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Windows 10 Upgrade Activates By Clicking Red X Close Button In Prompt Message (bbc.co.uk)
Reader Raging Bool writes: In a move guaranteed to annoy many people, Microsoft has "jumped the shark" on encouraging users to upgrade to Windows 10. Microsoft has faced criticism for changing the pop-up box encouraging Windows users to upgrade to Windows 10. Clicking the red cross on the right hand corner of the pop-up box now activates the upgrade instead of closing the box. And this has caused confusion as typically clicking a red cross closes a pop-up notification. The upgrade could still be cancelled, when the scheduled time for it to begin appeared, Microsoft said
The change occurred because the update is now labelled "recommended" and many people have their PCs configured to accept recommended updates for security reasons. This means dismissing the box does not dismiss the update.Brad Chacos, senior editor at the PC World wrote about this incident over the weekend, and described it as a "nasty trick".
That's it, I'm getting my Commodore 64 out of the closet and booting up GEOS.
For following years of best practice of automatically installing updates on home machines.
Got it.
Perhaps you mean the white X inside the red square?
But, yeah, this is the kind of thing that malware authors use. It's pretty shady.... if people don't want to upgrade, they don't want to upgrade. You gave them the box and you downloaded (and expanded) all of the files... you have already done everything you can to "promote" Windows 10 (intrusively) on people's computers...
Why are you stooping to this Microsoft?
You may as well just not give people a "choice" at all and just install the damn thing... why the pretense of having a user click something?
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
I could give you many reasons for why you are wrong, but it's simpler to tell a troll like you to go f*ck yourself.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
It seems like all adult supervision has disappeared at Microsoft.
Amusing that Microsoft wants us to love their stuff when they employ the same tactics as all the sites trying to confuse users into installing malware use.
Cant the makers of XP Antivirus 2010 issue some sort of DMCA cease and desist against Microsoft for infringing on their intellectual property? I believe they were the first ones to invent "Pressing the [ X ] button will initiate installation of said software..."
Ha! I call "FUD!" on that. Everyone ASSUMES the devil they don't know is better than the vulnerabilities that have been teased out over time (sometimes a long time) on a previous software. It can never be proven as true since time is forward.
It's been my experience that people are way more vulnerable in other ways, and most of these OS updates are dubious at best when it comes to being more secure.
An embedded firmware guy
If you don't move to Windows 10 then you deserve all the security problems you will inevitably have. GUI and "principle" issues aside - it is a smart move.
Most people should be forced to switch. If you are too dumb to prevent the switch then you are in the camp of people who should be forced to switch. The tears mean its working.
Windows 10 fits more criteria for "malware" than the most well-known malware suites do. Forcefully installs itself? Check. Spies on you? Check. Displays ads to you? Check. Uninstalls competitors' programs? Check. Doles out your security keys to people on your contact list? Check.
It's one step away from literally being ransomware.
Even Windows fanboi Thurrott is fed up ...
https://www.thurrott.com/windo...
The X button means fucking **quit**, not "minimize", you UI retards. If you're going to hijack the last 40 years of WIMP then give users an option to enable / disable this shit. Preferably the default would be OFF.
Microsoft Windows: noun, A 64-bit compilation of 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor written by a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition with 0 bit of understanding good UI.
Microsoft, you gave us this OS and introduced the masses to the concept of windows in a UI. You were even arrogant enough to name your UI Windows.
And all this time, we have gone through several iterations of your UI, but one constant has remained; the general understanding that if you click the fucking X located in a specific area of any window in your UI, it closes.
This has been by design since the dawn of Windows.
And since you've now taken the path of malware authors with this shady bullshit, we should treat you as such. It's one thing to ask users. It's one thing to force users. It's another matter entirely to trick and deceive users.
Bottom line is it's time to start the class-action lawsuit. This should not be tolerated in any way. Put another way, if malware was introduced into the core OS and deceived users against Microsoft's wishes, you better believe they would be attacking the cause of that problem and look to put a stop to it.
My wife accidentally clicked it on her admittedly elderly machine, now it won't boot up, no way to roll it back, all her files are gone.
This is different than malware... how is that?
Make a live USB/CD with Linux and retrieve the files that way.
