
Windows 7 computers are  automatically starting the Windows 10 upgrade - mendelk
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4a0asv/warning_windows_7_computers_are_being_reported_as/
======
acqq
Maybe the way to block it is still:

[https://support.microsoft.com/en-
us/kb/3080351](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351)

    
    
        Subkey: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
        DWORD value: DisableOSUpgrade = 1
    
    

The MSFT decision to perform forced updates is covered, for example, by
Extreme Tech, February 2:

"Look out: Microsoft shifts Windows 10 to ‘Recommended’ update, automatic
download"

[http://www.extremetech.com/computing/222326-look-out-
microso...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/222326-look-out-microsoft-
shifts-windows-10-to-recommended-update-automatic-download)

I still believe they shouldn't have done that and I hope they get sued,
heavily. Even if nobody dies, it's not OK. People had fully working computer
and some of them wont. I have one such computer, which works on Windows 7 but
doesn't on Windows 10.

~~~
justinclift
I'm really hoping this crap badly affects the computers of some large
justice/gov systems around the world (and/or the home computers of senior
judges).

That should get the right people involved for sticking the boots in.

~~~
saidajigumi
If the IT staff for any large organization hasn't reviewed their inventory for
affected systems and taken appropriate steps... that's outright incompetence.
The writing has been on the wall for years and MS clearly documents unaffected
systems (which includes Windows 7 Enterprise) and the required Group Policy to
block the update[1].

[1] [https://support.microsoft.com/en-
us/kb/3080351](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351)

~~~
acqq
It's the same link I've already given above? And fascinatingly for you, "the
writing was on the wall," and for some other commenters, it's unimaginable
that it even happens. The perceptions of individuals are really hugely
different.

~~~
tekklloneer
The difference in context is important. If you're working in IT, the writing
was on the wall.

~~~
chris_wot
There are literally millions of businesses with no IT department who bought
consumer workstations or laptops running outside of a domain. There are
millions of small businesses who literally don't have the expertise (or
frankly, the need) to run a domain controller, and who certainly don't have
enough money to justify purchasing a server and a Windows server license to do
so.

I'm genuinely curious as to whether I'll be down voted for this. It's
completely the case, and I'm not asking not to be downvote do, but could folks
at least explain why they don't like the comment?

------
erickhill
This upgrade occurred to my father's Dell laptop, which became hung during the
install and essentially "locked" from his standpoint. (He lives in another
state and I'm not able to assist his technical needs.)

In any case, he took it to Office Max where he bought it and asked them to fix
it. They did: they wiped his hard drive clean and installed Windows 10.

With none of his files.

Aggressive updating of an OS is not always a good thing, even with the best of
intentions. It feels more like a desperate attempt to force some people into a
world they don't want to be in so Customer Support can have a better time of
it (I doubt customer support is having a better time of it right now).

~~~
ZenoArrow
Does your father still have the laptop? If so, ask him not to use it until you
can get hold of it, and when you do I'd suggest running a Linux live distro on
the machine with tools to recover deleted files, there's a decent chance
you'll be able to recover many of them.

I've had success with the tools included in Trinity Rescue Kit before, so I
can recommend that to you. I've used it to recover a bunch of pictures that
were lost with a drive reformat.

[http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?content=TRINITY_RESCUE...](http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?content=TRINITY_RESCUE_KIT____CPR_FOR_YOUR_COMPUTER&front_id=12&lang=en&locale=en)

~~~
erickhill
Probably a lost cause. He had over 4K photos that he had taken in the 70s
digitized from slides and organized.

All that work was blown away. He has digi backups of the files, but all the
organization and notes are gone.

He's 77 with a quad-bypass in December, and the thought of starting over is,
well, depressing for him. Not sure he's going to even try at this point.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "He's 77 with a quad-bypass in December, and the thought of starting over
> is, well, depressing for him."

I'm sorry to hear that.

> "Not sure he's going to even try at this point."

I'm not suggesting he tries, I'm suggesting you try on his behalf.

~~~
erickhill
That's the trouble - the organization isn't simply by date. It was by country
- he travelled everywhere. He would actually know what goes where... But my
brother (who helped him the first time) might remember what to do.

Will give it a shot.

