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Microsoft Operating Systems Windows IT

Microsoft Denies Rogue Windows 10 Upgrades, Says Users Remain Fully In Control (hothardware.com) 515

MojoKid writes: Despite significant user outcry that Microsoft Windows 10 upgrade mechanism has gone rogue, installing on customers' Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 machines when their backs were turned or they were otherwise away from the computer, Microsoft is pleading innocent. News broke of the automatic Windows 10 upgrades over the weekend, and in nearly every case, it was claimed Windows 10 installed without user intervention. Microsoft issued the following statement regarding the alleged unplanned upgrades: "We shared in late October on the Windows Blog, we are committed to making it easy for our Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 customers to upgrade to Windows 10. As stated in that post, we have updated the upgrade experience to make it easier for customers to schedule a time for their upgrade to take place. Customers continue to be fully in control of their devices, and can choose to not install the Windows 10 upgrade or remove the upgrade from Windows Update (WU) by changing the WU settings." However, users are still reporting the Windows 10 has allegedly forcefully taken over their machines. Hundreds and maybe thousands of users and IT admins are still chiming in on various threads around the web that they've "been had" by Microsoft.
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Microsoft Denies Rogue Windows 10 Upgrades, Says Users Remain Fully In Control

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  • Confirmed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @12:50PM (#51708717)

    Happened on my wife's Windows 7 system over the weekend.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Happened to me last week as well. I have a desktop at my parents house running non genuine Windows 7. It shouldn't be able to run updates ever, but when I booted it after quite a while of sleeping, the Windows 10 update began. There wasn't even a mouse of keyboard plugged into the machine, so I'm sure it was not my parents.

    • Re: Confirmed (Score:5, Informative)

      by slazzy ( 864185 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @01:18PM (#51708993) Homepage Journal
      On a few of my systems as well. One of them is blackscreened (no video driver for win 10) and no way to restore. I've had to slave the drive in my Ubuntu system. Goodbye Windows for good.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @01:26PM (#51709075)

      Same here. Different wife.

    • Re:Confirmed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rob MacDonald ( 3394145 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @01:41PM (#51709269)
      Actually I'm still assuming user error. So lets talk about what just happened to me today. Literally 4 hours ago. I'm currently tasked with spinning up a test environment for a Thycotic server. As such, I spun up a fresh VM using our Server 2012 R2 master in VMware. It was updated last month so after install it was finding roughly 24 optional updates. Again, this is a fresh, un-configured image. After the updates completed and the box rebooted I began prepping it for a dcpromo. Now, I'm not sure if it was related to opening IE, or something else, but I was prompted with one of those server 2012 blue bars telling me to click here to upgrade to win10. On server 2012 R2, enterprise license. Now, if I was average joe crazy clicker, I would have accidentally installed win10 onto my fucking DC. But I'm not, I pay close careful attention to what I'm doing. So, sure, your wife's system might have upgraded to win7 over the weekend. After someone in your family crazy clicked that popup. It wouldn't be a blue bar on win7, but it would popup and offer you an free upgrade right now just click here. I have yet to see a single documentation case of this actually happening without user intervention. And before you flip out, go ahead and grab the entire systems event logs, export it to a readable format, remove any identifying information, and I'll show you exactly when someone decided to install this.
      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        I can understand the assumption, it's reasonable. However, someone above reported an "upgrade" happening on an unattended machine with no mouse or keyboard attached.

        • Re:Confirmed (Score:4, Insightful)

          by vux984 ( 928602 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @06:55PM (#51711583)

          However, someone above reported an "upgrade" happening on an unattended machine with no mouse or keyboard attached.

          This is /. people who haven't used Windows versions newer than XP have made all sorts of wild claims about what it has or hasn't done lately.

          I haven't seen any systems pushed to Windows 10 at all that weren't somehow user initiated.

          People simply don't read what they click on, then deny they clicked on anything at all. I've literally WATCHED it happen live hundreds of time when doing remote screen-sharing support.

          Other people will have had their kids click on it.

          And Win10 update does have a few quirks, where it will 'confirm and reserve your upgrade today' and then due to missing hardware support defer your upgrade until drivers available. My Mom's old laptop was like that, windows 10 showed up several months after she'd first tried to update it.