Just one? Seeing ads on startup and being forced to share more and more information are too high a price for a "free" upgrade.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I could give you many reasons for why you are wrong, but it's simpler to tell a troll like you to go f*ck yourself.
Microsoft are deeply ashamed of all the Windows that came before 10 and would prefer everyone forget they ever existed. I kind of feel for them.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
From what I see, it schedules the upgrade, and you have to opt out by going into some other settings to cancel.
It's not that the "X" activates the upgrade - at that point, it's too late.
Still, it's very shady not to give users an obvious choice on the popup, let alone not making it an "opt in" choice.
All of my machines are running Windows 10... shrugs... at this point, all the bitching is basically all about the point of the matter. Win 10 runs fine on the machines I've installed it on (several laptops, 9 or 10 desktops, some 10+ years old). Unless you have some particularly specific niche software or hardware (that can't run in Win7, therefore, not in Win10, since the drivers are mostly the same), people really shouldn't have too many complaints.
I'd be more concerned if Microsoft was pushing people to Win8 and the crappy fail that was the Metro Start Screen. Win10 dialed it back and makes more sense in the case of a desktop/mobile hybrid OS. Still, the exec who is pushing this sort of tactic needs to be fired ASAP.
In a surprising coincidence, I had just finished reading this article when my son burst in saying "Hey Dad something's strange with the gaming PC, it's shutting down saying it's configuring itself for the Windows 10 upgrade, but I never accept that!"
I have a backup . . .
Over the weekend I set up a new Win 10 machine for Dad (store bought HP Envy). Going through updates and installs I found one nasty surprise, Flash was installed by default on this box. I was hoping to wean him over to HTML5 with this upgrade (from Vista !), but HP builds them with Flash already in place. Went ahead and made Firefox64 the default browser, and Chrome as an alternative, but since Cortana and all MS services default to MS Edge no matter what you set, it's going to be a mixed operation from now on
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Wikipedia defines it as "an idiom popularized by Jon Hein that was used to describe the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality, signaled by a particular scene, episode, or aspect of a show in which the writers use some type of gimmick in an attempt to keep viewers' interest, which is taken as a sign of desperation, and is seen by viewers to be the point at which the show strayed irretrievably from its original formula", so I'd say it's close enough.
Personally, I'd have gone with "Screwed the pooch" or "Shit the bed".
I see someone has sneaked a peak at next years' business plan.
We are upgrading your system...resistance is futile...
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
You assume that they are truly proud of what they have now. Windows 10 (especially on mobile) has been a cluster f. It shipped too early, unpolished and only barley tested (which isn't unexpected when you fire all of your testers the year before).
Pity them. Windows for desktops/laptops/devices is dying and they are desperate to make and/or keep it relevant.
The only money making that happens wrt Windows today and likely in the future is as the backend of Azure... which does sort of make you wonder given their push to CoreCLR (ie not Windows centric), at what point they fire most of the devs behind Windows, put the business into sustained engineering mode and ride the wave until it finally ends (ala Radio Shack).
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Microsoft security support for Win7/8 for the next decade or so?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Define "consent" in the no-means-yes world of Windows 10
People used to laugh at me when I told them my Win 7 install is never connected to a network.
Look, there are a zillion things that MS did which are sneaky and downright reprehensible with regards to pushing Windows 10, but this is NOT one of them. Has anybody seen the actual dialog? It is NOT a question asking whether you want to upgrade. It is only a notification informing you that your PC is scheduled to upgrade since you have recommended updates turned on. Your PC would have updated to 10 in any case even if that dialog were not to popup, because 10 is a recommended upgrade. This notification is in reality offering you a chance to opt of it - I remember "click here if you want to change your update setting or cancel the upgrade" or something of that sort. Then an OK button. Clicking on "X" is not somehow "activating" an upgrade. It actually does nothing, as required of a notification dialog - it is just letting the already scheduled upgrade proceed, which is what one should expect.
If anything is sneaky, it is TFA which portrays the dialog box in a false light. The entire media just repeats without once stopping to think - it has become fashionable in tech media to hit on MS pushing Win 10, but this kind of reporting only detracts from the credibility of reporting on all the real sneaky things that MS is doing.
Disclaimer, I do use Windows 10 on my machines at home and especially my gaming rig.
