A couple nights ago I was working on a fully updated Windows 7 Home Premium PC and created a new user profile. Wanting to download Chrome I opened Internet Explorer and was greeted with an offer I have not seen before, "Install free antivirus from Microsoft...." Stupidly ("sleepy" is my excuse) I was curious if they were offering a replacement for the built-in Defender so I accepted it.
It displayed a list of things it was going to do, which I allowed to happen. I figured the changes were benign, largely already in place.
Note that a few minutes earlier I had disabled Windows Updates because this PC is used in an application where Windows Update must not run automatically (Deep Freeze Standard is installed).
Enabling Windows Update was in the displayed list but I figured I would just disable it again.
After rebooting I went to disable Windows Update and discovered it was grayed out, and the wording of a warning at the top confirmed that it was no longer changeable. (sorry, I didn't take a screen cap)
My thought was, "Is Microsoft forcing Windows Updates on all versions of Windows like they do in Windows 10 Home?"
I called Microsoft Support and after 45 minutes the 1st tier guy gave up.
The next day a 2nd tier guy called me back and he poked around for about 30 minutes. Both guys covered the same ground that I had tried before calling. Registry edits, permissions changes, turning off the WU service, etc.
Finally after a break, he deleted the following registry keys, which solved the problem. He was obviously elated about having overcome this perplexing obstacle.
reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
reg delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
Lesson learned.
It displayed a list of things it was going to do, which I allowed to happen. I figured the changes were benign, largely already in place.
Note that a few minutes earlier I had disabled Windows Updates because this PC is used in an application where Windows Update must not run automatically (Deep Freeze Standard is installed).
Enabling Windows Update was in the displayed list but I figured I would just disable it again.
After rebooting I went to disable Windows Update and discovered it was grayed out, and the wording of a warning at the top confirmed that it was no longer changeable. (sorry, I didn't take a screen cap)
My thought was, "Is Microsoft forcing Windows Updates on all versions of Windows like they do in Windows 10 Home?"
I called Microsoft Support and after 45 minutes the 1st tier guy gave up.
The next day a 2nd tier guy called me back and he poked around for about 30 minutes. Both guys covered the same ground that I had tried before calling. Registry edits, permissions changes, turning off the WU service, etc.
Finally after a break, he deleted the following registry keys, which solved the problem. He was obviously elated about having overcome this perplexing obstacle.
reg delete HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
reg delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
Lesson learned.
