Newsletter Archives

• Is there a way to tell the Win10 1903 version upgrade routine to leave your drivers alone?

  Posted on July 25, 2019 at 07:47 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Extensive testing by @Rick Corbett shows that the old tricks don’t work:

  [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
  “ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate”=dword:00000001

  Doesn’t prevent drivers from being replaced during a feature upgrade (version changes, such as the move from 1809 to 1903). As @b notes, the name of the key refers to Quality Updates, not feature upgrades.

  @Alex5723 notes that there’s a Control Panel setting that should work. You would think:

  

  @Rick Corbett tried that and found:

  Yes, it does have that setting (via Control Panel) but that setting is for metadata of a distinct class of hardware, not *all* hardware device drivers themselves… toggling the option makes Services start BITS to download metadata, not WUDO… so it’s not Windows Update-related. (BITS is no longer used by Windows Update by default.) As far as I can see there’s no effect at all on controlling downloads of device drivers themselves… but happy to be proven wrong.

  @Rick Corbett concludes:

  I’ve been through every setting in Settings and tried the previous REG tweaks to prevent hardware drivers from being included/downloaded/installed by Windows Update, all to no avail. It looks like with 1903 that Microsoft has removed all methods of preventing the inclusion of device drivers.

  Anybody out there have a solution? Lots and lots of people would like to keep their old drivers when upgrading, instead of having Windows Update wipe them all out.

  Windows Patches/Security driver update, Win10 1903

• Reported Type Cover problems with undocumented Surface Pro 4/Surface Book firmware update

  Posted on July 24, 2017 at 04:57 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Microsoft released a new round of firmware and driver updates for the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 on Friday. There’s no documentation and plenty of complaints.

  Computerworld Woody on Windows.

  UPDATE: Will wonders ever cease…. three days after pushing the patch on Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 owners, Microsoft just published the details.

  Microsoft News driver update, Surface Book, Surface Pro 4

• More info on the debilitating WPD driver update

  Posted on March 9, 2017 at 07:08 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Based on info from Günter Born…

  Avoid the driver – and roll it back if you’re having problems with Android devices connecting to Windows machines.

  InfoWorld Woody on Windows

  Windows Patches/Security driver update, WPD