If your start menu / cortona / search collapses, there's still Windows Key+R to get at the Run command line. From there you can do a number of things such as forcing your way into the Windows Update screen: Go http://www.neowin.net/news/psa-how-to-open-sp...s-10-from-the-run-command for info and how to and sure enough, a pile more was sitting there, even an Outlook update, although, have no Outlook... maybe another preemptive by MS to use my bandwidth. Strangely enough the big roll-up cumulative update 3081455 of Sept.7 is not listed. One wonders.

I have only one machine left on Windows. If eFMer would develop a LINUX version of BoincTask, I wouldn't have that one...

Always tried to stay away from emulators due to the overhead but may be worth another look. Might be better to accept the overhead versus maintaining a complete install and putting up with the MS aggravation.

Click bait headline. The article actually says "...the installer does require human intervention to actually proceed, so you won't run the risk of waking up to find your PC running a different operating system."

Finally, a KB fix [optional, yes] was made available to address the CPU time consuming by WmiPrvSE.exe, which relates to network traffic. Booted yesterday and less than 24 later the task manager shows it used 1:23:40 hours, 5.5% of 1 core per day. There's an article out there that discusses how to 'fix' the issue, claiming it relates to Search Conduit, and it applies to W7/8 as well: http://masijee.com/wmiprvse-exe-high-cpu-usage-fixed/. Conduit did not ring any bell though.