Microsoft now awfully pushy with Windows 10 on Win 7, 8 PCs – Reg readers hit back Have you noticed Microsoft being a little too eager in pushing its Windows 10 upgrade lately? You're not alone. The Reg news tip inbox has been awash the past few days with readers reporting that the newest version of Windows has been forcing itself onto computers amid other operating system updates, and sometimes even …
You really don't have to download and run a tool from a random website. Not if you know what regedit is.
1. Create a text file in your text editor of choice.
2. Type in the following:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Gwx]
"DisableGwx"=dword:00000001
3. Save it as "fuckoffWindows10nagware.reg". Make sure ".reg" is the real extension, it doesn't have a hidden ".txt" or something following - if you're reading this site, I assume you know about filename extensions.
4. Right-click and "Run as administrator". If necessary, confirm that "yes", you do want to make changes to Windows.
5. Problem solved. Have a nice day.
Random website? Most of us know of github. The tool consists of batch files, registry files and additions for the hosts file and it's all plain text and readable. So no dodgier than a random registry hack. The best advice for anyone that feels capable is to take a look at it to see if you're prepared to trust it.
I'm mystified by those who shudder at the horrors of M$ and Ubuntu, then proclaim Mint as some kind of golden horse, Mint has it's own issues with snooping, they get to place their own ads on your searches, and know what your searches are unless you remove the "addons", there's a few things you have to remove for a clean system, but with such a business model, can they be trusted by anyone mildly security focused?
citation: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=76946
There are plenty of distributions that are truly community driven and offer truly free (as in freedom) software. Mint while arguably popular isn't the holy grail it's usually lauded as. I'll refrain from suggesting a distro, it's an utterly personal choice and something only personal research can help you fathom.
> Mint has it's own issues
Yeah like almost all the rest of the GNU/Linux world its about to turn its back on POSIX. If your are a windows user switching away no worries you will love it as its turning into the hairball you know and love. If you actually care about POSIX, *BSD and the proprietary Unix(s) medium term will be the only game in town.
>"about to turn its back on POSIX."
>@asdf Can you please share a reference?
"Many of my previous projects (including PulseAudio and Avahi) have been written to be portable. Being relieved from the chains that the requirement for portability puts on you is quite liberating. While ensuring portability when working on high-level applications is not necessarily a difficult job it becomes increasingly more difficult if the stuff you work on is a system component (which systemd, PulseAudio and Avahi are).
In fact, the way I see things the Linux API has been taking the role of the POSIX API and Linux is the focal point of all Free Software development. Due to that I can only recommend developers to try to hack with only Linux in mind and experience the freedom and the opportunities this offers you. So, get yourself a copy of The Linux Programming Interface, ignore everything it says about POSIX compatibility and hack away your amazing Linux software. It's quite relieving!"
-- Lennart Poettering (very influential idiot over at Red Hat, the company that just happens to be riding record profits as they strategically pre-empt many other's work over the last two decades by turning GNU/Linux into a Windows like hairball that just happens to causes more and more FOSS to be Linux only, thus causing a profit snowball for Red Hat).
https://lwn.net/Articles/430598/
People complain systemd breaks the Unix philosophy but not at the highest level. It does serve one purpose to eat other FOSS and force a hard dependency on Linux. FOSS as always has ways of fighting back such as the *BSDs but in large part it becomes like the block chain in bitcoin in which the path the majority take ends up dominating. With Red Hat throwing a massive amount of money (that they now have and will continue to have) and dev time at the problem its looking grim long term for POSIX especially what with commercial UNIX dying.
Also on that link I give above it was more for the quote than the analysis of the author. He blames BSD way too much for the problem and implies them caring about POSIX (or indeed stability and not constantly breaking APIs) is passe and holding progress back when the truth is Red Hat went out of its way to make sure as many frameworks the FOSS desktop environments would come to depend on, would be near impossible to port to other OS as possible to the point of ripping up and throwing way frameworks that did get ported like HAL. There was definitely a need for some of what Red Hat did but Red Hat completely did it the wrong way (for anybody but their shareholders) which was predictable and its on the rest of the commercial *nix community (who actually do most of the FOSS development) for going along with it. Some may make their bones on Linux and enjoy it now but lets see how they like it as Red Hat starts being able to dictate more and more in the ecosystem with fewer and fewer viable alternatives. Forking is only as viable as your resources and your user base.
Excellent comment from comment section of that link:
"The solution (on the POSIX front) is to get newer Linux APIs standardized before forcing everyone to switch to them. It is totally unacceptable to say "we're number one, you do it like this". I'm not singling anyone out, but it's just plain wrong to have that attitude. Not only does it hurt portability, but it also makes it increasingly difficult to document how Operating Systems like Linux are supposed to work. Ever wonder why (even given the demise of the publishing industry) there are so few books coming out these days for developers to read? It's because this train is moving so fast that only those riding it have a hope of making the next stop."
and creates a whole host of other problems, when your PA says it will not run the MS office CD....
Old boss of mine used to run that line of bull waaaaay back in 2011. Pissed him off no end when I grabbed a Linux disk, had the OS installed inside 20 minutes on a blank machine (all drivers etc done, full office suite, can play media without having to download extras unlike certain OS's), and then grabbed Office 2010 and installed that in the system without (as he insisted) having to install extra bits of special software or spending hours doing special configurations. All this was done in front of someone he was proudly running Linux down to. While we were talking over things and I was distracted doing my normal job and looking after other customers.
Poor guy. Couldn't run it down any further when I showed the customer it would more than meet their needs.
(Customer I still see often.. Old boss - and his business- long gone)
BTW, how far back in time are you stretching for this? MS Office CD?????
"Random website? Most of us know of github."
I've *heard* of it. I was unaware that all content on the site is vetted by a team of expert analysts who despite getting no payment from me are nevertheless dedicated to my personal well-being.
You note that the files are all plain text and readable. That's insufficient. I've spent a couple of decades with this stuff and can certainly understand what REG and CMD files will do, but that doesn't mean that I can understand the wider consequences just by reading them. Give me a copy of the Windows source code and a few months to experiment and payment to my employer for my time and energy and I'll let you know. By that time, of course, MS will have teleported the goalposts into a parallel dimension so my answer won't be very useful to you.
There are more regkeys than those, see the next page for three more (post title "Problems and Solutions for KB3035583"). I particularly like the new DisableOSUpgrade entry, as if making your consent known with AllowOSUpgrade wasn't enough. I suppose next month we'll have YesImReallySure key.
Having removed the offending updates I was aware of (Upgrade app, 8.1 telemetry etc.) the "Upgrade to Windows 10 Home" optional update would not piss off and stay hidden, no matter how many times I hid it. Every reboot, back it came, like herpes.
Granted it's late and it's been a long day, so I may well have missed an update when trawling through the installed ones, however...
I can verify that Veti's reg hack does indeed work a charm. While the reg script moaned at me for some reason when I tried to run it with elevated privileges, I merely navigated to the relevant hive in the registry, added a new key and DWORD and set the hex value as per the script would have done anyway.
I wish I could give more than one upvote :)
You know, you almost don't need the icon here.
Apparently Win7 boxes are now under determined attack from a highly knowledgeable party who have already compromised the signing keys that are supposed to ensure that updates are trustworthy. You can try to resist these attacks by configuring the PC, but the attacker keeps shifting their target and has (probably) an endless supply of vectors available to them. The only sure way to defend your PC is to hide it behind an independent firewall and block connections to the outside world.
How is that different to XP?
A most excellent tool. I'm running it on 4 PC's at home and so far, so good. BUT, it's probably a good idea to recheck the page every couple of days since MS is changing tactics.
Edit.. just checked and downloaded the upgrade.. DAMN MS... pulled a fast one and the update caught it... Check your settings on Update as they're forcing them to Auto Update.
I've had issues with updating windows last Tuesday, this is what happened to me...
I have windows 7 ultimate and automatic updates turned off, I know from years of experience to only allow security updates to be installed after I've done some research. On 10/13/15 I received 9 important updates, 2 recommended and 3 optional updates (windows 10 upgrade, silverlight and skype update) I decided to download the 9 important updates and one recommended, I don't need windows 10 upgrade or the recommended update (KB 2952664, compatibility update for upgrading Windows 7) at this time.
After I downloaded and installed the updates and restarted my computer my settings for windows updates was changed with out my permission from check for updates but let me choose to install them which was my setting for at least past three years to install updates automatically. When I changed my update the settings back to the way it was before windows changed it I noticed that update KB 2952664 (compatibility update for upgrading Windows 7) was ready to be installed when I would power down, there was no option to stop it. I had no choice but to download the unwanted KB 2952664 update and then remove it manually.
This morning (10/15/15) I checked my update settings and everything's OK but when I went to installed updates the unwanted KB 2952664 update was back.
So let's review. Microsoft hacked my system, change my update settings, force me to download an unwanted update (KB 2952664) and then after I manually remove it Microsoft reinstalled it without my knowledge.
WTF is going on!
After hours of research I've discovered that I could remove all of last Tuesday's security updates except one KB 2952664 that's because this update involves collecting data every day and sending it back to Microsoft. The only way to remove this update is to do a system restore.
When I made the system restore I did not know there was an alternate solution.
( Florida1920... As mentioned in another thread, I started here: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/04/17/how-to-remove-windows-10-upgrade-updates-in-windows-7-and-8/ ) Thanks Florida1920.
I also discovered that they hacked my system with this update KB 3083710 they say it contains some improvements to Windows Update Client in Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. I believe this changes your update settings from check for updates but let me choose when to download and install them to install updates automatically. When KB 3083710 is installed it automatically installs KB 2952664 when you shut down.
There's also:
https://github.com/WindowsLies/BlockWindows
..a set of (readable) .bat and .vbs scripts which help people defend themselves from Redmond's shenanigans.
Despite the obvious quality of the project and its usefulness to Windows users, the author remarks:
"There is a highly concerted effort by M$ to harass websites that link to this. I'm tired of constantly trying to convince website admins it's not spam."
Maybe Reg could consider mentioning it for the potential benefit of readers? Perhaps as a bootnote to this article and the many forthcoming articles of a similar nature? Shirley some reference to tools which can help people mitigate this ongoing problem must be in order?
A class action to charge MS for the download fees/time would stop them. Ultimately, that ought to cost MS many billions.
