back to article How Microsoft will cram Windows 10 even harder down your PC's throat early next year

Microsoft will automatically download Windows 10 to millions more PCs in a "recommended" Windows update early next year. The tech giant shows no signs of slowing the rollout of its new operating system, utterly undeterred by the growing public outcry at its pushy attitude. Windows 10 already appears as a free "optional" …

Page:

  1. leexgx

    pre loading win10

    what they don't say is that 3G download is automatically done if you receive a copy or not (all my systems that had recommended updates turned on have re downloaded the 3GB on each of them) i have now removed the GWX update and by default now never turn on recommended updates (just important and Microsoft updates only)

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. joed

      Re: pre loading win10

      I'd not trust important updates. All my systems have been set to manual, every non-security update checked before approval (and I'll keep an eye on security updates because MS lost my trust). Plus all the CEIP schedules disabled. And 3GB would strangle my "broadband" for longer than I'd care to wait.

      Linux on the emergency exit.

    3. Joe User

      Re: pre loading win10

      And if you aren't careful, Microsoft will sneak GWX back on your PC by classifying it as "Important". Watch out for KB3035583 and be sure to unselect it.

    4. Joe User

      Re: pre loading win10

      There appears to be a way to block a Windows 10 forced upgrade:

      1. Open gpedit.msc (Group Policy Editor)

      2. Go to "Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update".

      3. In the list of settings, find "Turn off the upgrade to the latest version of Windows through Windows Update".

      4. Double-click this one and set it to "Enabled".

      This setting was originally meant for use by administrators in business environments, where random upgrades to Windows 10 could wreak havoc. Microsoft is unlikely to remove this option, and this setting will probably remain the most effective way to block uninvited upgrades.

      Note -- The Group Policy Editor normally isn't available in Windows 7 Home editions, but there's a way around that, too:

      How to Enable "Group Policy Editor" (gpedit.msc) in Windows 7 Home Premium, Home Basic, and Starter Editions

      http://www.askvg.com/how-to-enable-group-policy-editor-gpedit-msc-in-windows-7-home-premium-home-basic-and-starter-editions/

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: pre loading win10

        Thanks for this useful information. I will be doing it on every customer's machine I see.

      2. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: pre loading win10

        Re: GPE settings

        Note if GWX is running, changing these setting won't stop GWX doing it's daily "calling home" to https://wscont.apps.microsoft.com/winstore/OSUpgradeNotification/gwx/prod/...

        To stop this communication that should of been disabled by the above GP setting setting, you need to disable and uninstall GWX. So far I've found that

        GWX Control Panel (http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-stopper-to-permanently-remove.html ) does exactly what it says it does.

        I think, given how aggressive MS are being with Win10, if GWX is running, regardless of MS licence, you have a potentially open door to MS deciding to automatically update that computer...

  2. x 7

    absolute fucking stupidity

    1. Pompous Git Silver badge

      absolute fucking stupidity

      I could not agree more!

      1. h4rm0ny

        Re: absolute fucking stupidity

        Windows 10 - the Foie Gras of operating systems.

        1. Spleen

          Re: absolute fucking stupidity

          Foie gras is delicious. I think you mean that Windows 10 is the /gavage/ (tube-fed corn) of operating systems. Foie gras geese are not fed on foie gras, that's just wrong.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: absolute fucking stupidity

            Yep. And it's you, dear user, who is the goose.

          2. stringyfloppy

            Re: absolute fucking stupidity

            I think he meant they're using the same method used to produce the geese used for Foie Gras. Made perfect sense to me.

        2. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > absolute fucking stupidity

      At what point does it cross over from "fucking stupidity" to "breach of section 3 of the computer misuse act (1990)"?

      1. Fatman
        Joke

        RE: "breach of section 3 of the computer misuse act (1990)"?

        <quote>At what point does it cross over from "fucking stupidity" to "breach of section 3 of the computer misuse act (1990)"?</quote>

        It never will!!! Because Microsoft """owns""" your computer, you are simply allowed to use it!!

      2. CanadianMacFan

        "At what point does it cross over from "fucking stupidity" to "breach of section 3 of the computer misuse act (1990)"?"

        When they got rich enough to be immune from prosecution?

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        At what point does it cross over from "fucking stupidity" to "breach of section 3 of the computer misuse act (1990)"?

        I think the moment it installs W10 without your explicit permission. Having said that, GWX in itself could classify for that already as it interrupts you and starts showing advertising without your explicit say-so.

        Caveat: not a lawyer.

    3. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: absolute fucking stupidity

      And Terry/MS know it!

      "Your feedback is so important to our Windows 10 team"; yet he has disabled comments on his blog post...

