Windows 7 computers are automatically starting the Windows 10 upgrade

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4a0asv/warning_windows_7_computers_are_being_reported_as/

by mendelk • 10 years ago

260 224 10 years ago

acqq9• 10 years ago

Maybe the way to block it is still:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351

    Subkey: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
    DWORD value: DisableOSUpgrade = 1

The MSFT decision to perform forced updates is covered, for example, by Extreme Tech, February 2:

"Look out: Microsoft shifts Windows 10 to ‘Recommended’ update, automatic download"

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/222326-look-out-microso...

I still believe they shouldn't have done that and I hope they get sued, heavily. Even if nobody dies, it's not OK. People had fully working computer and some of them wont. I have one such computer, which works on Windows 7 but doesn't on Windows 10.

justinclift3• 10 years ago

I'm really hoping this crap badly affects the computers of some large justice/gov systems around the world (and/or the home computers of senior judges).

That should get the right people involved for sticking the boots in.

saidajigumi2• 10 years ago

If the IT staff for any large organization hasn't reviewed their inventory for affected systems and taken appropriate steps... that's outright incompetence. The writing has been on the wall for years and MS clearly documents unaffected systems (which includes Windows 7 Enterprise) and the required Group Policy to block the update[1].

[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351

yardie2• 10 years ago

If the sys admin is doing there jobs correctly than system updates should be coming from a Windows update server using group policy rather than directly over the Internet. Nothing kills productivity like 1000 PCs trying to download the same files simultaneously.

kbart• 10 years ago

"I'm really hoping this crap badly affects the computers of some large justice/gov systems around the world"

Enterprise editions are not eligible for free upgrade to W10, so it's not likely. Also, there are additional safeguards, for example, you must get upgrades directly from MS, not WSUS (as per standard business practice). I'm sure MS thought that well and chose targets that are not likely to defend themselves in courts (home users and small business).

kozukumi2• 10 years ago

Reading that KB article and Microsoft are being total dicks with such complicated instructions when they could have offered a download to a tiny program which simply allows the user to opt-out of all upgrade prompts for N months.

erickhill3• 10 years ago

This upgrade occurred to my father's Dell laptop, which became hung during the install and essentially "locked" from his standpoint. (He lives in another state and I'm not able to assist his technical needs.)

In any case, he took it to Office Max where he bought it and asked them to fix it. They did: they wiped his hard drive clean and installed Windows 10.

With none of his files.

Aggressive updating of an OS is not always a good thing, even with the best of intentions. It feels more like a desperate attempt to force some people into a world they don't want to be in so Customer Support can have a better time of it (I doubt customer support is having a better time of it right now).

acqq9• 10 years ago

I also have a computer that Microsoft "decided" is "upgradeable" even if it's not. I guess they estimated that the total number of such computers is not going to cost them much.

I do hope some class action suit happens. Only big companies install Enterprise versions of Windows, so a lot of users will have problems on the computers that otherwise normally worked. Even some that do very responsible work.

And I hope that EULAs in which we give them our firstborns and become the organ donors are finally going to be burned in courts.

ZenoArrow4• 10 years ago

Does your father still have the laptop? If so, ask him not to use it until you can get hold of it, and when you do I'd suggest running a Linux live distro on the machine with tools to recover deleted files, there's a decent chance you'll be able to recover many of them.

I've had success with the tools included in Trinity Rescue Kit before, so I can recommend that to you. I've used it to recover a bunch of pictures that were lost with a drive reformat.

http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?content=TRINITY_RESCUE...

chinhodado• 10 years ago

I agree. Depending on the size of the HDD and the amount of data lost, there's a good chance that some data can be recovered, especially small files like office documents.

That said, it's a HDD wipe followed immediately by a full Windows installation, so there's a high chance a lot of the data were overwritten already.

erickhill3• 10 years ago

Probably a lost cause. He had over 4K photos that he had taken in the 70s digitized from slides and organized.

All that work was blown away. He has digi backups of the files, but all the organization and notes are gone.

He's 77 with a quad-bypass in December, and the thought of starting over is, well, depressing for him. Not sure he's going to even try at this point.

ams6110• 10 years ago

A hard lesson in the value of backups. His hard drive could have crapped out (nobody's fault) and he'd be in the same boat.

deelowe• 10 years ago

uhh. Could this not set them up for a lawsuit? I mean, I assume and argument could be made that there's some liability involved in MS screws up the installation or if some program fails to continue to function. This should be fun to watch.

ourmandave3• 10 years ago

I just got upgraded Saturday and the EULA specifically says that you can't bring a class action lawsuit against them. They want you to try arbitration for 60 days and if that doesn't work then you can try small claims. Yeah, sure.

Anyway I had two problems afterwards.

It logged me into a TEMP account so no config changes were saved and my files appeared to be all missing. They weren't, it just the shortcuts all point to the C:\users\TEMP\ directories. There's a few fixes for that one. Mine was checking the box that stopped OneNote from auto loading at start up.

After a reboot the start menu went away. The logo button is there but the menu doesn't come up. I found a site with a few fixed and tried them all in succession. I don't know which one solved it because I only rebooted after doing all of them.

So now I have 30 days to downgrade to Win 7 or forever hold my peace.

DasIch• 10 years ago

EULAs aren't legally binding in some countries because they're not disclosed before the sale. So this might protect them in the US but I could imagine it becoming a problem in other countries still.

ubernostrum• 10 years ago

I know clickwrap EULAs have been contentious, but can a EULA for something you didn't even ask for and didn't want in the first place be forced on you against your will?

chris_wot9• 10 years ago

the EULA specifically says that you can't bring a class action lawsuit against them

Yeah, best of luck to them with this. It's not possible for them to put a condition into their EULA negating all legal rights. Imagine a completely ludicrous scenario: a Microsoft executive decides that they install an update that wipes your computer if it detects your version of Windows isn't licensed, and then another update accidentally causes your license to be invalidated. Then millions of computers get wiped. You think that licensing term is going to protect them from a class action? Think again.

WireWrap2• 10 years ago

If enough people file complaints with the FTC and/or state Attorney Generals, they might get involved as well.

I wonder how privacy settings are being handled, and whether harm is being done to those who are automatically upgraded.

xjay2• 10 years ago

I know one of their Windows 10 preparation updates reset a telemetry setting in Windows 7.

I recall it was "Turn off Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program," which is disabled by default. There might have been other settings. (Search for security hardening guides for Windows to get a check list.)

What prompted me to check this was when Microsoft chose to willfully ignore the opt out setting they had handed us prior to the release date of Windows 10.. Let's not forget that either!

Edit: Oops. Double negative.

CamperBob24• 10 years ago

They will have done a good job covering themselves against class-action lawsuits with the arbitration clauses in the EULA. But one area where I imagine they're vulnerable is when an individual user who was force-fed Windows 10 loses access to some important third-party software or hardware that for whatever reason doesn't work with 10.