The laptops, because that was what came installed, but the gaming rig, obviously since it is actually pretty good for gaming.
I do not really mind the OS itself, but I am growing tired of this constant crap they are pulling. Like forcing my to use Bing! I fucking hate Bing. If I accidentally search with Bing, I will go to google and search again even if the Bing answer may have been correct. I HATE Bing!
I really hope that this year, with Vulcan coming online, my biggest reason for not switching to Linux will be gone. I can imagine that Steam can really help to push Linux on gaming with the HTC vive. I have ordered it myself.
I'll need to update my graphics card, but I need to see what's on tap from AMD first.
It could finally be time for the Linux desktop.
This is exactly why free software (in the vein of what Richard Stallman calls for) needs to be supported. *YOU*, the user, must own complete control over your computer and the software it runs, not developers (much of the more liberal open source licenses are about developer rights, not user rights -- big difference!) or corporations.
I know many of you would object, "But I bought this computer, it's not Microsoft's!". Well I wholeheartedly agree, but the thing is, Windows being proprietary closed source means that Microsoft has a claim to intellectual property rights. Microsoft believes that you license Windows, not own it. Essentially, they still own the software on your computer. Again, I know that *you* disagree, but it kinda doesn't matter what you think -- Microsoft has money and lawyers and they push for the outcome they want. Which is to own your computer. And if they own it, they're technically allowed to do whatever they want with it, including force upgrades. That is the nature of licensing agreements -- you agree to their licensing rules, which means they can do whatever they want.
If this bothers you, switch to a free software OS. Some flavor of Linux or even BSD. Get involved in the free software community, both the technical community (making more/better free software) and the political community (that lobbies for changes to copyright law, tries to get government to adopt open standards, etc.). We have to fight back, or you can expect more behavior like this from Microsoft, Apple, etc., in the future.
I'm going to upgrade your car next week. Nothing you can do about it.
It'll look shinier, but I pulled a few cables, and put your old engine & tires in it.
Hopefully, I didn't pull too many cables.
It's just good for you, and free.
Don't whine if it doesn't work as well as your old car, you were stubbornly refusing to upgrade.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Let me guess: you're also moving to Canada if the wrong person gets elected in November. Really, you swear you'll do it. That's how totally serial you are.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It's people like him that have caused this. Their uncritical fandom of Microsoft has encouraged Microsoft to abuse its customers ever more, resulting in the (almost) forced upgrades (downgrades?) to Windows 10.
Paul: don't start complaining now. You should have been complaining over the last 10 years.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Yes the upgrade tactics have been heavy handed. But so has the push back
This is akin to excusing rape because the victim refused consensual sex. Microsoft needing to resort to underhanded tactics to get people to use win10 does not excuse Microsoft needing to resort to underhanded tactics to get people to use win10.
Yes the upgrade tactics have been heavy handed. But so has the push back, the FUD from sites like Slashdot and other supposed "tech" blogs. If you have an Android phone and are bitching about Windows 10 you're a fucking hypocrite, full stop.
Saying "Company X is doing this bad thing, but if given the chance, Company Y would do the exact same thing" does not prove that the thing is fine to do.
So no, not hypocrisy. If Google were in this situation I'd be criticizing them exactly the same.
Honestly, I can't 100% blame them. We witnessed how hard people hung onto XP. I still see companies with Windows Server 2003 in play (some of them still DEPLOY 2003). We know there are large swathes of people that simply do not accept change, no matter how good it might be (there are legitimate debates about win10 being better).
Their marketshare is not my concern. My ability to use my own computer is.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Until literally this week, there were no hardware drivers available for our receipt printers. Without GWX Control Panel, an automatic Windows 10 upgrade would literally put us out of business. Is that a good enough reason for you? Probably not.
Why was it a problem that Windows XP users hung on to Windows XP? Vista, like Windows 10, came with a lot of issues that made users evenly split between people who couldn't stand it and people who loved it.
Had Windows XP users been subject to this kind of harassment to make them upgrade to Vista, then two things would likely have happened.
