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Windows 10 Anniversary Update To Roll Out On August 2

Posted by msmash on from the affinity-for-Windows-updates dept.

Windows 10's first major update -- dubbed Anniversary Update -- will be released to users on August 2, according to a blog post published by Microsoft (Archive link). The company presumably posted the blog post ahead of the original publication plans, and as a result, quickly pulled the story. Windows 10 Anniversary Update will bring with it a number of major changes including extensions to Edge, and improvements to Cortana and Hello biometric feature. It will also mark the end of the one-year free Windows 10 update offer for Windows 7 and Windows 8.x users.

18 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. By any other name... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is a service pack.

    1. Re: By any other name... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      You're just jealous that Windows 10 users don't have to deal with Systemd and GNOME 3.

    2. Re: By any other name... by LichtSpektren · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You're just jealous that Windows 10 users don't have to deal with Systemd and GNOME 3.

      The most serial criticisms of system and GNOME 3 are that they're too similar to Windows SCM and Metro, respectively. Thus saying that one should then use Windows to avoid them is a collapsing spiral staircase of lunacy.

    3. Re: By any other name... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      A year later and Windows 10 is still buggy as shit, not to mention all the horrendously bad design decisions.

      You must be running at the minimum hardware specs. Windows 10 is like Windows Vista. I originally built my system for Vista in 2007, which required more hardware resources to run fine. Windows 10 runs perfectly fine on that system.

    4. Re: By any other name... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      I'm talking about the bugs that still haven't been fixed after more than a year, all the bad UI design and pointless crapware, like Cortana, which if you completely delete will hose your system.

      Just ignore Metro and turn off Cortana, which is what I do.

  2. Anniversary update.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And then I have to re-turnoff Cortana, reset the switches to block MS-bound data, and in general, try
    to discover the new ways MS has made sure to F-up things so they can anal-probe my machine...

    1. Re:Anniversary update.... by rudy_wayne · · Score: 2

      And then I have to re-turnoff Cortana,

      Even if you "turn off" Cortana, it's still running in the background. Try to kill it with Task Manager and it comes right back. There is a way to kill it permanently, but my experience has been that Cortana is the new Internet Explorer -- kill it and you hose your entire system.

    2. Re:Anniversary update.... by vux984 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Even if you "turn off" Cortana, it's still running in the background.

      Yes and no. Yes, there absolutely is a process called Cortana running in the background. But its not still listening to your microphone, etc. Its providing backend services for stuff like location services.

      What's in a name?

      In theory Microsoft should have broken the functionality into two separate modules. "Cortana Personal Assistant" and "Cortana Services". Where the former is JUST the voice-mic-UI stuff; and the latter does all the other stuff -- the search functionality, location services, and provides the hooks that other apps connect to to add their "cortana" functionality, should you ever turn Cortana back on. ... of course people like your self would still freak about "Cortana Services" running even after the "Cortana Personal Assistant" went away so instead of calling it "Cortana Services" it should be called "wcmi_support" or something suitably innocuous. Then when you looked at the process list, nothing would be *called* cortana and you'd now be happy.

      Although nothing changed at all except the name of a process.

      Sometimes I think Microsoft should rename the Task Scheduler from "Schedule" to "Clippy" and "svchost" to "systemd" just for the fireworks display.

  3. How does the "Free" licensing work? by wardrich86 · · Score: 2

    Is it worth doing the free upgrade and then downgrading? Will I be able to upgrade to W10 indefinitely on the off chance that they (or the community) fix up all the problems and snooping? How does the licensing work?

    1. Re:How does the "Free" licensing work? by freeze128 · · Score: 2

      Nobody who has accepted the free upgrade has paid anything.

    2. Re:How does the "Free" licensing work? by vux984 · · Score: 2

      Is it worth doing the free upgrade and then downgrading?

      IMO Yes.

      Will I be able to upgrade to W10 indefinitely

      According to Microsoft yes. (at least on that hardware)

      on the off chance that they (or the community) fix up all the problems and snooping

      The community more or less already has, depending on your level of paranoia.