Imagine being Stephen Hawking. You wake up one morning to find you've been "upgraded" to Windows 10, and your assistive speech hardware no longer works. That will blow away anything in the EULA, as far as any judge is concerned.

The degree of irresponsibility required to pull something like this is simply staggering.

mchahn• 10 years ago

Wouldn't the automatic upgrade mean you didn't agree to any T&C?

krapp2• 10 years ago

You did agree if you set Windows Update to automatically install updates. The upgrade to Window 10 is being treated as an "update".

DannyBee• 10 years ago

If they changed the T&C, that ain't gonna go well for them.

(IE it probably won't be held to be consent)

unclebucknasty• 10 years ago

Unless the auto-update terms in Windows Update expressly state that using it means you agree to any future, unknown terms that may apply to those updates, then agreeing to automatic updates would not be sufficient.

That is, unless the terms for Windows 10 are exactly the same as the version from which you are upgrading. That hardly seems likely, given that it is free and comes with new features, such as advertising, etc.

scholia• 10 years ago

It still brings up a EULA....

chris_wot9• 10 years ago

In 2010 Microsoft's update of Security Essentials changed Windows update from manual to automatic. [1] With an installation base in the hundreds of millions, if even 1% of users didn't know about this and switched to manual update, then that's a hell of a lot of people who are affected.

1. http://www.infoworld.com/article/2627526/antimalware/warning...

totony• 10 years ago

I had a client to whom this happened, they install W10 and THEN ask you if you agree.

He said no, they uninstalled w10 back to w7 and he can't login anymore.

kozukumi2• 10 years ago

Holy fuck are you serious?

wfo• 10 years ago

It force-upgraded me and I declined the terms when it finally booted up, it rebooted and went back to W7 luckily working correctly but with un-closable popups everywhere demanding I either install W10 now or schedule an update within a week or so.

Microsoft has taken to installing malware on our machines using their update mechanism and signing keys; I'd delete their cert if it were feasible. I think the CFAA is broad enough to make this a felony if this has bricked machines/destroyed data (apparently it has), it certainly should be illegal. If I were running the machine in a medical system someone could have died.

Someone12343• 10 years ago

Strangely nobody has ever caught this on video. Just a handful of anonymous people claiming "I totally didn't hit the wrong button in the UI!!"

Now, sure, I'd agree it should be harder to accidentally upgrade your PC. In particular for layman users. But I am generally skeptical that this is any more than just user error until proven otherwise.

I have a Windows 7 PC I use regularly, I too get the upgrade prompts, but it hasn't upgraded itself just as one counterpoint.

Someone needs to catch this on video.

PS - I flagged this article on purpose because I don't consider a random Reddit thread to be a legitimate source.

Eliezer• 10 years ago

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3043526/microsoft-windows/m...

It's a mainstream journalist so mileage might vary quite highly, but probably a little more trustworthy than a Reddit thread. At first they talk about the Reddit thread but then say they caught it on their own box.

hayksaakian2• 10 years ago

Dark patterns http://darkpatterns.org

"I clicked 'update security' and it gave me Windows 10!"

Someone12343• 10 years ago

Microsoft did bundle the IE banner upgrade advertiser with security updates recently, and that was uncool/unacceptable.

But I've never seen an update security button that actually INSTALLS Windows 10, and that is specifically what this complaint is about, the upgrade starting on its own.

As I said if there is a bug that causes upgrades to occur without permission then people need to provide production steps. If there isn't a bug and Microsoft is doing it on purpose then why is it only impacting so few people? And how can we exclude user error?

accountatwork• 10 years ago

I don't know if this was changed for the external release, but when Windows 10 was rolled out internally to employees at Microsoft, a significant fraction (but not all) employees weren't notified and had their machines reboot without warning. This happened in the middle of the workday and caused a lot of employees to lose half a day, and that's in the happy case where nothing went wrong with the install.

I flagged this article on purpose because I don't consider a random Reddit thread to be a legitimate source.

Maybe you also won't consider a random HN thread to be a legitimate source, but if you ask MS employees you're sure to find some who were either hit by this or know someone who was hit by this.

Someone12343• 10 years ago

Are employees at Microsoft using Windows Update or WSUS? That anecdote doesn't make sense because enterprise users have a completely different update pipeline with completely different controls (i.e. an administrator using WSUS can purposely force an update installation).

Just to be clear are you or are you not claiming to be a Microsoft employee?

ourmandave3• 10 years ago

No, it's forced. I came home from work and there was pop-up window which I thought was the usual nag screen. It said my Windows 10 download was ready.

Except this one had a count down timer at around 54 minutes left. There was also an option "I need more time...".

I X'd the box closed and went on thinking whatever.

54 minutes later, in the middle of typing an email, the system auto rebooted and "Configuring Update for Wndows 10" screen came up.

I took pictures of it with my cell which are kind of blurry because it's hard to have a steady hand during a good WTH rage.

Sindisil• 10 years ago

If that's the dialog I think it is, there should be a cancel button that would then roll back the update. Takes a good long while, and is BS of course, but would land you back where you were.

Of course, they seem to be iterating on the update dialogs. I'm not saying it's to get past those avoiding the update, but it's probably to get past those avoiding the update.

safepants• 10 years ago

Perhaps typing the email caused you to hit space bar or the return key while the popup install windows 10 prompt was active? I've had this happen with regular reboot messages from windows updates.

acqq9• 10 years ago

PS - I flagged this article on purpose because I don't consider a random Reddit thread to be a legitimate source.

You should be flagged here then, not because you don't trust Reddit but because you haven't checked any other sources, including these linked in the comments here, long before you posted your comment!

It's documented by Microsoft:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351

"How to manage the Windows 10 upgrade

Automatic scenarios

The Windows 10 upgrade is automatically blocked (that is, no further action is required) on computers or other devices in the following scenarios: .."

Note: no further action is required to stop computer to being upgraded only on Enterprise!

"Non-automatic scenarios

You can manage the Windows 10 upgrade by using any of the following methods."

Managing here means -- you can read slowly the whole article -- the ability to disable automatic upgrade! No action taken -- upgrade happens. Even if you have hidden the previous update! You have to enter the proper new registry entry or group policy:

"administrators who want to prevent Windows 7, Windows 7 for Embedded Systems, Windows 8.1, and Windows Embedded 8.1 Pro clients from upgrading should enable the policy settings that are discussed in this article."

It's not that "no click" is needed, it's that the people who do that click don't have any idea what is going to happen, e.g. they are not the "qualified administrators" of their own computers. Like most of the people who let other people installing them software. Now it's just something like:

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Win10....

Dark pattern par excellence.

