
Windows 10 to be a recommended update in early 2016 - tehmaco
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2015/10/29/making-it-easier-to-upgrade-to-windows-10/
======
halite
I've never been as frustrated with a windows update as this one. First, I've a
small machine with SSD that I use as media center running windows 7, this
humongous download (which happened overnight without any consent) killed that
machine. Since then I've it switched to linux and things are much better.

Second I know an elderly couple who doesn't know much about computers. When
they got the prompt for upgrade, they didn't even think it was an operating
system upgrade. They thought it was another windows update. Next morning they
couldn't do anything as the start button wouldn't work, printers were gone,
email settings were gone, critical error message when they click edge etc. Now
for a tech savvy person, it wouldn't be a problem and you can easily fix these
but they live far from city, like about a good 2 hour drive. Since I'm closest
to them, this weekend I'll be making a trip there and fixing it wasting around
6-7 hours of my life just because of windows 10. Thanks Microsoft!

~~~
mintplant
On a related note: with Linux as my daily driver, I don't understand how the
average Windows user deals with Microsoft's implementation of automatic
updates.

Say I just woke up, and I'm in a rush to boot up my computer, print out a
paper, and get out the door. But--surprise! Windows Update ran in the
background the night before, and now system startup is delayed half an hour or
more to configure a new batch of patches.

On the one hand, from a security standpoint, I appreciate that the default is
to keep users' systems up-to-date. On the other, it seems that Microsoft
pushes this with little regard for their users' time or comfort.

~~~
makecheck
Exactly. Startup or wake-up is the worst possible time to start a bunch of new
processes because it is the one time that the user has _explicitly told you
that they want to start using their device immediately_. Virtually _any_ other
time -- even a RANDOMLY chosen time -- would be less likely to be in the
user's way!

Microsoft is far from the only offender of course (a PlayStation comes to
mind, for example) but system designers really need to start using their
brains on this.

~~~
niyazpk
Firefox used to run its updates during startup too (not sure if it does
still), and this is one of the reasons why I switched.

When I am in a rush to check something online, I don't want to waste 5 minutes
updating anything.

------
falcolas
<horse class="dead">

If this were like any other Windows OS upgrade in the past, I'd be OK with
this. But... it's not. It adds a lot of tracking, reporting, and some
(currently innocuous) uncontrollable communication back to Microsoft. I guess
it really is time to do the cost/benefit analysis of a single company
collecting all of this information from my gaming rig.

</horse>

~~~
simias
Honestly regardless of whether Windows 10 is good or not I can't stand MS
pushing this update down my throat.

I have a Windows 7 computer that I use mainly for gaming and having those
notifications pop up randomly is infuriating, it behaves like some crappy
adware that comes bundled with IE toolbars.

No option to turn it off either, you have to manually uninstall a bunch of
updates if you want to get rid of it. And I almost believed the "but MS has
changed" crowd. I really hope Valve manages to bring gaming on linux so that I
never have to bother with this crappy OS anymore.

~~~
antsar
> _I really hope Valve manages to bring gaming on linux_

Not sure which games you play, but most of my favorites turned out to be
available on Steam for Linux. I made the switch after W10's release and have
hardly regretted it.

~~~
optimiz3
Maybe...Elite: Dangerous, Star Citizen, or anything made by Blizzard? It's
disingenuous to act like all you need is Steam.

~~~
Elhana
Anything made by Blizzard works in Wine just fine. Switched to Linux only
years ago. I remember I was already playing WoW WotLK in Ubuntu with Wine.

------
blisterpeanuts
I just installed a $79 OEM Windows 7 to an Intel NUC[1], and I have some
questions about upgrading.

1\. Why upgrade? Windows 7 seems like a good, stable OS that stays out of my
way and lets me get work done. Newer versions have these funky tiles and touch
interface, neither of which I want or can even use.

2\. I've heard if I let my Win 7 install "important Windows updates", one of
the updates is nagware to persuade me to update to Win10. Can that be turned
off? Will it violate my privacy?

3\. The article says you get up to 31 days to try Win10 and still be able to
roll back to your previous OS. Why only 31 days? Why not 60? Why not 10,000?
Does some irrevocable change occur to the hard disk after 31 days that renders
it incapable of supporting Windows 7?

4\. Will it cost money to update to 10 after next year? I'm not necessarily
opposed to paying for an upgrade if it's worth it -- it's a product that they
spent millions of dollars developing, after all -- but I don't like feeling
pressured. I'm just barely getting settled in with Win7, after all!

5\. Are there any reasons to stay away from 10? I've heard the anti-privacy
scare stories. Anything else? E.g. NSA back doors, or removed support for
interacting with Linux, or some such?

[1] (Originally I bought the NUC to be a quiet, compact Linux
server/workstation, but unfortunately the i5 model can't seem to run any of
the Linux distros I threw at it, whereas Windows installed flawlessly. My main
desktop has become a Mac Mini, actually :) [EDIT asterisks don't work :(]

