Windows Updates More Trouble Than Not

[GaryRR]

Last Windows 10 update rendered my ATI drivers incompatible. I think it also broke my USB bus because there is such significant lag now that aircraft are uncontrollable. I just uninstalled it but before that I tried doing P3D Repair on 4.5. I ran low on drive C space in the process.
The time has come. I have a 500 GB WD NVMe SSD. I am going to save on flash drive the airports I customized with ADE and the third party library files I used, verify all my passwords, install that SSD tomorrow, and then do a Nuclear Option Windows 10 reinstall and spend the rest of the week putting my sim software back together day by day.
There are also directories I get Access Denied messege and it's MY PC. I am administrator and sole user. It's time to start fresh. I hope when I reinstall windows it detects my NVMe SSD automatically. That is where P3D is going. If I ever figure out how to get my front case panel off the 2TB platter drive will be replaced with a SATA SSD in the future.

[MarcE]

The size of the Win OS has become insane. I have had my windows install on my C: SSD for about 10 years, 128GB of size. It was always fine but it's really become cozy on there. 12-20GB left depending on the temp files and with a serious amount of symlinks to my D: HDD. I desperately need a new PC but with the chips situation atm the prices are interstellar...

[GaryRR]

Just get a NVMe SSD. I got mine for $50US on Ebay. I'm going to install it this morning. I hope my big hands don't have trouble screwing it down. I may have to go to the hardware or Wallmart for a set of tiny tools.
I have a Western Digital Black, 500GB. I am going to put P3D 4.5 on it and FSX Steam after I do a complete nuclear reinstall of Windows. And then going forward I will disable updates. I don't use the PC for anything other than simulation. It see the internet for ASN, new sim software purchases or freeware from trusted sites like Avsim or Vatsim flying. I have no need of security updates because I don't website with it. On my phone now and I also use a Samsung Tab.

[AerialShorts]

Hey Gary, most websites serve ads and that includes AVSIM. Those ads are actually sourced from many other websites and have been frequent paths for computer attacks (not saying the ad servers AVSIM uses are malicious but just that things change and you never know). The companies serving the ads have a pretty dismal record of making sure they are malware-free. Even though you seem to only be visiting AVSIM and Vatsim, you are actually visiting lots of websites - whoever they take money from for being a conduit for that advertising content.

That whole ad serving thing is a big mess IMO. A web page ends up with bits and pieces served from many different servers in many different locations with many different attitudes on security. Many of those ads are served from overworked servers that hang the pages and information you want to see.

There are other risks as well that may or may not pose threats to you. Home networks end up with lots of devices on them that have little or no software support or updates and become bad guy hidey-holes that can attack other devices on your network. Basically they are “behind enemy lines” (your firewall) and if you don’t monitor your network, they can brute force attack 24/7. All this stuff is automated and managed remotely. It’s not like one guy is attacking your network personally. Your network becomes one of many.

The only way to be certain nothing is coming or going from your computer is to disconnect it from your network. Then you can feel safe in not updating. But even being on your home network puts your system at some level of risk and doing pretty much anything online greatly ups the ante.

I know updates are a royal pain especially with some software houses issuing bugged updates that cause problems. Also, a lot depends on what is available on your network that others may want. Even if the Windows sim box has nothing of value on it, if it gets compromised it can be used to attack other boxes with stuff that is of value like banking, retirement/investment information, Social Security or other income sources, etc. It’s especially bad if you use the same passwords on other computers.

As an aside, the way I checked Avsim was to turn off a system I use called Pi-Hole. What it does is dead end requests for ads, cookies, tracking, and blocks known malicious and other known problem web sites. As soon as I turned it off and reloaded Avsim, I got a whole raft of ads which shows that they are not only coming from other sites, but they are coming from sites that are at least blocked by Pi-Hole. If you don’t want to update Windows, I’d at least recommend looking into setting up your own Pi-Hole (pi-hole.net) or looking at similar functionality in DNS services like OpenDNS. Most websites now are collections of links and services to other sites. Very webby. Those other sites can be valuable targets for bad guys since so many trusted websites blindly link to whatever they serve. Blocking all that junk not only helps keep your system safe, it also really speeds up page loads since you won’t be pulling useless and sometimes dangerous content from all over.

Even if there is nothing of value on your network, it still has value to be used to attack other systems, store various kinds of contraband, etc.

It’s certainly your call how you want to do things, but I’d advise keeping your system updated. Good luck!

Edit - on that USB thing, you might check your motherboard manufacturer’s website for updated motherboard drivers. Windows updates have broken motherboard drivers before and the solution is drivers are updated to fix that. Added bonus is Windows generic drivers are frequently slow. Updating mobo drivers can really speed a system up and even resolve other problems.

[GaryRR]

Hey Gary, most websites serve ads and that includes AVSIM. Those ads are actually sourced from many other websites and have been frequent paths for computer attacks (not saying the ad servers AVSIM uses are malicious but just that things change and you never know). The companies serving the ads have a pretty dismal record of making sure they are malware-free. Even though you seem to only be visiting AVSIM and Vatsim, you are actually visiting lots of websites - whoever they take money from for being a conduit for that advertising content.