Pushed downloads STEAL your internet fees (especially on wireless connections which I use)! Getting governments to change laws so pushed downloads are specifically illegal without specific user-initiated consent would also help. If we steal MS code the shit hits the fan.
If MS steals our internet time zilch happens. Now who's fault is that? Us of course, as we've done fuck-all about it for years.
Personally, I've solve the problem completely by not allowing Microsoft Update with 50 feet of any of my PCs. I've never even seen an MS notice/request re Win 10. Now, isn't that wonderful?
Dear Bill,
You and I were, if not best buddies, certainly people that got on. For 30 odd years we have had a special relationship, DOS, 3.1 WIN95/98 (cough Vista). And you know what I even told my mates how good you were. Things were sweet.
Then win 10.
F*ck you
F*ck you in the a*** with a f****** 10 inch c******r sidewards
F*ck you until you f******g f*****d up f*****d f*****s f*ck off.
I've now gone to linux Mint and will now be converting all my non-tech mates over to it.
So yeah, its not going to be the year of Linux, but y'know, we, the tech nerds support our family and friends and when we tell them to fuck windows off, you are sliding down a slippery slope.
For the record, el Reg users, I held off going to Linux for years. All I can say is what was I thinking? Mint is a fantastic piece of software and is now on my laptop and my friends. Works great and to top it off, no fucking fucked up fucked ribbon.
So one more time
FUCK U MS.
(bit of a rant, soz people)
restored with asterisks by El Mod because it was quite a funny rant really, if a bit too sweary for normal service
>I am sure I would upvote too but it appears that
>
>"This post has been deleted by a moderator"
There do seem to be 1 or 2 moderators at El Reg who have a rather puritanical view about whats acceptable. I've had 2 of my posts refused in the last week which hasn't happened before so I suspect they're new. Probably just out of uni and still feeling terribly righteous and politically correct.
I wish I could read this post in the first place, as it appears to have been deleted by a moderator. In which case, shouldn't he/she delete all the comments? Like, "it never happened!". Funny that, given so many positive comments about the "it never happened" comment. Unless, as usual, I'm barking up (down?) the wrong tree?
Microsoft have seriously misjudge their market, yet again.
What people wanted was something that worked like Windows 7 and was bought like Windows 7. Windows 8 was bought like Windows 7, but didn't look like it. People didn't want it.
OK so they've kinda restored the look and feel, but then they've gone and changed the ownership model? Funny old thing - people don't want that either.
Whatever is left of the PC market clearly wants to keep things at about the Windows 7 level. Evidence - people are not upgrading, and are increasingly unlikely to do so. And when was the last time you read a good headline about Windows 10? The response to Windows 10 is ranging from meh to wtf.
In an age when the privacy of data is becoming a hotter and hotter topic, Microsoft have bet their future on personal data collection. They're getting desperate - some of these attempts to push Windows 10 could end up landing them in court.
If this doesn't seriously depress the PC market over the next few years then I don't know what will. To stabilise it Windows 10 needed to be anything from meh to brilliant. Meh would have been ok. A meh would have been guaranteed had they not put in all the data collection. In fact, they could have simply kept Windows 7's desktop and put an updated kernel inside. That would be been ok too.
MS need to look at how Apple change things. Basically, they don't. They've taken a few risks with dropping old APIs and frameworks, otherwise they've not really changed a thing. If Apple suddenly changed OS X into something completely different and unpleasant then what do you think their audience would think? Setting aside jokes about sheeople, I think that Mac sales would plummet. Apple must be laughing their heads off!
And in the world of Linux, look at how well Mint is doing. Subtle improvements to the old desktop paradigm are proving very popular there.
Basically on every platform out there there's no evidence that anyone wants anything different to what we've had for decades. The sooner MS drop the crap and go back to boring the sooner things will settle down. It's never going to return to its peak, too much damage has been done. Forcing a Freemium funded OS down the throats of their remaining users without their permission is a recipe for long term decline.
I don't think it will be too long before MS start treating Mac as the primary platform for Office. I mean, they'll have to; people won't be buying PCs...
Like the FCPX fiasco?
Re "...how Apple change things. Basically they don't" :-
Apple suddenly EOL'd FCP7 while it was a broadcasting industry standard, driving most existing users to rival video editing systems from Avid and Adobe. Their replacement product FCPX was half-baked at that time, lacking vital features, and not backwards compatible, but Apple didn't care. FCPX is great now, at least for freelancers, but boy what a hiccough (stupid English spelling...).
A bad example, by your own admission: Apple's response to the problems with FCPX was to throw the kitchen sink at it - they listened, responded, and honed FCPX into an astonishingly good NLE. They were right to move the NLE pardigm away from the FCP7 / Premiere / Avid one - the results speak for themselves: I can put a story together in a fraction of the time it took in FCP7, and the output quality is even better than was delivered by FCP7.
With Windows 10, on the other hand, MSFT started by trying to nag people into installing and have now moved to attempting to force it. At this rate, they'll be sending heavies round to anyone not running Win10 by Christmas!
So, rather than listening to and responding to customers in the manner of Apple, Microsoft have said a big "fuck you" to their customers and seem to consider people's computer hardware to be property of MSFT.
Me, I'm getting the popcorn machine warmed up - I can feel a class action coming on!
"Microsoft have seriously misjudge their market, yet again."
I think you seriously misjudge their market too. You're not their market, I'm not and nor is anyone on this forum. Their market is milions of punters who never come near windows update settings, and who know fuckall (and care likewise) about telemetrics, etc. And when they reboot their computer to find a "Please wait, installing a new operating system..." (and it's free OMG!!!!!), they go all gooey and warm in their eye sockets for the good daddy Microsoft has just given them something new, something better, something absolutely free!!!! This is the MS market and google market and facebook market, and it's unlikely to change soon, later, or most probably ever. Blame God for making people Big Time Suckers.
You're not their market, I'm not and nor is anyone on this forum. Their market is milions of punters who never come near windows update settings, and who know fuckall (and care likewise) about telemetrics, etc.
Have you not been paying attention? The market you are talking about is shrinking, and there's no sign yet that Windows 10 is going to do anything about it. It's still shrinking now.
The market that MS still dominate and may yet preserve is the one that likes this data slurping the least; Enterprise users. There's hardly any of them moving from 7 to 10.
This is the MS market and google market and facebook market, and it's unlikely to change soon, later, or most probably ever. Blame God for making people Big Time Suckers.
The wailing will be interesting in a year, though, when they realise they will have to pay again, and again, and then a much higher price because MS has realised they can't change or are too inert. THAT model I have seen before, it used to be played with MS Office. They can't do that anymore because they can no longer screw people over with yet another proprietary file format, so this is the next thing.
You're not their market, I'm not and nor is anyone on this forum. Their market is milions of punters who never come near windows update settings, and who know fuckall (and care likewise) about telemetrics, etc.
This group of punters is either going to:
- suddenly gain a real significant interest in what these updates do
OR
- begin outsourcing their update plans to someone who does
when they see the outrageous download bills and endless frustration these policies will generate.
I think you seriously misjudge their market too. You're not their market, I'm not and nor is anyone on this forum.
Upvoted, but I wish there was a more granular "I hate the implications of your post, but dammit you're right and there's f-all we can do about it" button :)
Forcing a Freemium funded OS down the throats of their remaining users without their permission is a recipe for accelerating long term decline.
Fixed it for you. The rot set in years ago, that's why MS is so desperate that it tried this. I'm not sure which focus group confirmed to them that this idea was acceptable, but I suspect that its members were either blind drunk of stoned...
This man needs a fuck... he has probably run dry.
It looks like Satya has been brought in to oversee the last phase in Microsft's existence.
First came the BillG phase. During this phase they were pretty nasty to the industry, but at least they made some pretty good products and actually attracted customers through value.
Next came the Ballmer years. You've built the company and a solid product base and become a mature company - now just drive the ship and don't hit any rocks. The emphasis was in body-slamming the industry (Google, Apple) rather than competing through releasing excellent product. Unfortunately he hit the rocks.
Lastly comes the Satya Nadella phase. The company is only sinking slowly because the dirty great rock through the bottom is holding it up. Time to pump out all the value you can and get off the ship. Screw the customers over. They are just going to defect to other companies anyway, so best extract what you can out of them while they're still around.
The saddest thing about MS is that it has such amazing resources and capability. If it just was directed in productive ways rather than destructive ways the whole industry would be way better off.
"During this phase they were pretty nasty to the industry, but at least they made some pretty good products and actually attracted customers through value."
Eh? Like what?
*Anything* that they've *ever* had that was *any* good was bought in and then slowly (or sometimes instantly) wrecked.
*ANYTHING*
I think they did Word and Excel for Windows (originally quite well). Ironic they were first released on Mac as Windows didn't really work properly till Win3.0 (or probably 3.1). While NT 3.5 was first version of NT (1993) and based a lot on OS/2 and VMS, it unlike MS Basic for CP/M and MS SQL 6.x was actually developed by MS and pretty good. They downgraded it in 1996 by including "features" inspired by Win95, which was hardly more than all the 32bit and media extensions for Win 3.11 for Workgroups rolled up and slapped under a new shell (desktop). The win9x desktop was a good idea, (though not original) but the File Explorer part is still limited and buggy compared to xcopy or win 3.x File manager.
NT was not based on OS/2. It was meant to be OS/2 v3, but has little similarity to it. Yes, it shipped with HPFS until v3.5, but that was written by Gordon Letwin of Microsoft. The OS/2 subsystem was required to run MS Mail until Exchange reached maturity.
(There was also an OS/2 1.3 PM subsystem for NT. If anyone has a copy of this, I would be very, very interested to see it, as I'm not aware of anyone who has it, never mind screenshots).
Dave Cutler came from DEC, NT is more derived on a DEC system called Prism.
The first release of NT was v3.1, not 3.5. It was memory hungry for the time, but not too bad. I ran OS/2 for preference during the 90s, but NT3.1 was probably in a better state than the initial release of OS/2 2.0.
The issue with NT 4 was not so much the desktop (that was needed, it looked embarrassing next to OS/2, or even '95), but the fact graphics drivers were moved into the kernel. However, it may have been needed, by 1999 the lack of USB and DirectX in NT was a real issue if you wanted to run more than servers. By the mid nineties the separation of desktop/server operating systems was ending, it was rapidly apparent that Netware would not survive, and that NT would eventually be the future.
