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

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."

Comments

Accidentally

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that accidentally is another English word that is reversing its meaning.

Re:Accidentally

[penguinoid]

It seems that accidentally is another English word that is reversing its meaning.

Kids these days are literally slaughtering the English language.

Ooops, I did it again

[qbast]

So sorry, it won't happen again until next update.

Re:Ooops, I did it again

[Luthair]

Basically, its happened to me too. They also re-install their shitty metro apps you may have removed.

Yeah, a "bug", sure...

[maugle]

Never attribute to malice etc etc, but this isn't the first time Microsoft has pulled this sort of crap, and the fact that they still haven't put safeguards in place to prevent these "bugs" is telling.

Re:Yeah, a "bug", sure...

[whoever57]

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. (Ian Fleming)

Is it time for a class action?

[Snotnose]

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.

Re:Is it time for a class action?

[iampiti]

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

Re:Is it time for a class action?

[chipschap]

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.

Re:Is it time for a class action?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I give them money for a Windows license they give me a decent OS

I mean, this is exactly why everyone is so hot about this. They changed from offering an OS to offering a spyware mess. If any of these posts gets modded up, you can expect some ACs to come in and say "but Android does this too!". Now, it doesn't, but even if it sucked raw anus with a straw, it's not a reason for Windows to wonder "how long a straw do I need"- but wait for it, those dual class Apologist / Shills will be here shortly.

The thing is, Microsoft changing models to something shitty was INEVITABLE. That's the core problem. Microsoft has been forced in court to NOT do many things- you didn't have a rational agreement with Microsoft, you had the government pointing metaphorical guns at them and demanding they behave in a barely civilized fashion. Then you gave them money and were ok with the results. That's you supporting a version of the company that requires constant legal expenditure to ensure that they don't just flip out and destroy everything.

The funniest part is that the paid version (Pro) available to individuals is a hot mess of spyware and total shit. Only Enterprise even has the ability to be controlled, and there's evidence that neutering it still takes an external firewall. The idea that corporations get privacy and you don't is scary as fuck.

Re:Is it time for a class action?

[Obfuscant]

As a Windows 10 user, you deserve every drop of this. I know it sucks you can't use Linux, or OS X, or BSD, for some selection of applications

Blame the victim. Right.

I need Windows 10 because I support code that is used by people who use Windows 10. I cannot change what they do, and I like getting a paycheck, so I use Windows 10.

I appreciate that you think I deserve whatever happens because of that, but your opinion doesn't put food on my table, and it's pretty arrogant and just ridiculous.

Right now you kinda have other options- you can run 8.1 and be reasonably early in its support cycle,

Thanks for telling me what I can run. Isn't that the same kind of thing that Microsoft is doing with their changes to default programs (they are NOT "apps")? And tell me, how does paying Microsoft for an 8.1 upgrade help me support people who are running 10? Are you going to pay for my 8.1 upgrade?

you'll have to be careful to avoid the Windows 10 "upgrade", etc.

I didn't "have to be careful" to avoid the upgrade. All it took was deleting gwx.exe and everything else in that directory.

But at the end of the day, you paid for this, asked for this,

You are an ignorant, arrogant jerk, and that is putting it kindly.

Re:It's Microsoft

[Dracos]

People keep saying MS is changing for the better, but this is the exact kind of shit that earned them so much enmity in the first place.

This is the result of "telemetry"

[DNS-and-BIND]

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.

Re:Just don't install the Start menu loss update

[herve_masson]

Isn't it the infamous "tablet mode" that get automagically enabled ? Took me one hour to understand what happened and disable this damn shit, another hour to rant against yet another windows 10 crap.

Re:It's Microsoft

[fizzer06]

I tried to use Corel VideoStudio X5 yesterday, but it crashed on startup. Did some searching and discovered Micrososoft security updates KB3134814, KB3126587 and KB3126593, installed on Feb. 9, 2016 were the culprits. After removing them Corel worked fine again.

Article is inaccurate

[vux984]

Windows 10 upgrade only resets the defaults if you go with the "recommended settings" option. If you select "customize" then it prompts you whether to update your default programs or keep the existing.

If you take Microsoft's "recommended settings"; is it any surprise that they set you up on Edge for your browser, the new windows 10 photo viewer, etc, and a few other application defaults?

It's nuts. There is a REAL problem with Microsofts telemetry situation; but too many of you get side tracked by every little irrelevant detail; and then run around like chicken little foaming at the mouth; and it takes all your credibility away.

- "Oh no! Windows 10 has waaay too much telemetry ... "

o "Oh, that sounds a little disturbing, tell me more?"

- "Oh no! Windows 10 sets your default browser to edge if you select 'recommend settings'.
- "Oh no! Windows 10 tries to connect to the internet so that it can update the icon that says whether or not you are connected to the internet!"
- "Oh no! Windows 10 connects to the internet a thousand times in the first 24 hours"

o "er...I see you left Windows update service turned on!"

- "OMG Micro$$$oft evil! Bing sounds stupid. They made it easier to get to device manager and control panels... by changing somehting. EVIL!!"

o "Yeah, I've forgotten why I was listening to you."

The house that Gates built was nothing like this

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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.