Microsoft has pissed me off

Everyone here knows I'm a PC user. While I've never been a die-hard Microsoft fanatic, I've just like Windows and I know how to use it to get what I want done. I also think that in the last couple of years, since Nadella took over, Microsoft has been headed in the right direction and has been doing some really great things, making decisions that are good for their own business and good for users too...

...But they're f***ing up this Windows 10 thing...

So apparently MS decided to switch from the carrot to the stick, and the new policy is to force the Windows 10 upgrade on their users. At some point, my clients are coming back to their computers and they've been upgraded. Even my own desktop got this upgrade recently. I had a little bit of warning from a dialog box, but where it usually let me X out and tell it not to upgrade, this time the notification was more like "oh, you're getting this upgrade, and all you can choose is when in the next 12 hours it happens." The next morning I came back to my computer and I had Windows 10.

Now, I actually don't have that much against Windows 10. It's leaps and bounds better than 8, but I liked 7 better. I'm also not a fan of the forced upgrades and the fact that I have no control over whether I receive future "enhancements" to the OS. So the next time Microsoft releases a "Windows 8-like" update, I'll have no choice but to receive it. But in general it's fine.

I'm pissed because this is causing problems. I know that I have some clients who got the update but aren't calling me because everything is fine, but I've gotten calls from others who are having problems. Most of them are driver issues, but some are more severe.

Example: lets say you're a 70 year old woman whose Windows 7 computer was set up for her 5-7 years ago. At that point she asked whoever set it up (wasn't me) to make it so her computer boots to the desktop. Well, to do that you have to set a password and then edit the user account to auto login (pretty sure the password can't be blank for this to work). Well, after the Windows 10 upgrade this person booted up and was presented with a password box. She didn't know what it was, and now she's stuck. She had no password reset disk, and Windows 10 gives you almost no options for how to proceed. In the end, I used a password recovery program to reset her password to blank and was able to get in and set a new one.

I know this is a single case, and that there were problems created by the user, but hey, she'd been using the computer just fine for six years until MS decided to force this update on her for her own good.

And why? Because they're going to start charging for it in July? Why would they even do that? If they're so obsessed with getting people to hop on board that they'd force it, why give a deadline at all? I know it's an incentive that'll get more people to upgrade, but everyone is already getting bombarded with reminders to upgrade, so it's not like people can forget about it.

Up until now, my advice to my customers had been something like "hey, Windows 10 isn't bad, but if everything is running well for you and you don't want to rock the boat, Windows 7 will be supported until 2020, at which point you'll probably want a new computer anyway, so just hold off." But now I need to find a way to give them the option of blocking this forced update, and I can't find much info online about this... Anyone know?

Sorry for the rant. This move really ticked me off. I was one of the people who thought the U2 iTunes thing was a dumb move, and this is a few orders of magnitude greater than that.

My mom, who is mostly blind, still uses Windows 7 using the slidy enlarged desktop on a large TV. On 7, she knows where everything is. Her 'puter "upgraded" to 10 overnight one night, and I got a call the next day. Everything is different, so of course, she can't do a thing. I had to drive over and upgrade it back to 7.

I can see MS is trying to ape IOS, but not all the world is a phone...

I know I have seen somewhere that there is an update which starts the nagging about upgrading to Win10, but I can't remember which KB-number is has. Uninstalling this particular update should prevent the nagging and possibly the forced upgrade.

Here's one link I found describing how to stay on Win7 or reverting back from Win10.

Just use the tiny Never10 app linked on those instructions. It sets the same registry keys that the group policy editor sets if you follow Microsoft's instructions for their corporate customers for preventing the upgrade.

https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

(and yes, I know it is from Steve Gibson, who can be a terrible hack, but this is one of his good pieces of work)

grc.com, known for SpinRite, ShieldsUp, and various other tools, has a tool to block the upgrade; Never10. Will also delete the files if they've already been downloaded in preparation for the upgrade.

Link

Ah, beaten to the punch... :-)

Thanks for the link. I hadn't seen that. I knew it was an update, but that tool makes it much easier.

