The Return of KB3035583

Yes, the evil (Get Windows 10 aka GWX) KB3035583 update somehow installed itself this morning on my main Windows 8.1 machine. I was doing some housekeeping on my school Windows 7 laptop as I am between semesters right now. Thought it would be a good time to remove some unneeded programs (Oracle Virtual Box and Microsoft Project Professional) that I am not going to use and update Flash,  Java, Thunderbird and Firefox. While I was running Malware Bytes on the laptop I started checking for updates on my main machine.

I did look at the updates that were available I was really only paying attention to the descriptions. Microsoft is at some point going to reclassify the Windows 10 update as ‘recommended’. Besides, I hid KB3035583 update so it shouldn’t even be there to install. Well, apparently it was as when I restarted after doing a bunch of updates I had the Get Windows 10 icon down in my system tray. I took a look at the installed updates and sure enough there was KB3035583 with today’s date. I went to right-click on the update and selected uninstall…the computer shut down…technically incorrect, I lost power to my residence which caused the computer to shut down just as I was to uninstall the update.

Since my laptop had a full charge I’d went to go to the local power company’s website to see if there was any information and to get their phone number (I don’t get paper bills and haven’t had an ‘analog’ telephone book since at least 2012). That’s when I realized that without power, my router won’t work and therefore no Internet. So using my SmartPhone I went to their website and then called their automated system which informed me they were aware of the outage and should have power restored in about 2-hours. I had some stuff to take care of anyway, so I left to run some errands.

Upon returning home power had been restored. Got the Windows 8.1 system booted up and proceeded to remove KB3035583. This time it uninstalled without incident and after restarting the computer, the icon is gone as is the update. I did check in the Resource Monitor (Performance Tab of Windows 8.1 task manager) and did not see GWX.exe running. So, the moral of the story is still be on the lookout when installing updates for KB3035583 as Microsoft is doing everything they can to get you to install Windows 10 without you knowing it. I also checked on my Windows 7 laptop and the update was not there and was not installed when I did the last batch.

2 Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. The Return of KB3035583 Part 2 – El Guru's Tech Blog
  2. Choose Windows 7 at “your own risk and you own peril” – El Guru's Tech Blog

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