Hard to believe but true.

deadcast5• 10 years ago

I highly doubt that the people on Reddit and HN are just making this up. It's not like an "Automatic Update" is that remarkable of a claim. Forbes[1] a few days ago and others recently wrote about this very issue. So far it seems like a pretty real problem. Sucks it's messing with so many. :/

[1]http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/09/12/microsoft...

untog3• 10 years ago

I use Windows Media Center on my machine so I'll be pretty irritated if it automatically upgrades - MS removed it in Windows 10.

swampthinker2• 10 years ago

Why not VLC?

untog3• 10 years ago

I think you're thinking of Media Player, not Media Center.

Media Center is a whole DVR package, consumes TV streams, TV guide data, recordings, can be connected to an Xbox 360... and so on.

Nadya3• 10 years ago

While it comes down to some level of personal preference - VLC is not faithful to source material in regards to color balance/contrast and this is apparent in scenes with shadows. VLC will have a "washed out" look. Some users prefer that "washed out" look though (for scenes with very heavy shadows it often does look aesthetically better) but others prefer faithfulness to the original.

MPC-HC is more faithful to the original product - so I recommend it over VLC.

Example: http://i.imgur.com/TJng0HW.jpg

Not my image and I noticed the frame is different. I can assure you that the difference isn't due to being different frames. You'll find no shortage of better examples by searching "VLC washed out".

Bedon2923• 10 years ago

This is the exact reason I have been avoiding 10. I still use the DVR capability. I know I don't have automatic update on, but still getting paranoid about it reading all the issues people are having.

untog3• 10 years ago

I've been trying to move away from WMC - trying MediaPortal, NextPVR and Emby, so far, but the interface on all of them is sub-par. It's very frustrating - I'd gladly pay a chunk of money, but I guess I'm part of a small audience that doesn't make such development worth it.

davesque• 10 years ago

This happened to my co-worker just the other day. He develops native windows software so it was pretty annoying for him.

Bedon2923• 10 years ago

Yeah, a couple of mine had it over the weekend too. One with good results, and doesn't care. The other with a couple fails in the house that had to spend time to reinstall from scratch.

api• 10 years ago

Now with more ads, spyware, constant logging of everything you do to Microsoft, and telemetry!

No thanks. I guess MS wants to cede the entire high-end market to Apple and Linux and re-position themselves as a bargain basement low-end vendor of spyware ridden junk.

largote• 10 years ago

The high-end market is mostly gamers, which is 95%+ Windows.

TazeTSchnitzel• 10 years ago

Microsoft's Windows Store/UWP push has scared some game developers, most notably causing Valve to make a Linux version of Steam and their own OS. A concerted effort by the games industry could see Windows's market share fall there.

stcredzero• 10 years ago

Funny, I've been trying to get my Windows 7 laptop to take the upgrade, but it strangely won't.

ocdtrekkie2• 10 years ago

Use a disc or the Media Creation Tool (which can directly start a Windows 10 install). Both methods are much more reliable than the Windows Update method.

mynameishere• 10 years ago

Here's the update:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/3035583

...that explains the Windows 10 update, but on my machine it just says "Install this update to resolve issues in Windows. blah blah blah" which is the same boilerplate they all use. The update size is uniquely given as a range 722 KB - 821 KB, which is probably a low estimate for an OS installer. So, no indication of the magnitude of this. Since it isn't a security update, anyone with a properly-configured system (IMO) shouldn't be bothered by it. Unless Microsoft updates it to a "security update". Which seems possible.

The whole "auto update and restart" thing seemed like a potentially global-scale Therac-25 style bad idea when I first heard about it on Windows XP (or whenever). But it never happened--I guess not too many critical systems use Windows. Just millions of people losing millions of hours of productivity...

ploxiln• 10 years ago

That's just for the (non-removable) button in the taskbar. There are in fact a number of different updates related to the upgrade from windows 7 to windows 10.

cm2187• 10 years ago

I wonder if there are pages on reddit commenting a comment page from HN...

skeletonjelly• 10 years ago

https://reddit.com/r/hackernews

innertracks• 10 years ago

Dual booting with Fedora. I voluntarily upgraded the Win 7 partition to give it a whirl a while back. They said I would have 30 days to go back.

Less than 24 hours later ... Nope.

The only place I want Windows running on my personal hardware is in a VM. Done with them.

electrotype2• 10 years ago

What do you think about this script on Voat? : https://voat.co/v/technology/comments/853510

I'm really curious to know your opinion Hacker News. Is this a good way to live with Windows 7 now? It seems to be open-source, easy to apply, it disables telemetry and Windows 10 crap.

Any better alternatives?

newman314• 10 years ago

Shutup10 and Spybot Anti-beacon

electrotype2• 10 years ago

And why those?

213• 10 years ago

This seems to disable 51 updates from installing. That is quite a list. Some of the updates are blocked for other issues than privacy - one of them for example is a graphics stack security update which is blocked because it broke some older games.

This reminds me of the older "registry cleaner" apps which are highly debatable.

beeboop• 10 years ago

Considering it stops updates to IE, I would never recommend that. I only ever use IE if I'm on some ancient (often government) website that doesn't seem to work in FF/Chrome, but even the default IE homepage (Is it still MSN?) has ads, which means a very real possibility of malware infections. The risk of being one TMZ page away from a malware infection is too much IMO.

IgorPartola• 10 years ago

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Windows badly needs a better update mechanism. This has been a huge pain point for consumers for a long time, which often results in buying new hardware instead of updating the browser, etc.

On the other hand I think this will drive people away from Windows and towards OS X and Ubuntu.

Oh right, there is no downside to this!

deadcast5• 10 years ago

Haha yeah! I really can't wait until I can do ALL of my day-to-day dev work on a Linux OS. Soon though... very soon...

mikegioia2• 10 years ago

Just out of curiosity, what dev work can't you do on Linux? I usually only hear that case for games or graphic/video editing.

ross-life• 10 years ago

On the other hand I think this will drive people away from Windows and towards OS X and Ubuntu.

They already pushed too far. Was a life long Windows user, used at home for gamedev and Steam, chosen at work (mainly QA) because it's what I knew extensively, VS is great and it's what users used. Was literally the only Windows user in a sea of OS X machines at some companies.

Now? All my personal and work devices run Ubuntu or Arch. My partners devices now all run Ubuntu or Arch. Projects I'm planning that were going to be "Windows first" will now be "Linux first".

Sounds silly, but I was enjoying the progress Windows was making security-wise. From Vista to 7 and 7 to 8 (and even to 10) the "under-the-hood" part of Windows seemed to be making great strides in protecting the user, even if they were screwing up the UI.

But everything they've pulled with 10 have completely pushed me away from the platform. Adverts in my OS? The nagging? The "updates can be installed even if you really don't want them"? Phone-homeing I can't turn off at all with a consumer edition? I understand wanting to make it hard to turn it off so they can collect reliable stats or protect the consumer from themselves but as a technical user I want my OS to do exactly what I want it to do. MS completely killed that.

