Day: October 10, 2016

Windows 10 | Cumulative Update KB3194496

On By windows7bugsIn Windows 10Leave a comment

 

Few weeks back I have decided to stop receiving the insider builds for Windows 10 as I hardly found anything interesting that needs such huge volumes of downloads and my precious time! (A bit prudish here). Well it was all easy…not entirely. Even after leaving the Insider program for this particular PC, I kept watching the Windows Update program trying to download the subsequent builds and miserably failing to install them. Fortunately for me, this PC is mostly used as a media center, hooked to my TV.

To stop receiving the newer builds, I unlinked my Live account finally and deleted the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder after disabling Windows Update for a short period.

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Then I realized that I had this issue with a cumulative update KB3194496! Each time I tried update, the lengthy process will fail with “we couldn’t complete the updates, undoing changes.”

After few days search, I came across this link through “Bing”, the greatest search engine EVAR invented by a man!

Though there were many other POSTs explaining some different types of fixes, I opted to go with the solution provided by Microsoft, running a small .msi file downloaded from this link

I had a reason for choosing this fix, as I “was” an Insider while the patch was downloaded and failed the first time. Whatever, after running the .msi and answer with “A” to the prompt in the command line, I downloaded and installed the update without any issues. You may try the same, if you are/were an Insider!

 

regards,

rajesh

Windows 10 | Control your Windows Updates

On By windows7bugsIn Windows 10Leave a comment

 

We have relatively small network & upgraded all possible candidates to Windows 10 professional edition during the free upgrade period, to realize that our 15MBPS (Okay stop mocking us) fiber optic connection was choked & almost no browsing was possible as almost all the machines started downloading the updates. Our WSUS server cannot handle the Windows 10 unless upgraded and we were frantically searching for a method to stop the client machines directly downloading the updates & came across many beautiful blog posts those systematically explained how we could use group policies to control how the clients download updates.

One of the best posts we adopted for our network is available here

We tried the group policy workaround with few of the laptops in the IT and we were able to stop those automatic download of end number of updates those Microsoft pushed everyday to address the numerous issues they were not even able to fix with the anniversary update!

As a user with administrator privileges, start the local group policy editor.

 

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Navigation –> Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Windows Update

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Find “Configure Automatic Updates” and open it.

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Here you can choose, suitable for your situation. For me, notifications are fine & then I decide when I should download the updates.

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Close the Group policy update MSC (Microsoft System Console) and you are all set. From next reboot, you will be given notifications about the downloads, rather than automatically start downloading and clogging your internet connection.

(If you are always connected to WIFI, you can use the “Metered” connection trick to avoid downloading updates automatically. As this trick is not applicable for Ethernet connections, I am not getting into detailed how to this time)

Important Note: You may forget to download and apply the much needed updates, so make sure you will never stop looking at the notification panel for update related.

Regards,

rajesh