Posts by lonegull

Desperation

Running Creators Update since the ISO was released and have had no major issues. Stable and responsive.

More stable

Running Version 1703 now and there is a noticeable improvement in stability and responsiveness from 1607, for me at least. Problem with the start menu greying out and being unusable but that is trivial since I use Start Menu 8 from IOBit. Can't stand the Windows 10 start menu!!

As far as the telemetry, I still disable diagtrack and related services. I don't believe for a second that Microsoft has reduced it a bit. Cortana is also disabled! The update as a whole is more under the hood improvements, very little change on the surface.

Tip of the iceberg!

I suspect diagtrack and the bypassing of the host file is only the tip of the iceberg to the extent that Microsoft has backdoor-ed Windows 10. Given the breadth of access they give themselves in the EULA and privacy agreement, there are other undocumented subverted system processes running in Windows 10.

To be fair though, it isn't just Windows 10 spying on customers. Nvidia geforce graphics drivers send telemetry back to Nvidia. This can be disabled using the autoruns program from Microsoft.

Cortana can be disabled

First disable Windows Search in Services. Then go to folder of Cortana (right click on Cortana in Task Manager and select open file location), rename folder, I just add BKUP to the end of the given folder name.

There are two Cortana (so times more) tasks that must be disabled before it will allow you to save the name change of the folder. Hide the search box on the task bar.

I have not found any problems with searching my computer with the Windows Search disabled. Some may want the indexing, if so you will not be able to disable Cortana as it will create a new folder and restart without Windows Search disabled.

Desperation

Microsoft's tactics in forcing Windows 10 upgrade is plain desperation. Windows 10 is getting better, but is not much more than a reconfigured Windows 8.1 w/ spyware.