Thank you for the help.
I finally rid all of my windows 7 computers of all of the "help with updating to Widows 10" updates (including and especially KB2952664 which I had been unable to remove as it seemed to re-install at every boot.
WOW! my computers run as if they were new. I had forgotten how good windows 7 really is. No more problems with IE11, no more network problems....... no more problems at all......... and so fast!
Those with SSD drives boot almost instantly again as the did when 7 was first installed.
So "help with updating to windows 10" means making windows 7 seem slow and buggy and "outdated"?
By design?
David.