Microsoft has been releasing updates to build 10240 on an almost daily basis since it hit RTM. Most of the patches are important security or bug fixes and rather useful but some have reported crashes occurring as a result of the updates. As we had previously reported, Microsoft has made updates mandatory and automatic, thus stopping users from opting out of unwanted updates or till the update has been checked by other users. A new troubleshooting package, KB3073930, however, allows you to hide or block Windows or driver updates.
With Windows 10 being released in a few hours, bookmark the knowledge base article or download the update blocker tool mentioned in the article right away. While one can debate the merits – or lack thereof – of forced automatic updates, there’s one huge, giant misstep Microsoft has taken with this: they will also force graphics drivers updates through Windows Update, and without this tool, there’s no way to block them.
I have had such horrible experiences with graphics drivers updates over the course of my life – from back in the 3dfx days all the way up until my current Radeon 970X Special Overlocked Whatever Edition With Kittens – that I am very careful and deliberate about these updates. I generally schedule some time for these late on Friday, but only when I know I won’t have any work over the weekend so I have a few days of performing possible fixes.
So, when I checked Windows Update last night and say that Microsoft secretly wanted to shove an AMD Radeon graphics driver update down my throat, I nearly panicked. To be clear: my machine is running the official AMD drivers from the AMD website, and not the AMD drivers Microsoft itself distributes through Windows Update. Had I not blocked this update, who knows what could’ve happend with possible conflicts or version mismatches or whatever.
Luckily, I found this tool and blocked the update – and as it turns out, that was probably the right thing to do. This past weekend, Microsoft forced a completely broken NVIDIA graphics driver update to its Windows 10 users, causing a whole slew of problems.
My view might be horribly jaded, but I have the suspicion that graphics driver updates are a huge source of issues with Windows. As such, who in their right mind at Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to force these update upon users?
I always thought the graphics drivers were the WHQL ones that nVidia/AMD paid Microsoft to have their sticker on it that would be in Windows Update, but I also tend to think that Windows Update doesn’t pull in all of the driver and only updates the core bits of it (for example, does it actually install the nvidia control panel, and the physx drivers?)
Either way, the only reason that there should be any graphics drivers there is for very basic functionality so you’re not stuck in vesa mode when you first install. There really should be a mechanism in place that says ‘if nvidia/amd installed, don’t muck about with installing our own crap’
One would think it’d be pretty damned simple to do.
Since I switched to nVidia back when the GeForce256 came out I have never had any trouble with video driver related updates. I had a total of 2 bluescreens that contained “nv_something” in the crash dumps, but those could as well have been caused by random bitflips or something (and these might also be related to beta drivers which I install occasionally).
My second PC (Core2Duo-class) got a cheap ATI graphics card two years or so ago (54xx or something?), and since then it has already crashed 3 times with apparently ATI related bluescreens. And that PC is only booted once every month or so, if someone wants to use it for playing.
I’d say ATI/AMD has still some catching up to do with their drivers, while nVidia looks and feels rock-solid.
I do not agree. The geforce 3 drivers was horrendous at first, and so was the drivers for the 5800 (leafblower) ATI got their shit together after the 8500 and the drivers for the 9700 was almost flawless. There has been a few hickups along the road and the FGLRX xorg driver did not get to a state i would call stable until 8.2, but please do not spread FUD. Today the AMD drivers are just fine, in some cases better (just look at the correction stuff they have if your screen is of non-standard types) than the nvidia drivers.
I’m not sure if we’re talking about the same drivers here. I’m talking about Windows drivers (as the OP was about Windows), yet your reference to xorg seems to indicate that you’re talking about Linux drivers. I cannot comment on the quality of the Linux drivers as I mainly use Linux inside a VM…
Also I only stated my very own, personal experiences with nVidia and ATI graphics cards and their drivers. I agree that other people’s experience may differ
Instead of MS trying to shove users with their drivers, why MS don’t take a lesson from Linux and instead simple distribute the official latest Nvidia/AMD graphics drivers, or allow them to use Windows Update to directly does so?
Simple branch it in “stable” and “latest”, inform the user that problems with the “latest” branch is not a MS problem, and allow the user to select.
Actually, the nVidia drivers you get via Windows Update *are* the official ones from nVidia. Not the very latest, but nevertheless official.
