What exactly does KB2952664 do?

10 may not install if decline the terms of use but it doesn't mean 10 won't hose the current install :)

People are pretty silly to have GWX icon and not get rid of it and also switch their update settings to exclude recommended updates.

I have very little sympathy :)

And no system image too :p

These people need win-10 badly win-7 is way too complicated :D

Stage 1: Denial...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/15/windows-10-automatically-installs-without-permission-complain-users

Microsoft's response in the Guardian article is in fact true, "..But Microsoft insists that Windows 10 will not automatically install without asking for explicit permission..."

I saw this on a client machine. A large, nearly full screen pop-up indicates Windows 10 has been downloaded and is ready to install. It lists many of the great features of their new and more secure operating system, and there is a big "OK" button in the lower right-hand corner. I watched a client click on the "X" in the upper right-hand corner thinking they were simply closing (read "closing") an annoying come-on. In reality what they were doing is postponing a scheduled task that had already been created.

A closer inspection of the pop-up reveals that in very, very small (blue) print in the lower left quadrant of the pop-up is a hyperlink reading (paraphrasing here), "To cancel installation of Windows 10 click here."

This is not lying; this is not deceptive marketing; this is very effective social engineering.

As caustic as some of ThrashZone's comments have been (sorry, brother but you know it's true :) ) he is absolutely correct. Anyone who ends up with Windows 10 on their computer "inadvertently" got it because they are too stupid to own a computer. I do not have a Facebook account because I actually read the EULA which states very explicitly that any of "your" stuff that you upload to Facebook is now "their" stuff and they can do whatever they want with "their" stuff. This is the world in which we live.

Any employer that ends up with Windows 10 "suddenly" appearing on their corporate workstations is managed by a bunch of witless morons because they allowed their employees to have admin rights. I have no sympathy, though I will gladly take their money to "roll-back" the installation and then repair Windows 7 when it doesn't work - it's what I do. Any home user that ends up with Windows 10 is on his own because he didn't read the instructions.

You may think this all sounds pretty severe, but I don't even have admin rights to my machines on my home network; nobody does because it is a full-blown AD environment. My wife loves it because she knows she can't "break" anything, and she is able to do anything she "NEEDS" to do with her computer.

And there's the rub. Anyone can do anything they need to do without admin rights (calm down all you Gamers; we know you're an exception). And Microsoft knows that 90+% of their users think they know enough to be admins of their local PC. In other words MS knows most of their users are morons.

All that being said, I have Win 10 installed on three machines - a laptop, and a PC that I use for testing so I can support all those hapless gits who have had Win 10 "mysteriously" appear, and one gaming rig that kicks butt and takes names. Win 10 is actually a damn fine OS once you disable all of the 'spyware' that is incorporated into the OS. All of my workstations are Windows 7 Pro and will stay that way until the machines up and die. Then I'll dig out some old processors and motherboards in my lab and install Win 7 on them.

By the time Win 10 gets around to build 3000 (I think the latest is 1511) they will have worked out the most egregious  bugs, market pressure will have exerted itself and the most heinous "spyware" will have been rolled back. and it will be a world-class operating system. Until then, as they said in Rome, "Caveat Emptor." That's kah-wee-aht by the way; I was a Latin major. :)

Didn't they sneak some W10 annoyware into an IE "security update" a few months ago?

I had to bite the bullet and take the SP2 rollup because I got a new PC.  I wasn't spending days with multiple reboots, each time checking to hide what should be hidden, to get up to date.  SO I installed GWX Control Panel and let it do the work for me (plus I googled and got from here things to do about telemetry) and did those things manually).

In about another month it should all be over.

I also found out that my processors may stop being supported in about a year and a half, that they will stop updates for the latest processors then.  I had thought they were going to not support them at all, so when Dell offered what I call the upgrade to Win7, I figured it hadn't kicked in with this processor yet.  I may be forced to do something at that time.

I don't understand why there hasn't been a class action suit yet.  We are forced to play games because they are FORCING an upgrade on people who absolutely don't want it, and claiming that they're doing it for our benefit.

I suspect Linux will not run many windows programs, plus my PC even needs specual drivers for USB3 (ALL ports) and my PCIe SSD hard drive, so chances are I'd have even more problems with that.  Until all this nonsense, I hadn't even given Linux a thought, and I work with it at work.

Unless you are a gluten for punishment, you will install GWX control panel, set Windows Update to NEVER, once a month manually start Windows update,  and hide all WINDOWS updates that are not labeled security.  If you will simply do this, you no longer have to worry about Win10.  It works for all of my clients.

KB2952664 just appeared in my Win 7 Windows Update for the 25th time..  Note that I have not hidden this patch.  I have no idea what changed.