@Fehu
I think you misread what the original poster wrote .. it unlike MS Basic for CP/M and MS SQL 6.x was actually developed by MS and pretty good. Which I believe means that the poster meant that CP/M and MS SQL 6.x were not pretty good.
BTW - Microsoft did not actually buy SQL Server from Sybase. It was a "joint development" of the Sybase product by Microsoft, Ashton Tate (dBase) and Sybase initially for OS/2. Microsoft later negotiated exclusive rights to SQL Server written for Microsoft operating systems. As you say, it was not until V7 that the Sybase code started to be depreciated, although the products started to move apart with V6.0.
This time can be used as an illustration of why it might not have been wise for another company to engage in a joint ventures with Microsoft. History shows that Ashton Tate failed for a number of reasons including the appalling dBaseIV "upgrade"; staff changes; and the realisation that their original product was probably not copyrightable as it had been written at JPL and so was 'owned' by Congress and thus in the public domain. Sybase are still around as a subsidiary of SAP.
Microsoft was initially a small company with relatively few products and limited resources. They did not have their own database and sold, under joint branding, the excellent R:Base desktop SQL database as a competitor to dBase. After a couple of missteps by R:Base it seems that a number of their people were employed by MS, and worked on the early versions of what became MS Access.
My thought here has always been that Microsoft's rise during the early PC era was basically down to two specific things; first, users with PCs were locked into Microsoft by IBM and Intel and second, the earlier versions of MS-DOS/Windows were incredibly easy to hack. No licence? Who cared! It wasn't as if the system asked for one and it was rare to hear of anyone getting done for it.
Of course there wasn't a viable alternative on the PC and users were being scared off other platforms such as there were despite the fact that more than one of them was superior at the time and, had they been successful in fighting off the deliberate Microsoft FUD, they may have gone on to be a lot better than what we now have. But then, of course, we now have Linux (I'll save the pro/anti-POSIX stuff for elsewhere) and Apple managed to survive the M$FUD - just - where contemporaries failed to hang on, either because sales disappeared or because financial types did them in the you-know-where (I haven't forgotten you, Boland!)
Though finally, I do need to say... Linux is not Min... oh sod it! It was worth it for the laugh!!!
>The saddest thing about MS is that it has such amazing resources and capability. If it just was directed in productive ways rather than destructive ways the whole industry would be way better off.
What is best for the industry is for this Beast to drown before it does any more harm.
@Charles Manning
The Ballmer years was when Product Marketing took over, and well... yeah, that went well... Thats the nicest thing I can say about the "chair throwing" years. You can't lead when Marketing is telling your developers when/how to innovate. And that is when they lost many of their best/brightest. With that said, Nadella's MS actually stands a chance at survival and even to thrive again, but it is sure not going to look anything like the previous versions of MS when he's done.
First came the BillG phase. During this phase they were pretty nasty to the industry, but at least they made some pretty good products and actually attracted customers through value.
Yup. Bob, Clippy, Windows Me, and EDLIN has been clinging on until Windows 7 or thereabouts. They also "improved" an impressive range of external products to utterly destroy their usefulness, especially Visio springs to mind here.
You and I have a lot in common... I started my experience with MS with DOS 1.0, and I've been an on again off again shill for Microsoft since the mid 80's. No more. I am in the process of converting my last spare machine to LINUX Mint as well and will only maintain Windows 7 for as long as this hardware holds out.
To say I'm livid with the idiocy behind MS's latest stun is a bit of an understatement. If/when I decide to upgrade OS's, it's on my schedule, not theirs. and it's sure as heck not going to happen blindly, without vetting the most important (and expensive) applications I use. While those apps will probably work with Windows 10, there's always a chance they won't and then I'm either out of luck and have to purchase more software because of Windows 10, or I have to spend at least a full day restoring my machine.
Needless to say, this whole experience has placed Microsoft in a very negative light, with me, and like you, I plan on conveying the virtues of LINUX to all of the friends and family I support, and recommend they consider abandoning MS, as well.
I've had it with all the creative liberties that MS (and Google & FB) are taking with my equipment,by collecting metrics on my usage patterns, at my expense. I am not their guinea pig nor am I one of their beta users. I am their soon to be former customer and should have a little bit of respect given to my property.
In conclusion, Microsoft can suck it and take their latest disaster of an OS and stick it where the sun doesn't shine.
>Re: FreeBSD
>Also runs very well in a VM for those critical services, DNS/DHCP etc.
If they are really critical you might think of moving those to OpenBSD (though admittedly VMWare support of OpenBSD sucks balls, but VBox supports it well even if it as whole sucks balls). A bit more secure and stable at the cost of perhaps a small bit of performance at least in the server role bare metal. IMHO always the first choice for anything internet facing.
A bit of a rant?! Steady on there - it's just software we're discussing here
Actually, we are not. We are discussing attitude. We are discussing Microsoft having so little regard for the right of the user to decide for themselves what that do or do not want run on their machines that what they do no longer borders on criminal but simply is.
@Whistlerspa: So it was CUCUMBER. Thanks. I only read it after El Reg has restored it and I'd been wondering about c**...**r.
To the OP: Next time you might consider curare-soaked, barbed-wire-wrapped, wrought iron fence. I believe that (or something very similar) is canonical according to the jargon file. Of course, you may feel it is too good for them.
To be clear, it's the iOS devices that suck, and Apple that sucks.
This is Apple with an iTunes store that is basically a web server that needs the magic 200MB iTunes web browser.
This is Apple that kept working to disable pyMusique and SharpMusique small tiny iTunes clients for Linux to prevent Linux users from buying music from iTunes.
Apple do their darndest to make sure that you cannot use your iOS devices with Linux.
So point your blame finger in the right direction.
Completely irrelevant to the point made. If the guy converts his mates to Linux and they have any iOS Device they wil be royally screwed. Finger pointing does not alter that fact.
Additionally, Apple are under no obligation to support or allow support Linux. Their only obligation is to their shareholders
>"I use Mediamonkey on Windows 7, but I'm looking for an alternative for Linux."
I'm fond of Clementine and suggest giving it a try... if it doesn't float your boat these are all fine apps too:
Amarok
Audacious (complete with WinAmp-skin mode which should make a Windows veteran feel very comfortable)
Banshee
Exaile
Rhythmbox
I think you've broken the record for must upvotes to a single post in the history of El Reg (and probably the record for the most stars in a single post for bleeping out expletives - there may be a correlation here :) ).
This is an award winner IMHO. You should get a free copy of Windows 10 or something, no, wait ..
(@ Gerry Perez - now tell us how you REALLY FEEL) (btw, upvote 1000)
A few thoughts/questions:
First, why exactly does M$ so desperately want Win1 0 to be everywhere? Why are they forcing it upon people who don't want it?
Why are they offering it "for free" to users of Windows 7, 8, and 8.1?
Why are they offering a €100.00 "incentive" for folks to trade in their old PC and get a shiny new Win1 0 box?
Could it be with Win1 0, UEFI, TPM, M$ Device Guard, Intel AMT, DRM, and Secure Boot, they've attained a sort of Nerdvana, where they TOTALLY control your PC, whether you like it, consent to it, or not?
What happened to the EU on this? Data Privacy and all that. Hey Oettinger, where are you?
And could it be that Ballmer was shown the door because he wouldn't do the dirty and approve this last step, which hands our PCs to M$ and the various TLAs and Hollyscrewed?
If they are SO DETERMINED to put this crap on our PCs, there must be something we REALLY don't need in it (or to follow).
Be Afraid (Arthur Dent and the rest of us). Be Very Afraid...
(Would like to add multiple icons, perhaps Paris drinking a beer being overlooked by a black helicopter, etc.)
While I might be stepping on some toes. I don't recommend linux today (any distro). Due to the mess it is in (linux being the kernel, not the top layers build on it). Along with the mess of many of the system layers like systemd that is being used today.
What I recommend is *BSD, a desktop friendly version of it.
http://www.ghostbsd.org/
If you want something more secure you can go with NetBSD or OpenBSD.
As for Windows 10. What Microsoft is doing is putting the base for operating system that is in subscription. While I have to use Windows 10 for games (mostly streaming that I'm planning) I don't plan on buying any subscription for anything from Microsoft. I expect that subscription is going to start with Windows 11 or 12 (version equal of it).
This post has been deleted by its author
As mentioned in another thread, I started here: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/04/17/how-to-remove-windows-10-upgrade-updates-in-windows-7-and-8/
and then did these Registry hacks: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-update/how-to-cancel-windows-10-upgrade-for-now/71a30488-8171-48fe-9a4d-728b4081bfd3?auth=1
So far, so good, after a few reboots and a Windows Update check (it's set to notify me of new updates, but installation is done manually).
I've got an middle-aged Vaio laptop, for which Sony's advice is roughly "oh god don't try installing Win10, definitely don't try upgrading, hold tight and in Q4 we'll give a status update". And as all experienced in the art of reading deadlines know: "in Q4" means at best I'll be drunkenly installing their new drivers as the New Years fireworks pop.
So having eager little bunny Windows Update trying to joggle me into a BSOD swamp is impressive: I never expected Sony to be the good cop in the room. Of course in theory I can roll it all back again as a bad fever dream, but it would be too much to hope that the eager bunny won't try again an hour later.
The license on a full server install would killhis profits stone dead
I've built a server that covers a lot of jobs (file server, boot server, various other jobs) and am working on a second custom database server in spare time (actually it's the interface that is an ongoing job.
Once I have it done and the kinks worked out I'll be able to do similar installs for others - for a fee of course.
Total license cost? $0. Ongoing maintenance costs? Hardware. So far I think it's been some 3 years since the last part needed replacing. No, make that 18 months - had a network card die. Just chugs away happily.
(Don't ask about the 2nd webserver - was short on funds when so used an old laptop that won't drive it's screen any more, stuck it on a shelf out of the way until I could get a proper replacement...Must do something about it but it sits there quietly doing it's job.....)
Go free... Go linux.. Or BSD... Or many things NOT MS based. Lots of stuff for businesses there as well.