Yeah, I heard about that. I'd used GRC's Never10 on my systems (thanks, Steve!!!), but Vixy got hit by this. Here's another rant about that particular change: https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows...ning-windows-10

I consider that kind of behavior to be synonymous with the way malware and adware installs. Change the behavior of the close button. That's really great, Microsoft. Nice work. Sigh.

In Vixy's case, the problem occurred on her company PC, which runs a piece of accounting software that is incompatible with Win10. So yeah, big problem. Fortunately, she says she hunted around and found the "Roll back" button after the Win10 upgrade was done, and used it, and it worked. Maybe your clients who are having the same problem can find the same "roll back" button. Not sure where it is, exactly... Anyone?

By the way, the way Never10 works for me is.........

The program that forces the upgrade on you, it can be found in the Task Manager and it is called "GWX.EXE" and there may be more than one instance of it running.

When you run Never10, and it disables the Win10 upgrade, you might still see an instance of GWX.EXE running in the Task Manager. Feel free to either reboot to get rid of it, or just Task-kill that sucker and you're done.

And it seems that Microsoft is now responding to "User Feedback" about this.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376962

Ugh. So they added another popup that's basically just like the popup that everyone is pissed at them for? Do they hear themselves?

Fortunately I haven't had any clients with disastrous results like the end of that article. No blue screens and no instances where I had to do data recovery and start from scratch. But I'm sure those exist and they don't have to happen. As much as I appreciate the extra work I'm getting, this "free" upgrade is costing my clients money when things go wrong...

Here's another option: GWX Control Panel I'll let you block/delete all those Windows 10 upgrade files and you'll never see an update reminder again.

That control panel is complete overkill and needless. The Never10 tool stops the upgrade, only needs to be run once and is an 80kb download.

I was just providing another option which has worked well for me.

BTW, lots of those Windows 10 interruptions are pretty funny, others not so much...

The interruptions like that make me wish that Windows had a "don't interrupt me" mode, where it could block all types of things from interrupting the foreground app.

For instance, sometimes if there is an ordinary Windows Update pending, windows8 will put a giant stripe across the center of the screen and darken the rest of the screen in order to tell me about it. If this happens when I'm giving a presentation, or during a performance when I'm using the laptop to display my chord charts, or when I change careers and become a weatherman, it's disastrous.

It's particularly bad when trying to stream g-code to a 3D printer and the job is going to take all night. Many many ways for Windows to stall the work leavin the hot end cooking without the cooling flow of fresh plastic.

I was in the middle of taking an exam for an online course when Windows 10 decided it was the perfect time to reboot my machine to install updates. Until then, I didn't realize the 'reboot whenever you want' option was checked somewhere and I had to go hunting for it.

Today I helped someone who had the upgrade forced on them. They ended up with a computer that booted up and they could log in, but then almost nothing worked. The start menu wouldn't open, and most of the taskbar icons did nothing when you clicked on them. The computer also showed that it was constantly in airplane mode despite currently being connected to the wifi network.

I eventually determined that the latest drivers from Dell needed to be installed, so I was able to work around the road blocks and get it updated, but it's not something the user would have figured out.

Again, how nice of Microsoft to grace him with the latest version of Windows and turn a computer that had been running nicely for months/years into a barely usable mess.

I'm surprised that there hasn't been any news of a class-action lawsuit over this, yet.

I wonder if it's because class actions are forbidden in their EULA (can they even do that legally)?

Is that so? Ha! I doubt it. That would be real easy: just put in the EULA that the user is forbidden to sue them for any reason and they are off the hook. That will never stick.

Would an EULA even be valid for something installed without consent?

You have to click thru an acceptance of the terms.

Edit: I wonder if that can be attacked as an abuse of monopoly.

My laptop "upgraded" to windows 10 without me doing anything. It was just at the w10 desktop the next morning.

It seems as though Microsoft's latest change to the dialog box is to simply remove the close button altogether.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/01/windows_10_nagware_no_way_out/

SIGH. They just don't get it do they?