~~~
abalos
1\. Windows 10 does offer a lot of performance improvements. Even if you don't
like the new interface, under the hood it's much faster. Even Windows 8 was a
lot faster.

2\. I think there is an option to ignore individual updates. You could
probably utilize that to get that to go away.

3\. Windows 10 literally saves a copy of your whole system running Windows 7
on the hard disk. That is deleted after 31 days.

4\. They claim that it will begin to cost money to upgrade starting next year.
Whether or not that becomes reality could go either way. My guess is that yes,
it will cost money just like a new Windows 10 build costs money now.

5\. You can turn off a good portion of the privacy-invading settings, but it's
still fairly invasive. Microsoft as a company has actually been ramping up
their support for other platforms which is kind of cool. I haven't heard about
any specific back doors in the Windows OS itself, but that doesn't mean they
aren't there. The OS is closed source, so it's really anyone's guess.

~~~
acqq
> 2\. I think there is an option to ignore individual updates. You could
> probably utilize that to get that to go away.

And then they push it again:

[http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/you-need-to-
stop-k...](http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/you-need-to-stop-
kb-3035583-from-installing-again/)

"Updates that have been hidden can appear again if a new version of the same
update is released. That’s the case with KB 3035583; not only has it received
an update (thus unhiding it), it’s status as an ‘Optional’ update has been
changed to ‘Important’."

This announcement today seems like they'll do it again, even stronger, with
revenge.

"Early next year, we expect to be re-categorizing Windows 10 as a “Recommended
Update”. Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the
upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device"

Windows 10 strikes back.

> 3\. Windows 10 literally saves a copy of your whole system running Windows 7
> on the hard disk

And if you really try downgrade, it doesn't work:

[https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-
US/80e4f83d-1...](https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-
US/80e4f83d-1529-4405-b8e3-d1d636f8b71c/task-scheduler-is-broken-after-
windows-10-downgrade?forum=win10itprogeneral)

"Task scheduler is broken after windows 10 downgrade"

~~~
abalos
Good to know about both of those. It's fairly ironic that it uses up a
significant portion of disk space for a "safe" copy of the original OS that
doesn't actually work..

------
acqq
> At any time during the first 31 days, you can go to “Settings->Update and
> Security->Recovery and Uninstall Windows 10” to return to your prior version
> of Windows.

My computer didn't work with Windows 10, contrary to their claim that it
would. The drivers I had on the notebook are "too old" and Intel doesn't
support the devices for Windows 8 or 10 but MSFT claimed in their "Update to
10" nagware that it would work. It doesn't. I've discovered that only after
two days of the immense number of the restarts of Windows 10, searching for
the possible causes and finding the posts related to my hardware on the web
forums.

And after I returned to Windows 7, it still presents "Upgrade to Windows 10"
and to decline I had to uninstall more updates and put some registry entries
which I had to search on the web (1). Far from easy to just say "it doesn't
work please don't bother me or make the goddamn drivers."

Oh, and the return to Windows 7 from 10 actually didn't work too -- it screwed
all the scheduled tasks (which were a part of the Windows 7 installation, not
the tasks I've made!) (2)

\---

1) This comment seemed to be the most useful: "This is totally unethical,
namely re-releasing KB3035583 after hundreds of thousands of people paid
technicians to have these removed."