Full disclosure: I've moved to Win 10 and am happy (though I have disabled all telemetry as standard, hosts, registry and services switched off...)
Saw this, on Ars, reportedly from MS "... In the recent Windows update, this option was checked as default; this was a mistake and we are removing the check."
Seems it will be stopped. Though I think few will be happy unless we hear details and maybe a head or two rolls.
This is so dumb. Those who want to be in control of their computing are a golden asset for any OS. These people probably have more impact on the future of computing that those who don't think. What genius even thinks it worth pissing such people off? Maybe MS has been secretly colonised by "consumer brained" people. STOOPID.
I don't usually go in for thew whole FTFY, but, this being the thread of 'fuck', fuck it.
"In the recent Windows update, this option was checked as default; this DID NOT GO UNNOTICED and we are removing the check."
<dream>As a penance, they should be forced to open-source DirectX</dream>
Well, if that was your first venture into FTFY territory, it wasn't bad - but still not quite there. Try:
"In the recent Windows update, this option was checked as default; this DID NOT GO UNNOTICED and we are removing the check - but by now we've probably already upgraded a shit load of end users who don't understand these things, SO FUCK YOU, GEEKS!"
And on this months menu we recommend to avoid these items, and while this might help you avoid Microsoft Muppetry (MM) we make no guarantees. Not suitable for small parts, may contain children. Batteries not included.
KB3083710 - still no information about what this does, but it is important they tell me.
And these three were unhidden once again:
KB2952664 - haha,
KB3035583 - update app *shudder*
KB2999226 - probably OK, but it mentions windows 10, so neh
Here are links that REALLY tell you exactly what this KBs do:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3083710 Still don't know this POS does, but it hits a TON of apps. Maybe someone at the windows community will know.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2952664 This one failed to install on my PC. YIPPEE!!
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3035583 NOT on my PC, mate.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2999226 This appears to be a Win10 update so Win8 and Win7 app will run.
To find other KBs, copy the URL and insert the KB number after the last /.
To get rid of these pests if already installed, go to control panel>programs and features> installed updates.
3083710 is one of the infamous "updates to update Update". There's no way to know precisely what it does. Deny, but don't hide - I'll look at this one again tomorrow, assuming if it screws the world up, I'll hear about it by then.
2952664: "Compatibility update for upgrading Windows 7". Yeah, if I were running Win 7 I'd come looking for that when I want to upgrade and not before. Deny.
3035583: "Update installs Get Windows 10 app in Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 SP1". You have to be kidding. Deny.
2999226: "Update for Universal C Runtime in Windows": Only needed if you're running either Win10, or Visual Studio 2015. Deny.
"KB3083710 - still no information about what this does, but it is important they tell me."
Microsoft - KB3083710 improvements to Windows Update Client in Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
I believe KB3083710 changes your update settings from check for updates but let me choose when to download and install them to install updates automatically. When KB 3083710 is installed it automatically installs KB 2952664 when you shut down
Agree with the sentiments above.
I have been with Microsoft from the beginning. The Very Beginning!
Until recently, my office ran 12 computers - all on varying forms of Windows from 7 Home to 8.1 Pro. Then came Win10.
I have in the past messed with various flavours of Linux, but the learning curve was too great for me. This time I finally got pushed over the edge!
There are only 3, that's *THREE PCs* still running any form of Windows because of this incessant sneaky-upgrade shit. These remaining computers now have all Windows updates turned off, and are examined daily for Windows Snoopware and sneaky-upgrade attempts.
Everything else runs Ubuntu, Fedora, or Suse.
Nice one Nadella - Way to piss off a whole section of once-loyal users.
If you'd let us 'upgrade' on our own terms, things *might* have been different.
Seriously guy, you and your company really suck.
I threw myself from the frying pan into the fire and moved into Linux support this time last year.
I say this not to crow, but because it's true, that I am genuinely relieved that I don't have to deal with the fallout of all this Windows 10 upgrade shite; it sounds bloody horrific if you're looking after SOHO/SMB customers who might just click through because Windows Update, and those of you dealing with it have my genuine sympathies.
Ick.
Steven R
I warned all the people who are normally dependent on my support. They were told not to upgrade to W10 until I said it was stable and had no problems. Then I reinforced that with a warning about the W10 spyware.
Unfortunately there is no way I can bring my users up to speed to avoid all the rocks that MS has now thrown at W7. I'm not even sure my PCs are clean at the moment.
The best I can do is get their PCs in for a delousing. That will cost me ££££s for each round trip for some of them.
Corrected title
Anyway at home I have left the OS the same as the OS it was built with, then rebuilt with new MB and CPU.
I still get updates, as I ran the registry hack to allow it, and I am still running (pretty well) XP Pro with a dual boot I am preparing to use as main boot of Linux Mint CInnamon.
Neither OS is giving me any crap, all I had to block on XP was the malware they wrote a few years ago post SP3.
That copy of Windows installed on your computer is not yours, they're just letting you lease it while retaining all rights to modify, alter, and even kill it at anytime, while leaving all the problems caused on your shoulders.
Right now they're seeing how far they can push that before the majority of users push back.
You are right. That is essentially what the EULA dictates. Still doesn't make it right. They do not have the right to force you to accept any or all changes. I am still the gate keeper of my systems and I dictate how I want my systems to run. I make the decisions on what, if any, information I share. And I certainly get to make the decisions on how my system accepts updates or security patches
This action by MS is the final straw for many users who have been able to overlook or even forgive MS's indiscretions in the past. Anyone who is not a mindless lemming is moving on I have, they have lost me as a customer. Honestly I haven't regretted that decision for one second.
How does it benefit Microsoft in the long term to have a EULA that essentially says "the floor will be shifting, the rug likely yanked out from under your operation as we see fit, and any bad outcomes are your problem to solve"? I hear time and again how the business community wants "predictability", this magic fun house forced update regime sounds exactly like what the corporate sector would run screaming from. Unless it's Microsoft's next extortion venture: "That's a nice business you got there, it'd be a shame if anything were to happen to it, wouldn't it? For a small fee, Guido here will see to it that no unfortunate ... upgrade ... befalls your business ...."
-Unless it's Microsoft's next extortion venture: "That's a nice business you got there, it'd be a shame if anything were to happen to it, wouldn't it? For a small fee, Guido here will see to it that no unfortunate ... upgrade ... befalls your business ...."-
"Next"? That's been SOP all along:
Wanna run your business on Windows? Super, it's fast, easy, efficient, and reliable... Just sign here, here, and here.
Good, you're all set! Of course, we'll need you to pay all these licenses, annually, and, oh yeah, you'll definitely need to buy Windows Support for quite a hefty sum for when things can go wrong, and they will!
What? Of course we said it's reliable... *Snerk, hmpphh, BWAA-HAHAHAHAHA!* Ahem. Just keep paying and hope we don't alter the deal further. *Spoiler* We will!
The big culprit is KB 3035583. it shows the usual blurb about "solving problems in windows" in the update info, but actually installs an app called "dowload windows 10 for win 7SP1 and Win 8.1".
Associated to it are KB's 2999226 ( update for win10 universal CRT ) and 2952664 ( upgrade to win7 to "facilitate" the upgrade to the latest version of windows.. a whole slew of files gets adressed here.). Both the same noninformative blurb, and you need to actually *read* the KB info to figure out what's up.
I think there's legal terms for this kind of behaviour. Not very nice ones either.
"This mistake affected a small number of Windows 7 and 8 installations. We are looking into the error."
Where small number = 10%, the error will repeat every month, and it will take 10 months to discover what's happening.
This is happening on purpose, there are consistent reports of computers starting to download the "upgrade" without the user giving consent both last month and this month.
I've been using this very useful tool: https://voat.co/v/technology/comments/459263 to remove all the scumware from Windows 7 & 8 - including not just the Windows 10 stealth download stuff but also the tracking a telemetry. Seems to work perfectly. Recommended.
Sadly, there's a lot of concealed "telemetry" that you'll never find and can't disable since it's baked right into the kernel. The only way to stop MS and the NSA abusing your computer is to flush Windows. You've already spent a fortune on brokenware - don't give these illegitimate offspring any more of your hard-earned. Apple are almost as bad, incidentally.
LINUX or BSD is the answer!
It is great......
I'm getting more and more users saying their home computers running windows have been updated and cannot boot or are slow, can I fix non-work equipment.......... NO!!!!
Go buy a mac or run linux....
OK it's only 50 or so people, but hopefully it will multiply out ,after all business execs usually cannot handle this
"it will multiply out"
Quite so. The posts that say we're not the target markets (maybe that should be marks?) have missed the point. We're the ones who are advising others. Friends and family who come looking for help with their W10s aren't going to get it, they're going to be directed to alternative OSes.
It's noticeable that many posts on this sort of thread are from people who say they've been MS supporters from way back and who are now changing their minds. MS really have misjudged badly to alienate so many supporters.
Anyone else get the feeling that they just
'Don't give a Damm'?
Surely some of this negativity has got past their Happiness Filter and reached top management?
The question is...
Will they change anything?
At the moment, I doubt it.
Sad to see them have to resort to these tactics.
I complained to Oracle's ethics exec about the ASK toolbar that Java updating added automatically...it took me two hours to purge its pieces from my system. Oracle cleaned that one up quickly.
This Microsoft thing is far more egregious. It's probably a bit like that Volkswagen fiasco...instituted by low-level guys to get ahead. Will complaining to Sadya Nadella get this monster cleaned up before we all are driven insane? After all, he said, "We set high ethical standards at Microsoft and we expect every employee to live up to those standards."
Can Microsoft do as well as Oracle?
I think before this all winds out you'll see more than just VW having dodgy mapping software.
The controller in question is a piece of Bosch kit that's used by almost ALL Common Rail diesels out there. And the problems (read:NOx) with Common Rail were known and discussed ad nauseum in various engineering and auto fora before the engines hit the market. I have one of the last "Pump-Düse" diesels that came out of VW; nosier than Common Rail, but works like a champ.
As for the US EPA, same criminals as the wahoos in the EU. People have discovered that CO² won't kill everyone, so we need a new disaster to extract peoples' money. This time it's NOx. Rinse, repeat. High efficiency, lean burn, or low pollutants (or pee in your fuel tank), take your pick.