------
IgorPartola
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Windows badly needs a
better update mechanism. This has been a huge pain point for consumers for a
long time, which often results in buying new hardware instead of updating the
browser, etc.

On the other hand I think this will drive people away from Windows and towards
OS X and Ubuntu.

Oh right, there is no downside to this!

~~~
ross-life
> On the other hand I think this will drive people away from Windows and
> towards OS X and Ubuntu.

They already pushed too far. Was a life long Windows user, used at home for
gamedev and Steam, chosen at work (mainly QA) because it's what I knew
extensively, VS is great and it's what users used. Was literally the only
Windows user in a sea of OS X machines at some companies.

Now? All my personal and work devices run Ubuntu or Arch. My partners devices
now all run Ubuntu or Arch. Projects I'm planning that were going to be
"Windows first" will now be "Linux first".

Sounds silly, but I was _enjoying_ the progress Windows was making security-
wise. From Vista to 7 and 7 to 8 (and even to 10) the "under-the-hood" part of
Windows seemed to be making great strides in protecting the user, even if they
were screwing up the UI.

But everything they've pulled with 10 have completely pushed me away from the
platform. Adverts in my OS? The nagging? The "updates can be installed even if
you really don't want them"? Phone-homeing I can't turn off at all with a
consumer edition? I understand wanting to make it hard to turn it off so they
can collect reliable stats or protect the consumer from themselves but as a
technical user I want my OS to do exactly what I want it to do. MS completely
killed that.

~~~
Terr_
IMO Microsoft has completely pissed-away huge amount of accumulated techie-
goodwill in an astonishingly short period of time.

I think it's due to how much of it really does look like malice (or at _least_
disrespect for computer-owners) rather than mere incompetence.

------
xpaulbettsx
As the lead developer of the Slack Windows app, this move is absolutely
phenomenal for me. Win7 is a huge proportion of our support tickets and causes
us no end of grief.

To put what these Windows users are doing in perspective, Windows users are
holding onto an OS that was released at the same time as OS X 10.6, and not
only doing it, but _demanding_ that developers support this version. If you
asked any Cocoa developer to support Snow Leopard, they'd laugh you out of the
room.

~~~
Can_Not
Windows 7 support is a critical feature of slack for me. Every version of
Windows after 7 is increasingly some kind of year 2000 era flip phone OS/dark
age of computers BS. It's 10 steps forward, 1000 steps back.

So what exactly do windows 7 users call in about? Is that because there is
some major API difference between 7 and 8 or is does it represent people who
buy computers less often?

~~~
xpaulbettsx
> So what exactly do windows 7 users call in about? Is that because there is
> some major API difference between 7 and 8 or is does it represent people who
> buy computers less often?

Windows 7 doesn't have a notifications / toast API which means we have to
implement notifications ourselves. It _also_ lets you turn off desktop
composition and throw the UI into a completely different rendering path, which
Electron doesn't support properly, so we then have to implement notifications
_again_ in a fallback software rendering only way. It also doesn't have a
spellchecking API, so we get to ship Hunspell in-box and deal with updating
dictionaries, the list goes on and on

~~~
Can_Not
For support and/or programming (in the context of slack), is Linux generally
better or worse than windows 8/10?

~~~
xpaulbettsx
Linux is a mixed bag - while it's actually way easier to support in general
and people write in with _way_ more detailed actionable feedback, it also has
its fair share of glitches, especially around video hardware.

------
mynameishere
Here's the update:

[https://support.microsoft.com/en-
gb/kb/3035583](https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/3035583)

...that explains the Windows 10 update, but on my machine it just says
"Install this update to resolve issues in Windows. _blah blah blah_ " which is
the same boilerplate they all use. The update size is uniquely given as a
range 722 KB - 821 KB, which is probably a low estimate for an OS installer.
So, no indication of the magnitude of this. Since it isn't a security update,
anyone with a properly-configured system (IMO) shouldn't be bothered by it.
Unless Microsoft updates it to a "security update". Which seems possible.

