Force W7 -> W10 upgrades. Not cool MS, not cool.

randal

randal

randal

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In before the W10 apologists. :)

Lots of unhappy people popping up all over the web saying the same, forced into a W10 upgrade and met with a hail of "there's nothing wrong with W10" responses. Not helpful.

Not the point, it's a forced upgrade without user intervention. That's outrageous. What about driver and hardware incompatibilities? What about people being in the middle of doing something? Or what about the people who are quite happy with W7 and the fact it's in extended life support for another 4 years.

Then you really have to start wondering why MS have decided to force the implementation in the way they have. I can understand them not wanting another Windows XP scenario where everyone is happy with what they've got but there really are better ways of going about it than just forcing it on people.

People bemoan Apple for their walled garden and secrecy, you just have to look at MS over the last few months to see they're as bad if not worse with their MS Store push, gaming monopolisation and now forcing W10 on people.

I'm not about to make the leap across to Linux or even OSX for my gaming needs but I'm going to make damn sure I'm not forced to change my setup when I'm not ready to.
 
Security reasons, not happy to upgrading to Windows 10, forced or not. Then that's fine, take the free upgrade now or pay for it later than the line. Your choice :)
 
best thing to do is upgrade to w10 and then rollback to previous OS through W10 then your hardware is tagged for W10 use after the free give out stops
 
I'm quite frankly shocked how many people just accept or even defend the current Windows Update mechanics. (That isn't to say I think its bad as default and/or optional functionality as long as it is option). Pushing Windows 10 upgrade from a previous OS automatically is very bad form.

Some of the issues I've run into:

-I support a few older friends/family members PC setup(s) and generally leave their systems setup to automatically update to a certain extent so that they aren't left without actual important security updates, etc. many of these people aren't overly familiar with technology and need to be shown how to do everything and even have notes to rely on to find things - waking up to a whole new OS completely and utterly confuses them and causes all kinds of issues for both them and makes a ton of extra work for me - and even when you get past that not only is their older version of Windows sufficient for their needs quite often their admittedly ageing but still functional printer, scanner, etc. isn't supported under Windows 10 :S

-I spend a fair amount of time doing modding for older video games, largely as a hobby, a lot of the software for this was written in the 90s or early 00s and doesn't work with Windows 10, will probably never work with Windows 10 and the developers have long ago moved on so one of my systems atleast will not be moving to 10.

-A few things I do both in terms of gaming i.e. if I'm alt-tabbed out the game and other stuff like the logging software for my oscilloscope and other diagnostic tools isn't recognised as "activity" in Windows 10 and if I leave it unattended running a monitoring/logging task for awhile with updates pending and/or Windows has decided to automatically update I can come back to find the system has rebooted itself and/or in the middle of doing updates and I've lost a load of stuff.

-Windows 10 and mobile devices i.e. tablets and laptops - though they have now done a horrid special casing to work around this specific issue in some situations (added new shutdown options) nothing more hilarious than trying to shutdown a tablet to save battery and having Windows decide to apply updates (Please do not turn off your PC message lol) and burn through all the remaining battery (or just start doing it itself when you have low battery) and/or devices like that tend to be useful for quickly picking them up to check something without booting up or turning to a PC - only not so useful if you are then met with a Windows Update screen. (This might not happen all the time but it isn't completely infrequent if you are a power user like myself). I never thought I'd ever say or think it - but Windows 10 has actually made me consider Windows 8 a better experience on a tablet due to issues surrounding this and my shiny new Windows 10 tablet largely just sits around looking pretty as my older Windows 8 tablet is less likely to be an inconvenience.

EDIT: Despite the impression some might get I'm not hating on Windows 10 - there are many good features and I've several systems running it though I can't see it ever going near my main gaming (except maybe as dual boot) or desktop system unless they make massive changes to certain elements that are ruinous on the experience.
 
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randal said:
...Then you really have to start wondering why MS have decided to force the implementation in the way they have. ...
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They want everyone on the same OS so they can flog universal apps to everyone like the Apple Store.

The real issue is the horrific amount of updates that they are sending down. If you have an older machine on marginal WiFi it can become effectively unusable.
 
People don't want to pay for software anymore. Times have changed, its either move with the times or get left behind, exactly the same way the game industry is working with the Free to Play model.

MS has said Windows 10 is their last OS, so you wont need to buy an Windows OS again but if you don't want to move with their business model then it will cost you in the future, via lack of security updates or paying for Windows 10 anyway. Either way YOU WILL BE USING WINDOWS 10 ONE DAY WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT if you continue to use their products. Regardless incompatibles of any software. That's not their problem, that's down the developers if they are not bothering to support their software.

Mac OSX, Linux, Android, iOS, Sony, Nintendo with their game consoles all work the same. Don't see why Windows/MS should be any different.

In 2 years time all this silly push back will be forgotten.
 
