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Despite Outrage From Users, Microsoft Continues To Install Bloatware Applications Onto Every Windows 10 PC (windowscentral.com)

Before Windows 10, a clean install of Windows only included the bare essentials a user would need to get started using their PC. With Windows 10, a clean install stays that way for about two minutes, because the second you hit the desktop, the Microsoft Store immediately starts trying to download third-party apps and games. Users have long complained about it, but it turns out Microsoft never put paid to it. Windows Central writes: And these apps keep trying to install themselves even after you cancel the downloads. There are six such apps, which is six too many. These apps are often random, but right now they include things like Candy Crush, Spotify, and Disney Magic Kingdoms. You should not see any of these apps on a fresh install of Windows 10, yet they are there every single time. There are policies you can set that disable these apps from automatically installing, but that's not the point. On a fresh, untouched, clean install of Windows 10, these apps will download themselves onto your PC. Even if you cancel the installation of these apps before they manage to complete the download, they will retry at a later date, without you even noticing. The only way I've found that gets rid of them permanently is to let them install initially, without canceling the download, and then uninstall the apps from the Start menu. If you cancel the initial download of the bloatware apps before they complete their first install, the Microsoft Store will just attempt to redownload them later and will keep doing so until that initial install is complete. This is not a good user experience, Microsoft.

19 of 490 comments (clear)

  1. What outrage? by Brett+Buck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There's no real outrage - people still keep buying the accursed thing in massive numbers. If anyone was really outraged, they would get something else.

    1. Re:What outrage? by DogDude · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If anyone was really outraged, they would get something else.

      There is no practical alternative. But no, most people don't care, either.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    2. Re:What outrage? by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If anyone was really outraged, they would get something else.

      Most are annoyed by Windows antics, not "outraged". Compatibility and familiarity trumps the alternatives so far.

      Macs are more expensive and don't run a lot of software titles, Google also pulls marketing shenanigans, Linux is unfamiliar and is hard to get help for unless you want to put up with impatient volunteers lacking people skills (I'm just the messenger).

      Until the alternatives improve, people will put up with a degree of MS spamware and forced upgrades. In the land of C-, you can stay D+ for a long time.

    3. Re:What outrage? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What alternative is there? Linux doesn't work for most people and it's pretty hard to buy a computer with it pre-installed and supported. Macs are expensive and MacOS has it's own issues.

      They put up with this shit because there isn't an alternative.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:What outrage? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Because if you're smart you'll stop using Microsoft products completely, or at least minimize it as much as possible. Or do you want to live in a Microsoft-only world, where you don't even have control anymore of your own hardware? That's what they want, why make it easy for them? Get Linux and take back control.

    5. Re:What outrage? by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      it's pretty hard to buy a computer with it pre-installed and supported

      Define "Linux". The second most popular type of laptop computer right now are Chromebooks, which do everything most people need (and will cover a much greater percentage of those left's needs once Crostini is ready.) I've stopped recommending Windows machines to family members who have problems with computers. a Chromebook fits their requirements perfectly, with no risk of being bamboozed by calls from "Windows" about viruses on their computers.

      The scope of the environment Microsoft controls is reducing rapidly. Nerds can run Ubuntu (or I guess a Ubuntu fork, because Ubuntu isn't hipster compliant enough); people who need a computer to write emails, browse the web, and occasionally pay their taxes or write letters, are well served by Chromebooks. Macs have their creativity niche. Which leaves Windows as a gamers platform, for those gamers who want something a little more mod friendly than a console.

      Everyone has choices right now.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    6. Re:What outrage? by green1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To add to this, if you want free support for MS products you get... none. If you want paid support for MS products, you pay through the nose, and the only solution is "have you rebooted? yes? ok, have you used the system restore cd?"

      I have found linux support far better in that most times I can find actual answers on how to fix things, for free, and not the tired "reboot and system restore" that seems to be the bread and butter of "support" in the Windows world.

    7. Re:What outrage? by goose-incarnated · · Score: 3, Insightful

      All of our business software is Windows-only. We're in retail. There are no usable Linux alternatives.

      And that's why you use Windows at home?

      --
      I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  2. solution? by e432776 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is a frustrating aspect of win10: lack of control over what programs are installed on your machine. I don't primarily use win10, but for machines I have set up I think I solved the problem by disabling automatic updates in the Windows Store. Of course, this means updates are..disabled. Perhaps others have a better way to handle this?

    In any case, disrespectful behavior by Microsoft.

  3. Well... by dyslexicbunny · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They probably paid Microsoft more for access than you did for your operating system. Enjoy being captive to this new customer experience!

  4. Re:Malware installs bloatware... by sconeu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because some of our clients have specialized equipment with interface software that only runs on Windows?

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  5. Re:Malware installs bloatware... by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't understand tech people that still uses crap like Windoze...

    I don't understand humans that still use air from the atmosphere to breathe.
    I don't understand rail commuters that still board trains.
    I don't understand grass seed companies that still use fescue seeds.

    Windows is the most common platform out there- of course a large number of tech workers are still going to be using it.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  6. Re: Malware installs bloatware... by Sique · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It might be shitty bloatware, but there are no alternatives (other than those also running on Windows), and the complexity of the problem does not allow for an inhouse re-development, as there are not enough installs to rectify the cost.

    --
    .sig: Sique *sigh*
  7. Newflash.. by sqorbit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft doesn't care what users think. Anyone who is surprised at this is just being silly. Microsoft has shown no desire to actually cater to users. Edge is quite possibly the most horrible web browser ever produced and they force it upon users. Windows 8 interface was a total failure, yet they still crammed it into the Windows 10 menu. These are only some examples. Microsoft has no motivation to actually make positive changes for end users.

    --
    Sent from my TARDIS
    1. Re:Newflash.. by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Microsoft doesn't care what users think. Anyone who is surprised at this is just being silly. Microsoft has shown no desire to actually cater to users.

      You are not the customer. You are the product. Your usage info and access to your computer (to force-install programs) is being sold to the actual customers - companies wanting marketing info and to sell you things.

      The difference is Facebook and Google have to give their product away for free to get people to agree to be the product. Microsoft somehow still manages to get people to pay for the "privilege" of becoming the product.

  8. No alternatives by sjbe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If anyone was really outraged, they would get something else.

    That implies that there is something else for them to get. There really isn't. Microsoft was convicted in court of having a monopoly. Do you know what that word means? It means there aren't other options on the PC. The only other options are linux which perpetually lags Windows on the PC desktop in application options and the OS X which is both pricey and ties you to Apple. Both linux and OS X are fine options for some but as much as it irritates me to say it, Windows is the best offering available for a lot of people and companies. A lot of software people want is only available on Windows. If the people around you use Windows chances are high you will too. If you play games on your PC it's a virtual certainty are you are running Windows to do it.

  9. Internet overages by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Grooming" will not recover the $10 per GB that your satellite or fixed-wireless ISP bills you for having downloaded the apps in the first place.

  10. Re:Malware installs bloatware... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seriously.

    Do you really consider Windows a necessity of the same magnitude as air, rail transportation etc? Talk about a Stockholm syndrome.

    No wonder you'll get raped for all eternity, you're essentially telling us you can't live without Windows and thus a total hostage to Microsoft. It's bizarre. You're actually mentally ill.

  11. Re:Malware installs bloatware... by Gr8Apes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You'd think HIPAA requirements would send that straight to a *NIX type machine, as Win anything is wholly incapable of meeting the security aspects.

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.