Terr_4• 10 years ago

IMO Microsoft has completely pissed-away huge amount of accumulated techie-goodwill in an astonishingly short period of time.

I think it's due to how much of it really does look like malice (or at least disrespect for computer-owners) rather than mere incompetence.

brownbat2• 10 years ago

On the one hand, a bunch of old insecure machines will get fixed. On the other hand, a bunch of other old insecure machines will get bricked.

In other words, win/win for security teams fighting botnets.

gherkin02• 10 years ago

On the one hand, a bunch of old insecure machines will get fixed.

That makes little sense. If a machine is automatically installing Windows 10, it was already automatically installing security updates. Windows 10 won't make it and less "insecure" than it was with Windows 7.

robertelder4• 10 years ago

Re-posting my comment from the other thread which didn't get as much attention:

I spent about 3 hours this week doing tech support for my mom over the phone because of Windows 10's aggressive upgrading behaviour.

I told her to keep her the best way to keep safe security wise is to make sure the os/browser is up to date, and because Windows 10 keeps asking to upgrade, she went ahead and did so. After upgrading to Windows 10, all network access (wired and wifi) stopped working completely. The worst part of this is that if you can't get internet, you can't even download new drivers to try and debug the problem. We tried a few things, and eventually just did a system restore back to Windows 8, but unfortunately, the system restore didn't work completely and there was more mucking around to try and get the computer into a bootable state. Then, last night, she said the heard the fan making a lot of noise, and looked down to see that Windows had gone ahead and started installing Windows 10 again. Fortunately, wired network access works now, but wifi is still broken. Hopefully Windows will push an update that fixes the wifi access soon.

Also, there seems to be a number of people here commenting very strongly in favour of Microsoft, which I find very surprising. Perhaps people from MS trying to do damage control? Some people have doubted that Windows is doing this automatically, but during the above debacle, my mother actually spent time to make sure that 'Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them' was selected. She even sent me a screenshot asking if this would prevent Windows 10 from installing. A few hours later she had Windows 10 again.

robertelder4• 10 years ago

On that topic, she just said that she has spent that past 2 days trying to get wifi to work. Does anyone here have suggestions for fixing/debugging this? I haven't used windows in quite a while, so my approach is just to go into device manager and try to click on 'update driver', find and diagnose problems etc. Tried deleting and re-creating the wifi connection, re-entering the password. The wifi connection appears, and we can 'connect' to it, but it says 'no internet access' but wifi can't access 192.168.0.1 (the router). The wired connection works fine. I don't know much about Windows sub-systems. I'm pretty sure all the Windows 10 updates have downloaded and installed.

bbradley406• 10 years ago

Given that it appears to partially work, I would guess that the auto-updated driver doesn't work properly on Windows 10. Can you determine the model / chipset of the wireless card?

vibrolax• 10 years ago

My fiancee (at her daughter's recommendation) allowed the Windows 10 upgrade to proceed on her Lenovo T530. It suffered the same Wifi symptoms you reported. We followed the same course of action to repair the problem, to no avail. Reverted to Windows 7 using the Windows 10 downgrade procedure, but the Wifi still failed to work properly. We successfully restored Windows 7 from a recent image backup.

I've had no problems performing Windows 10 clean installs on several machines, but have been far too skeptical to believe Microsoft could pull off a mass upgrade of the Windows 7/8 installed base.

I wonder what upgrade failure rate they deemed acceptable during their deployment testing?

ajonit• 10 years ago

I faced an issue on my new Asus laptop Atheros wifi adapter. Changing the channel from 11 to Auto on my roouter did the trick and things are fine since then.

HelloMcFly4• 10 years ago

Perhaps people from MS trying to do damage control?

While I appreciate the rest of your comment, I personally find comment like these are obnoxious. I sincerely doubt that vote and comment brigading are anywhere near as prevalent as reddit and this community seem to so routinely imply. Perhaps I'm the naive one, but it is tiresome to so regularly see comments (especially those close to one's own personal beliefs) consistently labeled indicators of a social media PR campaign because someone just can't believe they might be genuine.

Or maybe I should get my head out of the sand, I do not know.

mung• 10 years ago

Anyone who believes that it's okay to force unwanted updates onto someone's computer without unexpectedly and without their consent is a bit obnoxious.

mrmondo• 10 years ago

I'm not going to go into detail right now, but believe me it happens from Microsoft more than any other company I've seen.

carapace3• 10 years ago

For what it's worth I believe you are being wildly naive. Have a nice day.

existencebox2• 10 years ago

I'm going to make a few statements here to address the parent and children; but let me put the normal disclaimers here: I ONLY can speak for myself, I do not speak for MS or any of my coworkers.

Simply put, the sort of behavior implied (vote brigading) doesn't mesh with my understanding of how I or any of my coworker/HN reader peers tend to behave. I could be totally off the mark with this but it just doesn't mesh with the culture I've been exposed to.

More relevantly however, and more in line with how I typically approach HN threads regardless of topic, let me try and pose a more "occams razor" explanation:

MS has been gaining a lot of positive press lately. The tech community WANTS to see our biggest entities succeed and "do good". We hate seeing suggestions that a "new convert" to the good side might have changed face again. Realizing that a company can do both good and "evil" simultaneously is a degree of mental dissonance I don't often see handled "cleanly" so to say.

Long and the short; I am not happy with the forced upgrades. I am still using 7, and would be rather irked if they broke everything for the sake of forcing through content I do not want. However, I do tend to attribute much more naïve explanations for the patterns we're seeing, over some sort of PR conspiracy. There was a wonderful quote a while back, "we're not organized enough to be that evil" :) I don't mean to be any sort of MS apologist in this, my comment is entirely directed at the discussion regarding some degree of astroturfing, if I got asked about my opinions on the updates, well, that's a whole can of worms on its own and the remaining comments in the thread seem to speak to the resounding sentiment in that respect.

robertelder4• 10 years ago

It is just shocking to see people complaining of data loss, and other extreme inconveniences caused by this update, but then on the other hand people going so far as to flag this thread (see comments below), despite this having been experienced by thousands of people. Being skeptical makes sense, but flagging the thread? I don't see that kind of polar opposite reaction often on HN.

It can be relatively economic to pay people to post favourable comments if they already enjoy doing it anyway. I suspect that it happens more often than you think, and often takes the form of just paying people to hold biased opinions. It is not hard to imagine that if someone was holding onto a large amount of Microsoft stock, it would be easy to maintain cognitive dissonance.

chris_wot9• 10 years ago

I would normally agree, but Microsoft have a very well known pattern of astroturfing. Hell, they invented practically invented the Internet version in 2001.

I'd like to think that under Satya Nadella's reign they would have stopped, but they are still doing dodgy shit like forced upgrades to Windows 10.

To say that this is an utter PR nightmare is a complete understatement. If, as some comments indicate, they have bricked hardware then I think a class action lawsuit wouldn't be out of the question!