  3. lnLog
    Thumb Down

    wsusoffline - win

    Windows 10 is the best Windows ever – familiar, safer, faster, and full of innovations - And incompatible with half the commercial engineering software that I run.

    Another reason to use wsusoffline (along with reducing the data for multiple machines).

    1. Kiwi

      Re: wsusoffline - win

      And incompatible with half the commercial engineering software that I run.

      And incompatible with most of my customer's hardware too it seems.

      Microsoft, you bunch of retarded fuckwits.. WHAT THE FUCK IS THE USE OF A CLOUD-BASED OS WHEN IT KILLS THE FUCKING NETWORK HARDWARE?

      I am quickly tiring of having to reset machines, or re-install from scratch, because 10 either makes them unable to connect to the net or, in the worst cases, bricks them.

      The lot of you need to die. Slowly and painfully. Over several years. Fuck off and die you worthless lumps of shit. Do the world a favour and leave.

      1. Jos V

        Re: wsusoffline - win

        Agreed. Fuck the cloud. It might be an option if you live and work in a nicely connected first-world country, but not when you live and work in a developing country, as I do now, where having no proper internet connection is kind of expected, and having one is a commodity. Maybe google's loon balloons will actually work here, but I wouldn't rely on any proper cloud services to run reliably through it. MS must think the entire world has access to decent connections.

        And still. Now sitting in my MS update pending list (set not to download, nor install automatically), with some added notes from my searches:

        kb2952664 Win10 nagware

        KB2999226 is a nonsecurity patch for Windows 8.1 that, according to the KB article, sticks a new Universal C Runtime on Windows 8.1 machines. The new Universal C Runtime is needed when programmers use the new Windows 10 Software Development Kit to build Universal/Metro apps and you try to run them on Windows 8.1. It's a mammoth patch, first issued for both Win 7 and Win 8.1 on Sept. 15, then issued for Vista on Sept. 29. There's no indication that the patch has been modified in any other way.

        KB3035583: Ed Bott posted a very thorough analysis of KB 3035583 in his ZDNet report, "Get Windows 10: Microsoft's hidden roadmap for the biggest software upgrade in history." Bott has a less-conspiratorial take on the evidence:

        I have a hard time seeing this as adware. It is, instead, perfectly targeted advertising, offering a free upgrade to a product currently running on the system where the ad is being displayed. There are no hidden costs (aside from those incurred by the download itself) and the upgrade isn't going to be installed without your explicit consent. It can't, because there's at least one license agreement (and probably several) you're going to have to click through.

        KB 3068708:

        KB 3022345, since replaced by KB 3068708, says, "By applying this service, you can add benefits from the latest version of Windows to systems that have not yet been upgraded." That looks like a lightning bolt to any tinfoil hat. Read further, though, and Microsoft says the patch "collects diagnostics about functional issues on Windows systems that participate in the Customer Experience Improvement Program," which is a horse of a very different color.

        KB 3075249, however, doesn't mention anything about CEIP. It's billed as an update that "adds telemetry points to the User Account Control (UAC) feature to collect information on elevations that come from low integrity levels

        KB3080149, This package updates the Diagnostics and Telemetry tracking service to existing devices. This service provides benefits from the latest version of Windows to systems that have not yet upgraded. The update also supports applications that are subscribed to Visual Studio Application Insights.

        kb3092627, update to fix an update kb3076895, fixing XML core service.

        My private laptop runs Mint already (Win7 in VM). My work laptop, which unfortunately has to run applications that don't run in WINE, and a VPN, plus a couple of corporate sites that only run in IE (yeah, really), runs on Win7-pro. With Mint running in VM.

        Fuck MS.

        I'm kind of lucky still, with my MiFi box over LTE giving me 12Mbps peak where I roam around. Fixed internet at my workplace stops at 2Mbps if it is working at all.

        1. jelabarre59

          Re: wsusoffline - win

          > MS must think the entire world has access to decent connections.

          Actually, no. MS believes everybody is sitting on 100-gigabit connections down the hall from the update server.

      2. TimeMaster T
        Mushroom

        Re: wsusoffline - win

        "The lot of you need to die. Slowly and painfully. Over several years. Fuck off and die you worthless lumps of shit. Do the world a favour and leave."

        Take heart!!! That seems to be EXACTLY what Microsoft is doing.

        The downer is that they are "sharing the pain" with the rest of use :(

        1. Spasticus Autisticus
          Mushroom

          Re: wsusoffline - win

          I've been telling my customers* that MS is like a beached whale, it'll take along time to die but it is going nowhere and will die eventually.

          * I provide care in the community for Windows mainly but 95+% of my current customers will be moving to Linux or they won't be my customers any more. A small number that have no choice because of particular software or hardware can stay but I'll be even more ranty about the halfwits at Microsoft.

