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Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Bombards Windows 10 Users With Full-Screen Ads for Upgrade (theregister.com) 81

Posted by msmash from the no-mercy dept.
Microsoft has expanded its campaign to migrate Windows 10 users to Windows 11, deploying full-screen ads urging users to purchase new computers ahead of Windows 10's end-of-support date. The ads, appearing on Windows 10 devices, remind the October 14, 2025 cut-off date for OS support.

Microsoft Bombards Windows 10 Users With Full-Screen Ads for Upgrade More | Reply

Microsoft Bombards Windows 10 Users With Full-Screen Ads for Upgrade

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  • No (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21, 2024 @04:21PM (#64963327)
    My computer is fine and I won't buy a new one to upgrade my OS.
    • And given that it's Windows it's a best a sidegrade, not an upgrade. Possibly even a downgrade if they start bundling Recall or whatever it's called this week.

  • My win10 comp can't support win11 (Score:5, Informative)

    by swan5566 ( 1771176 ) on Thursday November 21, 2024 @04:27PM (#64963353)
    Likely will move to ubuntu next year.

    • Re:My win10 comp can't support win11 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday November 21, 2024 @04:34PM (#64963373)

      Likely will move to ubuntu next year.

      In the same boat and will switch to using my Linux Mint 22 (Cinnamon) system full time at some point -- I'm still finding alternatives to a few apps, but mostly I've been lazy. All my systems are too old to (officially) run Windows 11, if I even wanted to, though my Dell XPS 420 runs Windows 10 just fine.

      • Yeah I haven't looked hard at it yet. I'll be curious about drivers and Steam support.

        • With Ubuntu I have an awesome Steam experience. I imagine it should be pretty much the same on Mint. I've also had a lot of good experiences with drivers under Linux. Even my computer that I built new last year worked perfectly after install Linux and updating. Everything just worked. With older hardware, I think it's even more likely to work since there has been more time to get drivers going.

          I wish you the best of luck to going full Linux. I've been on Linux fulltime since about a year before Win7 EOL. Li

      • Apple just stopped support for Monterey so I updated the 2014 Mac Mini I use as a server to Mint 22. It works fine. I wasn't sure the Intel graphics could run Cinnamon, but it does just fine.

        • Most desktops are only really using the graphics card for blitting, alpha, maybe scaling, and possibly mipmapping. Compiz does all of those things, but also has optional 3d effects, and there are multiple 3D Window Managers these days. But Cinnamon is probably only really doing those first four things with the GPU even if you turn every possibly piece of eye candy on. The first three of them have been done by virtually all PC graphics chips/cards since the early nineties.

        • Good to know! I have a similar Mini at my dads house.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bartle ( 447377 )

        I switched to Linux Mint this year and I'm slowly adapting to it. If your computer has the resources, I recommend using Qemu to run a Windows 11 virtual machine. I set one up with a local account (tricky), installed Microsoft Office, and activated both using Microsoft Activation Scripts. I don't plan to play games on it but it will provide a nice way to access Windows software going forward.

        • I use virtual box to run Win11. Installation went well and any time I need it I just spin up the vm. Rarely need to though.

        • If your computer has the resources, I recommend using Qemu to run a Windows 11 virtual machine.

          I haven't tried a Win 11 VM -- just recently upgraded from Mint 21 to 22 and got access to the newer TPM 2.0 emulator. I do have a Win 10 VM and it runs just fine as well as other Linux VMs for experimenting. They all run well. My Mint system is older one I built with a ASRock Z77 Extreme3 (bare from a friend when he upgraded HW) with Intel Core i7-3770, 32 GB RAM and 500 GB Samsung EVO 870 (and two other HDs, one w/ZFS) so the available CPUs under Qemu may still prevent me running Win11 -- or Windows m

    • I said the same thing with windows 3.1, and installed linux and never looked back... been on ubuntu for about 20 years tho.

      • I used Ubuntu for a long time, until they started down the road of Snap-only packages, so I switched to Mint, which has Snap disabled by default and provides Apt packages for the things Ubuntu only provides via Snap. My alternative was Debian, but wanted something on a faster / more current track w/o having to resort to using Testing or PPAs ...

        • My alternative was Debian, but wanted something on a faster / more current track w/o having to resort to using Testing or PPAs ...

          Just curious - why the aversion to PPAs?