Whoever made the decision to auto upgrade literally hundreds of millions of computers should be fired. I believe that before the auto upgrade Microsoft said there were 110 million installs of Windows 10, but that was still only roughly 10% of total computers. There were still something like 40% of computers running Windows 7. Even if only 1% of computers that get upgraded automatically get bricked due to incompatible drivers, or whatever then that's still well over a million computers Microsoft have borked due to this stupidity.

Look, I can accept automatic upgrades for an existing operating system on consumer grade workstations. But I cannot understand or accept that automatically upgrading to a new major release is a responsible business decision. Microsoft are getting this in the neck, and rightly so. This alone is a good reason for me to recommend to my friends and family that they only buy a Mac, and if they can't that I work out if it's worthwhile installing Ubuntu or Fedora and spun up a VirtualBox VM to run their legally purchased copy of Windows.

CamperBob24• 10 years ago

It's suspicious as hell that Microsoft isn't being taken to task over this. If it had happened in the 2000->XP transition era, or even in the Vista->7 era, Ballmer would have been crucified.

Anyone who doesn't find the relatively tolerant/benign online reaction to Windows Update's recent behavior to be suspicious either a) hasn't been paying attention for about 20 years now; b) isn't very bright; or c) is being paid.

Downmod all you want, but somebody has to call BS on this.

marklawrutgers• 10 years ago

I had this exact same issue with my work machine and my at home workstation. Wifi adapter completely broken, I tried to revert back to Windows 8 on my work machine and it gets stuck on a black screen for over 24 hours. I tried to power down to restart it but no luck. Somehow everything got corrupted. Had to completely reformat the drive and install the operating system all over again, which it then proceeded to upgrade straight to Windows 10 again. I lost months of work but was able to recover from a backup I had a week prior to the incident. Absolutely disgusting business practice by Microsoft. The only times where a Windows 10 installation has worked well for me is when it's a brand new machine with little to no extra content on top of the existing OS. If you've used Windows 7 or 8 for over a year and accumulated a fair amount of apps, files, content, I can almost guarantee you're going to run into something breaking after the update.

chrsstrm• 10 years ago

Same scenario three weeks ago trying to help out my brother on his brand new Asus that came with Win 10. The wireless hardware just disappeared from the control panel so the option to update the driver wasn't available. I was about to walk him through a complete OS re-install with the option to keep his files until he decided that a wired connection was OK. At the time there was almost no available recent support articles on this issue, but I'm starting to think a Win update caused this after seeing others with the same problem. And here he was going to blame it on his kids...

krsree• 10 years ago

Same issue here. I actually upgraded to Win 10 from Win 7 about 3 months ago. Then 3 weeks back, an automatic update, and lost both Wifi and Wired connectivity. - No use updating drivers (they are not available for Win 10). -Cannot go back to Win 7 from System Update (since that option available only for a month). -Since Win7 is pre-installed, cannot even download a CSO image file with my product key!

I am still lost about what to do. Thankfully, after a complete restore to first Win10, I have wired connectivity back.

capabit2• 10 years ago

Also, there seems to be a number of people here commenting very strongly in favour of Microsoft

Count me (shockingly) in the pro Microsoft group here. After years and years of supporting family PCs, I understand and appreciate what they're trying to do.

If you make updating something the user has to do, they'll never do it.

If you prompt them to update, they'll never do it. Even if they've had the why of it explained to them many, many times.

In anticipation of the inevitable "well this update famously broke X": yes, the risk of an update doing something funky outweighs the risk of running software with known and possibly currently exploited vulnerabilities.

Esau• 10 years ago

So safety is more important than freedom? The attorney general and the FBI must really love you.

enraged_camel• 10 years ago

We don't force people to vaccinate their kids, even though unvaccinated kids are a risk to herd immunity. What makes you think it's OK to force users to update their computers?

makecheck3• 10 years ago

Even if Microsoft was just tired of having to ask the user for every little thing, there is a gulf between “ask the user if he or she wants to update” and “auto-install multi-gigabyte blob that changes everything, over a data plan that we don’t pay for, affecting users in dozens of ways that we cannot possibly know in advance” (as Microsoft has now chosen to do).

Microsoft could have started really small with this, even updating a single app. There is no non-marketing reason to simultaneously change massive amounts of software. And since it is now clear that parts of Windows 10 really are half-baked (like duplicate settings panels), there are clearly some things that should have waited for a later update, once there was time to finish them.

And you know, Microsoft has made billions and billions from software so frankly they do not get to screw around here. Nobody with that much money and that many engineers should get an ounce of sympathy for being so incompetent. They needed to start by doing a lot less, with a lot more care and attention.

deciplex5• 10 years ago

The only problem with that is that Windows 10 is, from a privacy perspective, a downgrade from 7 and 8. Many people are not fond of the UI changes, either, and of course Windows Store is just utter shit, as well.

marvy2• 10 years ago

This is madness.

I've actually had the "opposite" problem. Ever since Win10 came out, my Win7 machine doesn't bother announcing when updates are available. I have to remember to install them myself ever "patch Tuesday".

But I repeat: this is madness. What kind of a psycho update mechanism would try to install an new OS behind your back?

edwhitesell3• 10 years ago

I've actually had the "opposite" problem. Ever since Win10 came out, my Win7 machine doesn't bother announcing when updates are available. I have to remember to install them myself ever "patch Tuesday".

I also had this issue until I sat down and figured out how to make Windows Update stop forcing Windows 10 on me. Basically, you need to remove KB3035583, hide it from updates AND uncheck the box to "give me recommended updates the same way I receive important updates". Otherwise, it would keep coming back.

This latest patch Tuesday also introduced another "update" to trigger Win10 installation, it's called: upgrade to Windows 10 Pro, version 1511, 10586

Hiding that in Windows Update got me back to installing the normal updates.

Microsoft is making this whole process way too painful for those of us who know we don't want to update.

vacri• 10 years ago

The worst part of this is that if you can't get internet, you can't even download new drivers to try and debug the problem.

I have a friend who made a slipstream installer of XP that was the barebones base installer... plus 696 network drivers. I think it was 696, may have been 676. He'd found a package of "every XP network driver ever". Anyway, "This iso will install XP that can get you connected to download everything else..." made for a very useful bit of kit.

ebbv• 10 years ago

Also, there seems to be a number of people here commenting very strongly in favour of Microsoft, which I find very surprising. Perhaps people from MS trying to do damage control?

Sometime in the last couple years Microsoft has realized how important online discussion is to a company's reputation and has begun an aggressive campaign of let's call it "community outreach".

Unfortunately though it appears to me to be astro turfing, the admins here and elsewhere seem to believe it to be legitimate, so whatever techniques they're using are sophisticated.

jdietrich• 10 years ago

Also, there seems to be a number of people here commenting very strongly in favour of Microsoft, which I find very surprising.