Btw, AdBlue was already slated for almost ALL new diesels before this "scandal" came out (due to EU6 standards). Maybe someone wanted to *cough* round up the rest of them?
I think the EPA has morphed into "Extorting People All-the-time". The only thing they protect anymore are their own (and the 1%) interests.
There must be something, legally, that can be said here.
Leaving that aside, and also leaving aside any complaints about this (I think they've been covered well enough by those above), this is not a good look for Microsoft.
What does it say for your latest and greatest if you feel you have to force it on people and are being increasingly sneaky about it?
Going back to what's wrong with it, one of my (Win 7) laptops runs solely via a 3G dongle. It's not my main PC and I use it primarily for remote access to work and e-mail when I am away. My plan is 2GB and costs $30* per month. If this update downloads when I am not expecting it, who is going to pay for the excess bandwidth?
Now, I am an IT bod so I have the knowledge to sort these things out and I usually update the laptop when connected to a fixed network but not everyone has that skillset and knowledge.
If, as a tech 'guru', you setup a PC or laptop for a friend or family member who has little to no IT knowledge, you would generally enable automatic updates, excluding the optional ones. You know they're not going to understand it and won't do it themselves and you want them to be secure. You certainly don't want them turn on the PC one day and find a new OS has been installed!
* - Or there abouts - it's bundled on the same account as my mobile so I don't really pay much attention to it.
I don't have a landline at home - I connect to the world through a 3G dongle too. Most of the time I download stuff somewhere cheaper, like the free connection down at the pub.
All my machines are updated through WSUS which runs in a VM on my W7 laptop. That way I get to choose what patches to apply. I denied the download and installation of the "Get Win10" patch. My boxes can be set up to automatically update, because I have pre-approved things in WSUS, right?
So imagine my surprise when my 3G ran out of data unexpectedly. What normally lasted a month ran out in less than a week.
Examining the root of my W7 laptop I found a couple of folders holding over 4GB of Windows 10 installation files. Microsoft had just helped themselves to fifty quid's worth of MY bandwidth. Note that the box is set up to get its updates from my WSUS VM, and NOT from MS.
I decided to deal with updates this morning (before reading El Reg, so I hadn't seen this article and discussion yet) and spotted the pre-ticked "optional" downgrade to Windows 10.
Having unticked and hid it, I decided to make a cuppa before looking through the updates to see what to install... so I closed the window. When I came back, it was ticked again. So I hid it again.
At this point, I'd - like you - hidden it twice. Since it came back the first time, I decided to check... I closed the window then went back into updates again. This time it was still hidden.
However, I decided to experiment further - and rebooted the computer. Going back into updates again, it was back, and ticked. I unticked and hid it again, and this time it stayed hidden when I came out of updates and went back in.
It's currently installing the updates I selected. Once it's finished, I'll do another reboot and see if it comes back again. (In fact, it's just finished and I can see it wants to reboot), so I'll do that now.
And this time it didn't come back.
However, this may be related to comments earlier in the discussion, with Microsoft apparently saying "Oops, our bad, we did this completely by accident, honest, definitely not on purpose, you can trust us, and we'll fix it for the vocal bastards affected people who have noticed, stopped it and complained."
Took me three goes to get rid of it on my laptop as well.
Funnily enough, I disinfected my husband's lappy a couple of days later, and it stayed hidden on the first go. If I had an evil mind, the fact that my dsl modem hadn't been switched off at any point would leave me thinking that they recognised the IP address...
Not seeing updates checked but MS likes to reissue same KBs with new time-stamp so one has to keep a watchful eye.
Uncheck - give me recommended updates the same way...
Also, if you keep getting updates un-hidden try not clearing IE cache (specifically cookies) or just uninstall IE altogether and this way you'll avoid "accidents".
7, 8 ... linux
but pretty much all I use my lone W7 box for is to swap music to USB devices. I find my Debian box is a little cranky about automounting DVDs and USBs. I did once start to google and config, but it's still not perfect.
If peeps here can suggest a decent desktop distro (Mint ?) that is as rock-solid as Windows (in my experience) with USB devices, I'm happy to dual-boot.
My other grumble is remote access. For better for worse, RDP is Windows star player here. I have tried X2GO and TeamViewer, but they're a tad flaky (especially with the lockdown that is PolKit, which stops you making changes over a remote session. I fixed it in Ubuntu while back (and was thanked on several forums for my detective work, given the *cough* thin *cough* nature of documentation. However, since then it's been "fixed", and life is too short.
AC, so no one can connect me to that posting .....
@ prob laziness: Me too. Since the Win 10 update situation got crazy I only boot Windows with the ethernet disconnected. But of course that won't work for people who use Win for online gaming.
I haven't had trouble with Ubuntu recognizing USB devices. Bought an Olympus digital recorder, then noticed the specs listed only Windows and Mac as supported interfaces -- but Ubuntu properly mounted both the recorder's internal memory and the add-on SD card.
My install does miss SD cards sometimes when they're shoved into the PC itself, but usually removing and re-inserting helps. Quite Freudian, actually.
Be careful with dual-boot and Windows 10. I upgraded my dual-boot Windows 8.1 / Linux Mint laptop to Windows 10 / Linux Mint. Everything worked fine for several weeks and I could boot into either OS as required via the grub menu. Great I thought, then one day, Windows 10 did several automatic updates and destroyed the dual-boot, making it Windows 10 only. It also re-enabled all the UEFI secure boot stuff. Long story short I ended up reinstalling Linux Mint and and giving it the entire hard drive, getting rid of Windows 10 completely. One of the Windows 10 updates had even messed with the firmware, presumably making it look for C:\Windows\something.exe (I'd heard about that new bit of nastiness on El Reg a few weeks ago), so now a cold bootup fails and hangs after a few seconds (there is no drive C: now) and I have to do a Ctrl, Alt, Del to soft boot it into Linux Mint.
So not content with pushing Windows 7 and 8 users to 10, they are now actively trashing dual-boot computers and making them Windows 10 only.
" I upgraded my dual-boot Windows 8.1 / Linux Mint laptop to Windows 10 / Linux Mint. Everything worked fine for several weeks and I could boot into either OS as required via the grub menu. ...Windows 10 did several automatic updates and destroyed the dual-boot, making it Windows 10 only."
Probably the original update was at fault as it seems to have failed Windows SOP.
" I find my Debian box is a little cranky about automounting DVDs and USBs."
Currently running Wheezy (& no plans to go further) and that doesn't seem to have problems. ISTR problems with earlier versions however. It might vary with desktop - I'm running KDE.
> I've got an XP corporate install disk you can use :-)
That was what forced me to upgrade my brother's machine to MSWin7. The "Corporate" license I was running on it had been set to expire Jan 2014, so some update somewhere caused it to fail at the beginning of the year, rather than the regular April EOS. AC because, well, obviously.
Don't get me started. Windows 2000 didn't support a bog-standard S3-based graphics card from a well-known vendor made in 1999(!). In did support my considerably older Matrox Millenium card, fortunately.
I thought I had blocked the Win10 nagware on our main home desktop PC, but it has started nagging again. I will see what I can do about that
Sorry, but off-topic..
"considerably older Matrox Millenium card"
Ahhh. Simpler days. I bought mine when it first came out (in the '90s!) - incredibly expensive for an underpaid research engineer. I used that card in so many different machines over the next five years.
Here we are in 2015, and it is still in use in my MSDOS6.22/3.11/Win95/NT3.51/NT4/98SE/2000/XP legacy computer (gets booted maybe a couple of times a year). :)
Thanks for the happy memories!
Back on topic-
Above OSs were when we at least had a semblance of control over our own destiny.
Just looked back at my time with M$ - 34 years! Mostly happy ones (the less said about Windows Millennium, and Vista the better). All that goodwill pissed away almost overnight.
But let's face it: we are *NOT* the target for Win10. The target is the Reality TV Generation - the FaceSlap Folk, Twatter, the Uninformed, the Trusting, and so on. People who are happy to give up their privacy in order to be 'tagged' in a photo somewhere, to give up their hard-fought-for rights for ten seconds of Fame - even if that Fame means their bank accounts get cleared out every second Sunday of the month, or they get nutjobs stalking them and turning up at their front door.
Let's get something straight - I was a total Micro$oftie - not an evangelist, but I did not see why people would use anything but. I GET IT NOW. A bit late, granted, but I'm cured.
Well, sort of - After the mess that was the XBox One release at E3 2013, I thought I was done with XBox.
In comes Phil Spencer, and the XBone becomes a proper games machine.
Late 2014, I get an XBone. Fun ensues! Wooo!
Late 2015 - I am dreading the "Holiday Update" - the Win10-ising of the XBone UI. Since they dumped the Blades on the 360 to make it 'Kinect Friendly', the XBox GUI has sucked.
I think I am going to have a rough winter.
But wait! I have a PS4! Hang on though, Sony have done some pretty sneaky shit over the years - so I don't trust them either.
I know! It's PC Gaming for me, all the way!
Wait?! What?!! Most AAA games only play on Windows? (Unless it's Batman: Arkham Knight and that's still pretty stuffed on PCs atm ;( )
So, not only is Windows denied me, but I suspect my XBone is likely to go the same way too.
I live for gaming. Lived.
I know this is an unladylike comment, but Screw You Micro$oft!
Susi xxx
Kia Foster wrote:
Bill Gates should be very very very concerned that it appears that Microsoft is losing its credibility as an honourable company !!
My dear Kia, that horse left the barn over two decades ago, in the Undocumented Windows era. I'm sorry it has taken this to make a whole new generation of Windows victims users again have to lean that Microsoft and hono(u)rable cannot exist in the same time-space continuum.
KB3035583 just showed up AGAIN on a plethora of my client's systems a few days ago after I had already removed it, unchecked it and hid it weeks earlier.
And doing this is the most outrageous and evil thing Microsoft has done in its history, namely re-releasing KB3035583 after I've had dozens of clients pay me to remove it and their other spyware (telemetry) updates.
Furthermore, it appears that the update option, "check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them", has somehow been ignored with one of these re-released updates as I've found systems magically reset to "Install Updates Automatically", even on systems where the users don't even know how to access an administrator account.