The whole "auto update and restart" thing seemed like a _potentially_ global-
scale Therac-25 style bad idea when I first heard about it on Windows XP (or
whenever). But it never happened--I guess not too many critical systems use
Windows. Just millions of people losing millions of hours of productivity...

~~~
ploxiln
That's just for the (non-removable) button in the taskbar. There are in fact a
number of different updates related to the upgrade from windows 7 to windows
10.

------
foxyv
Prompted by Windows 10 privacy issues, I switched to Mint on my laptop
recently and was pleasantly surprised. I've been constantly trying to switch
to Linux but having to revert because of driver incompatibility. That has
completely changed in the past 3 years.

It makes my laptop feel speedy again. Before it was really slow with Microsoft
sitting on top of it. I recently slapped an SSD into it and it's even better.
Turned a no starter laptop into a real machine.

It's still not an operating system that can be used by new users, but I have a
lot of fun with it. It helps a lot that Steam has a Linux client now and I
don't play many big name titles.

Windows 10 isn't that bad if you don't mind buying a new computer, but I think
it may be the bane of people like my parents who use a computer for 10 years
without upgrading. You would think that with the minimal changes to the
Windows kernel that the driver support wouldn't be an issue. The invasive
marketing and privacy violations aren't anything new. Just more so.

~~~
mreams
I recently switched to Mint from Windows 8.1 and it's been shockingly easy. I
run triple monitors at work and I was worried getting them all working was
going to be a terrible experience. A coworker who runs Ubuntu offered to help
me get it set up, but in the time it took for him to get a cup of coffee and
come back, I had installed the driver Mint recommended and everything just
worked. It runs great on my laptop too, so far I haven't had any driver
issues.

Not all of my steam games run under linux but quite a few of them do and the
ones I've tried so far have run just as well as they do under windows.

------
innertracks
Dual booting with Fedora. I voluntarily upgraded the Win 7 partition to give
it a whirl a while back. They said I would have 30 days to go back.

Less than 24 hours later ... Nope.

The only place I want Windows running on my personal hardware is in a VM. Done
with them.

------
untog
I use Windows Media Center on my machine so I'll be pretty irritated if it
automatically upgrades - MS removed it in Windows 10.

~~~
swampthinker
Why not VLC?

~~~
untog
I think you're thinking of Media Player, not Media Center.

Media Center is a whole DVR package, consumes TV streams, TV guide data,
recordings, can be connected to an Xbox 360... and so on.

~~~
swampthinker
Ah, gotcha.

------
makecheck
This is probably like having your car towed: technically there’s something
that says they are allowed to do it but you sure as hell don’t expect it to
happen, you don’t want it to happen, it will cost you time and money and at
the wrong time it could really screw you. Thanks, Microsoft!

------
dageshi
At some point recently windows update on windows 7 decided to change settings
from "tell you about updates and you choose when to download and install them"
to "I'll download everything and nag you to death with countdown timer until
you update"

The _most_ infuriating thing about that being that if you turn your computer
on in the morning from hibernation go make a coffee and get some breakfast, by
the time you come back your computer has restarted (because apparently who
cares you weren't logged in and your screen was still locked, fuck you we're
forcing a restarting and you're losing any unsaved work, bad luck sucker!)

I killed the windows update service permanently it infuriated me so much.

~~~
jpindar
When you say "killed permanently", do you mean more than just disabling the
service, and if so, what? I have it disabled but I don't trust Microsoft not
to somehow override that.

~~~
yaegers
I also disabled the service "Windows Update" in services.msc.

Interesting thign happened. I stopped the service but left it on "Automatic
(Delayed Start)". Came back a while later and the service was magicall
restarted. Could have been anticipated by me. So I stopped the service again
and set it to "Manual". Came back a while later and, you guessed it, Windows
Update service was restarted. So I now set it to "deactivated". That was
yesterday. I am really curoous to see if it still comes back to life.

------
37prime
We’ve been getting a lot of calls from home clients since last Tuesday that
their computer now runs Windows 10. There are still some printer and software
issues, which were the reasons why they arestill running Windows 7.

------
davesque
This happened to my co-worker just the other day. He develops native windows
software so it was pretty annoying for him.

~~~
Bedon292
Yeah, a couple of mine had it over the weekend too. One with good results, and
doesn't care. The other with a couple fails in the house that had to spend
time to reinstall from scratch.

------
mchahn
Wouldn't the automatic upgrade mean you didn't agree to any T&C?

~~~
krapp
You did agree if you set Windows Update to automatically install updates. The
upgrade to Window 10 is being treated as an "update".