[http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-
glitch...](http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-glitch-
results-in-accidental-windows-1#comment-2312386490)

2) "Task scheduler is broken after windows 10 downgrade"

[https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-
US/80e4f83d-1...](https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-
US/80e4f83d-1529-4405-b8e3-d1d636f8b71c/task-scheduler-is-broken-after-
windows-10-downgrade?forum=win10itprogeneral)

------
carlosrg
My sister upgraded to Windows 10 and was greeted by a blue screen every time
she tried to turn on the computer. Investigating online it seems it's some
kind of BIOS incompatibility but the manufacturer (Packard Bell, doesn't
operate in USA but it's relatively well known in Spain) doesn't provide BIOS
updates for that model. So we restored Windows 7 and lost an entire day. I'm
sure she's going to be very happy when she sees the Windows 10 nag _again_.

~~~
acqq
It's even worse than nag:

"Early next year, we expect to be re-categorizing Windows 10 as a “Recommended
Update”. Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the
upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device."

~~~
carlosrg
I hope they reconsider that, or they're going to have plenty of unhappy
customers searching for alternatives.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
According to Ars, MS is saying their number one support request is how to get
the Windows 10 upgrade.

Not saying I believe that, just repeating what I read.

~~~
rjbwork
I definitely believe it. Something free that isn't the windows 8 people hated
but eventually adopted? Most people just think "yes plz"

------
toxican
> Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade
> process to automatically initiate on your device.

Oh great! Can't wait to get a million phone calls about this one.

~~~
rbanffy
Telcos demanded this feature. ;-)

------
prodmerc
I disabled Windows Updates and I still get the update to 10 notification.

Cortana doesn't work in most countries (why? just why? I speak English ffs).

10 will know more about me than Facebook and Google combined (don't really
care, but it's a bad thing imo).

No thanks, I'm happy with 7.

------
brianmcc
_Lesson_. It's not a "learning", it's a _lesson_. Stop inventing nouns we
don't need.

(I know, the horse has bolted long ago, no pointing harrassing this stable
door. I will blame too many choccy biscuits after lunch...)

~~~
talmand
Where I'm from, when someone needed some "learnin'" it usually didn't mean
something fun and awesome to the person that needed a lesson. It has its uses.

~~~
brianmcc
All for new words to help with disambiguation :-)

~~~
biot
Your sentence appears to be lacking both a subject and verb.

------
throwawayaway
It makes no odds. The most egregious intrusion of Windows 10, the wonderful
keylogger 'diagtrack.dll' has been backported to 8.1 and 7 and installs under
different than advertised Microsoft KB updates.

So it really is time to move to Linux.

------
batrat
Upgraded all windows machines to Windows 10. I'm so happy now. Much better.
People that say "i moved to linux", we all did this at a point in time But
like all Apple users, "I don't have time to troubleshoot, I need to get things
done". Windows 10 did this for me till now. Everything works out of the box,
no problem.

------
jussij
As someone who just moved to Windows 10 with all new hardware, my advice would
be just don't do it!

Windows 7 is a much better version of Windows than Windows 10 will ever be so
my suggestion would be wait a few years.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
Can you provide some specifics?

~~~
jussij
I can't provide any specifics other than to say I've used all these version of
Windows over my lifetime:

    
    
        Windows 3.x
        Windows for Work Groups
        Windows 95
        Windows Me
        Windows XP
        Windows Vista
        Windows 7
        Windows 10
    

Of all those systems, Windows 10 is by far the worst system I have had to use.

Everything has changed, nothing works like it once did, things that should
would just don't work!

But wait, not everything is bad. It does boot really fast!!!

I purchased all new hardware and took Windows 10 as the $AUD 250.00 OS option.

I could have got Windows 7 as a cheaper option and should have done so......

~~~
UK-AL
Still no specifics

~~~
jussij
OK, here is an example.

I ran into the all too common Start Button not working issue:

[https://www.techmesto.com/fix-start-menu-broken-
windows-10-t...](https://www.techmesto.com/fix-start-menu-broken-
windows-10-technical-preview/)

After about three days I found out this was cause by me changing the location
of the users Document and Setting folder, using the Location option as
provided by Windows 10 itself.

