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Man, Seeking New Copy of Windows 7 After Forced Windows 10 Upgrade, Sues Microsoft (bleepingcomputer.com)

Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: An Albuquerque man has sued Microsoft and its CEO -- Satya Nadella -- seeking a fresh copy of Windows 7 or $600 million in damages. According to a civil complaint filed last week on February 14, Frank K. Dickman Jr. of Albuquerque, New Mexico, is suing Microsoft because of a botched forced Windows 10 upgrade. "I own a ASUS 54L laptop computer which has an OEM license for Windows Version 7," Dickman's claim reads. "The computer was upgraded to Windows Version 10 and became non-functional immediately. The upgrade deleted the cached, or backup, version of Windows 7." Dickman says that the laptop's original OEM vendor is "untrustworthy," hence, he cannot obtain a legitimate copy of Windows 7 to downgrade his laptop.

6 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. Re:$600 million by Calydor · · Score: 5, Informative

    I may be wrong, but I think once you(r computer on its own) upgrade to Win10, your Win7 key is listed on Microsoft's activation servers as no longer valid. Thus you might install Win7, but you can't activate it.

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  2. Re:He wanted to lose. Now he doesn't like losing? by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, you joke, but we haven't bought a new Windows machine since 7 was no longer available, and we're now using non-Windows platforms for our new machines instead of going anywhere near Windows 10. So for us, it literally is the year of Linux on the desktop. Turns out that for development work it's probably better anyway, and for all the online stuff a browser or email client on Linux is kinda like a browser or email client on Windows.

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  3. Re:$600 million by Calydor · · Score: 3, Informative

    Microsoft disagrees:

    https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

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  4. Re:$600 million by karnal · · Score: 3, Informative

    HP is even more fun with this. they'll let you back up to either a USB stick or a set of CDs ONCE. Then lock you out from ever backing up that partition again.

    There are ways around this, but it's still annoying.

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    Karnal
  5. Re:Guy seems... by Mr0bvious · · Score: 3, Informative

    I think his point is: Don't treat me like a piece of shit and force an update on me that wastes my time, causes me lost productivity and then refuse to correct the issue.

    MS acted in an arrogant manner, his lawsuit is trying to address their respect of care for their users.

    Asking MS to fork out for a new laptop, licence, etc is not going to cause them any grief and is pointless.

    $600 million on the other hand may make them look and listen.

    I don't for a second think he is claiming he suffered $600 million in damages, but he wants the amount to be enough for MS to give a shit.

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    Never happened. True story.
  6. Re:$600 million by Cinnamon+Beige · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's the thing though, Microsoft gave users plenty of options to not upgrade to the free Windows 10 upgrade. I believe at least a year. PEBKAC.

    Microsoft didn't give users plenty of options to not upgrade to the free Windows 10 upgrade. The options that Microsoft gave, especially towards the end of the pre-release period for Win10, were that could upgrade now or later. I had to use a 3rd party application to keep them from forcibly upgrading an old Win7 box of mine whose hardware wasn't up to running Win10. I hear that towards the end, legal threats and general bad PR got them to make a public show of backing off on the "Do you want to upgrade now or later?" push, but I don't remember hearing any reports that they actually got around to having it so you could refuse the upgrade without deliberately blocking several updates among other measures, because they did things like relabel the relevant updates and those updates had their traditional vague descriptions that gave no indication that they would attempt to forcibly upgrade you.

    The general theory I remember was that M$ was doing all of this to forcibly inflate the numbers early on for Win10...