~~~
unclebucknasty
Unless the auto-update terms in Windows Update expressly state that using it
means you agree to any future, unknown terms that may apply to those updates,
then agreeing to automatic updates would not be sufficient.

That is, unless the terms for Windows 10 are exactly the same as the version
from which you are upgrading. That hardly seems likely, given that it is free
and comes with new features, such as advertising, etc.

~~~
krapp
All I can tell you is that it's listed under optional updates, and it's
automatically checked[0].

[0][https://imgur.com/wOO1jzz](https://imgur.com/wOO1jzz)

------
deelowe
uhh. Could this not set them up for a lawsuit? I mean, I assume and argument
could be made that there's some liability involved in MS screws up the
installation or if some program fails to continue to function. This should be
fun to watch.

~~~
ourmandave
I just got upgraded Saturday and the EULA specifically says that you can't
bring a class action lawsuit against them. They want you to try arbitration
for 60 days and if that doesn't work then you can try small claims. Yeah,
sure.

Anyway I had two problems afterwards.

It logged me into a TEMP account so no config changes were saved and my files
appeared to be all missing. They weren't, it just the shortcuts all point to
the C:\users\TEMP\ directories. There's a few fixes for that one. Mine was
checking the box that stopped OneNote from auto loading at start up.

After a reboot the start menu went away. The logo button is there but the menu
doesn't come up. I found a site with a few fixed and tried them all in
succession. I don't know which one solved it because I only rebooted after
doing all of them.

So now I have 30 days to downgrade to Win 7 or forever hold my peace.

<backspaced off rant here />

~~~
ubernostrum
I know clickwrap EULAs have been contentious, but can a EULA for something you
didn't even ask for and didn't want in the first place be forced on you
against your will?

~~~
ourmandave
I had the option to not accept the EULA. In that case I was then free to not
install Windows 10 despite it "prepping my system for the update" for an hour.

I figured any attempt at a roll back at that point would have been worse than
just proceeding. =(

~~~
chris_wot
That's interesting. If the OS upgrades to Windows 10, does it prompt you to
accept a new EULA after upgrading? If so, what does it do if you don't accept
the new terms? And how can they ask you to accept terms AFTER upgrading?

~~~
cesarb
The comments at
[https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/49eahx/computer_up...](https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/49eahx/computer_upgraded_to_windows_10_without_my/)
say that, if you decline the EULA after installing, it rollbacks to the
previously installed version.

~~~
chris_wot
Bloody hell. And this rollback appears to be less than reliable.

Why not ask for the acceptance and _then_ upgrade?

Do we know what data is lost when a rollback occurs?

------
ac29
Is there any evidence this isn't just a bug? I admin several Win7 machines at
work, and haven't seen this behavior on any of them. I didn't do anything to
prevent automatic updates, or otherwise disable a path to Win10 (they all have
the upgrade available).

I can see how someone could accidentally install Win10, since windows update
has it automatically selected, but I have yet to see a machine just restart
itself and start installing Win10. The machines I have upgraded to Win10 took
many clicks to actually install - I can't imagine Microsoft would
intentionally let users skip the EULA at the very least.

My gut says at least half the people have accidentally initiated this update
and half are experiencing a bug -- my counter anecdata says this is NOT being
pushed to all Win7 users with automatic updates enabled.

------
awqrre
I hope that Microsoft don't survive their Windows 10 release...

~~~
lubos
Windows 10 was their last release.

~~~
awqrre
I know that it was their latest release, if that's what you meant...

------
ck2
GWX Control Panel
[http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/](http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/)

Solves all W10 upgrade worries.

~~~
Terr_
I'm not normally an open-source zealot, but I'd really like something a little
more... auditable.

~~~
ck2
Doesn't seemed to be maintained anymore but
[https://github.com/rn10950/I-Dont-Want-
Windows-10](https://github.com/rn10950/I-Dont-Want-Windows-10)

------
BuckRogers
MS is getting pretty draconian with the Windows 10 shtick. I'm not sure why
there's such a push, just let people buy a Windows 10 computer when the
Windows 7 machines fail.

Fighting MS on this is a losing battle, all the workarounds are going to be a
non-stop, futile exercise. Unless I have a specific needs for Windows, if this
makes anyone uncomfortable to read (like myself)- I think this is the ideal
time to jump on Mac, Linux Mint, Ubuntu Mate or Antergos.