To cut a long story short, DON'T TOUCH the location of that folder as it will
break lots of things in Windows 10.

Also Windows 10 puts a new GUI layer over everything, so of course all your
years of Windows knowledge is lost.

And here's another example of why that is just stupid.

There is a new GUI to create new user accounts and it is very easy to create
new accounts, that is until the button stops working. You click on the button
but nothing happens. No message, no nothing.

So when that happens what do you do?

You spend another two days searching, only to find the solution is to bypass
the Windows 10 GUI and hit the old Windows layer using this bit of magic:

    
    
        Open command prompt in Admin mode
        control userpassword2
    

Running that command gives you the old Windows 7 user management dialog.

Finally, Windows 10 seems to have an annoying intermittent habit of not
understanding focus and z-order.

You click on a button and nothing happens.

You click on the button again and nothing happens.

You click on the button a third time and this time you notice the task bar
flicker, only to find you have three new instances all hiding behind the
current application.

That seems to happen a lot in the Settings panels.

~~~
jussij
And here is another example of stupid change for the sake of change.

In all previous Windows you could select and application using the start menu,
right click and use the send to option to create a desktop shortcut.

Windows 10 has no such option.

To create a shortcut in Windows 10 you have to use the option to open the
folder in explorer and from there you can then create the desktop short-cut.

~~~
jussij
And here is another issue that has just started to occur on a rather annoying,
regular basis. Right click on the task bar, hoping to bring up a menu so you
can select the task manager to kill an errant application.

Instead you get a pop up menu that display, each menu item but without any
text. So you get a popup menu a few millimetres in width.

Needless to say it is a useless, unusable popup menu, but luckily a reboot
does fix the issue.

------
andor
If they really wanted to make it easy to update, they could offer a
downloadable installer image that installs cleanly with any Windows 7-10
license key. And by downloadable I mean an ISO image on a website, not through
a "media creation tool" that requires the same operating system.

It's much easier to install/update some Linux distributions, and I don't think
that's in their best interest.

~~~
ac29
[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-
download/windows10I...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-
download/windows10ISO)

Not a "media creation tool", doesnt require windows. Just the ISO.

------
CyberDildonics
Thank god. I don't have windows 10 yet so I have to send microsoft all my
keystrokes, browser history and dick pics manually and it's wasting a lot of
my time.

------
fencepost
I wish I'd noticed this earlier in the day, but it may be worth looking at GWX
Control Panel ([http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-
stopper-t...](http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-stopper-to-
permanently-remove.html)) which provides simple steps to temporarily or
permanently remove the (current) "Get Windows 10" system tray icon along with
making the Registry changes to block upgrades from happening in Windows
Update. It'll also let you easily remove the downloaded 5-6GB of Windows 10
upgrade files if they're already on the system.

------
bargl
This may explain how they accidentally turned the auto update on a few months
ago (that ended up forcing a few people to upgrade to 10). They were probably
changing this from an Upgrade to an Update and it got out into the wild.

------
ionised
My recommendation is to completely avoid Windows 10, unless you are a heavy PC
gamer. In which case you'll need it eventually for DirectX 12.

If you are a PC gamer then install Windows 10 and use only a local account,
disable all of its cloud integration, disable all the telemetry and logging
and use a third party firewall to block anything else that the OS options do
not let you disable.

Then use another machine with another operating system like Linux that doesn't
behave like it owns you and your entire system, for all your other
personal/professional computing needs.

~~~
MichaelGG
I'll end up on W10 as it seems inevitable. Mostly I want it as a VMware "KVM
mode" (fullscreen, takes over all input) host, due to Windows having better
driver, power, and suspend/resume support. I'd love to run VMware directly on
Linux but don't like the idea of dicking with drivers for even two hours.

------
ep103
Can anyone give a non-biased, fact based report on what Microsoft tracks and
sends to their servers on Windows 10? I've seen a lot of stories claiming that
Windows 10 is free because it tracks just about everything, and sends it all
to MS servers.

~~~
pcunite
"Trust" with any OS is questionable. If you need that level of trust, you need
an edge device that deeply inspects each packet.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
But do Linux distributions like Debian and OpenSuse send feedback to some
server? I doubt there's enough of an organization to even care, let alone
engineer that kind of infrastructure. Well, Suse and Redhat, maybe. Ubuntu,
almost definitely. But Linux seems safer from prying eyes than the commercial
OS's.

