Block unwanted Windows 10 updates

After years of Windows users being able to pick and choose which security updates and new features would get installed, a controversial decision from Microsoft has made updates in Windows 10 mandatory, causing many early testers to get understandably peeved. Reports of an updated Nvidia driver causing performance issues on certain systems is just one example of how mandatory updates have so far bothered users. Thankfully, there’s also a way to avoid those unwanted updates — a troubleshooter package has been released that allows users to temporarily prevent a Windows or driver update from reinstalling in Windows 10. The package, which can be found by simply Googling ‘KB3073930’, was made for the Windows 10 Insider Preview, although it should also work on the fi nal release version. The troubleshooter will allow you to hide any updates that are causing you strife, and it will also let you manually select drivers for automatic installation. While this is a temporary solution, let’s hope that a proper fi x for this issue is on the way

Intel’s Skylake finally lifts off

For PC makers, Intel’s new Skylake platform has been a long time coming. Consisting of sixth-generation Core i CPUs and accompanying 100-series chipsets, the hype has slowly been growing for the platform, with leaked benchmarks pointing to great base performance and fantastic overclockability. The good news is that wait is nally over. Launching at the start of August are the enthusiast-oriented Core i5-6500K and Core i7-6700K CPUs and accompanying motherboards, based on the high-end Z170 chipset. Lower-end CPUs and boards are expected to start ltering through from September onwards. The Skylake platform has seen multiple delays. At Computex in Taiwan in June, most major motherboard vendors were already showing o Z170 products, but CPUs were nowhere to be seen. Australian PC vendors have told APC that even leading right up to the launch, test CPUs were hard to come by, indicating that retail chips may initially be hard to nd. Skylake should also launch on laptops before the end of the year, with some multinational vendors anticipated to release products as soon as October. Taiwanese publication Digitimes is also reporting that Intel’s NUC and Compute Stick product lines will see Skylake updates in Q4 2015. We’ll have a full report on the rst sixth-generation Core i CPUs and Z170 motherboards next month.

The Windows 10 upgrade experience

as we go to print with this issue of APC, Microsoft has just started rolling out the free Windows 10 upgrade. Judging just from the numbers — Microsoft claims 14 million devices were upgraded just on the fi rst day — it’d seem to be off to a good start. Unfortunately, my own upgrade experience didn’t quite go as smoothly as I’d hoped — although, admittedly, part of that could defi nitely be my own fault. When upgrade day rolled around, I decided I’d leave my home PC (which runs an almost 2-year-old Windows 8.1 installation) switched on to see if the required 3GB of downloads would come down automatically via Windows Update — which apparently, they did… and then some, as I discovered when I got home. Windows 10’s temporary upgrade folder housed not just 3GB of fi les, but a whopping 15GB! It seems that some of the downloaded fi les had been corrupted — apparently repeatedly — and Windows Update had been trying to replace them with good ones… and, failing time and again. (Thank goodness for unlimited broadband plans.) Deducing that this problem probably wasn’t going to resolve itself cleanly, I then went about deleting all the corrupted fi les and then trying to force Windows Update to start the process again… which, after a couple of hours of downloading more fi les, once again failed. The installer was still ending up corrupted. “Screw Windows Update,” was my general feeling at this point, so I went about looking for alternatives, fi nding that Microsoft’s smartly put together a standalone tool for creating a Windows installer on a USB drive — the so-called ‘media creation tool’, which you can fi nd here: tinyurl.com/apc419-w10mct. Using this to create a USB 3.0 fl ash drive with the Windows 10 installer, the upgrade process was fast — taking around 30 minutes — and completely fl awless. (APC’s creative director, Troy Coleman, went through a similar ‘corrupted downloads’ experience, but also had a great experience with the media creation tool.) And now that it’s running, I’m pretty fond of the new OS. It’s very quick, not just for Microsoft’s own apps (like the excellent but a little under-featured Edge browser) but for using and launching third-party ones too. Not everything is working great, however. I run a dual-monitor setup, and trying to game on one screen and watch fl icks on the other results in choppy video — and this is something that worked perfectly on Windows 8.1. Hopefully, these are just driverrelated teething problems that will improve over the next few months — it still is very much early days for Windows 10. If you’ve upgraded to Windows 10 already, what was your experience? And is there anything you particularly love or hate about it?