xp and vista stopping updates .

[ChrisPCarter]

Oh
and just to clarify
My cousin is a seriously good tech guy working in Vienna for a large software company, and he suggested turning of updates on Win 7 machine

Well I don't know ANYONE in the IT industry who would suggest that and I've been doing it over 25 years.
There are zero benefits to turning updates off and a lot of reasons why you should be installing them regularly.
Admittedly, if you're on a very old version of Windows that's "end of life" and no longer supported then there won't be any updates, but that's even worse. Main support for Windows 7 ended last week on 14th January so there are no more bug fixes or feature updates but security patches will still be available until 14th Jan 2020 so if you really like avoiding change you're probably safe for a few more years.

For a few days Microsoft turned an option on to automatically download and prepare Windows 10 for upgrade on Windows 7 and 8 machines but people were still asked if they wanted to opt out before it installed. They got a lot of stick for this and changed it a couple of days later anyway so it is not automatically installed. This was towards the end of last year where it was a free upgrade until October and they were just trying to encourage people to install it.
Those who didn't take advantage of it lost out on £50 to £150 worth of software which they will probably have to install sooner or later anyway. At some point your other software will be updated and won't work on an old version of Windows and you'll have to upgrade everything in one go. Probably time for a new PC by then though.

 

[Storeman]

Running Windows 7 here.
Automatic Updates are turned off. I update manually every few months, this saved me having the Windows 10 update forced upon me. Not keen on an operating system that sends so much of my data back to MS. By the time Windows 7 gets to end of life, either someone will have worked out how to stop Win 10 spying and sending data back, or I'll be going with Linux Mint.

I've never used automatic updates since XP. Never had a problem.
Also, £50 to £150 worth of software? Do people actually pay for Windows? Interesting concept.

 

[J B]

I've had customers who stuck with XP despite the warnings and had ransomeware on their systems because of it, losing data and costing them a fortune in recovery costs and lost work. In some cases it's not even recoverable as it even encrypts backups so there's no way of restoring back to a previous date. They were demanded to pay £30K

Sounds like we're all doomed then

or are you just touting for business?

 

[Mursal]

Need to update (manually or auto) regularly, to keep protection up, if you do anything worth protecting on the net.
Microsoft Security Essentials (free security software) will update every day .............

XP (service pack 2 or below) will work without any need to contact Microsoft, but not online for important stuff without updates.

 

[Still Farming]

The "4000" attack on company may be a known firm that attracts this attention maybe ?