Are you serious? That's just straight up obnoxious. "I'm gonna give you two options: install right now or install slightly later than right now...like four hours from now."

If I remember correctly, the dialog box I got would only let me delay the installation by around 8 hours, and I think there was a small link I could have clicked on to cancel the upgrade, but I didn't see it (because that's how they wanted it).

The only way this is better is that users will no longer click the X on these popups without reading them, so they won't be as shocked when they see their new desktop. I might also give them a little prep time if they know what they're doing. That's as much credit as I'll give MS on this.

http://arstechnica.com/information-techn...icrosoft-10000/

"...this payout is hard to interpret as anything other than an invitation for other disgruntled Windows 10 recipients to take legal action against Microsoft."

That was absolutely the first thought to hit my mind when I read the story.

tanstaafl.

I heard about that. Frankly, I can't say that it's an unreasonable number considering the potential harm to her business.

To this point, I'd say I've assisted about a dozen customers with issues relating directly to the Windows 10 upgrade. While it certainly helps my business, I feel badly for the people who received this "free" upgrade and ended up with a broken computer that they had to hire me to fix.

Crazy.

I had my laptop "upgrade" its self to W10 one night, so I decided to give it an honest try. I deleted all the store crap, bought a couple of utilities to replace lost functionality, and tried to install all the stuff I need when on a site visit. That was a few months ago.

Finally, I gave up, and I'm reinstalling W7. I just need stuff to work without spending 2.5K usd on updated softwares that don't get me anything.

MS did break the update function for 7. I downloaded the final rollup, and it's been "searching for updates on this computer" for about 30 hours at this point. I suspect it'll never finish.

That's a reason Microsoft is pushing so hard to get people to Windows 10 as it has a completely new update system.

The old update system is pretty much collapsing under it's own weight. Heard some pretty bad horror stories from some former MS employees. Helped explain why over time I was noticing more and more Microsoft products move away from it. Visual Studio and Office switched to other update methods over the past few years.

I've had the same issue a few times, and there is a solution. Use the WSUS offline tool to download as many updates for the machine in question as possible, which will take a little while but does actually work. Once those have been installed, the windows update will work correctly.

This solution has worked for me on several machines over the last few months, and for several friends, so it seems solid. The tool is pretty good.

Of course, you'll probably want to install GWX control panel or Never10 before you apply the updates in any case or all the telemetry and windows 10 malware will get right back in there, rummaging around in your bits and making you feel dirty...

pca

Woah, I'm very curious what kind of software you're using.

I've also had the problem of needing to replace some software, but everything seems to be working, for the most part. Then again I use mostly small, free utilities. I'm happy that my old favorite, CDBurnerXP, still works on 10. Funny, for a program with "XP" in the name

I got bitten by the forced 10 upgrade and so far I haven't had any problems at all. Everything seems to work properly, from GoToAssist to Tivo Desktop to Picasa.

I'm going to have to find worthwhile start menu tiles, though. At the moment I've removed every single tile that MS loads up the system with except for the weather, which I've made maximum size and still never look at. I pretty much only use the start menu to get to settings.

I just turned on my W7 workstation that's been off the last 8mos.

Made sure to run Never10 before letting it connect.

The next windows update took a long time. At least a day.

Wait. What?

Microsoft's Windows 10 nagware goes FULL SCREEN in final push

Ugh...

Patrick, that WSUS thingy really did the trick. Thanks!

Glad to have helped!

It's got me out of a few holes. I personally think windows 7 is the most usable version of windows so far, which is, admittedly, like saying that this turd over here is the most polished one, but... Unfortunately, considering the sheer amount of windows only software I have to run for various work related reasons I don't have a choice.

pca

Personally I think Windows peaked at 2000, and XP was only marginally worse (in the beginning). I only started running 7 when I got drives too big for XP to recognize. Clearly 10 is just an attempt to ape IOS and install a "store".

So, it took me several days to get the laptop running on 7 again and I got my car reader app running under the XP virtual machine, so all is good. I should send an invoice to MS for all that time...

2000 was my favourite too.