Bloatware updates make system unusable

Thread: Bloatware updates make system unusable

At random times, Windows becomes so slow that it's almost unusable. Task manager shows the C disk active at 100% for hours. It takes me 15 minutes to copy a file. Sometimes the disk pointer is frozen for a minute or two.

This has happened four or five times a month since I bought my Windows 10 laptop in March, and I finally figured out what's going on. The computer is downloading and installing the latest Microsoft bloatware and crapware updates, and is taking almost total control of my computer to do it.

It is ABSOLUTELY OUTRAGEOUS that I have to lose hours of work so that some Microsoft jackass can download crapware updates onto my machine. By the way, this is different from the security updates. Crapware updates can happen at any moment, any time of the day or night, even if security updates are paused.

Here's what happened on Tuesday (yesteray, Dec 24) when I had to get some critical work done: I got a Microsoft crapware attack starting at 10 am, which continued until after 1 pm. It was the worst crapware attack ever, since after it ended two of my apps (Acrobat and Emacs) no longer worked at all. I was afraid that the crapware update had done permanent damage by deleting essential files, so I rebooted, wasting another hour, and fortunately the apps worked again.

As if that weren't bad enough, I couldn't believe it but incredibly, at 3:55 pm, there was ANOTHER crapware attack. That lasted until 6 pm. And then at 6:30 pm there was ANOTHER crapware attack, lasting half an hour.

And what a surprise!! I played a game of Freecell, and there was a brand new ad that I'd never seen before. I wonder where that came from? I had lost a whole day's work so that Microsoft could upload a bunch of new ad crapware to my computer.

Tuesday's crapware attacks were somewhat disastrous for me personally, since it was Christmas eve and I needed to get some things done, which I was prevented from doing. You can imagine how totally pissed I am that some Microsoft jackass thinks he's so important that updating his crapware ads is more important than me getting my job done. By the way, to paraphrase Boris Johnson, I would rather be dead in a ditch than click on one of those ads.

On this and other support forums, I sometimes see a "Windows running slow" report that gets blamed on a virus. Well, maybe some of them are from a virus, but I'd bet that 90% of them are from Microsoft crapware update attacks. In fact, Microsoft may purposely be making crapware attacks look like viruses, so that people won't know what's really going on.

This is a nightmare. Does anyone know what I can do about this?

Thank you for your time.

Configuration:
Dell Inspiron 5570, Memory: 24 GB
Processor: Intel Core i5-8250U CPU @ 1.60GHz[Cores 4] [Logical/Core 2]
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Last update: Feature update to Windows 10, version 1909, installed on 12/21.
OS Build: 18363.476

Welcome jtw23 - Make sure your ads id is turned off. Settings->Privacy-General. The first 4 settings - TURN THEN OFF. (Unless you want to see the ads ?).

Thanks to everybody for all the different options. I'm going to have
to play around with them, and see what works.

Unfortunately, there's no way to test these options except to wait and
see if another crapware attack occurs. If there's none withing 2-3
weeks, then whatever I tried probably worked.

I should say the following:

* I don't mind the crapware
* In fact, I use some of the apps, so I don't want to delete them
* If I deleted some of them, I couldn't be sure which ones are
responsible for the problem
* I don't mind the crapware being updated, if the updates are well-behaved

However, the problem is that the crapware updates are NOT well
behaved, and they make the computer unusable at random times for
hours. I can't imagine why Microsoft isn't getting a lot more
complaints about this.

***
*** Privacy settings
***

Here are the four options. The first was already off. I turned the
other three off, but those don't look like something that will help.

- Let apps use advertising ID to make ads more interesting to you
based on your app activity. (Turning this off will reset your ID)

- Let websites provide locally relevant content by accessing my
language list.

- Let Windows track app launches to improve Start and search results.

- Show me suggested content in the Settings app.

***
*** Microsoft Store settings
***

Here are the five settings. I turned the first and third
ones off:

- App updates - Update apps automatically - On <<< turn off

- Live Tile - Show products on tile - On

- Video Autoplay - Play videos automatically - On <<< turn off

- Offline Permissions - Manage your devices - Make this PC the one I use
to run some games or apps that have limited licenses, even when I'm
offline. - Already Off

- Purchase sign-in - I want to buy without a password, for faster
checkout. - Already Off

***
*** Registry
***

Changing the registry always makes me nervous, so I'm going to have to
do more research on this.

For anyone who's considering this, you might want to keep track of the
old registry values before you change then:

reg query HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager

reg query HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager\Subscriptions

reg query HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager\SuggestedApps

reg export HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ContentDeliveryManager x.reg


Thanks again to everyone. As I said, I won't know if anything I try has
worked unless nothing happens for two or three weeks. So I may not
have a final answer for a while.

Also check there isn't other third party bloatware you don't need. Uninstall programs you don't want and use Autoruns so see what third party stuff is loading.

I have been using Windows 10/8.1 for some 6 years and never experienced anything like that.
Basically it is about configuration and settings, certainly a large number in Windows 10. Knowing when scheduled version updates and SPs are coming along and doing that at a suitable time.

You have done much of what is required.
Store Apps - Just configure that to manual updates > 3 dots > Settings > Update apps automatically > Off.
Settings > Privacy > Background Apps > Those you don't want > Off.
Settings > Update & Security > Change Active hours/Advanced options.
Settings > Search > limit the indexing to your requirements.

Every other application you install needs the same treatment, we don't know about that.
No fiddling with the Registry is required.