~~~
spriggan3
> MS is getting pretty draconian with the Windows 10 shtick

They likely have a long term strategy around Windows 10, what it is I don't
know but I know for a fact that it requires pushing W10 on as much PC as
possible, whether the user wants it or not. I'm on W8. I will upgrade one day,
I don't want to do it now (I'm working with an old soundcard that barely
supports W8, so there is a risk with upgrading to 10), yet everyday I get a
"Upgrade to 10" popup which almost tricked me into upgrading once. They are so
aggressive about updating I fear this "free" upgrade might be a trap on the
long run. I feel like I'm no longer in control of some software I've bought(
yes, because licenses aren't free).

~~~
shostack
I recently bought a new Win10 laptop while giving up my Win7 desktop. I
honestly wouldn't have if I thought I could continue getting the most out of
my system (gaming and doing other fun things) well into the future.

I'm pissed off beyond belief about the egregious privacy overreach, but
realized that my info is already out there, so I just need to continue taking
whatever precautions I normally do and pretend like all my info is public
anyway.

That said, I can only imagine that the long-term play is to one day give
people a countdown on Windows 10 becoming a subscription, and you can either
pay it or lose access to everything (or be severely crippled or something).

That's the only angle I can think of, and it jives with their approach to
Office and everything else. They know damn well that people don't always want
something new (and often that is because of conflicting interests and them
pushing crapware like the privacy stuff), so they need the ability to control
whether that happens or not.

I personally am holding out for now with Windows 10, but if they ever pull
that move I will say to hell with it and fully switch to Ubuntu and do what I
can in terms of gaming (maybe buy a Playstation).

------
progman
Calm down and relax! Microsoft knows better than you what is good for you ;-)

Honestly, I ditched Windows since XP completely in favor of Linux, and it
turned out to be a very good decision.

MS' extremely unfriendly behavior to its customers is indication of
desparation. WinPhone failed against iOS and Android, and PC purchases are
shrinking continually. This means MS is shrinking continually, and they know
it very well.

------
electrotype
What do you think about this script on Voat? :
[https://voat.co/v/technology/comments/853510](https://voat.co/v/technology/comments/853510)

I'm really curious to know your opinion Hacker News. Is this a good way to
live with Windows 7 now? It seems to be open-source, easy to apply, it
disables telemetry and Windows 10 crap.

Any better alternatives?

~~~
newman314
Shutup10 and Spybot Anti-beacon

~~~
electrotype
And why those?

~~~
daveguy
Shutup10 gets rid of the nagware, anti-beacon stops the phone home.

------
daveguy
I am thankful that a random Windows update broke some of our software a few
weeks ago. It prompted me to disable all updates and allow only essential
updates. Small business so I'm it for IT. Never heard of kbwhateveritis
required to avoid the MS invasion. Thanks for breaking our system weeks ago
MS!

------
ionised
Meet the new Microsoft, same as the old Microsoft.

Seriously though, I hope they receive some major backlash for their behaviour
over the last few months. It's incredibly aggressive and anti-consumer.

~~~
CamperBob2
The old Microsoft would have been blasted into oblivion for doing this. For
some reason, the "new Microsoft" is getting a free pass on behavior that would
make Larry Ellison queasy.

------
lazzlazzlazz
Upgrading to Windows 10 from 7 requires a single button click after opening
the upgrade reminder in the task bar.

Dismissing the upgrade reminder is impossible and requires a registry edit:

[https://support.microsoft.com/en-
us/kb/3080351](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351)

Microsoft is a disgusting company, and I hope they are fully aware how much
social capital this has eroded.

------
pingec
Today I woke up to this message on my Windows 8.1:
[http://i.imgur.com/4jvC8Q0.png](http://i.imgur.com/4jvC8Q0.png)

They are not asking if I want to upgrade anymore, they are asking _when_ I
want to upgrade :/

------
Kenji
What a coincidence - 4 days ago I disabled auto updates on Windows 7 because
it would force me to restart all the time. I'm glad I did that. Forcing Win7
to Win10 Upgrade? Disgusting practice by Windows, will switch to Unix-based
systems asap.

------
api
Now with more ads, spyware, constant logging of everything you do to
Microsoft, and telemetry!

No thanks. I guess MS wants to cede the entire high-end market to Apple and
Linux and re-position themselves as a bargain basement low-end vendor of
spyware ridden junk.

