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I have a router that supports white listing by website domain name. I have a Windows 7 machine that I would like to allow my young kids to use for accessing a selection of white-listed websites. Is it possible to also white list Microsoft's update servers to keep the OS up-to-date?

Could the advice in this answer be followed in reverse? Does anyone know if this list of domain names is still accurate?

Community
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user3692971
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2 Answers2

1

Try this at: http://www.pcsympathy.com/2015/08/16/list-of-windows-10-phone-home-domains/

For updates, leave these whitelisted:

download.windowsupdate.com  -w7 xp
update.microsoft.com    - w7 xp
sls.update.microsoft.com.akadns.net - w8.1
vortex.data.microsoft.com   - w8.1
vortex-win.data.microsoft.com   - w8.1
fe2.update.microsoft.com.akadns.net - w8.1
statsfe2.update.microsoft.com.akadns.net    -w8.1 not required at the moment ?
8bittree
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foresthus
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Microsoft keeps a list with wildcards at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb693717.aspx

There are however quite a lot of routers that do not allow wildcards, or call "http", "https" and "www" all URL-prefixes.

So in practice this is quite a bit of fiddling and a free tool like DNS Query Sniffer can help: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/dns_query_sniffer.html

Basically you:

  1. unblock your firewall
  2. run the DNS Query Sniffer tool
  3. let Windows Update do its work
  4. note the domain names used
  5. whitelist those for the next time
  6. block your firewall

Repeat these steps as soon as Windows Update fails.

Jeroen Wiert Pluimers
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