Advice Request Microsoft Re-Releases KB2652664, KB2976978 Telemetry Updates for Windows 7/8.1

[Exterminator]

Microsoft Re-Releases KB2652664, KB2976978 Telemetry Updates for Windows 7/8.1

Microsoft has silently re-released two Windows telemetry updates that were linked to the infamous Get Windows 10 (GWX) app that the company pushed to Windows 7 and 8.1 users in mid-2015 to prepare the migration to Windows 10.

The company, however, does not disclose what exactly is new in KB2952664 for Windows 7 and KB 2976978 for Windows 8.1, providing just a generic description that doesn’t say much about their purpose.

“This update performs diagnostics on the Windows systems that participate in the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program. The diagnostics evaluate the compatibility status of the Windows ecosystem, and help Microsoft to ensure application and device compatibility for all updates to Windows. There is no GWX or upgrade functionality contained in this update,” the company says on the KB page.

The two updates are currently listed as optional and it’s not known if the company wants to promote them to the important branch next week when it releases this month’s Patch Tuesday updates.

Telemetry updates
What’s also important to know is that these updates are supposed to be shipped to users in the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program and are listed as compatibility updates for keeping Windows up-to-date.

In the past, the two updates were linked with telemetry data collection in Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, and they launched a Windows task identified as DoScheduledTelemetryRun.

As Woody Leonhard explained, there were cases in the past when these updates installed on computers that weren’t part of the Customer Experience Improvement Program collected data anyway, so without any information from Microsoft at this point, it’s hard to decrypt their purpose.

For the moment, the good thing is that they’re not pushed to all computers running Windows 7 and 8.1, so it remains to be seen if anything changes until next week the Microsoft releases Patch Tuesday updates.