~~~
largote
The high-end market is mostly gamers, which is 95%+ Windows.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Microsoft's Windows Store/UWP push has scared some game developers, most
notably causing Valve to make a Linux version of Steam and their own OS. A
concerted effort by the games industry could see Windows's market share fall
there.

~~~
shostack
Just got my new laptop with Win10 because I'm a gamer. That was pretty much
the only reason.

If they ever pull shit with Steam, are proven to have mishandled my data as
part of the telemetry bullshit (well, the stuff I couldn't disable, because I
spent half an hour trying to turn off all the various settings I could), or
ever force Windows into a subscription model, I'm done with gaming on Windows
for good and I'll suffer through the Linux gaming experience.

Hopefully by that point there will be enough weight behind it to make
switching an easy choice.

------
xufi
My logic: Time for another tool that goes deep in to the autorun.dll's and
deletes the update prompt..... Oh wait...

------
stcredzero
Funny, I've been trying to get my Windows 7 laptop to take the upgrade, but it
strangely won't.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Use a disc or the Media Creation Tool (which can directly start a Windows 10
install). Both methods are much more reliable than the Windows Update method.

------
cm2187
I wonder if there are pages on reddit commenting a comment page from HN...

~~~
skeletonjelly
[https://reddit.com/r/hackernews](https://reddit.com/r/hackernews)

------
robertelder
Re-posting my comment from the other thread which didn't get as much
attention:

I spent about 3 hours this week doing tech support for my mom over the phone
because of Windows 10's aggressive upgrading behaviour.

I told her to keep her the best way to keep safe security wise is to make sure
the os/browser is up to date, and because Windows 10 keeps asking to upgrade,
she went ahead and did so. After upgrading to Windows 10, all network access
(wired and wifi) stopped working completely. The worst part of this is that if
you can't get internet, you can't even download new drivers to try and debug
the problem. We tried a few things, and eventually just did a system restore
back to Windows 8, but unfortunately, the system restore didn't work
completely and there was more mucking around to try and get the computer into
a bootable state. Then, last night, she said the heard the fan making a lot of
noise, and looked down to see that Windows had gone ahead and started
installing Windows 10 again. Fortunately, wired network access works now, but
wifi is still broken. Hopefully Windows will push an update that fixes the
wifi access soon.

Also, there seems to be a number of people here commenting very strongly in
favour of Microsoft, which I find very surprising. Perhaps people from MS
trying to do damage control? Some people have doubted that Windows is doing
this automatically, but during the above debacle, my mother actually spent
time to make sure that 'Check for updates but let me choose whether to
download and install them' was selected. She even sent me a screenshot asking
if this would prevent Windows 10 from installing. A few hours later she had
Windows 10 again.

~~~
HelloMcFly
> Perhaps people from MS trying to do damage control?

While I appreciate the rest of your comment, I personally find comment like
these are obnoxious. I sincerely doubt that vote and comment brigading are
anywhere near as prevalent as reddit and this community seem to so routinely
imply. Perhaps I'm the naive one, but it is tiresome to so regularly see
comments (especially those close to one's own personal beliefs) consistently
labeled indicators of a social media PR campaign because someone _just can 't
believe_ they might be genuine.

Or maybe I should get my head out of the sand, I do not know.

~~~
existencebox
I'm going to make a few statements here to address the parent and children;
but let me put the normal disclaimers here: I ONLY can speak for myself, I do
not speak for MS or any of my coworkers.

Simply put, the sort of behavior implied (vote brigading) doesn't mesh with my
understanding of how I or any of my coworker/HN reader peers tend to behave. I
could be totally off the mark with this but it just doesn't mesh with the
culture I've been exposed to.

More relevantly however, and more in line with how I typically approach HN
threads regardless of topic, let me try and pose a more "occams razor"
explanation:

MS has been gaining a lot of positive press lately. The tech community WANTS
to see our biggest entities succeed and "do good". We hate seeing suggestions
that a "new convert" to the good side might have changed face again. Realizing
that a company can do both good and "evil" simultaneously is a degree of
mental dissonance I don't often see handled "cleanly" so to say.

