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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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
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!?
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.