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Windows 10 Forced Update Resets Default Apps To Microsoft Products (theinquirer.net)

Posted by BeauHD on from the there's-always-vanilla dept.

Freshly Exhumed writes: Microsoft has told The Inquirer that it is aware of a bug which has been causing users' default programs to switch to the bundled Microsoft options. After deleting the update, a user discovered the next day that Windows had reinstalled it and reset the default settings again. InfoWorld gives some real world scenarios: "If you have Chrome as the default browser on your Windows 10 computer, you'd better check to make sure Microsoft didn't hijack it last week and set Edge as your new default. The same goes for any PDF viewer: A forced cumulative update also reset PDF viewing to Edge on many PCs. Do you use IrfanView, ACDSee, Photoshop Express, or Photoshop Elements? The default photo app may have been reset to -- you guessed it -- the Windows Photos app. Music? Video? Microsoft may have swooped down and changed you over to Microsoft Party apps, all in the course of last week's forced cumulative update KB3135173."

9 of 387 comments (clear)

  1. Is it time for a class action? by Snotnose · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I usually hate class action lawsuits, but as a Win10 user I'm getting sick of this crap. Between the spying, excuse me, "telemetry", the reboots in the middle of the night with the laptop closed, to resetting all my app associations, it's just a fucking joke. I don't believe for a second the app associate reset is a "bug", or a "glitch". It's something Microsoft is trying to sneak past us hoping that, if they do it enough times, we'll give up and use their app instead of the one we want.

    Don't tell me to run Linux. I do run Linux. I also need my laptop for things Linux won't run.

    1. Re:Is it time for a class action? by iampiti · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well, up to now I was happy with Ms' business model: I give them money for a Windows license they give me a decent OS which allows me to run the software I want and stays out of my way.
      They've now have changed it and it doesn't suit my needs. Was I stupid by trusting that Microsoft was going to update Windows in a way that didn't suck? Maybe, but I repeat, up to now we had an exchange that satisfied both parties, I could've continued that way but Ms no longer want it.
      I asked for this? No, I didn't, I asked for the other model to continue. This is enabled by Ms' near monopoly on desktop OS and by people who do upgrade to Windows 10. I everyone refused they'd have no recourse but to back up.
      My future? Windows for games and Linux for everything else

    2. Re:Is it time for a class action? by chipschap · · Score: 4, Interesting

      By putting substantial effort into it, I've been able to get almost completely away from Windows (haven't booted my Win 8.1 partition in at least a month).

      At one time, when Wine wasn't very good and some things that I had to have, like decent OCR, weren't functional on Linux, I was stuck. But things have evolved and so have my adaptivity skills.

      I realize I'm not making a good general case here. Of course, if you're an average user and most of what you do is on the Web or involves typical office suite work, Linux will work for you just about out of the box. If you have specialized needs, I contend that Linux can often be made to work for you, although sometimes that won't be true. (Gamers have the biggest problem, I suppose; people that require a specialized vertical such as maybe medical imaging software and others.)

      But to come the point, with all the Microsoft nonsense I keep reading about (and trying very hard to stay clear of), there's a lot of incentive. Microsoft seems to be getting more and more aggressive and not even caring enough to conceal it. There's a lot of reason to try to get away from their lock-in.

      Will Microsoft eventually self-destruct? To some extent IBM, which in its day was every bit as aggressive, did. But I'm not willing to put up with another decade of suffering.

  2. Welcome to July 2015 by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Windows 10 updates have been doing this since it was released to the general public in July 2015, why is it only just making headlines now?

  3. Just don't install the Start menu loss update by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There's an even more evil bug going around in the Windows 10 fever pit right now, the sudden loss of Start menu functionality. One day you boot up and although there's still a Stafrt button, it no longer brings up its menu, and any program icons you pinned to the Taskbar are gone. As with so many other bugs in a new Windows version, a search reveals that a lot of people are getting this and there is a plethora of suggested workarounds, but none of them will work. You have to reinstall Windows.

  4. This is the result of "telemetry" by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 5, Interesting

    With Windows 10 users living in the in the nightmare world of the Panopticon, I'll bet dimes to dollars Microsoft knows exactly how many people are not using Microsoft's own programs to open their software. Some manager somewhere saw the numbers weren't good enough to ensure her bonuses, so MS pushes out an update to reset the preferences which users have clearly chosen. I bet it works, too, after 3 months the numbers are will still be above where they were before the update. Evil like this has the unfortunate tendency to work.

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  5. Re:Ooops, I did it again by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's hardly the first time an update has reset things to default. It's just that now, instead of being a screw up that affects a percentage of users, because it's Windows 10 it's an evil plot to force you to use Microsoft apps for the five seconds it takes you to raise what happened.

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  6. The house that Gates built was nothing like this by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's really not fair. This is nothing like the house that Gates built. Microsoft of the 1990s and early 2000s went to extraordinary lengths to ensure stability and backward compatibility on the Windows platform, far beyond what most in the industry have ever done before or since. They did start to shift their stance on that a few years ago, with for example less effort to support other people's software and devices/drivers that relied on undocumented features, but that should never really have been their responsibility in the first place so personally I don't hold that against them.

    However, this "update any time we feel like it and break whatever" attitude is relatively recent and seems to be squarely on Nadella and his senior management team, who can't get the boot fast enough as far as I'm concerned. Microsoft of 2016 is actively customer-hostile in numerous ways, and as both a private individual and a business person I want the old MS back so I can get on with using computers to help me do interesting and useful things instead of fighting with them.

    I was in a meeting just this past week with a bunch of other local consultants and freelancers, and at lunch time this subject happened to come up because someone had been looking for a new PC and checking out the latest status with Windows 10. It turned out that nearly half the people in the room -- and these were all clued-up people when it comes to IT, who would not make decisions about infrastructure or security policy lightly -- no longer install any Windows updates on their Win7/8 machines by default now, even security updates unless a specific threat was identified. Literally no-one there was installing more than security updates as standard policy any more. Also literally no-one was using Windows 10, nor had worked with any customer or client who was using Windows 10 outside of evaluation/lab settings yet. The general sentiment seemed to be that a lot of places are deferring major purchasing decisions until at least the dust has settled, or in a few cases actively switching to alternatives (almost invariably Linux on the server side and Apple for laptops).

    For an organisation that famously had "Developers, developers, developers!" as its battle cry under previous management, that is a potentially catastrophic shift in attitude from a group that would almost certainly have favoured a Microsoft platform for a wide range of projects just a few years ago.

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  7. Re:It's Microsoft by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The More Information section of at least one of the knowledge base articles mention...

    So I went to the linked article which pointed me for further information to a MS security bulletin which said I needed to refer to a KB article which sent me back to the security bulletin. I think I saw a white rabbit with a wristwatch at some point too. In any case I think what MS is trying to tell us is that they have a problem with too many levels of indirection through pointers.