Long and the short; I am not happy with the forced upgrades. I am still using
7, and would be rather irked if they broke everything for the sake of forcing
through content I do not want. However, I do tend to attribute much more naïve
explanations for the patterns we're seeing, over some sort of PR conspiracy.
There was a wonderful quote a while back, "we're not organized enough to be
that evil" :) I don't mean to be any sort of MS apologist in this, my comment
is entirely directed at the discussion regarding some degree of astroturfing,
if I got asked about my opinions on the updates, well, that's a whole can of
worms on its own and the remaining comments in the thread seem to speak to the
resounding sentiment in that respect.

~~~
shostack
Out of curiosity, are you an engineer there? If so I'm wondering how close you
are and how much visibility you have into the marketing and PR side of things
over there.

This strikes me as the kind of thing that engineers might be kept in the dark
about, but some PR agency somewhere may have outsourced something like this
and done so in a way as to provide plausible deniability. A quick googling
shows this wouldn't be the first time MS has resorted to astroturfing [1].

So while I don't doubt the sincerity of how you or any of your immediate
coworkers/HN reader peers tend to behave, I think the facts speak a bit more
clearly to the possibility of other parts of the MS organism being willing to
do this sort of thing.

[1] [https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&e...](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-
instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=microsoft%20astroturfing)

~~~
existencebox
I am, yes. My visibility has shifted depending on different orgs I've been in
(I've been in orgs where I'm entirely disconnected from the PR side of things,
and in others where I get regular mails from the marketing teams); I read some
of the links on the search you provided but they seem to denote "what I'd
expect", a worst case where a vendor goes too far in accomplishing a PR
objective, and while it's plausible that this is ongoing (as you say, I
CERTAINLY don't know what totally distinct marketing teams on contract are
doing) I'd note one thing: That in the well documented occurrences in the
past, it's typically been the more "standard" sort of native advertising dark
patterns that are becoming prevalent. I don't say this to excuse it in the
least; but to say that I tend to see "patterns" even in the more questionable
actions of a given entity, and even when I looked more deeply in said googling
I didn't find many concrete occurrences of that sort of truly grassroots
astroturfing. Enough accusations to raise an eyebrow for sure; but I'd point
out a few things on that as well: in some of the well documented cases, MS has
come forward and accepted accountability for the occurrence. While this could
absolutely be a post-factum face saving, the cost/benefit of enacting those
sorts of campaigns seems misaligned, at least to my eyes, that I'd be hard
pressed to think of any of the Marketing/PR people I've met taking that sort
of risk.

Again, there could certainly be degrees of separation, and as you accurately
state I can't in any way speak on that. My main goal was just to speak to the
best intentions and actions of the peers I've had the opportunity and
privilege to work with.

------
vc98mvco
If you ever asked yourself how does one feel when assimilated by the Borg...
now you know.

------
Laaw
Good, Windows 7 is a security problem (or will be, soon).

~~~
charonn0
In what way? I've been planning to remain on Windows 7 for the foreseeable
future and 7's security wasn't really on my radar.

~~~
21
Windows 8/10 has some newer security mitigations, so technically they are
somewhat harder to exploit.

------
Someone1234
Strangely nobody has ever caught this on video. Just a handful of anonymous
people claiming "I totally didn't hit the wrong button in the UI!!"

Now, sure, I'd agree it should be harder to accidentally upgrade your PC. In
particular for layman users. But I am generally skeptical that this is any
more than just user error until proven otherwise.

I have a Windows 7 PC I use regularly, I too get the upgrade prompts, but it
hasn't upgraded itself just as one counterpoint.

Someone needs to catch this on video.

PS - I flagged this article on purpose because I don't consider a random
Reddit thread to be a legitimate source.

~~~
ourmandave
No, it's forced. I came home from work and there was pop-up window which I
thought was the usual nag screen. It said my Windows 10 download was ready.

Except this one had a count down timer at around 54 minutes left. There was
also an option "I need more time...".

I X'd the box closed and went on thinking whatever.

54 minutes later, in the middle of typing an email, the system auto rebooted
and "Configuring Update for Wndows 10" screen came up.

I took pictures of it with my cell which are kind of blurry because it's hard
to have a steady hand during a good WTH rage.

