Thread: Because Of Course They Did

Oh, the joyful joy joy joys of W10 updates. You can set a 12 hour window where no updates happen. It's not supposed to happen during games, but I had it happen with Hearthstone when I used to play.

I use the free version of Avast with a ton of shit turned off. It's fairly unobtrusive. Windows defender should work fine as long as the browsers have some type of adblocker on them (like uBlock or Disconnect), and they ain't checkin out questionable Russian porn sites.

For the HP programs, just do a search on the programs to determine if they're essential. I disabled most of the Toshiba stuff on my laptop. May as well also examine the start up programs (CCleaner makes this easy).

I put up with the crap because...ummm... I'm lazy. Since I play fewer Windows only games, maybe I should just switch over to linux full time.

Originally Posted by DJ Ms. White

Oh, the joyful joy joy joys of W10 updates. You can set a 12 hour window where no updates happen. It's not supposed to happen during games, but I had it happen with Hearthstone when I used to play.

I use the free version of Avast with a ton of shit turned off. It's fairly unobtrusive. Windows defender should work fine as long as the browsers have some type of adblocker on them (like uBlock or Disconnect), and they ain't checkin out questionable Russian porn sites.

For the HP programs, just do a search on the programs to determine if they're essential. I disabled most of the Toshiba stuff on my laptop. May as well also examine the start up programs (CCleaner makes this easy).

I put up with the crap because...ummm... I'm lazy. Since I play fewer Windows only games, maybe I should just switch over to linux full time.

I'm not going to twiddle update options right now. I'll check in with them for annoyances next time I'm here. I refused all the the "Send MS this stuff" and "Help us advertise to you more efficiently" options during the initial setup, and they're not using Edge.

I set them up with Firefox. Running uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and Flashstopper (to prevent auto-play video).

I did not install Flash, and have advised them against ever doing it.

I know Chrome is a decent option, with +s and -s vs Firefox, but they're familiar with Firefox and so that was that.

Their browsing habits are pretty mundane and sedate. They're unlikely to ever go searching for any questionable stuff - no one's looking for porn, or cracked software, or ripped audio/video.

That's not to say that it can't happen. My aunt got sucked in to a 'virus' scam sometime last year. Some site she visited put up a scary page about a virus infection and gave an 800 number to call "Microsoft Support". She wound up paying $200 for the privilege of having a browser 'helper' installed that redirected her searches and added a bunch of advertising. I don't think any real damage was done, but I spent a few hours cleaning out shit and she spend some time changing passwords.

Anyone else is welcome to add comments or suggestions. I'm leaving their house soon, but will be visiting again in the near future.


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Originally Posted by AetheLove

I've also copied the migwiz data and exe, and am hoping I can just run it on the new machine.

Just for the record, and perhaps not surprisingly, that worked fine.

I'm not sure it was that much easier than just backing up any User data and copying it over, but it was easy to preserve directory/file hierarchy and assign files to user accounts (which you have to create first).

It can't transfer apps, but it did offer a list of apps that were used on the old machine.


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open add/remove programs and take a screenshot of the list.

I can tell you what to remove.



I use bitdefender free for antivirus; the windows defender isn't very good anymore; it'll catch the most widely known about stuff, but even then not much.

If all the hardware on the machine is working, the only update from HP I would install would be a bios/firmware update. That and graphics card drivers. But do all that manually, don't use the built in tools they try to get you to use.