          I'm not saying it's outright impossible that MS has pushed the update without user confirmation on some systems due to a bug or some other issue. But I'd say the VAST majority are people who did confirm it and either don't even realize they confirmed it, or had someone else who uses the system confirm it, or who are just posturing on slashdot, or claiming other peoples anecdotes as their own (where the 'other person' probably clicked update without reading it...)

          Its nowhere near as bad as /. shrill monkeys would have you believe.

    • Do you have kids???

      I have 3 windows 7 PCs, none of which automatically upgraded. On to of that, the one I tried to intentionally upgrade, failed miserably. I ended up installing kodibuntu on that...much faster!
    • Re:Confirmed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by scdeimos ( 632778 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @05:55PM (#51711233)
      It almost happened to one of my work computers over the weekend. We still keep some Windows 7 computers for development and testing because the majority of our customers still use various incarnations of it. This computer was configured for manual updates, thankfully, and we routinely hide all the Windows 10-related "security updates". On Friday I left with 21 updates pending and returned on Monday with just 1 update pending, which I thought was very odd. Checking the list of updates it had deselected all other updates and ticked only the "Upgrade to Windows 10 Pro, version 1511, 10586" item. Fucking Microsoft.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @12:50PM (#51708719)

    Which is why I shut off updates completely

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @12:53PM (#51708749)

    The popup before the forced install said "do you want to install Windows 10 now, or download it for installation later". Either of those option is consent to install Windows 10. You probably selected "download for later installation" thinking you'd have a chance to refuse the installation. What you should have done is click the close-box top right.

    It was a trick.

  • Oh yeah, its an experience all right. Possibly not quite the one they had in mind though.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    As long as they install GWX Control Panel. Otherwise, they get whatever turd sandwich Microsoft feels like shoving down their throats.

    Or users could go really nuts and install Linux or a BSD.

  • by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @01:07PM (#51708877)
    We have some old machines which are clearly unable to run Windows 10. They barely run Windows 7. Yet, they keep getting notifications to upgrade to Windows 10, and list it on available updates. It is never going to run on a Pentium M or D machine. Microsoft, include a hardware check before you try to push it!
  • by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @01:07PM (#51708879)
    they are raping people computers
  • by LichtSpektren ( 4201985 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @01:11PM (#51708925)
    Automatic updates on her Windows 7 computer were off but Windows 10 self-installed over a weekend.
    • by DogDude ( 805747 )
      Sure it did...
      • You are such a pompous ass who thinks that users are stupid and incompetent --no wonder Microsoft hired you! Please stop your obvious astroturfing.
        • You are such a pompous ass who thinks that users are stupid and incompetent --no wonder Microsoft hired you! Please stop your obvious astroturfing.

          Uh yeah.

          MS would be sued into an oblivion if they pushed this on PC's. People do not watch what they click. Of course if anyone disagrees they must be a MS employee because everyone views things the exact same way

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I'm gonna call bullshit on this one. The way Microsoft trick you into installing the update is despicable, but if automatic updates were indeed turned off then she must have at least been tricked into a manual install.

  • Has this happened to real people at Slashdot, or is this disinformation propagated by ACs? Cause from here, it looks like disinformation...
    But hey, as this is proprietary software, it could be an ugly and illegal piece of A/B testing. It could. Still, no proof seen here. My Windows 7 boxes are doing fine (and my Windows 10 too, BTW).
    • by Holi ( 250190 )
      My experience on my work network, a 2008 r2 domain, says they are pushing too hard. I am starting to see the windows 10 flags show up on several pc's attached to my domain.
    • It happened to a computer in my office.
    • by Lumpy ( 12016 )

      Complete disinformation and/or idiots that don't understand what they clicked on.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @01:23PM (#51709045)

    Happened to my daughter's computer. Unfortunately, her internet access was obtained over an LTE device (Rogers "Rocket Stick") - the Windows 10 downloads resulted in a $100 Cdn bill.

  • by OpenSourced ( 323149 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @01:31PM (#51709135) Journal

    Yesterday I had a customer call because one of his PCs has updated to Windows 10 without asking. According to the user, she had come back to her PC to see the update already installing. Of course I cannot know if that is the complete story, users are notoriously unreliable, but a couple of things come to mind.