~~~
Sindisil
If that's the dialog I think it is, there should be a cancel button that would
then roll back the update. Takes a good long while, and is BS of course, but
would land you back where you were.

Of course, they seem to be iterating on the update dialogs. I'm not saying
it's to get past those avoiding the update, but it's probably to get past
those avoiding the update.

~~~
cortesoft
Assuming you are there to respond to the dialog.... if you aren't, then the
timer will go off and it will be too late.

~~~
21
That happened to me. I was pushing the update a week away each time it
prompted me. But at one prompt I was out in the city.

When I arrived home, the computer was rebooted and upgraded to Windows 10...

The curious thing is that I have Bitlocker on all drives, including the system
one, and it asks for the password on boot. Somehow they got over that
(probably temporarily saved the key somewhere).

------
ocdtrekkie
This isn't news, and was announced _months_ in advance. Microsoft announced
back in October that they'd upgrade Windows 10 to a "Recommended update" in
February.

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/windows-10-upgrade-1.32965...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/windows-10-upgrade-1.3296511)

You can check in Windows Update whether or not to automatically apply
Recommended updates the same way you apply Important updates. By default, it
is checked. (By default, most users really _should_ upgrade to Windows 10.)

But, as with all Microsoft things, people will flip out like this wasn't
announced and they were totally blindsided because everything Microsoft does
is totally evil.

------
martinald
Sorry, why is this a big deal? We've completely accepted auto updates for
browsers (chrme & firefox) - years ago. Obviously better, compatibility
improves and security issues are easier to push out and fix. To me the browser
is as important as the OS, I spend the vast majority of my time in it.

Why should MSFT _not_ do this? It's a free update. They're not charging for
it. On many aspects, it's a lot better than Windows 7/8\. Maybe not to
everyone's taste, but Windows 7 is nearly 7 years old now. From what I can see
it performs better on older hardware than W7.

We accept that Android fragmentation is terrible and Google should be doing
more to fix it. Yet it seems the complete opposite reaction when MSFT tries to
fix their desktop fragmentation.

~~~
rabboRubble
Why is this a big deal? Why should MSFT not do this? Here are a couple of
reasons why...

Perhaps the machine hardware is not Win10 compliant

Perhaps a machine hosts software that requires significant regression testing
before permitting an upgrade to Win10

Perhaps the machine's software is not Win10 compatible and needs to be
rewritten before a Win10 upgrade

Perhaps the machine in question has specific greenzone periods and should not
be upgraded without an agreed outage schedule between IT provider and user
base. (Think banking, power generation, healthcare, airline sectors, etc.)

Perhaps your Mom owns the computer and you want to personally manage the
upgrade when you visit at Christmas instead of having to spend 6 hours on the
phone with her.

MSFT has no idea whether or not its _SAFE_ to automatically roll out an update
for their OS users. They make no effort to check hardware compliance status
with all hardware manufacturers. They make no effort to check the compliance
status of 3rd party software. They make no effort to ensure that critical
infrastructure systems (power, health, banking) individual greenzones are
followed to prevent unplanned outages.

~~~
sveiss
The upgrade notification system does make the effort to check against known-
bad hardware and software, including 3rd party software, and will warn and/or
block the upgrade if it's known to be incompatible.

As for managed machines, most won't be eligible for the upgrade to begin with
(domain joined, Windows 7 Enterprise), and the upgrade can be blocked entirely
via Group Policy or WSUS. Any sensibly managed machine in the environments you
mentioned won't be automatically upgraded.

Yes, the compatibility checks aren't perfect, and yes, making sure the update
isn't rolled out to managed machines requires that they actually be managed,
just like any other update Microsoft publish. But it's unfair to say they make
'no effort' to support these scenarios.

~~~
rabboRubble
My small sample of machines, manufacturer says machine not compatible, MSFT
still prompted me to install win10. If they are actually checking HW
compatibility they are doing a shitty job. Which means they shouldn't be
rolling anything out in this fashion.

On Reddit I read about medical devices getting automatically upgraded when
needed for a procedure. Maybe the hospital network was badly managed but that
does not excuse MSFT's auto rollout.

My point still stands that MSFT should not be automatically upgrading the OS
without significant user oversight, agreement.