          1. Just Enough
            Facepalm

            Re: wsusoffline - win

            "95+% of my current customers will be moving to Linux or they won't be my customers any more."

            That's an interesting way of treating your customers. "Do exactly what I say, or I'll stop giving you the option of employing me. Then what'll you do?"

            "A small number that have no choice because of particular software or hardware can stay but I'll be even more ranty about the halfwits at Microsoft."

            That's exactly what your customers pay you for; your permission to use the OS of their choice, plus a lecture with every service call. They must love it.

            1. Stoneshop
              Linux

              Re: wsusoffline - win

              That's an interesting way of treating your customers. "Do exactly what I say, or I'll stop giving you the option of employing me. Then what'll you do?"

              "From $date I will support Linux only because $reasons, so if you really, really need to keep using Windows, you'll need to find another source of support before then".. How is that making people do exactly as I say? Depending on the way various people need to be told, more forceful expressions can be in order, but that's entirely between them and me.

              Contracts, whether explicit or implicit (as in, "You're family, I'll help you with that") have two parties. Either end can terminate the contract, given a reasonable notification time. And real support contracts generally stipulate the hardware config AND the software versions covered. So when customers start running W10, unwittingly or not, the supporting party would be entirely justified in saying "tough shit, bye".

            2. JimC

              Re: wsusoffline - win

              > That's an interesting way of treating your customers. "Do exactly what I say, or I'll stop giving you

              > the option of employing me. Then what'll you do?"

              You must admit, though, its almost exactly in line with what Microsoft are doing here...

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: wsusoffline - win

            If I were your customer, I'd be looking to get shot of you with a snotty attitude like that.

            1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
              Facepalm

              Re: wsusoffline - win

              I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the line "care in the community" means he's talking about family/friends/neighbours here, not actual cash paying contracts.

            2. Spasticus Autisticus

              Re: wsusoffline - win

              I want to retire and all my customers know how I feel about the steam driven, three wheeled lorry (truck) with no locks that is Windows, (slow, unstable, bloated, needs loads of extra software to keep it secure-ish). Fuck Microsoft telling me and my customers what we're going to have to do with our PCs, I tell them there are better OSes out there and that I'm unwilling to deal with the MS POS* that drives me to despair. My health is more important to me than my customers and because I'm good at my job almost all will go to Linux or OSX.

              Care in the community - Windows is often sickly & is mentally retarded, I am self-employed fixing computers for a living. My Linux customers (around 30 at present) are a joy to visit when they need something upgraded or added, very rarely fixed.

              *Classic use, not Point of Sale or Proof of Share.....

              1. Vic

                Re: wsusoffline - win

                My Linux customers (around 30 at present) are a joy to visit

                When I was doing at-home PC support a few years back, I moved quite a few "difficult" customers onto Linux. It actually cost me quite a bit - they had significantly fewer callouts than when they were using Windows.

                One guy was very happy until his son came home and *insisted* that the machine be returned to booting Windows by default. And then the callouts resumed.

                Vic.

              2. keithpeter Silver badge
                Coat

                Re: wsusoffline - win

                "My Linux customers (around 30 at present) are a joy to visit when they need something upgraded or added, very rarely fixed."

                Do they have the root password/sudo?

                Do your customers tend to be individuals with a laptop or small companies with a bit of a network including backup/printing/shared drives?

                Just interested. Happy retirement.

                Coat: this is mainly a Windows topic so I'm sort of off.

                1. Spasticus Autisticus
                  Linux

                  Re: wsusoffline - win

                  @keithpeter

                  I mainly service private individuals with either laptops and/or desktops. I have a few SoHos, usually Hos. I do have one So using a Ubuntu server with a mix of XP (holy crap!) and Win7 desktops with shared files, printing, and backup.

                  All users have sudo for logging in and updates, I doubt very much any install new programs even though I show them how to use Synaptic, once these systems are set up they hardly ever need looking at. There is a 10+ year old laptop out there using Mint 11 (oh well, but it keeps on working), a few on 13, one or two on 16 and the rest on 17.x

                  1. keithpeter Silver badge
                    Pint

                    Re: wsusoffline - win

                    "There is a 10+ year old laptop out there using Mint 11 (oh well, but it keeps on working), a few on 13, one or two on 16 and the rest on 17.x"

                    Good for you.

                  2. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: wsusoffline - win

                    I have a few SoHos, usually Hos

                    The Hos suggest you're IN Soho :)

                    Yes, coat. The one with the Comedy Store tickets, thanks.

            3. hplasm
              Devil

              Re: wsusoffline - win

              "If I were your customer, I'd be looking to get shot of you with a snotty attitude like that."

