Automatic Updates nuisance

[Frank Booth Snr]

Does anyone know how to actually turn off this bloody thing? I've
disabled it in Services. I've turned it off in Control Panel. The icon
no longer shows in the taskbar. Yet my modem and firewall icons still
keep flickering as before that indicates continual activity, so I'm
guessing that that these measures have no genuine effect. This also
continues without any browser loaded.

Regards,

Frank

 

[DL]

Your Firewall should have the ability to show what is accessing.
Modem lights flicker from time to time anyway.
If its off in Control Panel, its off.

 

[Frank Booth Snr]

Your Firewall should have the ability to show what is accessing.
Modem lights flicker from time to time anyway.
If its off in Control Panel, its off.

Clearly not true. Having just turned Automatic updates on again, its
icon re-appeared informing me that that downloading is 64% complete, so
it has been downloading all the time, while it was switched off.

 

[Dave Patrick]

Have you set the 'Automatic Updates' service to disabled?

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

 

[DL]

You stated you disabled the service

Clearly not true. Having just turned Automatic updates on again, its
icon re-appeared informing me that that downloading is 64% complete, so
it has been downloading all the time, while it was switched off.

 

[Colon Terminus]

Does anyone know how to actually turn off this bloody thing? I've
disabled it in Services. I've turned it off in Control Panel. The icon
no longer shows in the taskbar. Yet my modem and firewall icons still
keep flickering as before that indicates continual activity, so I'm
guessing that that these measures have no genuine effect. This also
continues without any browser loaded.

Regards,

Frank

If, indeed, you disabled the Automatic Update Service then it damn sure
ain't running. Something else is causing your modem activity. You need to
run a Malware/Worm/Trojan/Virus scanner(s).

 

[Frank Booth Snr]

Have you set the 'Automatic Updates' service to disabled?

Yes. It made no difference. It doesn't matter now as it's finally
finished all the downloading. (New hdd was the reason for all these
downloads occurring again)

 

[Frank Booth Snr]

If, indeed, you disabled the Automatic Update Service then it damn sure
ain't running. Something else is causing your modem activity. You need to
run a Malware/Worm/Trojan/Virus scanner(s).

Yes that thought occurred to me. But my scanner revealed no problem.

 

[DL]

what scanner?

Yes that thought occurred to me. But my scanner revealed no problem.

 

[Frank Booth Snr]

what scanner?

My AV scanner

 

[DL]

Your AV scanner is likely not sufficient to detect malaware/trojans.
As well as an online AV scan from a recognises source, eg Symantec, Trend
Micro
Use Adaware, SpyBot, MS Defender - all - for malaware/trojans

 

[+Bob+]

Your AV scanner is likely not sufficient to detect malaware/trojans.
As well as an online AV scan from a recognises source, eg Symantec, Trend
Micro
Use Adaware, SpyBot, MS Defender - all - for malaware/trojans

Good advise but not really sufficient IMHE.

First you need to find out what is causing the network activity, if
any.

start a command window. Type "netstat -b" to see what is connected on
the network. At the end of each line you will see what executables are
generating the traffic. Find out what's hooked up and to what IP
addresses, see if you started it. Don't get too paranoid - post here
if you don't understand.

If you check right after you boot (don't run anything network oriented
like email, browser, newsgroups, etc) and then monitor for a while you
should be able to tell if there are any programs working outside your
authorization.

 

[DL]

agreed

Good advise but not really sufficient IMHE.

First you need to find out what is causing the network activity, if
any.

start a command window. Type "netstat -b" to see what is connected on
the network. At the end of each line you will see what executables are
generating the traffic. Find out what's hooked up and to what IP
addresses, see if you started it. Don't get too paranoid - post here
if you don't understand.

If you check right after you boot (don't run anything network oriented
like email, browser, newsgroups, etc) and then monitor for a while you
should be able to tell if there are any programs working outside your
authorization.

 

[Frank Booth Snr]

Good advise but not really sufficient IMHE.

First you need to find out what is causing the network activity, if
any.

start a command window. Type "netstat -b" to see what is connected on
the network. At the end of each line you will see what executables are
generating the traffic. Find out what's hooked up and to what IP
addresses, see if you started it. Don't get too paranoid - post here
if you don't understand.

If you check right after you boot (don't run anything network oriented
like email, browser, newsgroups, etc) and then monitor for a while you
should be able to tell if there are any programs working outside your
authorization.

That's fine. But in my case I know that 'Automatic Updates' were causing
the continuous network traffic. When it finally stopped, I got a message
telling me that updates were ready to download, and there were some 45
of them. My problem was that I couldn't switch off the downloading.

 

[Frank Booth Snr]

Your AV scanner is likely not sufficient to detect malaware/trojans.
As well as an online AV scan from a recognises source, eg Symantec, Trend
Micro
Use Adaware, SpyBot, MS Defender - all - for malaware/trojans

I think that's going overboard. I use A squared, and MS Malicious
Software Removal to scan my PC. If those 2 don't find anything, I'm
happy to assume that all is well.

 

[DL]

Afraid thats not sufficient for malaware

I think that's going overboard. I use A squared, and MS Malicious
Software Removal to scan my PC. If those 2 don't find anything, I'm
happy to assume that all is well.

 

[DL]

If Automatic updates is Off, and the auto update service is stopped,
together with BITS then there will be no auto updates or downloads. However
stopping bits can have other consequences.
Personally I'm not sure why it is such a big deal, I cannot remember when
the auto download service ran for any great length of time on any of my
win2k sys, and it certainly doesnt interfer with anything else

 

[Frank Booth Snr]

If Automatic updates is Off, and the auto update service is stopped,
together with BITS then there will be no auto updates or downloads. However
stopping bits can have other consequences.

Not sure what BITS is. But having turned off the other 2, the update
icon disappears from the system tray, but the downloading still continues.

Personally I'm not sure why it is such a big deal, I cannot remember when
the auto download service ran for any great length of time on any of my
win2k sys, and it certainly doesnt interfer with anything else

The 'big deal' is that while WU downloads it interferes with my
downloading of web pages, slowing down the process, and often causing
time-outs.

 

[Sid Knee]

The 'big deal' is that while WU downloads it interferes with my
downloading of web pages, slowing down the process, and often causing
time-outs.

I'm curious, does WU also do whatever reboots it feels it needs
automagically if you aren't around to prevent it? The possibility of
that was mostly why I turned it off in the first place, but I can't
recall now whether I established that It actually *did* do this.

 

[Frank Booth Snr]

I'm curious, does WU also do whatever reboots it feels it needs
automagically if you aren't around to prevent it? The possibility of
that was mostly why I turned it off in the first place, but I can't
recall now whether I established that It actually *did* do this.

No. It doesn't reboot of its own accord. But that's because of that
option available in Control Panel. It always asks, when finished with
installing whether I want to restart the PC. If I say no, I get regular
messages popping up to remind me to reboot. You can set it to automatic
reboot as well.