Two days ago I found KB3035583 installed AGAIN on several systems I support and had to uninstall it AGAIN. I then had Update find it again, unchecked it and hid it, and lo and behold, the Windows 10 installer itself was STILL pending as the only available update! Looking at "view other updates", I found the Windows 10 installer itself included, and then unchecked and hid it, and that actually BROKE Microsoft updates! After I did the above, update would immediately fail with an error (I think 0x80240019: "WU_E_EXCLUSIVE_INSTALL_CONFLICT An exclusive update cannot be installed with other updates at the same time").
This happened on ALL the systems at one business I support!
Fortunately I had encountered this problem before when I had had to roll back to W8.1 from W10 for a client who was tricked into installing W10, so I knew what to do, namely apply the following .reg hack (it will solve the problem on both W10 and W8):
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade]
"AllowOSUpgrade"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade\State]
"OSUpgradeState"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
"DisableOSUpgrade"=dword:00000001
[Note: copy the above in a file with .reg type, and execute the reg file by right-clicking and selecting "Merge".]
This reg hack can be applied at any time when removing, unchecking and hiding KB3035583 and the Windows 10 installer update itself, but the simplest way to use the reg hack is to first uninstall KB3035583, and then apply the above reg hack BEFORE rebooting, namely first use:
wusa /uninstall /kb:3035583 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:2952664 /norestart /quiet
then apply the .reg reghack, and then reboot. I've found that if the reg hack is applied that way, the Windows 10 update installer itself will not come back, though you still have to recheck for updates after the boot, to find KB3035583 AGAIN and then uncheck and hide it.
Note KB2952664 comes back too, and if you want to make sure you've removed ALL the telemetry put the following in a .bat file:
@echo on
wusa /uninstall /kb:3035583 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:3022345 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:3068708 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:3075249 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:3080149 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:2990214 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:3012973 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:2952664 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:2976978 /norestart /quiet
pause
and run the above batch file, THEN do the .reg hack, and then reboot, and as I said before, you will then have to have update check for new updates, find KB3035583 and KB2952664 and uncheck and hide them.
At this point in the game, because of what Microsoft is doing to my clients with their outrageous, repeated attempts to force W10 onto my client's computers and thereby completely wreck their businesses if they succeed, my only choice is to turn automatic updates off altogether with "Never check for updates" and manually check once or twice a year and see if there's anything worth allowing to install.
@Asok Asus
Many thanks for the detailed information and the BAT file.
Last night, the Windows Update icon was on the Shut down button again. I'd done Patch Tuesday the day before, but KB2952664 was being offered yet again in my Win7 virtual machines and on their Win7 host.
As I hid this update yet again, I noticed that Windows Update was now set to install updates automatically -- replacing the previously-selected "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them" option.
That's the last straw, and I have now selected the "Never check for updates (not recommended)" option.
Windows Update was for many years our defence against inimical software. It is a bitter irony that it itself is now the most immediate threat. In my astonishment, I can only think that the minds at Microsoft have been addled by mobile telephony.
Here, meanwhile, the Linux Mint 17.2 host machine is nearly ready to take over.
Or do what I did,
Disable the windows update altogether, I do not see the point of this culture in which you switch the machine on and everything updates itself breaking stuff here and there with the best intentions.
Windows is something that is confined to a VM now to run legacy windows software or windows software that doesn't run in Linux or doesn't have a native equivalent.
Linux is a hot mess (less so every day that passes, but still) hard to explain to newbies.
The advantage? You have freedom to kick that mess around whatever means you see fit, the mess will just obey your commands. Once you get a hold of it it pays immensely. Not everybody appreciates it though.
What I find amusing is that the majority of the people complaining here will scream murder and just carry on like they always do once they get used to the new way of working.
MS is just the old vampire telling its servant; I'm your master, Windows user, do my bidding, I promise you eternal life.
Like a lot of people, I trust Windows Update to do a reasonable job of patching insecure code and generally making life a bit safer. That includes optional updates, where you can make the natural assumption that if they're there, having them can't do much harm. It's a lot easier to hit Install than wade through and research a bunch of tick boxes.
That may now have all changed. No sign of a Windows 10 on my PC yet, but any sniff of it without my in-your-face consent might result in a restore from disk image.
There may be trouble ahead
"But while there's moonlight, and music, and love and romance,
Let's face the music and dance..."
I now have that song stuck in my head. Thanks a bunch.
But seriously, I agree with your post.
Windows Update was an arrangement of trust - "I will give Microsoft permission to install new code on my PC, but trust them not to abuse that."
And they've broken that arrangement in spectacular fashion. We now face a future of having to review every single update in depth, to ensure that it doesn't make unwanted changes.
Thanks, Microsoft.
" critical backup computer and anti-virus server" on Windows 8.1....
If you're running a critical server on a client OS then you really need to have a longer harder look at how you do things.... And if you're not keeping a really good eye on the updates that get installed on said "critical" system then you're asking for even more trouble.
Well done El Reg. It's about time someone collated enough reports to show clearly how evil Microsoft have been.
My only gripe is that Microsoft seem to be getting away with saying that this has been happening 'due to a recent error': unasked-for download and installation attempts have been reported on various forums for well over a month. They have been wilfully shitty to people who should have been able to trust them for quite some time now.
It's like nation states protesting that they are not really evil and would never bomb a hospital knowingly, you muts be mistaken. No wait, it actually happened but iit was an error. No wait, the run was phoned in by our allies who were confused. No wait, the run was phoned in by our guys who were observing the place, but there was a spy from a friendly nation inside who had it coming. Ok, we will look for evidence. What's that? One of our tanks has driven through the rubble, destroying what was left? Welp!
GIVE PASS! RINSE, REPEAT!
MSDOS 2.x
MSDOS 3.x
Win 95
Win 98
Win 98 SE
XP <======== the best version of Windows!
Kubuntu <===== jumped ship before the abomination that was Vista
Ubuntu + any derivative that works for particular hardware, i.e. Xubuntu on my Toshiba NB100 netbook.
FYI, I just installed Linux Mint 17 on a Samsung NP-N130 netbook (Intel Atom, 1GB RAM) and everything worked immediately. OK it's a bit slow loading applications but it's usable. Most likely it's working at the same speed as XP did.
Bonus FYI :)
My elderly HP laptop's screen and keyboard were dying so I bought an identical model for £60 and just swapped the HDD over and carried on as normal. No activation keys in Linux land. Try doing that on your Windows box!
Did I mention that there are no activation keys? I'm not being overly smug, just relieved to not have that major hassle again.
Spotted this bullshit on my wife's Win 7 laptop the other day, not been used for a while as she has a Surface Pro 3 as a daily use device.
Fired it up and straight away, the "Get Windows 10" icon produced a bubble type alert, saying 100m people had already updated....I just fucked that right off and assumed that would be that.
Next, i manually ran Win update from the control panel and was amazed that after scanning for a but, instead of telling what updates I could have, it just told me to update to Win 10!!
Oh my days!! So i had to go into the optional updates, uncheck that update before i could patch the machine ( also - dafuq, optional but checked by default, you wankers!!!!!)
So, with a small amount of knowledge you can avoid it, but can you imagine how many morons and suckers have just blindly "Next>next>nexted" themselves into oblivion?? No wonder 100 MEEELION people have upgraded , they probably don't know they had a choice!
If would be funny if it wasn't so serious.
Fuck you MS - Windows 7 was great and now you've gone and fucked it all, again.
P.S - the person quoted in the article, who has a "Business Critical backup machine" and is getting his updates straight from Win Update. What a pratt! You have no business working in IT!!!
"P.S - the person quoted in the article, who has a "Business Critical backup machine" and is getting his updates straight from Win Update. What a pratt! You have no business working in IT!!!"
Maybe he doesn't work in IT. Maybe he just happens to have enough skills and not enough resources to look after the IT kit in a small business as an aside to his actual job. At least he understands the need for backups. That's a lot moire than many small businesses have.
Maybe he doesn't work in IT. Maybe he just happens to have enough skills and not enough resources to look after the IT kit in a small business as an aside to his actual job. At least he understands the need for backups. That's a lot moire than many small businesses have.
Hmm... I'm at a loose end...
I'm waiting for the day when all these new Mint users go "sudo apt-get upgrade" and when they reboot it replaced the OS with Win10. Wouldn't put that past MS.
My laptop runs Win7 but I've never caught it wanting to downgrade to Win10. The machine is probably just too old. But the guy who broke into my house and stole my better-specced laptop .... may 1000 Win10 upgrades (per day) be forever with you. Good luck getting those over our crap "broadband" down here in the southern hemisphere. Bwha ha ha ha ha ha (cue organ music and thunder).
I've already installed Mint alongside Win7 as a dual-boot, and tried it out. It's fine, except that, as expected, certain software doesn't have a Linux variant and when I try to run it in WINE it doesn't perform as expected. Of course, there are different software products that are similar, but also as expected, their functionality is not equivalent to the software I already use, which means I lose features that I use frequently. Grrr. I will eventually have to install Win7 in a VM and so will still be dealing with keeping MS updates away from it. Grrr.
I find that WINE under Linux Mint 17.2 runs Quicken 2002 and Photoshop 5.0 LE just fine.
No special tweakery was entailed -- I just ran their installation executables as I had done under Windows. Afterwards, I copied my Quicken database files across, launched Quicken and opened the QDF file via the File menu to pick up my account registers and other financial records.
That very old Photoshop limited edition was bundled with the Epson scanner I bought in 2000. The scanner's still going, though nowadays I use the excellent Vuescan to drive it.
I also use Q2002 on WINE. An example of a program that does what I need it to and not much more. I don't need the rest of the tie-ins and functionality of the later versions, thank you very much. MS should pay attention.
Give the users what THEY want and you'll continue keeping them as a revenue stream. Which is what YOU want. Screw them over (ref. the rest of this comment section) and you'll find yourself wonder WTF happened to your user base.
Mint Problems So Far:
In Linux itself, I'm struggling to get used to KeePass as a replacement for Roboform (the Lite version of which can't read existing passcards, and doesn't have enough features compared to full Roboform). I'll have to struggle with KeePass/KeeFox for the foreseeable future.
In WINE, Winamp can't see my CD drive, so I can't rip CDs with it, which I do need as it's got a reliable ripper that I like.
In WINE, Winamp can't see my CD drive, so I can't rip CDs with it, which I do need as it's got a reliable ripper that I like.