          I'm on Mint for the same reason that you are. That said, I've added one or two Ubuntu repos, and a few PPAs as well. I've never had any problems with compatibility or updates.

          FWIW, I run a few AppImages and Flatpaks, either because they allow me to run multiple versions of the same program or because they're all I can get. I do try to avoid Snaps though, because fuck Ubuntu's attitude.

          • Just curious - why the aversion to PPAs?

            Nothing really. I'd use them if I needed to (and did on Ubuntu 18) but otherwise it's one less thing to think/worry about...

      • And what have you used those about 10 years between win 3.1 and Ubuntu?

    • I was in the same boat a few years ago when I first set up my home theatre PC (after being frustrated by the limitations of Google TV/Apple TV/Fire TV), the hardware was made of surplus parts that I had took off over the years from my gaming PC when doing hardware upgrades. Apparently the CPU was too old to be supported by win11 so I went Linux. I was already familiar with Ubuntu but I chose PopOs due to Ubuntu not working well with Flatpak. All is been good and I have no complaints.

      • I had a MythTV system on top of Ubuntu for several years until my cable provider switch from analog to all digital *and* set the Cablecard CC bit on almost everything. I wasn't up to experimenting with using a Silicon Dust digital tuner so switch to a TiVo Bolt (based on experiencing a friend's TiVo systems) and have been pretty happy with that.

    • Likely will move to ubuntu next year.

      No idea how much experience you have with Linux; so apologies if this sounds patronising - it's not meant to be.

      I used to be on Ubuntu, but 6 or 7 years ago I switched to Mint and haven't looked back. I like the ecosystem and the attitude a lot more; and for the few things I use that are only available in Ubuntu repos, I simply add that repo and install via Apt.

      If you're moving from Windows to Linux as a daily driver, I recommend at least a bit of both distro shopping and Desktop Environment shopping befor

      • Easier to just run Windows in a vm instead of dual booting. At least that's what I do when I need to use Windows. Thankfully that's rare.

        That's very good advice regarding using the live images to test out difference desktop experiences. I know I prefer Xfce.

        • My only experience with a VM is running Win2K under Mint. Doesn't running something as heavy as Win 10 or 11 in a VM result in a speed reduction?

          I'm also using XFCE. Some of the other DEs have features I like, but Thunar coupled with its Bulk Rename feature is an absolute necessity for me. Bulk Rename can be used with other FMs, but the integration isn't as seamless.

  • To repeat.. (Score:3)

    by haxor.dk ( 463614 ) on Thursday November 21, 2024 @04:27PM (#64963355) Homepage

    No.

    Do not want.

  • But not until after a few rounds of malware that Microsoft won't fix for free.

    • But not until after a few rounds of malware that Microsoft won't fix for free.

      Which is why I have my dad's Win10 system on a thumb drive to reimage if anything happens. I'll still have to put his radio programs back in, but at least the OS will be the same.

      • Why not do a semi-annual full backup of his system to include all data, drivers, and settings? There are free full-drive backup programs from EaseUS, Paragon, and CloneZilla that make this fairly easy.

        I do a complete backup every January and July and keep it on a separate data drive and a second copy on an external drive. I've had to do a complete reinstall twice and retrieve individual files a few times.

        32 Free Backup Software Tools [lifewire.com]

  • Yup, and then I ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday November 21, 2024 @04:30PM (#64963365)

    ... pressed [Ctrl]-[Shift]-[Esc] to pop up Task Manager, right-clicked on the offending process, and selected "End task".

    What's more annoying is that their PC Health Check app says my PC can't be upgraded as it "doesn't currently meet the minimum system requirements to run Windows 11" -- and never will as the CPU is too old and there's no TPM, etc... (It's a Dell XPS 420, and runs Windows 10 fine, btw.) So it' s not like I even could "upgrade" to Windows 11.

  • Didn't know how good I had it. (Score:3)

    by abulafia ( 7826 ) on Thursday November 21, 2024 @04:40PM (#64963389)
    Before two weeks ago, I could say the last time I used MSware was last century.

    But the company that owns us now have decided our big growth phase is over, time to digest us. The first thing was moving us to Outlook.

    The GUI is the same. Which is not a good thing, but whatever, I'm used to terrible UI.