I think it's an issue of trust.

On the one hand, Microsoft have taken some positive steps - making meaningful OSS contributions, following standards in Edge, making sensible statements about crypto etc.

On the other hand, Microsoft have an atrocious track record of corporate citizenship, typified by the Halloween memos. While they have been making progress, they are still a long way from perfect. Even if their current actions were beyond reproach, rebuilding trust takes time.

I think some people on HN want to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, while others think it's just the same old bullshit under a new coat of paint. Personally, I think we should take each issue on merit. Praise where praise is due and criticise where criticism is due.

zanny• 10 years ago

Just anecdotally : I have my grandmother, brother, and his mother on Kubuntu, and my mother on Lubuntu. So far, the most updates anyone has gone through is 3 (my mother went from 10.04 to 12.04 to 14.04 and soon 16.04) and we have never had an issue. Oh, and you get to chose when to do the upgrades rather than having them backdoored on you.

Desktop Linux works fine for regular people. They aren't going to go digging in the terminal to brick their own computer. Show them the software center and that their app store uses things online called apt links and anyone with a smartphone understands it fine.

Cub3• 10 years ago

Set my girlfriend up with a Chromebook for this very reason.

An "open and go" computer that fits her needs (and reduces the tech support calls to me)

CoffeeDregs• 10 years ago

Drive-by-upgrade... Happened to my wife's Windows 8 computer late last week with no warning. She was puzzled to wake up to a computer that had been upgraded without asking her. Then she couldn't use our home printer. So she went to work to print something. But then she couldn't use the work WiFi.

I know that her Windows 10 experience will be better than her terrible Windows 8 experience, but this seems clearly to be a maneuver to minimize the Software Support Reserve line on the Income Statement.

I'm all for upgrading users from a crappy Windows 8 to a nice Windows 10. That said, my wife is a reasonably sophisticated user and she didn't notice any significant notification before her computer was upgraded.

[... And, when I talked with her about the upgrade, she mentioned that she was now getting toolbar pop-ups asking her "How likely are you to recommend Windows to a friend?" WTF.]

dang• 10 years ago

people here commenting very strongly in favour of Microsoft, which I find very surprising. Perhaps people from MS trying to do damage control

I realize you didn't mean to, but this triggered a whole off-topic discussion about imaginary astroturfing, vote-brigading, and shilling.

When we see evidence of these behaviors we crack down on them hard. But people are far too ready (by at least an order of magnitude, probably two) to impute this behavior to others merely because they have an opposing opinion. That's not evidence, and the discussion should never go there on that (non-)basis.

All: if you suspect astroturfing in HN threads, please let us know at hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate, and please don't go on about it in the threads unless there's real evidence. An opposing opinion is not evidence!

martinald• 10 years ago

Sorry, why is this a big deal? We've completely accepted auto updates for browsers (chrme & firefox) - years ago. Obviously better, compatibility improves and security issues are easier to push out and fix. To me the browser is as important as the OS, I spend the vast majority of my time in it.

Why should MSFT not do this? It's a free update. They're not charging for it. On many aspects, it's a lot better than Windows 7/8. Maybe not to everyone's taste, but Windows 7 is nearly 7 years old now. From what I can see it performs better on older hardware than W7.

We accept that Android fragmentation is terrible and Google should be doing more to fix it. Yet it seems the complete opposite reaction when MSFT tries to fix their desktop fragmentation.

AnimalMuppet• 10 years ago

We've completely accepted auto updates for browsers (chrme & firefox) - years ago.

I have not accepted auto updates that I can't turn off for anything, ever.

sliverstorm• 10 years ago

I sympathize with MSFT, but the main reason they shouldn't unilaterally force the issue is because it won't always work. The upgrade process is pretty reliable, but not completely, and there are all sorts of compatibility problems still lurking (Windows Media Center is gone, lots of hardware doesn't have Windows 10 drivers)

Google is taking the longer view; they want to fix fragmentation, and are moving towards it step by step, improving matters on tomorrow's devices, without bricking today's devices. MSFT is trying to make it happen sooner by forcing the issue instead of gradually migrating.

WireWrap2• 10 years ago

We've completely accepted auto updates for browsers (chrme & firefox) - years ago.

Enabling automatic updates from outside organizations SHOULD get you fired in any and every business where security is important. I've never seen it done in such environments, and certainly would never do it myself.

acdha• 10 years ago

That's an understandable motivation but it has to be balanced against the risks of keeping your users vulnerable for longer periods of time. It's rather expensive to have a 24x7 security team to review & push updates.

For something like Chrome that's probably a net loss because the Google team is very good and browsers are both Internet-exposed and generally self-contained. For something like Windows, the reverse is true because there are a lot more things to test, many with local apps or settings which have a lower chance of being tested upstream in the exact combinations which you use.

rabboRubble2• 10 years ago

Why is this a big deal? Why should MSFT not do this? Here are a couple of reasons why...

Perhaps the machine hardware is not Win10 compliant

Perhaps a machine hosts software that requires significant regression testing before permitting an upgrade to Win10

Perhaps the machine's software is not Win10 compatible and needs to be rewritten before a Win10 upgrade

Perhaps the machine in question has specific greenzone periods and should not be upgraded without an agreed outage schedule between IT provider and user base. (Think banking, power generation, healthcare, airline sectors, etc.)

Perhaps your Mom owns the computer and you want to personally manage the upgrade when you visit at Christmas instead of having to spend 6 hours on the phone with her.

MSFT has no idea whether or not its SAFE to automatically roll out an update for their OS users. They make no effort to check hardware compliance status with all hardware manufacturers. They make no effort to check the compliance status of 3rd party software. They make no effort to ensure that critical infrastructure systems (power, health, banking) individual greenzones are followed to prevent unplanned outages.

sveiss2• 10 years ago

The upgrade notification system does make the effort to check against known-bad hardware and software, including 3rd party software, and will warn and/or block the upgrade if it's known to be incompatible.

As for managed machines, most won't be eligible for the upgrade to begin with (domain joined, Windows 7 Enterprise), and the upgrade can be blocked entirely via Group Policy or WSUS. Any sensibly managed machine in the environments you mentioned won't be automatically upgraded.

Yes, the compatibility checks aren't perfect, and yes, making sure the update isn't rolled out to managed machines requires that they actually be managed, just like any other update Microsoft publish. But it's unfair to say they make 'no effort' to support these scenarios.

Nadya3• 10 years ago

We've completely accepted auto updates for browsers (chrme & firefox) - years ago.

Your argument starts off with a wrong assumption. I manually update all my software and only when I see fit. Sometimes feature removal prevents me from updating. http://i.imgur.com/u3qVwBS.png

W10 is completely incompatible with my workflow/customizations I've made to W7. There are registry tweaks everywhere and custom DLL's because I'm reliant on a few bits of software that keep me anchored to Windows instead of moving to greener pastures (Gentoo). Much of my software is completely incompatible with both W8 and W10.