First, as I suspect will happen with 10, they'll lose users to alternatives. Admittedly that's Mac now. Back in 2006/7, Ubuntu was actually very good and had a UI a close second behind Mac OS X in terms of user friendliness. There's no doubt in my mind that, at that time, users would have switched to Ubuntu in droves. The post-GNOME 3/Unity debacle makes that an unlikely choice right now for Windows 10 skeptics, but it's certainly making people look elsewhere.
Second, and more importantly, Windows 7 would never have happened. Windows 7 is the fixed version of Vista, the first usable version of that operating system. Nobody doubts that 10 is imperfect. Even those with machines powerful enough to run it comfortably are concerned about the OS's security/privacy issues, and the forced reboots. Nobody likes this, and in a normal world Microsoft would have felt obliged to fix that.
What is the incentive for Microsoft to fix the problems with Windows 10?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It's one step away from literally being ransomware.
That comes in July, when it stops being free, but doesn't stop being an automatic install.
"You're copy of windows is unlicensed. Pay us $100+ or you will never see your own data again."
I wish I thought this was an exaggeration, but frankly, I expect exactly that.
Microsoft should be prosecuted for racketeering for how they've handled Windows 10.
Enjoy winning your lawsuit in a decade and getting a coupon for $10 off Office 2026.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Their market share is not my concern. My ability to own my own computer is.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
But what's worse? Ransomeware trojan from visiting an unsecure site, or ransomeware Windows 10?
I agree, the whole Windows obsessed IT magazine market have never said anything even remotely bad about Windows or Microsoft except for the occasional nit place far down in the column (after the 99 reasons to upgrade now). They barely acknowledge the existence of competitors, and have served as apologists for Microsoft constantly (after all you have to upgrade someday or you'll go to jail, so they're helping you!). Of course, they'll all paid from Redmond.
It's like the 70s again, where "no one got fired for buying IBM", only with more religious fervor.
I don't suppose her computer has an Asus motherboard?
There was a recent Windows 7 update that disables secure boot. Asus motherboards have secure boot enabled by default.
This results in a non-bootable computer and could seem like data loss.
Might be something to check into anyway.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Since the Windows Drive Model hardly changed between Windows versions I've not found a driver that existed in Windows 7/8 that didn't currently work in 10. I even got the serial port connected touchscreen in my vista era General Dynamics notebook working on Windows 10.
Sometime an MSI installer would check the Windows version (fix with Orca) or need to be run in "Compatibility Mode" - but I have all sorts of long unsupported hardware running in Windows 10.
The real kick will be when an automatic Windows update screws everything up and Microsoft says "Not our fault" - but I anticipate this will be a crap-shoot with both supported and unsupported apps and hardware the same... the difference being that the "supported" hardware may become unsupported or possibly get a fix after the impact has already been noted.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Let me guess, you can't uninstall those things, despite the EU ruling that doing that with Internet Explorer was illegal...
Wikipedia defines it as "an idiom popularized by Jon Hein that was used to describe the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality, signaled by a particular scene, episode, or aspect of a show in which the writers use some type of gimmick in an attempt to keep viewers' interest, which is taken as a sign of desperation, and is seen by viewers to be the point at which the show strayed irretrievably from its original formula", so I'd say it's close enough.
Personally, I'd have gone with "Screwed the pooch" or "Shit the bed".
But you forgot the originating reference. It's makes no sense without that.
Everyone is doing it. 1) Turn on something by default. 2) Make you have to jump through a bunch of hoops in order to opt out or turn it off. 3) Charge you a lot of money if you fail to do so. My phone company does it. My satellite company does it. My credit card company does it......
Then you should have better control over your computers.
I think a whole lot of people agree on this point. We, the people who OWN the computers, should have much better control over them. Such as being able to say NO to an upgrade, and have that preference stick, and not be surreptitiously reset or otherwise bypassed AGAINST OUR WILL.
I understand it perfectly. That's why I know what a sleazy bunch of malware distributors Microsoft has become.
We have little choice on software that we use for point of sale. What we use is the only system that interacts with the national franchise, so if we don't use it, 300+ employees are out of a job. We don't write hardware driver for printers, and we don't write the software that interacts with those drivers. We can't. No retailer our size can. The resources simply aren't there. If you believe otherwise, you have no idea what you're jabbering about.
