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On 11/09/15 21:03, Eion MacDonald wrote: > I confirm two Microsoft hidden files, one the afore-named $Windows.~BT > size 5.63GB and a file $Windows.~WS of 62KB on a Windows 7 Pro Machine > where no permission for Windows 10 upgrade was ever given. Yeah, that's the established Windows "preload" - it came down over their BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) service as far as I understand it. If anyone cares, I'm halfway through a "kneecap Win7/8/10 telemetry" write-up as I've been tcpdumping several machines for a little while now and trying to figure out what the best strategy for dealing with these little snitches is and would be happy to share my somewhat confusing conclusions. To be honest, there are already hundreds of other sources online for the same info as the blogosphere scrambles to figure out the same stuff though and they're probably just as an (un)reliable a source as me, and it's already out there. Brutally short conclusion: outside of an AD-controlled enterprise style environment with a separate network ACL/firewall/MAC strategy (i.e., your Ciscos, Procurves, *BSD firewalls and all the other stuff that lets you lock the network down OS-independent) Windows is now officially unusable. I would very definitely NOT type in the password to anything I care about - including my login - to any Windows computer, ever, regardless or not of whether it's going to be connected to the internet ever again. As someone else pointed out, a lot of the telemetry crap has been backported to 7/8 already (marked as a 'critical' update and thus automatically installed... b*stards) so Windows really is now just pure poison. Meanwhile in sysadmin world Windows Server remains an awesome, intelligent and adaptable ecosystem: such, such a shame that Microsoft had to just piss in the pool and ruin everything :[ Damn, I'm really, really pessimistic about out computing future, even more than usual. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq