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Microsoft Denies Rogue Windows 10 Upgrades, Says Users Remain Fully In Control (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: Despite significant user outcry that Microsoft Windows 10 upgrade mechanism has gone rogue, installing on customers' Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 machines when their backs were turned or they were otherwise away from the computer, Microsoft is pleading innocent. News broke of the automatic Windows 10 upgrades over the weekend, and in nearly every case, it was claimed Windows 10 installed without user intervention. Microsoft issued the following statement regarding the alleged unplanned upgrades: "We shared in late October on the Windows Blog, we are committed to making it easy for our Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 customers to upgrade to Windows 10. As stated in that post, we have updated the upgrade experience to make it easier for customers to schedule a time for their upgrade to take place. Customers continue to be fully in control of their devices, and can choose to not install the Windows 10 upgrade or remove the upgrade from Windows Update (WU) by changing the WU settings." However, users are still reporting the Windows 10 has allegedly forcefully taken over their machines. Hundreds and maybe thousands of users and IT admins are still chiming in on various threads around the web that they've "been had" by Microsoft.
Which is why I shut off updates completely
As long as they install GWX Control Panel. Otherwise, they get whatever turd sandwich Microsoft feels like shoving down their throats.
Or users could go really nuts and install Linux or a BSD.
Actually, read the summary again... carefully.
(emphasis mine)
From what I see of that quote, so long as you intentionally tell the system to *not* push Windows 10 on your box, it will just do it whenever Microsoft and Windows Update decide to push it in.
In the eyes of the typical user (who does not read tech blogs or suchlike, let alone dork around with their Windows Update settings), this appears by all counts to be a 'forced' push of Windows 10 onto their box.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
We have some old machines which are clearly unable to run Windows 10. They barely run Windows 7. Yet, they keep getting notifications to upgrade to Windows 10, and list it on available updates. It is never going to run on a Pentium M or D machine. Microsoft, include a hardware check before you try to push it!
It is exactly this. Users that were clueless that they need to dork around with system settings to avoid the forced update.
So clueless? Yes. Innocent? Absolutely. Users should not need to read tech blogs and dork around in some system settings to maintain control of their machines.
Fuck you MS.
And this is why I don't have Windows running anywhere in my house - with multiple computers, I could see Microsoft totally raping the bandwidth caps on my rural Satellite Internet connection... and rural 3G/4G Internet users likely wouldn't get any relief from it either. :/
Speaking of which, I wonder if Microsoft could be found liable for any extra expenses incurred as a result of such a use case?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Nope. It won't install unless you accept the EULA. It is NOT automatic. The same people that get trojan horses installed all the time and click OK to everything have got this installed too. They probably also have the Ask Toolbar and lots of other garbage. Here's the details: http://www.zdnet.com/article/h...
False. GWX is being pushed onto domain joined equipment, and if not for GWX control panel, *WILL* begin installing Win 10, even on Domain joined computers with Windows 10 updates disabled, and/or KB3035583 hidden/disabled.
As noted, MS used a trojan horse to reactivate even if you blocked KB3035583.
It looks like the KBs in question are KB3146449 and KB3139929. Issue is summarized in this article: http://www.ghacks.net/2016/03/09/security-update-ms16-023-installs-new-get-windows-10-functionality/
From the article: "The main issue with pushing Windows 10 offers this way is that users cannot remove them from their system as KB3146449 does not appear in the list of installed updates for the system as it is integrated into KB3139929."
You can't remove nor block KB3146449. You could remove KB3139929 (or hide/block it), but this would be counteractive because it's actually a security update for MSIE 11.
If that is not MALWARE behavior, then what the hell is?
Yesterday I had a customer call because one of his PCs has updated to Windows 10 without asking. According to the user, she had come back to her PC to see the update already installing. Of course I cannot know if that is the complete story, users are notoriously unreliable, but a couple of things come to mind.
First, the customer called mainly because some programs stopped working. If things stop working it's not an "upgrade", its a whole new OS, and you have to market it that way, and wait for people to install it proactively. Anything else is irresponsible.
Second, reports like this one are suddenly multiplying. There is no real difference in my mind between starting the "upgrade" on Windows' own volition or offering the "upgrade" to the user so many times and in so different ways as to make it practically sure that he or she will accept it by mistake.
Microsoft is clearly confident in that its ecosystem is so solid in the desktop that nothing they do will change that. They are probably right, most of my customers are so heavily invested in the MS environment that nothing at all will make them change. One tried to switch away from Office to LibreOffice and, after a couple of years, had to backtrack licking its wounds.
So you have a monopoly, but also a saturated market. You miss out on the Web revolution because you don't like centralized services, you like distributed better, that's your business. Then you miss out on the mobile revolution because the interface is so different from the one you have, and in your religion there is only one commandment, and it is :"There is only one Windows, and all pledge loyalty to It". So God forbids that you make something imaginative, like another system that works well with Windows. Afterwards you foul your cash cow by changing the interface that was working (desktop Windows) to be usable in the touchscreen world, apparently ignoring that people are well capable of learning and using two different interfaces with ease.
So you prod your customers in the direction you want, even if you are not very sure of it being a good direction. It may be a winning strategy, who knows, not I, I have never earned the fat bonuses these marketing geniuses make. But in my book, prodding customers isn't a winning strategy.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
It's not Bullshit! It happened to my work computer and several of my co-workers! We were told by our IT department several times not to upgrade. I can't remember how many times I had to decline the offer to upgrade to Windows 10 -- and still the damned machine was upgraded! So frustrating!
In my case the solution was completely disable the Windows Update service (denying the service from booting, not just change a setting on the control panel). No more Windows updates for me, but these days I no longer trust the service to leave it on.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Actually I'm still assuming user error. So lets talk about what just happened to me today. Literally 4 hours ago. I'm currently tasked with spinning up a test environment for a Thycotic server. As such, I spun up a fresh VM using our Server 2012 R2 master in VMware. It was updated last month so after install it was finding roughly 24 optional updates. Again, this is a fresh, un-configured image. After the updates completed and the box rebooted I began prepping it for a dcpromo. Now, I'm not sure if it was related to opening IE, or something else, but I was prompted with one of those server 2012 blue bars telling me to click here to upgrade to win10. On server 2012 R2, enterprise license. Now, if I was average joe crazy clicker, I would have accidentally installed win10 onto my fucking DC. But I'm not, I pay close careful attention to what I'm doing. So, sure, your wife's system might have upgraded to win7 over the weekend. After someone in your family crazy clicked that popup. It wouldn't be a blue bar on win7, but it would popup and offer you an free upgrade right now just click here. I have yet to see a single documentation case of this actually happening without user intervention. And before you flip out, go ahead and grab the entire systems event logs, export it to a readable format, remove any identifying information, and I'll show you exactly when someone decided to install this.
Actually, read the summary again... carefully.
[...]and can choose to not install the Windows 10 upgrade or remove the upgrade from Windows Update (WU) by changing the WU settings."
And then do the same every single time Windows finds new updates. You can't hide it once forever. And if you miss the next update cycle because you were in bed sleeping, too bad.
The jerks at M$oft are drunk with corporate cool-aid and follow other objectives abusing their customers.
Happens a lot, just look at any larger corporation, where the only goal it to increase bottom-line - take them to the cleaner!
I haven't seen this Windows 10 update on my Win7 box! It is probably because I don't install any updates ever and have the widows updates turned to do not download, do not notify. I trust the malware infections I might get from pirated software more than I trust Microsoft.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
It is not as if Microsoft does not employ people who are competent at designing and testing proper user interfaces: People who know and expect how users will interface with Windows Update.
They expect people to install it by mistake.
The forced update is nothing else but intentional douchebaggery.
To blame the users is probably what they had planned to do all along.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
We can only hope.
It runs the rollback routine and sets you back to Windows 7. However, the terrible thing about that, is the snapshot seems to occur right before it installs Windows 10, which includes having the Get Windows 10 program open with a running countdown.
Do you not find it remarkable that each and every one of these... "incompetent" mistakes are always in their favor?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
They're just confused because they believe MS will force the 10 upgrade with no opt-out. The lack of any actual evidence doesn't phase them. All they need is a vague rumor and they'll be happy to consider their preexisting believes gospel truth.
If there is any truth to those rumors, I figure they just come from a few users who just clicked through the nag screen without reading it or scheduled the upgrade for later and were then later shocked to discover windows 10 was installed "without doing anything".
Required reading for internet skeptics
Yep, declining is one of the technique users have been using to get out of their surprise install. Rolling back the install has had varying results of stability though, most common being no internet, drivers reverted to way way back versions, fickle stability & blue screens of death, to flat out unbootable. Yep there's the love!
As I read the other day, "the operating system is now the virus".
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
What about a never ending stream of malice that occurs over and over again. Stupidity can only explain so much.
It almost happened to one of my work computers over the weekend. We still keep some Windows 7 computers for development and testing because the majority of our customers still use various incarnations of it. This computer was configured for manual updates, thankfully, and we routinely hide all the Windows 10-related "security updates". On Friday I left with 21 updates pending and returned on Monday with just 1 update pending, which I thought was very odd. Checking the list of updates it had deselected all other updates and ticked only the "Upgrade to Windows 10 Pro, version 1511, 10586" item. Fucking Microsoft.
However, someone above reported an "upgrade" happening on an unattended machine with no mouse or keyboard attached.
This is /. people who haven't used Windows versions newer than XP have made all sorts of wild claims about what it has or hasn't done lately.
I haven't seen any systems pushed to Windows 10 at all that weren't somehow user initiated.
People simply don't read what they click on, then deny they clicked on anything at all. I've literally WATCHED it happen live hundreds of time when doing remote screen-sharing support.
Other people will have had their kids click on it.
And Win10 update does have a few quirks, where it will 'confirm and reserve your upgrade today' and then due to missing hardware support defer your upgrade until drivers available. My Mom's old laptop was like that, windows 10 showed up several months after she'd first tried to update it.
I'm not saying it's outright impossible that MS has pushed the update without user confirmation on some systems due to a bug or some other issue. But I'd say the VAST majority are people who did confirm it and either don't even realize they confirmed it, or had someone else who uses the system confirm it, or who are just posturing on slashdot, or claiming other peoples anecdotes as their own (where the 'other person' probably clicked update without reading it...)
Its nowhere near as bad as /. shrill monkeys would have you believe.