The only alternative to keeping a close watch at Microsoft's malware attempts is to go out of business. We finally have the option of moving to Windows 10, but I'm still not convinced it's possible to turn off enough telemetrics to be PCI compliant. It's entirely possible that we cannot continue to use Microsoft products without committing fraud against our merchant service. That not only has Microsoft resorted to being a criminal enterprise, they're going to force their customers to do so as well.
Thanks. Microsoft.
Since the Windows Drive Model hardly changed between Windows versions I've not found a driver that existed in Windows 7/8 that didn't currently work in 10.
You've apparently never worked with Epson receipt printers. When I tried the Win 7 drivers on Win 8, it blue screened so hard the blue screen crashed. That's 7 to 8, not 7 to 10. Our receipt printers would cost at least $100k to replace, and until two days day, our point of sale vendor (they have the only software that works correctly with the national franchise) did not sell a printer that had working Windows 8 drivers. Yes, they are very slow updating stuff; they test thoroughly, and yes, they suck in many ways, but it would cost us seven figures to replace them, and nothing we could build ourselves would actually work.
Microsoft knows there are millions of computers out there that cannot be upgraded without destroying the ability to perform the work they were bought to perform. And they don't care.
And that's fraudulent.
Microsoft should be prosecuted for racketeering for how they've handled Windows 10.
i disagree! they should be commended for their efforts to spread Linux! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I have 8.1. There are some dumb bits. But if you ignore Metro and the app store and lack of start menu, it's not bad on the desktop. I prefer it to Windows 7 in several ways, and it doesn't have all the telemetry, requirements to have Cortana & Edge, forced updates, and other W10 idiocies. Microsoft apologized, a rare event, for Windows 8 in regards to the UI and removal of start button which are basically cosmetic goofs, improves in 8.1, but then turns around and doubles down on stupid ideas in W10...
It's a somewhat recent Microsoft pattern as they've stopped being the only 500 lb gorilla in the room. They see other companies making money and then try to catch up very late to the game, without knowing anything about the field they're determinted to dominate, and ending up failing and being laughed at. The Zune to catch up with the iPod music player boom; Bing to catch up with Google; Windows Phone to catch up with iPhone and Android; the Win CE devices to catch up with Palm; the whole Media Edition fiasco; etc. (They did succeed with Xbox I think, which was either a fluke or else the corporate office wasn't interfering.) So now they're again trying to do catch up with being yet another ad revenue based company, a phone-like applet based company, and yet another misguided attempt to make tablets no one wants. They have not been a leader in technology for a very long time.
I thought I'd throw in a few thoughts for people transitioning away from Windows.
Wine, a program that runs Windows software on Linux, might look attractive at first. Most of the time, it works better to run Linux / open software on Linux. You'll probably end up happier if you consider Wine as last resort, when you really want a specific brand of software (game?) that's Windows-only. How often did you use a Linux emulator to run Linux software on Windows? Examples - use Chrome or Firefox, rather than trying to run IE under Wine. Use LibreOffice/OpenOffice rather than Microsoft Office. For most people, Gimp will be better than Photoshop under Wine (graphics professionals will mostly be using Macs).
For taxes, that's something you do once per year. Good tax software is available under Linux, for countries other than the US. For US taxes, why screw around installing different different things trying to find something that runs well locally when the providers are all focusing on their online services. Ibuse Taxact.com. Better to have my taxes done in a few hours than to spend a few hours each year screwing around with different software.
The real power of Linux, the biggest advantage over Windows, is at the command line. Once you get used to using your main applications in GUI, experiment and learn a bit of the command line. It can save you many hours of tedious clicking.
If you really get stuck, the very same programmers who wrote Linux and created all of the open source software are here to help you! You wouldn't ever imagine that you could email Microsoft and the lead programmer for MS Office would personally answer your question, but that's exactly what happens with Linux, if you have a good question. Eric S. Raymond wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek but very useful guide to getting help called How To Ask Questions the Smart Way. Yes, you should use Google first (include the word "howto" in your searches) and maybe even read the directions. If you do your part and can't find an answer, though, you may well get an answer from Linus, or Ted Tso for filesystem issues, from Daniel J Bernstein for qmail his other software, from me for storage and Perl stuff, etc.
Just one? Seeing ads on startup and being forced to share more and more information are too high a price for a "free" upgrade.
That's two.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u