Is Microsoft getting more pushy with 10

[DaveLembke]

Here is a strange one...

Friend of mine had her laptop automatically try to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 8 two days ago. I figured she must have accidentally accepted to take the Windows 10 upgrade. Helped her to get back to 8 and all was well.

I fired up my spare computer running Windows 7 for first time in a week and am greeted with a message that my system is going to be upgraded to Windows 10 on May 25th. I DID NOT ACCEPT the free upgrade, but somehow my system was set to give me the Windows 10 upgrade.

Fortunately I caught this message and CANCELLED the process.

Anyone else seen where Windows 10 is on its own trying to install to systems?

I have 2 other systems running Windows 7 and I have black flagged the Windows 10 nagware KB 3035583 on them so they didnt get what appears to be an auto upgrade.

I guess I will have to black flag Windows 10 KB 3035583 to never install on this other system too.



[attachment deleted by admin to conserve space]

[BC_Programmer]

Is Microsoft getting more pushy with 10

Yep.

[Geek-9pm]

Push? Or Shove?

A few months back we we given the warning.
Updategate: Microsoft is about to make it even harder to opt out of Windows 10
Also:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/03/16/windows-10-stop-upgrade/

My own upgrade was fairly straightforward, but I did end up with a no-longer-functional webcam, a soundcard which required uncommonly convoluted manual driver installation, a couple of glitchy games and all my default programs reset to Microsoft’s own applications. Nothing major went wrong, but I still had to spend half a day fiddling, and that’s as someone who broadly knows what they’re doing. For someone less PC-savvy who just clicked the Upgrade button and trusted all will be well, that stuff’s a frightening mountain.

This could hurt Microsoft. If not already. 

[BC_Programmer]

I'm of the mind that Win10 is at best a lateral shift from 8.1. Though I suppose that's somewhat off-topic.

At this rate it would not surprise me if an automatic update would forcibly update to Windows 10 with no way to cancel it at all.

Their approach with KB3035583, the "Get Windows 10" program update, is incredibly sneaky and I would almost suggest malicious, even. Hiding an update will hide all future versions of that update, unless the new one is marked appropriately, in which case, it will appear again. Microsoft has released every new version of the GWX update with that mark; so any user who had hidden the update, will see it again and it will be automatically selected as well. This seems rather user-hostile; if a user, such as myself, has hidden the Get Windows 10 program, then it is not reasonable that any change to that program would change that, as it is the specific purpose of the program- upgrading to Windows 10- that I do not want to have performed on my systems.

The presence of advertisements within Windows 10 seems to partly explain why they want to get people onto Windows 10 so badly, considering that in terms of features it is rather lacking. (and usable features, moreso, do NOT get me started on VPN connections...) But besides displaying advertisements, there is also all that sweet, sweet information they will be gathering about how users use their PCs, what programs they run, for how long, etc. I'm sure there are a lot of interested third parties that would pay for that information. This may be why the Windows 10 EULA explicitly gives Microsoft sole proprietorship over the gathered information- "By accepting this agreement and using the software you agree that Microsoft may collect, use, and disclose the information"


EDIT: This is not conspiracy theory stuff here really, as there are certainly loads of perfectly legitimate uses for the gathered information to make various products better, the main concern here (IMO) is that individual users should be able to, at least, opt out of that collection if they desire.

[Geek-9pm]

Yesterday PC World  did an article on this topic.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3073457/windows/how-microsofts-nasty-new-windows-10-pop-up-tricks-you-into-upgrading.html

This morning, the unthinkable happened: My wife, an avowed PC user who long ago swore to never touch an Apple device, started shopping around for a Mac Mini. And it’s all thanks to Windows 10. Or rather, the nasty new way that Microsoft’s tricking Windows 7 and 8 users into automatically updating to Windows 10. 

[DaveLembke]

Thanks for all the info.. I was curious as to why the big push to 10 so forcibly. It appears that their master plan is coming to light. I have always been under the caution that nothing is free. *Yes some things are, but generally there is a hidden catch to free. Companies dont thrive by giving away product, and so I am more cautious when a company that has up til Windows 10 charged for everything and anything they possibly could giving away the most recent OS for free.

I took the upgrade on one of my systems, and that system has been offline for about 6 months. There is no draw to Windows 10 for me. And as BC stated its lacking some features as I also noticed. To me there is nothing special that Windows 10 has that makes me have to have it. Windows 7 does everything I need and all software I have works with it. Plenty of Driver Support for 7 as well. I had a old single-core Celeron M 1.6Ghz laptop that came with Windows 7 on it from prior owner who upgraded it from XP and I figured I might as well upgrade that to Windows 10. Maybe 10 is more efficient and will run better on a celeron M 1.6Ghz laptop. Started the process to upgrade that one and it complained that there was no driver available for Windows 10 for the Chipset, so the Integrated Intel Graphics had no Windows 10 driver support and a result of that, this laptop was blatting for it to be upgraded to 10, but the upgrade refused due to lacking drivers available for that older Intel Chipsets integrated Graphics.