I guess it’s the same with ATI/AMD and Intel
Actually I encountered a bug with a nVidia driver on Windows XP, the latest to support Geforce FX5200 had OpenGL broken, here’s my finding on the issue :
http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2010-December/055350.h…
Autamatically installing updates that risk breaking your graphics support? Sounds like they already have taken a lesson from Linux.
Zing!
I can’t count how many times Intel video has stopped working on numerous different machines after updating a Linux installation…
Really? That’s shocking to me. Its never happened to me with Intel or AMD graphics. Using open source drivers, of course.
I’ve always looked at intel as the gold standard for linux graphics drivers in terms of quality and reliability.
What time frame was this?
Edit: But yes, of course with the binary AMD/ATI drivers they have been broken by updates that modified Mesa/X11. So I don’t use those anymore.
Edited 2015-07-28 17:38 UTC
I think that’s what most people refer to when singling out gfx driver issues on Linux distros, though I could be easily mistaken.
Open source drivers generally don’t give as many problems during/after updates, at least in my experience. Their performance relative to the proprietary drivers though, that’s another discussion.
With proprietary blobs, you generally have to be pretty careful with matching Xorg versions and whatnot. Nvidia with Debian was pretty hellish for me around 3 or 4 years ago. Basically, if you use any distribution that’s even remotely considered “Testing” or “Rolling” you’re threading a minefield.
Edited 2015-07-28 21:01 UTC
I have a feeling that those saying Linux graphics drivers worked like a charm for them don’t use any 3D applications, while those who do have noticed problems
As for nvidia vs ati on linux, if you run Windows games in Wine there’s no question, nvidia always wins. Much smaller chance of artifacts and crashes.
I do love the Linux attitude of “hey, it’s always worked fine for me so there’s no way anyone else could have problems.” I’ve no idea what the OP’s timeframe was, but I can tell you that within the past 6 months I have seen Intel driver updates fail on Ubuntu, while the very same (supposedly anyway) driver on the same hardware using Mint worked fine. There are just too many variables at play for this kind of setup to be reliable. Hardware, distribution, packaging, Xorg patches, driver patches, nonstandard kernel patches… It’s a damned mess, and it’s not made any better by the attitudes of its so-called “community” who believe that problems don’t exist simply because they’ve never had them.
I think I’ll avoid the problem altogether by not “upgrading” to Windows 10. I’m sure I’ll horribly miss the enticing, beatifully crafted phone UI and the lovely Cortana, but such is life.
Edited 2015-07-28 17:16 UTC
As long as you’re not using IE, that’s a totally reasonable thing to do.
Win10 needs to have the highest uptake possible, so as to kill IE9, IE10, and IE11.
Ah, very good point, I didn’t think about that. Even as a Linux user, I am now rooting for the success of Windows 10, since I also run a few websites.
Edited 2015-07-29 04:03 UTC
I must have been lucky, but the only issues I have had with the drivers from WU were a few weeks back when they corrupted the mouse cursor. It was fixed a few days later.
Were the people with issues using some 3rd-party tools that fiddle with their GPU-settings or something that clashed with the drivers? I haven’t gotten any need for such, so maybe that’s the reason why I ain’t run into problems.
I don’t want to wait a “few days” for my mouse to work. That is a major bug.
WU has always known in the past never to replace drivers that were newer than available via Windows Update.
The drivers via WU are WHQL, but not necessarily the latest (at least, this is the case with 7/8/8.1)
Of course, I’m not worried about this. The Pro version will let me defer updates anyways, which I push to the following Sunday via group policy, because any borked updates usually get pulled by then anyways.
With GPUs complex processors able to do all sorts of accesses to main memory and GPU drivers which are crazy complex pieces of code with embedded dynamic compiler, advanced memory management.
With recent browser doing 3D and fast 2D and video and programmable shading and geometry. And all the software playing with graphics…
The graphic stack is an high risk target for security. Microsoft have no choice but preparing for automatic updates of the video drivers.
Doesn’t this tool only block a specific version of the driver? I don’t see any way with it to block say all NVIDIA updates, only the specific one you catch with this tool. I’m presuming whenever a new version of the driver comes out, it will be automatically installed instead. So if you’re not heavily on the ball with watching Windows Update you’re going to slip up, and a driver update will be automatically installed eventually.