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Both Linux and Android have the option to manually manage updates, game consoles are an entirely different story to a desktop PC.

that's down the developers if they are not bothering to support their software.
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That is a very narrow minded way to look at it - there is a wide range of software out there built for different purposes, by different people in different situations, companies go bust, people move on, etc. which might mean there is no one to support software that is still perfectly functional and stable on older OSes - that doesn't necessarily mean people will hold back their main systems to support it but might use an older system or an older OS in a VM etc. and wouldn't want that force upgraded to a newer OS.

At the end of the day an operating system exists to facilitate the user, something that many companies seem to have lost sight of and sooner or later will lead to a backlash against their products - consumers might dumbly accept it now but eventually they will start to run into limitations.
 
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Hi randal is there a specific windows update KB that can be blocked to ensure that the pc is not forced to w10 (i run w7 myself and havent seen any windows folders with stealth w10 waiting :confused: though in saying that i opted out of the free 10 upgrade)


edit: is it this one? KB3035583
 
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I agree. It's not cool to force the upgrade on people.

I understand the logic, but it's still not right. Surprised that they didn't fear someone taking them to court over it.

You could imagine the legal flood gates would open if a case was brought against Microsoft for an automatic Win 10 upgrade that lost some important files during the upgrade etc....
 
Surfer said:
Hi randal is there a specific windows update KB that can be blocked to ensure that the pc is not forced to w10 (i run w7 myself and havent seen any windows folders with stealth w10 waiting :confused: though in saying that i opted out of the free 10 upgrade)


edit: is it this one? KB3035583
Click to expand...

Get a copy of GWX Control Panel and see the end of Windows10 nagging.
 
randal said:
What about driver and hardware incompatibilities?
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If the hardware was incompatible, then that computer wouldn't be getting the windows 10 upgrade at all (it's what was holding the upgrade on my fathers computer even though I've replaced the incompatible component) and by now if there aren't any windows 10 compatible device drivers for compatible devices then there is something certainly wrong with the company manufacturing said devices if they aren't creating windows 10 compatible drivers.

And just so you know, I haven't upgraded to windows 10 yet and have disabled auto install on windows update so that the upgrade isn't installed without my approval.
 
Surfer said:
Hi randal is there a specific windows update KB that can be blocked to ensure that the pc is not forced to w10 (i run w7 myself and havent seen any windows folders with stealth w10 waiting :confused: though in saying that i opted out of the free 10 upgrade)


edit: is it this one? KB3035583
Click to expand...

I've had that one and another who's id escapes me, but that one has forcibly installed itself several times despite being ignored. It installs the GWX front end, which now just crashes on mine every few hours. "GWX has stopped responding", suits me fine. Far as I can see the machine thinks it's installed, but it won't run. Win?

Side note on this, the schedules setup in Task Scheduler that govern when this runs are locked down with some pretty tight permissions so you can't even stop it. Of course it's scheduled to run at just about every given opportunity, when you unlock your screen, when you resume, when you login etc.

flowrider99 said:
Get a copy of GWX Control Panel and see the end of Windows10 nagging.
Click to expand...

Didn't know such a thing existed, may take a look. Ta.
 
I completely agree that the way Microsoft have handled this is extremely short-sighted and abusive of their large market share.

Windows 10 is a good operating system, but then why should people be forced to upgrade when they have a system that works fine with everything they use, including stuff which is no longer supported?

Those who defend this are very narrow-minded. Rroff put it perfectly when he stated that there is software and hardware designed to do jobs all over the world which are not necessarily supported anymore and these will likely not be updated. In other software situations, it takes time for companies to fully test their software. Do Microsoft want to pay the man hours of all those software engineers to work on updating an otherwise fully-working piece of software?

It should be an option and third party tools and technical know-how should not be necessary to avoid Windows 10. There should have been a tickbox to disable it, provided by Microsoft themselves.
 
This gave me a chuckle...:p

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The way some people on here berate other's who for one reason or another will not or cannot move to 10 is pathetic. Never heard of personal choice? Never thought that there may be other reasons why they don't want to upgrade? My main pc is on 10 and will be staying on it but my old laptop will be staying on 7 because there are no drivers for it plus the essential software I use on it hasn't been updated for years and doesn't work with anything newer than 7. Most of the drivers I am already using with 7 are for Vista as there has been no updates since then. So before people go shooting their mouths off, try thinking and realising that there are genuine reasons that people don't want to move.
 
I agree, combined with concerns on how upgrades may be handled with this whole 'free' upgrade in the future (I think it's inevitable that we'll all 'have' to buy W10 sooner or later), I've decided specifically not to upgrade to W10, kind of a pointless one-man protest :p

I don't intend or desire to have an MS account (especially after some annoyance with an old hotmail account that was hijacked), so W10 doesn't really seem to offer much over and above W7, DX12 may be useful at some point although I'd prefer games used Vulkan really, but otherwise it's fairly marginal improvements it seems.
 
So how do you get security updates manually?

I turned off automatic updates a while ago because of this and now every time I try and select specific security updates it says Downloading Windows 10, even if I select one single security update that isnt KB3035583. Its seems it wont download anything at all.

So is this the new thing no security updates unless you download Windows 10?
 
I already had windows 10, my PC just performed a W10 upgrade over the top of my existing installation, no idea why!
 
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