MS Orchestrator

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What exactly is MS Orchestrator? Is it totally necessary?Does it need to be installed? Can it be uninstalled? It may sound like I don’t trust MS. Used to many years ago! Now? Not so. Thanks in advance for  any information.

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Are you talking about the data centre automation software or something else?

Where are you seeing this software?

cheers, Paul

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In Update Manager – MS Defender Antivirus Definitions

 

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https://www.askwoody.com/newsletter/you-can-stop-the-avalanche-of-teen-suicides-due-to-social-media/#patch-watch

What happens behind the scenes

When you install updates, there are a lot of things going on in the background. Microsoft’s Learn article How Windows Update works documents the process. It includes scanning, downloading the update, installing, and then committing the patch to the system. It goes something like this:

• Orchestrator schedules the scan.
• Orchestrator verifies admin approvals and policies for download.
• Orchestrator starts downloads.
• Windows Update downloads manifest files and provides them to the arbiter.
• The arbiter evaluates the manifest and tells the Windows Update client to download files.
• The arbiter stages the downloaded files.
• Orchestrator starts a restart.
• The arbiter finalizes before the restart.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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The following relates solely to a home (workgroup) environment, not business (domain-joined, managed) environment.

Defender piggy-backs on Windows Update‘s Orchestrator to prevent the need for more than one download mechanism. Defender‘s malware signatures are quite straightforward and updating them doesn’t need the complexity of Windows Update‘s arbiter logic.

If, for whatever reason, you hamper/disable Orchestrator then, after 3 failed attempts, Defender will automatically ‘failback’ to using the deprecated Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)… but only for malware signature updates, not its engine updates.

As for your question about whether you can uninstall Orchestrator, it doesn’t exist in isolation. Windows has a) added services that look specifically for any attempts to tamper with the overall Windows Update mechanism and b) increased protections on more and more services specifically to deter fiddling, unless they are sanctioned by Microsoft.

In my experience, disabling/removing Orchestrator will most likely trigger the download of an additional ‘Health’ recovery tool unless you also disable Windows’ built-in reporting.

Hope this helps…

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Rick Corbett, thanks for the informative reply. IMO MS is slowly painting Windows into the too hard basket. As much as I hate  to admit it a tablet is a far less complicated and easier platform for the average old age person. I am such a person with smart phone, Samsung tablet and an Asus Experbook lap top. The amount of time I spend looking after Windows 11 compared to the other two devices makes me wonder if Windows has lost the plot and out lived it’s usefulness, in my situation that is. Cheers, Chris.

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