…or you could just use any disk imaging tool to make a full backup of the drive before installing the update, giving you a turnkey way to revert if the upgrade causes problems. Which would also address all of the recent hand-wringing about downgrading.
Of course, maybe the current crop of so-called “geeks” don’t expect to be able to do things that aren’t explicitly-allowed by the software/hardware vendor – as result of their computing experience being limited to mobile devices, gaming consoles, and other consumer electronics toys.
Making a disk image is VERY explicitly allowed by Microsoft. Actually, their whole setupprocess, backupprocess, recovery partition, etc are all based on their own disk imaging technology. Do a search for dism or wim or winpe and you will see that you don’t need any external software for this anymore
That said, system protection is the feature in Windows that you should use to undo a borked update/installation
Except that with this new update structure, you might not know when updates will be installed. That is the very definition of forced automatic updates after all. How many disk images do you want to keep, for how many devices?
After reading some of the replies, it seems people don’t understand that the video drivers obtained through Windows Update are not Microsoft drivers. They are drivers supplied by the manufacturer. If a video driver update breaks something with your video, you should be blaming your videos manufacturer, not Microsoft. It’s unreasonable to expect Microsoft to play Quality Control for all drivers, for all manufacturers, on all hardware configurations. They shouldn’t be expected to provide support for other companies products.
That being said, to ease any problems Microsoft should provide a method to easily rollback a driver update and flag it as problematic for the user so it doesn’t get installed again.
ilovebeer,
But isn’t this exactly what WHQL certification means?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHQL_Testing
As far as I’m aware, all windows update drivers are WHQL drivers. And, as others have said already, it doesn’t always mean the latest and greatest from the manufacturer. A couple of times now I’ve experienced issues with WHQL drivers, most recently with intel wifi drivers and flaky wifi connections. Low and behold, the issue was already resolved with the manufacturer’s latest drivers but not in WU.
Edited 2015-07-28 21:12 UTC
WHQL certification means the driver passed the various tests Microsoft uses in the certification process. It by no means covers all hardware combinations & compatibility.
WHQL certification is like saying “it works here and there’s a strong chance it will work for you too”.
“It’s unreasonable to expect Microsoft to play Quality Control for all drivers, for all manufacturers, on all hardware configurations.”
OK, it is unreasonable. However, it’s also unreasonable to think all users are idiots, don’t know any better, and if they have a certain version of a certain driver, that can only be by error, and not on purpose. Time taught me to never trust MS/Win to know which driver works best for me, and I certainly won’t start now.
Pardon me but the premise that such things are unreasonable suggests auto updating anything is probably not a good idea.
I’m not sure how you equate auto-updating security fixes and drivers as meaning all users are idiots who don’t know any better. Most typical users I’ve come across have Windows set to auto-update anyways so it’s not like the action is something new in Windows 10.
I think users should be able to add drivers to a driver exclude list so unwanted updates aren’t forced upon them. But it’s going overboard to imply that we are in the end times because of auto-updating.
Thank you, Thom. Good timing as well!
I’m excited to upgrade to Windows 10 on my gaming machine based on what I saw in the preview, but I was wary of the update situation. This will make that pill easier to swallow.
According to Forbes, Windows Update installed the latest NVIDIA GeForce driver.
Which NVIDIA’s own driver management tool didn’t recognize and tried to role back.
The na~Ave user who let Windows 10 manage its drivers instead of a half dozen or so similar third party apps
escaped unscathed.
So I can finally block KB3035583 and it won’t *stab* come *stab* back?
Well, it’s not just graphics drivers that we should be worried about. There can be several instances when either a certain driver version is desired, or required to be used (graphics driver or something else, equally or even more important), and an OS disregarding the users’ requirements, especially in such sensitive matters is simply and utterly UNACCEPTABLE. And don’t even start with oh, only the home version does it and home version users are idiots anyway, since a). it’s simply not true, lots of professionals use home versions for lots of reasons, and b). lots and lots of work pcs and laptops have home versions on them. MS can go self-fsck again.
YOU are going to be in a world of hurt as a business if you allow this company to have that sort of control over your operating system.
Hug a Penguin today, or take defensive action like I did years ago by virtualizing every Microsoft system you have and putting it under the boot of a Penguin Hypervisor.
Good lord I work for a bank at the moment and there is no possible way that would work. However, we do have LINUX desktops rolling out as an experiment in departments right now and I suspect this is a huge boon towards that effort.