    What is... actually perfectly in line with how I remember Microsoft is getting calendar invites after the meetings happen, my mail mysteriously being delayed for hours in the afternoon, and shit just randomly breaking.

    So yeah. Taking a quarter century off from their shitware was nice. On the bright side, I'll probably get laid off, so I won't have to use it anymore.

    • You forced to use Teams yet? Compared to that, Outlook actually works well :D

      • The "best" part is how they cooperate to enshittify your desktop. Email comes in to Outlook with an appointment. Outlook icon lights up. Now the teams icon does too, due to "activity". Now I accept the appointment and I get a notification about it. Yes, I know it's already past, thanks.

        The other great part is how teams will get stuck and refuse to relog. So then you have to force it to quit and relaunch it... Typical Microsoft quality

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by abulafia ( 7826 )
        I'm personally unclear on why they're separate applications in the first place. Yeah, I read that Teams is supposed to be "real time". Which is of course why they wedged a slightly different version of the calendar in there and let it host Excel.

        It is starting to come back to me... the actual reason is going to turn out to be that they did that to kill off some competitor.

    • Outlook and Exchange ... haha ...

      Reminds me when Microsoft insisted to sent salesmen to a big internet company in Germany.
      Around the time when WWW just started.

      They got refused several times. And they kept insisting to get a pitch to sell Exchange to them as a mail server backend.

      So in the end some guys in the company yielded and invited the MS sales men to give a presentation.

      So morning they made their powerpoints, and then lunch break then it continued and went into a Q&A session.

      One of the first ques

  • I'd happily upgrade to Windows 11 if they want to give me the funds to upgrade my hardware.
  • During my Windows 10 installation a while back, I turned off many of Windows notifications. To date, I've never seen any of these pop-ups.

  • so it's just warming people up.

    • planned obsolescence... degrade the user experience until it frustrates and demoralizes the user into throwing the machine away and/or buying a new one/upgrading to windows 11.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        Win 10 has a defined life span, just like MacOS, iOS, etc. - Windows OSes lifespan's are similar to Apple's.

        If you have a retail version of Windows 7, 8/8.1, or 10 you can use the product key to install Win 11 on your new, Win 11 compatible hardware.

        This doesn't really seem like the big money grab Linux users want to claim this is... Windows 10 was released 9 years ago, it goes end-of-life shortly after it's ten-year anniversary of July 29th, 2015.

        • There is no lifespan.
          There are endpoints of upgrades.

          Which might be difficult on an iOS device if you have to import new SSL certificates, but on MacOS, you just do that with openssl.

          The OSes run forever.

        • If you have a retail version of Windows 7, 8/8.1, or 10 you can use the product key to install Win 11 on your new, Win 11 compatible hardware.

          This no longer works for old keys: https://www.thurrott.com/windows/290832/you-can-no-longer-use-windows-7-8-keys-to-activate-windows-11 [thurrott.com]

          However I recently found that I could move my Win10 physical machine into a VM by imaging the whole disk into a qcow2 file, and then setting up a VM for it. As expected this invalidated the key due to the change, but surprisingly I was able to reactivate it when it asked "was there a hardware change?" Answered yes, and then it was OK. Technically it is on the same machi

  • [laughs in Win7] (Score:3)

    by RyoShin ( 610051 ) <tukaro@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Thursday November 21, 2024 @05:18PM (#64963471) Homepage Journal

    users to purchase new computers ahead of Windows 10's end-of-support date

    Tell ya what, Microsoft: You buy me a brand new, at-least-mid-tier gaming rig and I'll let it run Windows 11 for at least a year.

    My PC is from 2016, I only last year moved from Win7 to Win10, so that's the only way I would possibly deal with Win11 myself anytime in the near future. Honestly, at this point a given Windows OS only becomes usable once it's nearly deprecated...

  • If you can change then switch to Linux, or Zeus help you, Apple. I refused to use a version of Windows past 7 which forced me to look for alternatives. Linux is not exactly user friendly but it damn well beats the shit offered by Microsoft. If you don't think your techie enough for Linux then switch to Apple if you can afford it. Anything is better than Windows. Send a message.

  • Microsoft has generated an exorbitant amount of animosity from its users recently.

    They're not listening to user feedback, and they don't care. They want you to use Windows 11 and they want you to use their AI feature bullshit, just like any other streaming service, Windows is now an app.

    Their motto should be "all your data are belong to us".

