I booted up my WIn10 machine for the first time in a year just to test something with Xojo… 5 hours later it was done doing “updates”. In comparison I did a full Mojave upgrade in 45 minutes… go figure
Indeed.
As a consultant who travels a lot, it gets to the end of the day, I’m tired.
I’m hungry.
I have a 3 hour drive ahead.
I click ‘shut down’ and then Windows says:
‘you aren’t going anywhere, mate.
I’m downloading 35 updates and if you shut me down I shall definitely NOT become stronger than you imagine’
Hibernate is your friend, I always hibernate unless I need to reboot for something especially so on a laptop. Dumps the ram to disk and turns off. No power usage and almost instant on with zero patch interruptions 
Pro Tip: Change your power button option to hibernate then you never forget
I thought I was good at metaphors, but that is beyond me
I’m sure that there are people at MicroSoft that already know that for the last 2yrs I have been running a non genuine version of windows (sort of not on purpose). Fair enough and I accept it.
However, in my cynical view, it seems like some sort of revenge payback attack to ensure that I get the message!!.. but maybe it’s just me?
I wouldn’t be surprised that there are some goons at MS exacting revenge upon me by uploading a virus of sorts just to pizz me oooff. I mean off.
So, just in case, and for the record, and to be completely clear:
[quote]In the year of our Lord, circa 2018, I do declare that I knowingly (but with many many reasonable excuses) used an unlicensed version of Windows 7.
So can you please make my “true blue” Windows 7 work again. btw. I never really liked that bitchy Mac stuff - I was just making it up, and I always liked you anyways. Blessed to you and your family.[/quote]
Well, I don’t think there’s much else I can say or do.
When I wake up in the morning, everything should be tickety-boo.
Well, it seems my contrition has payed off, and also my constant prayers to the Sun God Ra, have been well received. He/She told me just to wait, and have some patience.
When I woke up in the morning, everything WAS tickey-boo.!
All I had to do was to turn off ALL automatic updates and make the system “tell me” when updates were available.
Then I made a recovery disc (just in case), restarted and only a few updates were required at a time. I then installed the required updates at “my” discretion. But of course, with consultation from Ra.
All good now. The first thing I did was re-install and re-authorise Xojo and everything is back to “normal”.
Over the next few days I’ll have to re-install other applications, but of course with guidance from Ra.