I am hoping that after July 2016 the free upgrade annoyances will be killed off by microsoft since, it would be pointless after that point to suggest Windows 10... or would it?  It would be quite annoying if it remains and changes to something similar to what they did with Windows XP where it says this OS is out of date... although at least XP had a checkbox to say never remind again.

[BC_Programmer]

[DaveLembke]

laughing so hard...  Windows 3.1 win 10 blat haha 

I wonder if someone really wrote an old program with support for Windows 3.1 to make this joke or if its just photoshop edit.

[BC_Programmer]

I wonder if someone really wrote an old program with support for Windows 3.1 to make this joke or if its just photoshop edit.

I saw some similar images and decided to make this one myself, actually. The ones I've seen are pretty simple and are a basic window with a bit of text. I wanted to make something that looked a bit more similar to the dialog that GWX actually shows. Could have gone as far as the flat-style button but decided I had spent too much time converting files by that point.

I used VB3. Of course the program doesn't actually do anything at all, so there was no actual programming involved (or that I had to re-learn). Just had to convert the images to an appropriate format and do a bit of form design.

I guess I could have gotten away with just the one image (the background). Though showing the icon when it's minimized is a nice touch.

I'm thinking of expanding it to make a simple "retro programming" project based on it where it displays random images and messages from a directory, which would be an interesting topic to write about.

[DaveLembke]

Cool! 

Btw... turned my laptop on and I guess Microsoft is trying to push 10 to this computer too. Cancelled it out. I guess I will have to turn on all Windows 7 systems I own and see which ones have the windows 7 dooms day count down to an attempted forced 10 upgrade. 



[attachment deleted by admin to conserve space]

[patio]

I run 7 on 2 different PC's...i get no warnings whatsoever...

[BC_Programmer]

I run 7 on 2 different PC's...i get no warnings whatsoever...

Do you have the Win10 GWX updates installed? Not having them installed seems to neatly avoid these issues, it's just a matter of keeping them off which is relatively straightforward (though IMO shouldn't be necessary...)

I've been reading about some of my own gripes with Win10 (mostly the Windows Update options, or lack thereof, which even on my secondary systems has successfully wasted my time on a few occasions). And from what I've read, supporters of the change suggest it is for the best- The reasoning seems to rest on this idea that users are all stupid morons and shouldn't be trusted to adjust configuration options. Most of them quote statistics. I liked reading one quote that "80% of all infections are caused by the OS being out of date" which I think they just made up on the spot. Mind you, I have no data to support my own thinking that end-user malware infections tend to come about through Trojan Horse software, rather than through particular OS exploits.

If users are allegedly too stupid to be trusted with adjusting their Windows Update options, why are they allowed to adjust any administrator settings like UAC? Why are they even allowed to give admin permission? Clearly the solution is to not give users administrator permission or the ability to configure UAC settings. Instead, in order to protect users, they should be presented with a UAC dialog which provides a phone number for Microsoft and a password prompt, and the user must phone Microsoft and plead their case to demonstrate that they deserve to be given local administrator access on their PC.

Btw... turned my laptop on and I guess Microsoft is trying to push 10 to this computer too.

I don't have win7 on any of my real systems but I use a program called GWX Control Panel which works for both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. I run it after I run Windows Update (which I can still do since I'm on Win 8.1 *AHEM*) and clean out the various settings Microsoft sneakily changes. (OS Upgrades through Windows Update in particular). There are a few other programs that do basically the same thing, and some will remove the various KB updates Microsoft has pushed through Windows Update that add Telemetry tracking and diagnostics services to WIndows 7 and 8.

[patio]

I'll check both rigs for the offending updates...as i've done since XP i have Win Updates turned to notification only...auto update is dis-abled.

[patio]

Talk about nefarious...

[DaveLembke]

The latest, and possibly evillest move (to date) involves making closing an unwanted upgrade popup -- by clicking the x in the top right corner -- the same as agreeing to the upgrade.

WOW!!!!   This is exactly what I have been doing when I seen pop ups for Win 10 upgrade.. I have been clicking the [X] to get rid of them. Sneaky Sneaky Sneaky Microsoft!!!

Well now I have more insight as to WHY this installation of 10 almost happened. I never thought I would have to ever turn off auto updates to notification only, but Microsoft has really gone too far with this issue. Gonna check into BC's GWX Control Panel when I get home from work too. It sounds interesting and useful.

Thanks everyone on this subject. Btw when checking out other systems one other one wanted to do the Win 10 upgrade to and killed it off on that one too.