[Privoxy-devel] Privoxy blocking Win10 upgrades to Win11 (sad trombone)

[Ian Silvester]

Thanks for the report Sam (and for the log digging!). 

This does sound like a perfectly reasonable exception to the ad*. blocking pattern. Unless anyone sees a reason not do so I think we should add the exception to default.action.

Ian


On Thu, 26 Dec 2024, at 22:46, Sam Varshavchik via Privoxy-devel wrote:
> So I have this Windows 10 VM that's been trying, with all its might, to  
> update itself to Windows 11, for a few months now. The update would get to  
> about 10%, and then bail out with a "Windows 11 is not yet ready for your  
> device" message. Sad trombone.
>
> I have read some write-ups, on an assortment of blogs, about Microsoft  
> blocking Windows 11 upgrades, for various reasons, so initially I didn't pay  
> much attention to this, but as time went by I got more and more curious, to  
> the point that I decided to do some digging.
>
> And I discovered that it was Privoxy that was causing this. Windows update  
> was attempting, with all its might, to download the following URL
>
> http://adl.windows.com/appraiseradl/2024_12_11_03_55_AMD64.cab
>
> and it was getting squashed here:
>
> In file: default.action View
> {+block{Host matches generic block pattern.} }
> ad*.
>
> Cute. I disabled privoxy, and the update is now happily past this point.
>
> Basically, this was a self-foot bullet by MSFT::
>
> - Windows update was getting a 4xx, from Priboxy.
>
> - the user-facing error message, that resulted from this, simply said,  
> meekly: "Windows 11 is not yet ready for your device". This is how Windows  
> Update chose to handle this error message
>
> - buried deep in Windows update logs was a random hexadecimal code
>
> - Googling that hexadecimal code led to a bunch of web pages yammering  
> something about Windows Update having difficulty downloading whatever it  
> wanted to download, and that was likely to be a problem with the Windows  
> Update service itself, so just have patience, and wait it out
>
> - Waiting accomplished absolutely nothing. Privoxy had infinite patience in  
> 4xx-ing that URL, every time.
>
> - After putting two-and-two together I disabled privoxy, and that fixed  
> everything.
>
> Just mentioning this here. Perhaps a tweak to the default blocking rules  
> might be in order?
>
>
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