    I use Windows 11 at work, and it's fine, but it's not an out-of-the-box experience, It's been heavily tailored by our IT department to be less consumer and more en
  • Until I see a real reason to not use it. And Nothing about Windows 11 makes me want to use it. AI, Recall are features I DO NOT want!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      Hackers appreciate your refusal to run a supported OS that gets periodic security updates.

  • >"deploying full-screen ads urging users to purchase new computers"

    Isn't that just so helpful! As if the user has NO other option but to buy an entire new computer so it can meet the *COMPLETELY ARTIFICIAL* requirements to run MS-Windows 11 so you can then be subjected to even MORE abuse.

    Go download and install something like Linux Mint and BE DONE WITH THE INSANITY. $0. No more nagging. No more "Ads". No more spyware. No more being harassed. No more antivirus making your system crawl. No more fo

    • The problem for a lot of us is that work requires Windows. For that reason, and that reason alone, I have Windows 10 on one computer. When I retire completely, I'm going to have an "F Microsoft" party and joyfully scrub it off that box forever. I'm sure there's no shortage of people in my position.

      But I think there's a bigger change coming. Purely anecdotal, but based on office chat I hear, a lot of small businesses don't see any advantage to chucking out 20 or 30 perfectly adequate computers and spendi

  • Slap them round the face with a wet fish!

  • Windows 11 (Score:3)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Thursday November 21, 2024 @06:46PM (#64963677) Homepage

    When they said that Windows 10 was going to be the last major version of Windows, I didn't think they meant they were going to fuck up everything after it.

  • I upgraded my last W10 desktop to Linux last month. What a relief!

  • It's not well known but any computer with a TPM 1.2 can be upgraded to windows 11 without fuss. If it add ram most computers can run windows 11 just fine. I have a 10 test old machine I just upgraded. All using official MS instructions.

    See https://support.microsoft.com/... [microsoft.com]

  • When Windows 11 claims your computer isn't advanced enough to run Windows 11, MSFT is flat-out lying. Here's how to get around it:

    The Autounattend.xml drive does several things:

    • (1) It bypasses checks for TPM 2.0, SecureBoot, RAM, CPU, and Storage;
    • (2) It disables the "requirement" to log in

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      And does this allow reliable updates later? No? Welcome to reinstall-hell.

      Not a solution, except for experiments.

  • Microsoft would have to a) upgrade my hardware, b) pay me to put up with their advising bs, And it wouldn't be cheap! 10,000 per advert they force upon me. And 10,000 per byte of data Microsoft scrapes from me.

  • Mountains of e-waste. (Score:3)

    by Computershack ( 1143409 ) on Thursday November 21, 2024 @08:46PM (#64963859)
    Governments should force Microsoft to pay for the cost of disposing and recycling the millions of perfectly good usable computers that will be rendered obsolete by not being allowed to upgrade to Windows 11 for what is a bullshit excuse.

    • That most likely will happen in the EU soon.

      Because: many government agencies run windows computers. But perhaps new enough that this behaviour does not hit them.

    • ESG doesn't apply to megacorps, only to poor people like you and me

  • Crappy practices like that are a reason to leave (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday November 21, 2024 @09:21PM (#64963915)

    An OS has to _work_ and stay in the background. It has to be as non-intrusive as possible.

  • Would 9/11/2025 not be a better cut off date?

    I bought a Windows laptop last October. A Pain.

    Next days, when I have time I flatten it and put Linux on it.

    Any suggestion about a distro? I consider Mint. But I have no preferences.

    • How geeky do you want to be? If computing on the bleeding edge with software that may be Not Quite Ready for Prime Time sounds good, try Fedora. Personally, I like Xfce because it gets out of your way and lets you set your desktop up the way you like rather than the way the devs think is the One True Way along with Compiz because I like the eye candy, but that's me; it's your computer, so set it up the way you like.

  • I tried Linux Mint in this Dell XPS laptop a year ago, and its sound chip was not supported yet. But the current version of Mint has a much newer kernel, and sound works fine. My only problem is that Firefox treats trackpad scrolling like mouse wheel scrolling, so it's chunky, but that's apparently Firefox's fault for not keeping up with whatever UI support Linux has now for scrolling.

    The first time I nuked Windows 11, but was able to get Windows 10 installed, which was less annoying. This time I added a s

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