~~~
Asmod4n
The Desktop search of Unity (Ubuntu) returned suggestions from Amazon.

~~~
Spivak
And they're still getting shit for it. The community tore them apart when it
happened. The fact that they even considered such a thing means my distro
recommendation is now permanently anything not Ubuntu/Ubuntu based.

It's an inevitability that people are going to make user-hostile Linux distros
that take advantage of users ignorance, some already exist, but that shouldn't
be a black mark on those distros that do it right and respect their users.

------
snake_plissken
If you want to get rid of the prompt and the upgrade, remove update KB3035583.
You'll also want to hide it by right clicking the update and selecting "Hide
Update" from within the available updates dialog area. This will stop Windows
Update from installing it over and over and over again. Which it will do if
you don't hide it.

Also, it looks like for those like myself that have done this, it now appears
to be a stand alone update with no KB identifier. You can do the same thing to
this update; just Hide it! This work around will probably be overridden by
some future update, but it will give you temporary respite from this windows
10 upgropalypse.

~~~
vetinari
Don't worry, Microsoft will helpfully unhide it for you, so in the next batch
of updates it will get installed.

In other words, carefully check the updates. I had to hide it again several
times already. I shouldn't have to do that :(

------
pcunite
My understanding is you get a prompt. You must click a "Next" or something to
that effect to actually upgrade to Windows 10.

~~~
DangerousPie
Yes:

> Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade
> process to automatically initiate on your device. Before the upgrade changes
> the OS of your device, you will be clearly prompted to choose whether or not
> to continue. And of course, if you choose to upgrade (our recommendation!),
> then you will have 31 days to roll back to your previous Windows version if
> you don’t love it.

~~~
marcosdumay
I guess the follow-up question is: Will it keep asking you to upgrade after
you say no?

~~~
vetinari
Is there even "No" button? Or just "Upgrade now" and "Upgrade later"?

As far as I remember, in gwx there was no such option as "no, thank you, I
will keep my current OS".

------
hauget
"to be a recommended update" so what the hell is it now? It's impossible to
get rid of that damn upgrade notification.

------
acqq
> _If you are on a metered connection_ on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, then you
> have the option of turning off automatic updates.

Can I declare somehow my connection "metered" or is this something MSFT
decides?

~~~
talmand
You can turn off automatic updates regardless of your internet connection
situation.

~~~
acqq
On Windows 10 Home not unless it's "metered" connection. But how to declare my
connection "metered"?

~~~
talmand
[http://www.howtogeek.com/224471/how-to-prevent-
windows-10-fr...](http://www.howtogeek.com/224471/how-to-prevent-
windows-10-from-automatically-downloading-updates/)

~~~
acqq
Thanks. Still, automatic updates _can 't be disabled on the Home edition of
Windows 10_. So much for "We understand you care deeply." They understand, but
they don't want to let you. At least not without paying them premium.

------
xdinomode
Linux Mint Master Race!!!!

------
makecheck
Also discussed here.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10475272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10475272)

------
v4n4d1s
Currently getting some new hardware with support for VT-d/IOMMU to run Games
and other heavily graphic applications in virtualized windows environments.
([https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multiheaded-
NVIDI...](https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multiheaded-NVIDIA-
Gaming-using-Ubuntu-14-04-KVM-585/)). I really have to get rid of any
microsoft software running directly on my hardware.

~~~
thomnottom
Good read. I looked into this a few years ago when I first started my switch
to Linux but never convinced myself to buy a second video card. Now it might
be worth a try again as I am loath to dual boot and therefore haven't touched
any Windows-only games in a while.

------
cballard
I'm an OS X user - why are they waiting so long? Shouldn't it be the
recommended OS from day one?

I hope that OS updates eventually become like browser updates - they just
happen and you don't notice. Seamlessly on the latest.

~~~
prodmerc
Are you kidding? Major OS updates should never be unsupervised/without notice.
Every time, there's some major __ckup that makes something unusable...