    First, the customer called mainly because some programs stopped working. If things stop working it's not an "upgrade", its a whole new OS, and you have to market it that way, and wait for people to install it proactively. Anything else is irresponsible.

    Second, reports like this one are suddenly multiplying. There is no real difference in my mind between starting the "upgrade" on Windows' own volition or offering the "upgrade" to the user so many times and in so different ways as to make it practically sure that he or she will accept it by mistake.

    Microsoft is clearly confident in that its ecosystem is so solid in the desktop that nothing they do will change that. They are probably right, most of my customers are so heavily invested in the MS environment that nothing at all will make them change. One tried to switch away from Office to LibreOffice and, after a couple of years, had to backtrack licking its wounds.

    So you have a monopoly, but also a saturated market. You miss out on the Web revolution because you don't like centralized services, you like distributed better, that's your business. Then you miss out on the mobile revolution because the interface is so different from the one you have, and in your religion there is only one commandment, and it is :"There is only one Windows, and all pledge loyalty to It". So God forbids that you make something imaginative, like another system that works well with Windows. Afterwards you foul your cash cow by changing the interface that was working (desktop Windows) to be usable in the touchscreen world, apparently ignoring that people are well capable of learning and using two different interfaces with ease.

    So you prod your customers in the direction you want, even if you are not very sure of it being a good direction. It may be a winning strategy, who knows, not I, I have never earned the fat bonuses these marketing geniuses make. But in my book, prodding customers isn't a winning strategy.

  • This doesn't look good for Microsoft. It should be easy to confirm, as all installations should behave in the same way at the very least if they are running the same edition of Windows7/8/8.1

    The fact that they can't give a simple Yes or No answer and a few screenshots about how this works makes it look like there is some sort of dodgy affair going on, like what was described earlier that the way to cancel is to use a tiny Close button instead of a proper Cancel button.

    My PC hasn't tried to install anything

  • by TheDarkMaster ( 1292526 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @01:40PM (#51709253)
    In my case the solution was completely disable the Windows Update service (denying the service from booting, not just change a setting on the control panel). No more Windows updates for me, but these days I no longer trust the service to leave it on.
  • Wait what? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @01:49PM (#51709339)
    They deny it happens automatically by confirming it happens automatically:

    [Customers] can choose to not install the Windows 10 upgrade or remove the upgrade from Windows Update (WU) by changing the WU settings.

    Hear that? It's not automatic IF YOU OPT OUT by changing the WU settings.

  • Forced adware install to get an IE security update is user choice ?How please. It blackmail,its evil its Microsoft SSDD.
  • by CrashNBrn ( 1143981 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @02:11PM (#51709543)
    I ran Windows Update last night, and the 'Upgrade to Win 10' (an optional update) was auto-selected.
    The Windows Update page at this point had only one option to click. Begin installation of Windows 10.
    Just like this: http://postimg.org/image/qkvw8... [postimg.org]
    You had to go into "show all available update options" which is in small blue text. Deselect the optional update, so that you can select the "important" ones.

    Today, I thought, I'll open Windows Update to see what the small blue text was, to be more accurate...and guess what... yeah the Windows 10 "optional" update is reselected, and if you bother looking at the image above, again the only option to proceed unless you "show all available update options"

    So Microsoft can claim whatever the fuck they want. It's bullshit.
  • It's all clear (Score:4, Insightful)

    by no-body ( 127863 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @02:18PM (#51709589)

    The jerks at M$oft are drunk with corporate cool-aid and follow other objectives abusing their customers.
    Happens a lot, just look at any larger corporation, where the only goal it to increase bottom-line - take them to the cleaner!

  • by Misagon ( 1135 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @02:40PM (#51709759)

    It is not as if Microsoft does not employ people who are competent at designing and testing proper user interfaces: People who know and expect how users will interface with Windows Update.
    They expect people to install it by mistake.
    The forced update is nothing else but intentional douchebaggery.
    To blame the users is probably what they had planned to do all along.

  • by mauriceh ( 3721 ) <mhilarius@gmai l . com> on Wednesday March 16, 2016 @07:15PM (#51711665)

    They did it to my wife's PC 3 times.
    I had to go to fairly great lengths to stop it from recurring.
    Installed and deployed GWX Control Panel to stop it.
    Tell me: Why would GWX Control Panel even exist if this problem did not happen?

I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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