Updating is a no-go for me and if I'm going to move away from W7 it is going to be to move to Gentoo. I've had the auto-updates disabled for ages - and it looks like I can't even trust security patches to only contain security patches, so I've disabled those too now.

Oh - and it bricking incompatible devices and losing people's files is a big reason why this is a bad idea. How happy would you be if you lost all important data on your computer?

gengkev• 10 years ago

I'm glad that you've had a good experience with Windows 10, but this is still a big deal. There are a lot of reasons this is different from Chrome and Firefox updating, or even from Microsoft automatically delivering updates to Windows 10.

Windows 10 is not just an update: it's a completely separate operating system, illustrated by the fact that you have to accept a separate TOS. And while the upgrade may be free, the OS is not. I have never heard of an involuntary OS upgrade, and it's ridiculous that Microsoft is trying to impose one now. No rational user of Windows 7 would suddenly expect to be force-upgraded to Windows 10.

Yes, Chrome and Firefox will force you to update when you restart your browser. Yet although they might nag you, they won't forcibly restart your browser for you. This is what Microsoft is doing to users' computers: the upgrade might take hours and download gigabytes of data, even if the user never asked for it. This is effectively holding computers hostage. If a computer is being used in a safety-critical situation, even if it shouldn't be, that's a recipe for disaster.

Finally, Windows 10 has downsides that Windows 7 doesn't. First, the upgrade itself might not succeed, as I learned the hard way when the upgrade process simply... stopped. Additionally, depending on your configuration, the upgrade could render your software or hardware unusable: not all hardware may be compatible, even if Microsoft thinks it is. And Windows 10 has more invasive tracking than Windows 7 did, with little or no option for ordinary users to disable it.

Ambrosia• 10 years ago

It's a free update. They're not charging for it.

I'll shit in your dinner for free

Laaw• 10 years ago

Good, Windows 7 is a security problem (or will be, soon).

charonn0• 10 years ago

In what way? I've been planning to remain on Windows 7 for the foreseeable future and 7's security wasn't really on my radar.

213• 10 years ago

Windows 8/10 has some newer security mitigations, so technically they are somewhat harder to exploit.

makecheck3• 10 years ago

This is probably like having your car towed: technically there’s something that says they are allowed to do it but you sure as hell don’t expect it to happen, you don’t want it to happen, it will cost you time and money and at the wrong time it could really screw you. Thanks, Microsoft!

vc98mvco• 10 years ago

If you ever asked yourself how does one feel when assimilated by the Borg... now you know.

dageshi2• 10 years ago

At some point recently windows update on windows 7 decided to change settings from "tell you about updates and you choose when to download and install them" to "I'll download everything and nag you to death with countdown timer until you update"

The most infuriating thing about that being that if you turn your computer on in the morning from hibernation go make a coffee and get some breakfast, by the time you come back your computer has restarted (because apparently who cares you weren't logged in and your screen was still locked, fuck you we're forcing a restarting and you're losing any unsaved work, bad luck sucker!)

I killed the windows update service permanently it infuriated me so much.

jpindar• 10 years ago

When you say "killed permanently", do you mean more than just disabling the service, and if so, what? I have it disabled but I don't trust Microsoft not to somehow override that.

dageshi2• 10 years ago

Just disabled the service. I do want the option to periodically turn it back on so anything more serious than that isn't on the cards for me.

yaegers• 10 years ago

I also disabled the service "Windows Update" in services.msc.

Interesting thign happened. I stopped the service but left it on "Automatic (Delayed Start)". Came back a while later and the service was magicall restarted. Could have been anticipated by me. So I stopped the service again and set it to "Manual". Came back a while later and, you guessed it, Windows Update service was restarted. So I now set it to "deactivated". That was yesterday. I am really curoous to see if it still comes back to life.

ck22• 10 years ago

GWX Control Panel http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

Solves all W10 upgrade worries.

Terr_4• 10 years ago

I'm not normally an open-source zealot, but I'd really like something a little more... auditable.

ck22• 10 years ago

Doesn't seemed to be maintained anymore but https://github.com/rn10950/I-Dont-Want-Windows-10

BuckRogers• 10 years ago

MS is getting pretty draconian with the Windows 10 shtick. I'm not sure why there's such a push, just let people buy a Windows 10 computer when the Windows 7 machines fail.

Fighting MS on this is a losing battle, all the workarounds are going to be a non-stop, futile exercise. Unless I have a specific needs for Windows, if this makes anyone uncomfortable to read (like myself)- I think this is the ideal time to jump on Mac, Linux Mint, Ubuntu Mate or Antergos.

spriggan3• 10 years ago

MS is getting pretty draconian with the Windows 10 shtick

They likely have a long term strategy around Windows 10, what it is I don't know but I know for a fact that it requires pushing W10 on as much PC as possible, whether the user wants it or not. I'm on W8. I will upgrade one day, I don't want to do it now (I'm working with an old soundcard that barely supports W8, so there is a risk with upgrading to 10), yet everyday I get a "Upgrade to 10" popup which almost tricked me into upgrading once. They are so aggressive about updating I fear this "free" upgrade might be a trap on the long run. I feel like I'm no longer in control of some software I've bought( yes, because licenses aren't free).

shostack3• 10 years ago

I recently bought a new Win10 laptop while giving up my Win7 desktop. I honestly wouldn't have if I thought I could continue getting the most out of my system (gaming and doing other fun things) well into the future.

I'm pissed off beyond belief about the egregious privacy overreach, but realized that my info is already out there, so I just need to continue taking whatever precautions I normally do and pretend like all my info is public anyway.

That said, I can only imagine that the long-term play is to one day give people a countdown on Windows 10 becoming a subscription, and you can either pay it or lose access to everything (or be severely crippled or something).

That's the only angle I can think of, and it jives with their approach to Office and everything else. They know damn well that people don't always want something new (and often that is because of conflicting interests and them pushing crapware like the privacy stuff), so they need the ability to control whether that happens or not.

I personally am holding out for now with Windows 10, but if they ever pull that move I will say to hell with it and fully switch to Ubuntu and do what I can in terms of gaming (maybe buy a Playstation).

ionised• 10 years ago

I'm not sure why there's such a push

They stand to make a shit load of money having people on Windows 10.

awqrre2• 10 years ago

I hope that Microsoft don't survive their Windows 10 release...

lubos• 10 years ago

Windows 10 was their last release.

awqrre2• 10 years ago

I know that it was their latest release, if that's what you meant...

Kenji• 10 years ago

What a coincidence - 4 days ago I disabled auto updates on Windows 7 because it would force me to restart all the time. I'm glad I did that. Forcing Win7 to Win10 Upgrade? Disgusting practice by Windows, will switch to Unix-based systems asap.

foxyv• 10 years ago

Prompted by Windows 10 privacy issues, I switched to Mint on my laptop recently and was pleasantly surprised. I've been constantly trying to switch to Linux but having to revert because of driver incompatibility. That has completely changed in the past 3 years.