      Spybot Anti-Beacon

      And there are several other tools out there too.

      And for what its worth, unless you are disabling all updates and/or manually vetting every update to your win7/8 box the snooping is still a problem.

      For most people, whether you are on 7 or 10 you are probably best served with an anti-telemetry tool as the least hassle way of dealing with this. And since its the same issue and solution whether you are on 7 or 10 then you can choose to run 7 or 10 based on other criteria.

    3. Re:How does the "Free" licensing work? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Is it worth doing the free upgrade and then downgrading? Will I be able to upgrade to W10 indefinitely on the off chance that they (or the community) fix up all the problems and snooping? How does the licensing work?

      The free upgrade is tied to your computer's Hardware ID.

      When you install Windows 10 your hardware ID is sent to Microsoft. As long as you don't make any major changes to your computer (new motherboard is the big one) you can do a clean install at any time and Windows 10 will continue to work just fine. It just checks your Hardware ID against the one Microsoft has on file and when they match everything is fine.

      Don't mess around with upgrading/downgrading. Use a backup program to save a copy of your current Windows installation. I like Acronis True Image, but there are others. Then, if you don't like Windows 10, it's easy to go back to whatever you were running before.

      Upgrade from Windows 7 or 8 without going through the complete upgrade process:

      Download Windows 10 ISO and extract file called "gatherosstate.exe" in the "sources" directory and run it on your current version of Windows. It will generate a file called GenuineTicket.xml -- save this to an external drive.

      Do a clean install of Windows 10, skip entering license key during setup procedure.

      Disable Internet connection. Reboot.

      Copy GenuineTicket.xml to "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\ClipSVC\GenuineTicket\ "

      Reboot. Re-enable Internet connection.

      After a few minutes Windows 10 will be activated and you're ready to go.

  4. Re:great news by jenningsthecat · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's great that those of us normal people who have already updated to Windows 10 will receive this update. Meanwhile, the neckbeards and tinfoil hat Lunix zealots will be stuck without a secure and up to date system. Seems like a good deal to me.

    Obviously you don't have much experience at trolling - that attempt was about as subtle a sledgehammer, and reeked of incompetence. Go away, and don't come back 'til you have some skillz.

    --
    'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
  5. Meh by EndlessNameless · · Score: 2

    Given its penetration, the Edge extensions hardly matter.

    Most of the other features are niche, invasive, or useless. Seriously, does anyone release malware that can't evade Windows Defender out of the box?

    Cortana will remain relatively useless until it can integrate with smartphones, which means Microsoft will have to put more effort into its Android and iOS apps, helping to make them first-class platforms.

    Anything that makes the Windows Store better sounds good. That's the only thing of real value I see, and even then it's more for the future than the present.

    --

    ---
    According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
  6. Re:question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    No. It will still upgrade to Windows 10 but then encrypt the hard disk until you pay for the upgrade.

  7. On The Fence re: Win10? by tsqr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I performed this procedure on an old Win7 netbook, and it worked out fine. Good way to take an objective look at Win10 without endangering your Win7 installation with a possibly irreversible update process.

  8. Re: Let the bitchfest commence by LichtSpektren · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, but repeating your false pro-Linux propaganda over and over won't make it true, either.

    Which part is false: the part about the spyware (which even Microsoft admits is true, albeit in an indirect way, because they've documented that you cannot turn off any of the surveillance without the Enterprise edition), the part that Windows has malware and Linux does not, or the part that it is my advocacy that people should boycott Windows and use Linux instead?

    I might be missing something but I was able to turn off all the spyware in the privacy settings and I am running the home version. ??

    No, you pressed some buttons that gave the appearance of turning off the spyware. In effect, they do nothing unless you're on the "Enterprise" edition: http://www.forbes.com/sites/go...

  9. Re:Hope they fixed 2 bugs by stackOVFL · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Don't forget the fuzzy fonts issue. That one drives me nuts.