As far as that goes, I tend to use Clementine as a music player which can be made to do most of what Winamp does, and I use SoundKonverter for ripping stuff. Sometimes you need to consider breaking down your requirements when it comes to Linux rather than combining everything into one humungous app.
Now if only we could convince the distros about the wisdom of that rather than kowtowing to Poeterring's bloody systemd...
>In WINE, Winamp can't see my CD drive, so I can't rip CDs with it, which I do need as it's got a reliable ripper that I like.
Open winecfg and click "detect drives"
On Linux, sound juicer is quite good as well ... you can also try CodeWeavers.com, they do make life easier for Windows converts. The free trial works very well.
So this is the new road MS is on? If they keep this up, they will lose what little support they have left. Who's responsible for this bullshit anyway? Is that the new CEO?
I'm getting very close to the point where i am done with Muckrosoft. Next phone might not be a windows phone, my current next-gen console is already a PS4 and i am reconsidering the Xbox one purchase i had planned.
There is currently enough choice, you don't need MS for anything anymore, so if this is how it's going to be, then i say to hell with them.
Having dabbled in Linux of various flavours over the years, but stuck with Win XP then 7 as default out of comfort/inertia/ease of integration with work (which is not in the IT field, I'm just an interested amateur), I've now had it with MS after weeks of trying to keep this "upgrade" at bay.
There's a couple of old programmes I use and like which may not run well in Linux, so I'll need to figure out running Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs in a VM, but otherwise I know MS offers me nothing I need that I can't get for free in LinuxLand.
In the long run I'd rather spend hours of my free time learning useful skills on an OS I know I'll be hanging on to than spend hours trying to keep an OS I don't want away from my PCs. They're not to my mind particularly old machines, and do everything I want them to, but they won't benefit at all from any of the features Win10 offers on the hardware front, and if I have to have the hassle of learning new ways to do stuff on the software front I'd rather do it with a setup that will make my PC run faster rather than slower.
It seems, nowadays, the only ways to keep W7 or W8 the way they are would be:
- to fight a permanent battle against MS, by uninstalling unwanted updates, managing a mile long list of banned IP in the firewall
- or, to run W7/W8 in a closed VM, with no access to the network, for legacy apps
I'm going the second option TBH
I've made a previous comment about how I'm still on Windows Vista (PC assembled in 2008), and on hindsight it's a blessing in disguise.
Microsoft is so utterly pathetic, it pushes Silverlight in Windows updates even though it has been rather clear for quite some time that Silverlight is a dead platform.
We don't want your ecosystem Microsoft. Please kindly take your tentacles away from our digital lives. We may tolerate certain Microsoft products as 'necessary evils', but by and large, we don't need Microsoft stuff to go about our day, for both work and play. Unthinkable a decade ago, a reality today. Being in denial about this isn't healthy.
As mentioned before FreeBSD, is a good alternative too.
Running PC-BSD for some time now and ONLY reason i STILL have a MS client OS is so that i can play TWO games!! WHen i do not playthe darn OS is powered off! I am close to pull the power cord in pure paranoia as we do not know if MS is faking poweroff!! Freak you MS you Freaking Grunt!!!
I'm glad this has been mode an article because it's disgusting how pushy they are. It's so obvious they're up to no good, especially with the hidden updates!
Microsoft are not only forcing Windows 10 but they're forcing updates too and not easily displaying what these updates are. You've highlighted that they're now writing less KB articles for all their updates now and will basically pick and choose what they want to disclose in these patches, but you have zero option to decide which ones you do or do not want, or in particular *when* you want to install them.
More info on how to control Windows 10 updates can be found here along with a tool to disable the "Hidden updates" feature (what a stupid and misleading name) https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3073930
One of my PCs does that. I found out through clicking on the Windows 10 system tray icon that having my PC set to auto-login on a non-administrator account is delaying the update. Microsoft is doing the rollout in waves, so if they think your PC will have trouble they don't bother you.
The other PC reminds me once every two weeks how great Windows 10 is by popping up a window that I have to close. Otherwise it's behaving.
I fking hate Msoft.
I went to the link below and submitted a 'Technical Support Scam' report, which seems appropriate. I incorporated as many expletives as my sensitive nature would allow. Won't do any good of course, but it dissipates the anger.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/getsupport?oaspworkflow=start_1.0.0.0&wfname=scamsurvey&locale=en-gb&ccsid=
"So what happens at the end of the "free" update period? Will they still push it onto Win7/8 users only then present them with a notice saying "Please pay us $$$ to continue using your PC"?"
Frankly, if as much sh*te happens during the free period, you're right to expect ransomware-style stuff after !
Tell you what, since ransomware is anyway difficult to disguise into anything but crime, I 'm gonna suggest this cunning plan:
- security updates, only available as part as Windows as a Service
So, basically, you'd be paying for fear of being exposed to every exploit kit. Brilliant !
Anon, as I may have revealed some heavy stuff :-)
When Win 10 is installed over your existing Win 7/8.1, it backs up your existing Windows folder. (It just renames it to .old or something during the 'upgrade').
In Win 10, you just go to the Backup and Recovery options, and under Recovery there is an option to restore the previous OS.
You can only do this for 1 month after installing Win 10, as the Windows backup is removed automatically after 31 days. You'd have to recover from a backup, or do a fresh install of your old OS after that point.
Note, I'm speaking from experience, as I'd gone from Win 7 to Win 10, has some issues which got worse over time, and so restored my Win 7 via the recover route above.
Been back on Win 7 about a week now, and other than reinstalling a couple of things, including the graphics drivers, it's been rock solid, as it always was previously.
Not going to be trying that again any time soon!
I also did a revert to Win 7 after "spamgrading" to Win 10 on one of my laptops. It reverted without too much fuss but screwed up some parts of the schedule system in the process. Thankfully I made a backup before that happened so one full recovery later and all was well. Thankfully Microsoft knew how to write useful software back in those days!
---------
spamgrading (v.) - To force users to change an application or system by forcefully pushing the change via the internet, usually requiring users to implement unusual measures to resist the change where it is unwanted, unneeded or has been shown to be unfit for purpose. See Windows 10
Windows 10 is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are running it.
------
My home machines are all running W7 pro and joined to a samba4 domain... at first I thought I'd be safe because domain-joined machines weren't installing the GWX bollocks and I've only been (manually) installing the security updates. But lo and behold I spy the "install W10" option ticked.
Starting to feel a bit like Kind Cnut demonstrating the futility of trying to hold back the tide, although it's Nadella and co who are happily acting like cnuts. Any fragments of trust I had for MS are now gone completely and W7 will be the last MS OS I use at home.
There are three major issues with what MS is doing, and I think it may be worth getting legal advice.
1 - This is not a patch, this is a major OS change. It thus has simply no place in a patching system as it interferes with the proper operation of a system. The fact that MS doesn't make that distinction should tell you something about their idea of patching, upgrades and general system maintenance.
2 - The install happens AGAINST the explicit wishes of the holder. Given (1) I think it can be declared unwanted interference with a computer, even if the user has not explicitly hunted down the tickbox, unticked it, hidden it, sacrificed three goats (or, if not available, traffic wardens) and sang Kumbaya before running a patching process. This puts it IMHO firmly inside reach of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, and I hope that a larger company gets hit by this so they can sue their socks off. Come to think of it, isn't this a criminal offence? In that case, it's your taxes paying for it so go right ahead and complain.
3 - Windows 10 requires (as far as I know) the acceptance of an entirely new set of T&Cs which contain conditions that may have been invalidated by the recent Facebook vs Europe death of Safe Harbor. Ramming this down people's throat without their explicit permission is again legally questionable.
Message to Microsoft: stop this. NOW. Not only is this the road to legal action, it is also pissing off the last customers you still have.
Message from OSX, BSD and Linux users: please, please, PLEASE continue. More!! Why bother asking, Just Do It™. Oh no, that's Nike.
Alongside the Win 10 upgrade appears to float a fairly substantial change in Terms & Conditions which switches users from "I paid for it once, now go away" to "you owe use an annual tithe for this use or we'll blackmail you with your own data" model.
I suspect this is really the main reason for the pushiness: hard, cold cash.
Win 7/8 gave them a one-off hit of their favourite addiction (money), Win 10 gives them returning revenue, and I am willing to bet a substantial amount of money that that charge will go up substantially the moment they feel they have enough people locked in - inertia wins every time.
It's a good strategy from the perspective of a persistent abuser: nice bit of data you have on your computer and in our cloud, it would be a shame if you couldn't get to it anymore. I guess they learned something about viruses after all, just not anything that helps the *user*.
Windows now truly has become the virus we used to joke about. Bail while you still can.
I paid good money for this computer and even paid for Windows 7. It does not belong to the evil Microsoft, nor Gurgle. When they try to find out all about me, who else gets this information? My computer's camera has black tape over the lens, Must I install other things and monitor the updates, too?
Read recently where that pretend Indian, Senator Elizabeth Warren wants her pet Consumer Protection Bureau to track our finances. I do not trust these Commies. She lied to get racial preferences by claiming to be a Cherokee. Is Microsoft helping? It is none of their business. Maybe Microsoft is passing this info to these evil people or the agency is tapping into Microsoft's data to store my private things. The government's computers are constantly being compromised by bad guys.
1. Unplug network from PC just in case.
2. Boot up and make sure my Win 7 updates, hasn't been switched to 'auto' mode (it's always set to notify with no downloading), and fix as needed.
3. Move a few files around, to free up one of the SSDs (the newest one only has about 10GB used on a 256GB drive in slot E: ).
4. Download Debian (or one of the other distribution, not sure which yet).
5. Write Debian to bootable USB, and then install to newly freed up SSD.
6. Set system to dual boot.
7. Grab Steam in Debian, and have some fun.
Hmm, probably add a step before 1, Open beer, or wine, depending on how I feel. -->
At some point later, I might Install Win 7 in a VM under Linux.
Not being a MS fanboi myself, i think they deserve utter respect. A few days ago i finally gave in, and allowed the upgrade from 8.1 to 10. It went like a dream in less than 1.5 hour. Everything works, it feels faster and more fluent than 8.1. They only subtly made ClassicShell disappear into Avalon, all the other apps, including Fullscreen games, work as they did before.
NVIDIA drivers work, also MSI tooling like afterburner and Dragon gaming center work fine.