That whole ad serving thing is a big mess IMO. A web page ends up with bits and pieces served from many different servers in many different locations with many different attitudes on security. Many of those ads are served from overworked servers that hang the pages and information you want to see.

There are other risks as well that may or may not pose threats to you. Home networks end up with lots of devices on them that have little or no software support or updates and become bad guy hidey-holes that can attack other devices on your network. Basically they are “behind enemy lines” (your firewall) and if you don’t monitor your network, they can brute force attack 24/7. All this stuff is automated and managed remotely. It’s not like one guy is attacking your network personally. Your network becomes one of many.

The only way to be certain nothing is coming or going from your computer is to disconnect it from your network. Then you can feel safe in not updating. But even being on your home network puts your system at some level of risk and doing pretty much anything online greatly ups the ante.

I know updates are a royal pain especially with some software houses issuing bugged updates that cause problems. Also, a lot depends on what is available on your network that others may want. Even if the Windows sim box has nothing of value on it, if it gets compromised it can be used to attack other boxes with stuff that is of value like banking, retirement/investment information, Social Security or other income sources, etc. It’s especially bad if you use the same passwords on other computers.

As an aside, the way I checked Avsim was to turn off a system I use called Pi-Hole. What it does is dead end requests for ads, cookies, tracking, and blocks known malicious and other known problem web sites. As soon as I turned it off and reloaded Avsim, I got a whole raft of ads which shows that they are not only coming from other sites, but they are coming from sites that are at least blocked by Pi-Hole. If you don’t want to update Windows, I’d at least recommend looking into setting up your own Pi-Hole (pi-hole.net) or looking at similar functionality in DNS services like OpenDNS. Most websites now are collections of links and services to other sites. Very webby. Those other sites can be valuable targets for bad guys since so many trusted websites blindly link to whatever they serve. Blocking all that junk not only helps keep your system safe, it also really speeds up page loads since you won’t be pulling useless and sometimes dangerous content from all over.

Even if there is nothing of value on your network, it still has value to be used to attack other systems, store various kinds of contraband, etc.

It’s certainly your call how you want to do things, but I’d advise keeping your system updated. Good luck!

Edit - on that USB thing, you might check your motherboard manufacturer’s website for updated motherboard drivers. Windows updates have broken motherboard drivers before and the solution is drivers are updated to fix that. Added bonus is Windows generic drivers are frequently slow. Updating mobo drivers can really speed a system up and even resolve other problems.

I might go with PC Matic or something if I choose to shut off updates.
As far as non Windows Generic Drivers go what vendors can I trust? I see a lot of hits when I search for drivers. Some sites seem shifty to me. Any suggestions?
Thanks.

[AerialShorts]

The Windows generic drivers come with Windows. The drivers specific for your motherboard or other parts will come from whoever made your motherboard or other parts. I run ASUS motherboards and they have a section of their site where you can get their drivers, BIOS updates, etc.

By downloading the latest install media from Microsoft for a Windows rebuild you’ll get their latest and hopefully best performing generic drivers but what you get from places like your mobo manufacturer are best and optimized for your hardware. For example, Windows had no clue how to talk to my mobo sound chip on its own. Until I installed the driver from ASUS, sound was scratchy and sounded terrible. Installed the driver and all good. But there are also drivers for chipset, LAN, wireless (if installed), etc.

About trust, though, you’re stuck with however your hardware vendor guards their driver code and not all are equal. There are cheap mobos out there that may be less formal in how they do things. All I can tell you is a number of years ago, I got a motherboard driver disk that came with my motherboard that was infected with a virus. I found it only after finishing my build and then running a virus scan just to get a baseline and the scanner caught the infection. It was the same model used in custom builds where I worked so I told the guys, they pulled out some factory disks that came with their boards, and all were infected too. The board manufacturer was sending out virus infected driver disks with their boards. It wasn’t a false positive either. It was a real virus.

You are right to stay away from driver aggregate sites. I always go straight to the websites of my hardware makers which is usually ASUS for mobos but others are the same in general. Display drivers seem to be much more dynamic and change a lot but for those, the convention is to go to the chipmaker (nvidia for my hardware) rather than the actual card builder for the driver.

And while talking about driver security, nvidia has a pretty bad security record IMO. Their driver updates are focused on game compatibility but they also end up patching huge security holes. Display drivers run with very high privileges and are easy to compromise which then gives you full keys to the kingdom. Nvidia has a long history of really big security holes. All complex software seems to end up with security holes but nvidia seems to have more than their fair share, again IMO. Always a good idea to keep those updated. The caveat is with complex software like FS2020, there’s also been occasions where a new display driver causes CTDs or other issues. That just happened with the next to last nvidia driver. Many had problems with it. So with a sim system, sometimes you might want to not always install the latest nvidia driver for a while so others can test first.

Good luck!