It makes my laptop feel speedy again. Before it was really slow with Microsoft sitting on top of it. I recently slapped an SSD into it and it's even better. Turned a no starter laptop into a real machine.

It's still not an operating system that can be used by new users, but I have a lot of fun with it. It helps a lot that Steam has a Linux client now and I don't play many big name titles.

Windows 10 isn't that bad if you don't mind buying a new computer, but I think it may be the bane of people like my parents who use a computer for 10 years without upgrading. You would think that with the minimal changes to the Windows kernel that the driver support wouldn't be an issue. The invasive marketing and privacy violations aren't anything new. Just more so.

mk4p• 10 years ago

Re: Steam support in Linux, do you have any idea about VR support? I'm not a huge gamer and I'd consider ditching Windows over this incident, except that I want to play with my Vive when it gets here.

mreams• 10 years ago

I recently switched to Mint from Windows 8.1 and it's been shockingly easy. I run triple monitors at work and I was worried getting them all working was going to be a terrible experience. A coworker who runs Ubuntu offered to help me get it set up, but in the time it took for him to get a cup of coffee and come back, I had installed the driver Mint recommended and everything just worked. It runs great on my laptop too, so far I haven't had any driver issues.

Not all of my steam games run under linux but quite a few of them do and the ones I've tried so far have run just as well as they do under windows.

daveguy2• 10 years ago

I am thankful that a random Windows update broke some of our software a few weeks ago. It prompted me to disable all updates and allow only essential updates. Small business so I'm it for IT. Never heard of kbwhateveritis required to avoid the MS invasion. Thanks for breaking our system weeks ago MS!

37prime• 10 years ago

We’ve been getting a lot of calls from home clients since last Tuesday that their computer now runs Windows 10. There are still some printer and software issues, which were the reasons why they arestill running Windows 7.

ocdtrekkie2• 10 years ago

This isn't news, and was announced _months_ in advance. Microsoft announced back in October that they'd upgrade Windows 10 to a "Recommended update" in February.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/windows-10-upgrade-1.32965...

You can check in Windows Update whether or not to automatically apply Recommended updates the same way you apply Important updates. By default, it is checked. (By default, most users really _should_ upgrade to Windows 10.)

But, as with all Microsoft things, people will flip out like this wasn't announced and they were totally blindsided because everything Microsoft does is totally evil.

lazzlazzlazz• 10 years ago

Upgrading to Windows 10 from 7 requires a single button click after opening the upgrade reminder in the task bar.

Dismissing the upgrade reminder is impossible and requires a registry edit:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351

Microsoft is a disgusting company, and I hope they are fully aware how much social capital this has eroded.

xpaulbettsx3• 10 years ago

As the lead developer of the Slack Windows app, this move is absolutely phenomenal for me. Win7 is a huge proportion of our support tickets and causes us no end of grief.

To put what these Windows users are doing in perspective, Windows users are holding onto an OS that was released at the same time as OS X 10.6, and not only doing it, but demanding that developers support this version. If you asked any Cocoa developer to support Snow Leopard, they'd laugh you out of the room.

chris_wot9• 10 years ago

So don't support Windows 7 then. But forcing upgrades which can lead to machines no longer functioning just means that person wipes the HDD and reinstalls Windows 7.

You miss the fact that Windows 8 was such a botch job that most of us didn't start upgrading until Windows 8.1 - and this isn't just end users, but a hell of a lot of IT professionals. This never occurred on OS X.

RDeckard• 10 years ago

This isn't about you as the Slack Windows app developer.

kiallmacinnes• 10 years ago

Windows 8, and even Windows 8.1 were so utterly terrible its no wonder people are asking for windows 7 support. I'm betting 90%+ of business has stayed on 7, which often translates to individuals sticking with 7 too as it's what they know, and their IT dept / guy told them as much.

Your blame is misplaced, these Windows users are doing nothing wrong. Microsoft did terrible releases for years, and is trying to recover from that mistake in a terrible way.

Can_Not2• 10 years ago

Windows 7 support is a critical feature of slack for me. Every version of Windows after 7 is increasingly some kind of year 2000 era flip phone OS/dark age of computers BS. It's 10 steps forward, 1000 steps back.

So what exactly do windows 7 users call in about? Is that because there is some major API difference between 7 and 8 or is does it represent people who buy computers less often?

xpaulbettsx3• 10 years ago

So what exactly do windows 7 users call in about? Is that because there is some major API difference between 7 and 8 or is does it represent people who buy computers less often?

Windows 7 doesn't have a notifications / toast API which means we have to implement notifications ourselves. It also lets you turn off desktop composition and throw the UI into a completely different rendering path, which Electron doesn't support properly, so we then have to implement notifications again in a fallback software rendering only way. It also doesn't have a spellchecking API, so we get to ship Hunspell in-box and deal with updating dictionaries, the list goes on and on

ac29• 10 years ago

Is there any evidence this isn't just a bug? I admin several Win7 machines at work, and haven't seen this behavior on any of them. I didn't do anything to prevent automatic updates, or otherwise disable a path to Win10 (they all have the upgrade available).

I can see how someone could accidentally install Win10, since windows update has it automatically selected, but I have yet to see a machine just restart itself and start installing Win10. The machines I have upgraded to Win10 took many clicks to actually install - I can't imagine Microsoft would intentionally let users skip the EULA at the very least.

My gut says at least half the people have accidentally initiated this update and half are experiencing a bug -- my counter anecdata says this is NOT being pushed to all Win7 users with automatic updates enabled.

progman• 10 years ago

Calm down and relax! Microsoft knows better than you what is good for you ;-)

Honestly, I ditched Windows since XP completely in favor of Linux, and it turned out to be a very good decision.

MS' extremely unfriendly behavior to its customers is indication of desparation. WinPhone failed against iOS and Android, and PC purchases are shrinking continually. This means MS is shrinking continually, and they know it very well.

_khau• 10 years ago

Meet the new Microsoft, same as the old Microsoft.

Seriously though, I hope they receive some major backlash for their behaviour over the last few months. It's incredibly aggressive and anti-consumer.

CamperBob24• 10 years ago

The old Microsoft would have been blasted into oblivion for doing this. For some reason, the "new Microsoft" is getting a free pass on behavior that would make Larry Ellison queasy.

pingec• 10 years ago

Today I woke up to this message on my Windows 8.1: http://i.imgur.com/4jvC8Q0.png

They are not asking if I want to upgrade anymore, they are asking when I want to upgrade :/

xufi• 10 years ago

My logic: Time for another tool that goes deep in to the autorun.dll's and deletes the update prompt..... Oh wait...

Windows 7 computers are automatically starting the Windows 10 upgrade

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