Thank you @abbodi86 , for collecting these ideas together at the top of a new topic. I think this option fits my needs better than group hopping. My needs may be different than others. It is good to have alternative methods described so well.

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jburk07,

HiFlyer,

Microfix,

Pepsiboy

Egads this is too advanced for the likes of me. I’ll just have to consider going back to Group B or just accept the tracking. Rats!

@abbodi86, Nice post! NEEDS TO BE AN AKB 😉
I have a couple of questions..
1. Regarding switches: /d 1 /f do these switches signify:
/d=decimal     1=numerical value (1=on 0=off)    /f= force (Thanks PKCano)

2. Having run the cmd
sc stop Diagtrack then sc delete Diagtrack
wouldn’t most of the pastebin script be redundant in that case? then I could manually adapt to suit the systems.

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woody

OldBiddy wrote:

Egads this is too advanced for the likes of me. I’ll just have to consider going back to Group B or just accept the tracking. Rats!

Don’t feel bad, its waay over my head also!

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walker,

OldBiddy

Nice script.

Only thing is that I tend more to disable jobs than delete them, though the point could be made that deleting a job does make it more difficult for the software to re-enable.

-Noel

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WildBill

@abbodi86, have you done performance testing to determine if not logging events gives back any machine performance?

Long ago I had done all of what you described, except disabling the AutoLogger-Diagtrck-Listener trace logging. I can’t imagine it will do THAT much for performance, but hey, every little bit helps. I’ll report back after I get another run of nightly jobs tonight and can compare the times.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge here!

-Noel

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HiFlyer

Nadella’s gang has some competition in the race to collect Telemetry, it seems:

Google secretly logs users into Chrome whenever they log into a Google site

Firefox collects data on you through hidden add-ons

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WildBill,

jburk07

Thanks for these excellent and clear instructions, @abbodi86! I wouldn’t mind going to Group B for my own machine, but it would be a pain to to go that route for the other 2 machines I update, and I wouldn’t have attempted the script since I wouldn’t know how to undo something if I mess up in executing the process. But these manual steps are very clear and not onerous. I had done some of them earlier, but I’ll be interested to see what happens to my settings after the October rollup.

I really appreciate your time and effort.

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walker

abbodi86 wrote:

1) Unified Telemetry Client

– introduced in updates KB3068708/KB3080149, and became part of the Monthly Rollup since October 2016 preview rollup

Did NOT know this was in Monthly Rollup. Never install previews (& never will), so it’s been baked in since November 2016. I was surprised since Windows Update still shows as Recommended (do not receive Recommended updates the same as Important). Followed your manual instructions for disabling Telemetry Client services (I had already disabled DiagTrack) & Compatibility Appraiser tasks. Am still switching to Group B after Patch Tuesday, especially if KB2976978 still shows in Windows Update as Important, like KB3010149 does in Recommended. Would rather be Safe (& on Win8.1) than Sorry (& on Win10 whatever).

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abbodi86,

walker

Thank you so much for the script! Just to clarify: Is there any functional difference between running this script after installing a rollup versus exclusively installing Security Only patches? In other words, does a Group A system where one installs the latest rollup and then runs the above script make any additional network connections than an identical system that has installed only Group B patches? Would there be any additional (telemetry related) CPU usage on the Group A version?

If the answer is no, then it seems the reasons for going Group B are rapidly vanishing!

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jburk07

Is it safe to delete diagtrack.dll?

I just noticed the cmd script is unable to access certain subdirectories under the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Diagnosis path. (The icacls command issues “Access is denied.”) If I try to manually view the contents of these subdirectories, it’s not enough to simply access as administrator; I’m told I have to take ownership of the directory.