this reminds me of my dualbooted laptop. Every once in a while I visit Windows for a quick video game session. Quick coming from steam, Windows and nvidia updating all at once, leaving me little time to play.
Depending on how often you manually update her Windows machine, you might be exposing it/her to unnecessary security risks. Automatic updates are much wiser given the state of OS and internet security in 2018.
And yes, definitely uninstall Java if you’re not going to let it automatically update. Sometimes a single update addresses a dozen High Severity vulnerabilities. Though browsers aren’t allowing Java plugins anymore, so the attack surface is limited to downloaded programs.
Windows 10 has a feature where you can set “Active Hours” during which it will never run an update. Windows 10 is pretty good, and anyone running Windows should probably run 10. It has much better security features than prior versions, and a recent update gave it many of the features from Microsoft’s EMET tool that sys admins used – things like mandatory ASLR for programs not compiled with the requisite flag, bottom-up ASLR, Control Flow Guard, validation of exception chains (SEHOP), etc.
I hate it when MS does anything that changes my settings in general, but I haven’t experienced that in some time. One time, my mouse pointer size settings that I set on a 4K laptop were automatically synced/copied to a 1080p desktop, with ridiculous results. It was stupid of them to sync settings that are dependent on screen size and resolution across machines with different screens. Anyway, the Active Hours settings help with the disruption issue.
I hope it’s airgapped then – have to keep up with patches in this online world. (I know the patching experience sucks, but horrifically out of date machines are how this stuff spreads….)
I hope it’s airgapped then – have to keep up with patches in this online world. (I know the patching experience sucks, but horrifically out of date machines are how this stuff spreads…)
There is a trade-off involved. I don’t think she could have recovered from the kind of problems I experienced this week-end.
I’ve had a Windows update break Internet connectivity. How do you recover from something like this without driving to her place?
And should the update change the settings, she is likely to experience this as her PC being broken. It is bad.
I manually run some updates when I visit and I have plenty of time to deal with the consequences. I do not update zip utilities. Honestly, I should probably just remove Java entirely… will do so next time around.
It’s really hard to disable updates in Windows 10. My co-worker was trying to run something overnight, and Windows decided it needed to reboot. Took multiple attempts to tell Windows to really, really disable auto updates.
Have you tried Linux? My mom is quite happy with it. She mostly uses the browser, and I do the updates when I visit her.
Have you tried Linux? My mom is quite happy with it. She mostly uses the browser, and I do the updates when I visit her.
My goal is not to change anything, not even how the icons are laid out.
I guess that it is for this reason that the Chromebook and iPada have been quite successful.
In software companies of my experience, the “A” team create pieces of cool software, deliver, and then move on to a new project. It is left to others to patch and create updates. The biggest problem is not necessarily the quality of the coders, but the fact that those who are patching have little to no experience with the code base they are patching.
Ah this reminds me of my dualbooted laptop. Every once in a while I visit Windows for a quick video game session. Quick coming from steam, Windows and nvidia updating all at once, leaving me little time to play.
Right. And all these updates are long, even on a super fast PC with a really good Internet access.
Updates are a breeze if you use the stable version of Debian Linux.
Is that an option for you? You do not need to configure anything. Everything works straight out of the box.
My server farm is 100% Linux.
It does not help me one bit with my gaming PC or my laptop. Or my mother.
Depending on how often you manually update her Windows machine, you might be exposing it/her to unnecessary security risks. Automatic updates are much wiser given the state of OS and internet security in 2018.
And yes, definitely uninstall Java if you’re not going to let it automatically update. Sometimes a single update addresses a dozen High Severity vulnerabilities. Though browsers aren’t allowing Java plugins anymore, so the attack surface is limited to downloaded programs.
Windows 10 has a feature where you can set “Active Hours” during which it will never run an update. Windows 10 is pretty good, and anyone running Windows should probably run 10. It has much better security features than prior versions, and a recent update gave it many of the features from Microsoft’s EMET tool that sys admins used – things like mandatory ASLR for programs not compiled with the requisite flag, bottom-up ASLR, Control Flow Guard, validation of exception chains (SEHOP), etc.
I hate it when MS does anything that changes my settings in general, but I haven’t experienced that in some time. One time, my mouse pointer size settings that I set on a 4K laptop were automatically synced/copied to a 1080p desktop, with ridiculous results. It was stupid of them to sync settings that are dependent on screen size and resolution across machines with different screens. Anyway, the Active Hours settings help with the disruption issue.