              Said millions of ex-Windows users, to Microsoft as WinX is forced on more and more unsuspecting machines.

            4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

              Re: wsusoffline - win

              "If I were your customer, I'd be looking to get shot of you with a snotty attitude like that."

              To whom was that comment addressed Spasticus Autisticus or Microsoft?

          3. croc

            Re: wsusoffline - win

            Well, if that approach is good enough for Microsoft, why not you?

        2. Charles Manning

          Sharing the pain...

          "The downer is that they are "sharing the pain" with the rest of use :("

          Only the codependent amongst us stick around to enjoy that pain. For those of us who have de-Microsofted it's like slowing down and rubber-necking as we drive past a crash scene.

          As a consultant I'm seeing more and more Linux pop up amongst my customers. They're using VMs so they still have their Windows stuff for email etc as they slowly migrate.

          Even their Windows workspaces have Cygwin with more bash scripting and gcc/gdb based development. That's easing their transition though they don't even realise it.

        3. Mpeler
          Mushroom

          Re: wsusoffline - win

          But I thought that Micro$haft had a "We Share Your Pain" program?

          Seems like A WeSYP ejection for Nadella, all M$ upper manglement,

          and the "ribbon" team is in order.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-c0YSsF_O0

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: wsusoffline - win

      Windows XX is the best Windows ever - So said MS marketing dept every single time a new version was released and almost every time they have been wrong (except maybe Windows 2000 and 7)

      1. thx1138v2

        Re: wsusoffline - win

        You'll notice they don't say for whom it will be best. In my experience it has always been best for MS, not the users.

        One of the previous versions (I think it was Vista but might have been XP) said it would be the "most secure ever" and that turned out to be the most secure for Microsoft's profits and had little to do with user security.

  4. raving angry loony

    Evil

    Forcing an update to an operating system that's incompatible with many people's software? More evil from the definition of "high tech" evil.

    Yep, Microsoft continues to be evil. Told people that for over 30 years. Nobody believed me. Now I make and sell good food as a career, and only use MS crap to play games, mostly. I still tell people Microsoft is evil though. Still, nobody believes me. Even after they bitch about the latest update that killed their system, they still won't believe me.

    I told you so. I fucking told you so. I'll never tire of saying that. Truth might be ignored, but it feels good to say it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Evil

      My wife has a (poorly) configured laptop courtesy of the school she works for and that's exactly the reason why windows update sites are blocked at the router in my house - no way I'm losing all my bandwidth for idiotic shite like this. They never learn.

    2. Badvok

      Re: Evil

      "Forcing an update to an operating system that's incompatible with many people's software?"

      Whereas I'm sure there are a few obscure bits of software that might not work, I certainly haven't found any. For me, with all the developer tools and bespoke apps I run, I can't say I've really noticed any difference going from 7 to 10. I didn't even have to reinstall anything following the in-place update.

      That's all it really is you know, just another update, not really a new OS. Yes they've added a few things and tweaked a few bits under the hood but backwards compatibility is not broken for anything Vista compatible onwards, everything that worked for me under 7 works just as well under 10. Though of course I'm not still holding onto any tools from that long ago.

      1. x 7

        Re: Evil

        "Whereas I'm sure there are a few obscure bits of software that might not work, I certainly haven't found any."

        I can assure that at the moment most mainstream medical software will not work. Also lot of it requires outdated versions of IE.

        1. Gideon 1

          Re: Evil

          "lot of it requires outdated versions of IE"

          Seems you need urgent upgrades your software anyway, so maybe Win 10 is a blessing in disguise.

          1. yakitoo
            Facepalm

            Re: Evil

            "Seems you need urgent upgrades your software anyway, so maybe Win 10 is a blessing in disguise."

            Not if your system is governed by FDA rules.

        2. James O'Shea

          Re: Evil

          "Whereas I'm sure there are a few obscure bits of software that might not work, I certainly haven't found any."

          Hmm... let's just say that my sister has asked me to fix her laptop. It seems that she installed Win 10 Home on it (I advised her to get Win 10 Pro if she must install Win 10, but did she listen...) and after she did an obscure bit of software named 'iTunes' didn't work properly. (As it was iTunes, it took a while to become obvious that something was wrong. At first she thought it was just iTunes being iTunes.) Among other things, some of her music vanished.

          Now, she had made a backup before updating (that piece of advice she'd listened to. It might be a result of what happened when she updated from XP to Vista without making a backup first and Stuff Happened(tm)) and she restored the missing music... and the next day said items were missing again.

          Dropping back to Win 7 solved the problems. Except, of course, that iTunes is still iTunes, possibly the single most evil app ever created for Windows. You'd almost think that Apple wants to sabotage Microsoft...

Page:

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like