Folding Forum

Windows 10 will update your drivers whenever they decide it's important. I assume their criteria are based on the crash reports they get and exclusively on video considerations. When they do, they will unload OpenCL, crashing FAH (well, after all, OpenCL does contribute to the "Windows experience"). The approach I've taken on my WIn10 machines is to manually update the drivers, myself, with the goal of always being equal to or ahead of anything that they're going to want to distribute. That way I keep OpenCL running with a driver version >= what Microsoft thinks I need.

Fortunately, most of my Windows systems are Win7, where I don't need to keep up with Microsoft's planned driver upgrades..

bruce wrote:Windows 10 will update your drivers whenever they decide it's important. I assume their criteria are based on the crash reports they get and exclusively on video considerations. When they do, they will unload OpenCL, crashing FAH (well, after all, OpenCL does contribute to the "Windows experience"). The approach I've taken on my WIn10 machines is to manually update the drivers, myself, with the goal of always being equal to or ahead of anything that they're going to want to distribute. That way I keep OpenCL running with a driver version >= what Microsoft thinks I need.

Fortunately, most of my Windows systems are Win7, where I don't need to keep up with Microsoft's planned driver upgrades..

Certainly not looking forward to this, think I will disable windows update

road-runner wrote:

bruce wrote:Windows 10 will update your drivers whenever they decide it's important. I assume their criteria are based on the crash reports they get and exclusively on video considerations. When they do, they will unload OpenCL, crashing FAH (well, after all, OpenCL does contribute to the "Windows experience"). The approach I've taken on my WIn10 machines is to manually update the drivers, myself, with the goal of always being equal to or ahead of anything that they're going to want to distribute. That way I keep OpenCL running with a driver version >= what Microsoft thinks I need.

Fortunately, most of my Windows systems are Win7, where I don't need to keep up with Microsoft's planned driver upgrades..

Certainly not looking forward to this, think I will disable windows update

Unfortunately that is not possible, on pro you have the option to delay updates but that's about it. Its a "feature" of Win 10

Unless you have an Enterprise licensed version of Win 10, MS has made updates mandatory and something agreed to in the EULA. The license will deactivate after a period of time if the updates are not applied. You can turn off device driver updates, but a number of persons have reported that was overridden by the Anniversary Update late last Summer/early Fall.

Not sure if it will work but I found this and done it... In the Control Panel, go to System and click Advanced system settings to open the System Properties window. Open the Hardware tab and click Device Installation Settings and set to no on automatically update...

There's also a thread that explains how to change the registry so that drivers on any version of Windows 10 do not update :

viewtopic.php?f=80&t=29681

road-runner wrote:Not sure if it will work but I found this and done it... In the Control Panel, go to System and click Advanced system settings to open the System Properties window. Open the Hardware tab and click Device Installation Settings and set to no on automatically update...

Don't think that works anymore. It used to explicitly mention drivers in the description, but not anymore and really only seems to affect icons.

Well when they break it I know the cure back to windows 7 to heck with a gestapo operating system that I have no control over

Hello road-runner,

Well when they break it I know the cure back to windows 7 to heck with a gestapo operating system that I have no control over

If you don't have specific Windows application requirements, I would suggest that you consider a linux installation. I went through all of this last year and finally made the jump to linux. I am so happy that I did. I kept Windows 10 as a dual boot option on my main system for those apps that I can't find replacements for. My linux system has been folding unattended for approximately 2 months (I'm a snowbird). No worries about an update forcing a reboot or any of that nonsense. For dedicated folding machines linux seems the best option. It just runs.

May have to do that I used to run ubuntu back in the bigadv days on dedicated macines... The new rig is going to be main rig which I usually like windows on though.. May move some stuff around as far as video cards when I do move it into place still using my old x58 at the moment

Best thing to remember is that, at all times, Windows10 is a rolling beta. :/

Also you can run an app from MS that marks downloads as bad and won't try to redownload and install them. See https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 342be283c2.

This page reviews using Group Policy Editor in Win 10 Pro & above to change your update setting to the very familiar Win7 setting of notify when available but do not download until I want it setting.
http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-disab ... indows-10/

I have the diagcab file from the MS site saved and simply run it when Update notifies me of a new nVidia update. Will look at the above settings to block update period though!

There is also this:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/hel ... %3Dtwitter

Nert wrote:Hello road-runner,

Well when they break it I know the cure back to windows 7 to heck with a gestapo operating system that I have no control over

If you don't have specific Windows application requirements, I would suggest that you consider a linux installation. I went through all of this last year and finally made the jump to linux. I am so happy that I did. I kept Windows 10 as a dual boot option on my main system for those apps that I can't find replacements for. My linux system has been folding unattended for approximately 2 months (I'm a snowbird). No worries about an update forcing a reboot or any of that nonsense. For dedicated folding machines linux seems the best option. It just runs.

I use virtualbox to install windows 10 as a virtual machine on my linux pc to run applications that only run under windows. It runs a little slower but it's not too bad. Unfortunately you do have to have a windows license for the VM. It lets me run the windows applications without booting into windows.

You know its fairly easy to simply block the update ips via firewall, or if like me you have some decent router hardware, further upstream. I only have one system that runs 10, but I dislike it continually updating, so i blacklisted the update IPs on my ASA. Same should work for most high end routers/firewalls. There are a few sites that list all the IPs/domains that microsoft uses, just block the ones associated with windows update.