The 10 UI is a good compromise between Win7 and Win 8.1 UI, and it looks and feels just great.
So if your machine can, it is advisable to bite the bullet and invest the time for an upgrade, just backup your important files first for ease of mind.
It went like a dream in less than 1.5 hour
And what would you have done if it had gone titsup? A major OS update is not a trivial exercise, and by doing it the way they did it denied people the chance to make a backup first. MS doesn't exactly have a clean history when it comes to updates.
Out of interest, did you have to agree to new Terms & Conditions? If so, did you actually read them?
LOL, i knew my post would not harvest positive feed back.
>> Out of interest, did you have to agree to new Terms & Conditions?
>> If so, did you actually read them?
Yes i did not read, i also switched all "Send to Microsoft ..." options off before install, except for crash reports.
Is it bad i did not read "Terms & Conditions", will they come to take my house and car now ?.
Is it bad i did not read "Terms & Conditions", will they come to take my house and car now ?.
Good heavens no, they're hard to convert and shipping a car to the offshore place where they pay their $1 per $1M in tax is not viable either - even Microsoft can see that to be bad business, which is saying something. They only want the soul of your first born and the contents of your bank account. In case there is no first born (quite possible, you're running Windows), your own soul will do. And you don't get to call your computer YOUR computer anymore. After all, it's Redmond's now, and legally so.
By the way, that car. Find a good home for it. Once they have everyone locked in the prices will go up, and eventually you will have to choose: food, car and computer - two out of three isn't so bad..
:)
@naive
So if your machine can, it is advisable to bite the bullet and invest the time for an upgrade, just backup your important files first for ease of mind.
Interesting choice of user handle there, methinks!
If it were just a matter of how the system handled at the GUI, I doubt that there would be much of an argument about it, but that's not the main problem. "If your machine can" - that's one part of the problem, not to mention that some users have found Win10 to be somewhat unstable even if it went in without a squeak. That's not totally unheard of since drivers are always an issue at release time.
If you've taken the time to read back, you'll know that Microsoft's paradigm shift from operating systems to "system as a service" is the main cause of most quibbles. Data mining, forced advertising, forced upgrading and so forth are all examples of why it is not a good idea to move from prior supported systems. Not yet, anyway.
If you don't mind being drilled for your personal data, you don't mind your system locking up or shutting down because Microsoft forced an upgrade onto your system that doesn't work or has been insufficiently tested, you don't mind the possibility that you will be charged for its use at the company's discretion, you don't mind that Microsoft reserve the right to release personal data to government agencies without your knowledge or permission, then fine. Go for it. I hope you and Cortana are very happy together.
Define "everything works"? Were you running 3rd party software that has specific OS and system requirements? I suspect it's more of running the usual MS products then? Full set of functional drivers for all hardware? Sorry, I'm not buying into your recommendation blindly. MS has screwed me once and I'll not be bent over the desk again.
MS has screwed me once and I'll not be bent over the desk again.
Really? The only way you can prevent that is by no longer using MS products. If you still are I would suggest you start putting some comfy cushions on that desk and on the seat you plan to use afterwards..
Well, aside from the constant nagging, I must say that the update works astonishingly well. I have done this with Win7 and 8.1, completely different hardware, same result. Even Classic Shell was kept, so I never got to see tiles. So they *can* do good software. But not when GUI is involved, apparently.
Big effing deal.
So it works. Perhaps because it's mainly WIndows 8 with a reasonable start menu.
Why shouldn't it work?
You don't really think Windows 10 is a complete rewrite, do you?
However, for us who don't want it for privacy and licensing issues, we shouldn't be asked to install it over and over.
I guess I have little to add after all of this. I've rather been finding myself bemused that, for once it's not just me this time that finds all this rolling software/spyware-as-operating-system to be conceptually offensive.
My experience; disable windows update. I never trusted it in the first place but, eventually (in ~2013 or so) relented at home (it's amazing how few viruses you even get exposed to with blocked javascript/flash). I caught that again when the redmond music started sounding bad. Off, staying off, because I don't need my operating system to be the new Ask Toolbar*.
GWX; the most pernicious worm since nimda. Infection via the vector which, in theory we are supposed to avoid getting them.
*(it is of course, much worse than that)
Did it install without your consent? Even better, have you at some point unticked the "download and install this crud on my computer if I dare come near any usable network" box?
In that case you may have a valid complaint under the UK Computer Misuse Act 1990 as it's amounts to unauthorised access to your machine - possibly a criminal offence colloquially known as "hacking". I'm not quite sure who handles this, but as it's a consumer issue I'd say it would be best if you get the government to help you organise the complaint. I don't keep up with who Trading Standards gets to handle the public anymore, but they appear to be the first port of call. The "criminal" aspect means that the state organises any possible prosecution, but I suspect that requires more than one complaint, so I would recommend anyone who had an unauthorised install to complain.
Speaking of Trading Standards, there is a secondary aspect here - as this upgrade is forced upon you, it is possible to argue that the new T&Cs were agreed to under duress and thus invalid.
Key is that you decide on the remedy you want. Restoring the original OS seems to be the sensible option, and, of course, abandoning any attempt to do this again. It isn't right that a third party has to come up with a remedy (keep mentioning this, because MS is apparently trying to get it flagged as spam) for what is IMHO simply abusing the user's last fragment of trust to force them into installing something they absolutely do not want (a fact proven by the fact that Win 10 upgrades were not exactly widespread).
Or switch to an OS that leaves you a choice. That's any other OS..
So, do I reboot into my windows 7 box and just let it update, then complain to law enforcement that my computer was "altered" against my will ?
I think that an major OS update should NEVER be done without explicit consent from the user, not unreasonable given the risk of problems. So, in my opinion this does indeed already qualify as an unwarranted invasion of my system, and if it borked the upgrade it would be a Denial of Service with consequential liability on top.
However, just to make life easier for criminal charges we will reserve this for when you have actively gone out of your way to stop this from happening by playing "hunt for the little tickbox" game that MS is playing and it then STILL installs. Heck, it should not even download that virus update without your permission.
Yes. That's certainly one approach.
Legal remedy? Trying to unscrew screwed computers that were wrecked by this "upgrade " has cost me about 30 hours. My time is charged at £850 / hour. MS can pay my standard rate. They can then pay a further £1700 / machine for my upgrade fee (usually to SuSe). That will come close to what this debacle has cost me. They should also make reparation for the distress they've caused and the training of the staff to use the new OS.
These clowns owe me the larger part of £85k.
If everyone else who was affected by this put in a nice bill to MS - and then backed them up with Court action through Trading Standards, MS would probably fold in weeks.
Their EULA is (as usual ) unenforceable outside the USA so they're stuffed!
Regular updates are offered, then when you check, the "Install win 10" is pre-ticked in the list.
I untick it... AGAIN, and continue with the updates.
Then after the obligatory reboot, windows update appears again offering me the exact same image from the article!
If I click the "Show all available updates" I get shown a new set of updates, none of which are ticked, yet 90% are important to my WIndows 7 installation! WTF M$oft!
Ugh. Just checked a small business PC I maintain and it's got the GWX icon in the systray (after I removed it a couple of months ago) - uninstalled the update (again) and I'm going to have to disable automatic updating entirely 'cause the users are exactly the type that'd hit update without thinking of the consequences. It also means I'm going to have to do a bit of uninstalling on some friends laptops that I thought had dodged the bullet.
I actually use Win 10 Pro on my Asus laptop and think it's ok but this cat and mouse game of Microsoft trying to forcibly install their latest and greatest (!) is getting pretty tiresome (not to mention shady) now.
Surely this must count as criminal mischief, MS should be held liable for any problems people have because of it.
I think it could be argued that by aggressively forcing people to upgrade, the users have only agreed to their T&Cs under duress. I think that UK consumer law thus invalidates them, I recall some discussion about the required balance of power to agree to a contract. This means that any get out clauses for MS ("you shall not sue us in any other jurisdiction than the one that will cost you the most in travel and court costs so we can drain your wallet before you can harm us" and the like) are also invalid, landing them squarely with quite an ugly own goal.
If so, I'm happy, because they're worth it. I truly hope that some enterprising MP starts prodding Trading Standards and the police to take them to task about this, preferably in court and in a way that will hurt them enough to think twice about pulling such a stunt again.
Can someone point me at the Win 10 T&Cs? If they contain matters that harm user privacy we could even punt that ball straight into the EC Commission as another example of US overreach. Might as well use the death of Safe Harbor for all it's worth...
It is clear that the new Microsoft is out to montize every PC user of their software.
They want annual subscriptions to keep the cash flow happy and (the important bit)
create a walled garden that is beyond Apple's wildest dreams.
Inside that garden MS will dictate your every move. Their telemetry will enable them to see (And think) what you are doing and are going to do. Then Cortana will burst into life even though you have disable it and shout 'I'm sorry Dave, I can't allow that'.
They seem to have this misguided idea that Mommy Sataya knows best and that we must not be able get up to the sort of antics we have done for years and frankly abused their OS. No more. You won't be able to do that. Big Bro Sataya is watching every move you make, every key you press. all to stop you doing anything that might be a bit risque (or worse).
I really fear for the future of MS. Users will only take so much. Oracle is doing exactly the same to its customers but their lock in is even worse (Sadly).
As has already been said,
BAIL OUT NOW. IF you wait it might be too late.
I am really glad that I am retiring sometime within the next 10 months. I will be able to leave the world of imploding world of MS behind me with a big smile on my face. I won't regret it one bit.
This is weird,I shut off my Windows 10 laptop and hid it in a place out of sight the other day,before going out.When I came in,got the laptop out,I opened it,and it started up,as if it had been in 'sleep'mode.I shut it off,using the 'power' button in the settings. It just was on,drained a good amount of the battery,too. Very weird,anyone hear of such?
Here's something weird: I shut off my Windows 10 laptop before going out.I had hidden it in a out of sight place. I got the laptop out when I came in,and it was on when I opened the laptop! I had shut it off with the settings 'shut down'button,watched it sut down.Now,it was on,and it had used up a lot of the battery,also! Anyone here of something like this?
For those that haven't heard of it, Reactos is a built-from scratch OS intended to be able to run Windows software without modification. The webiste is http://reactos.org/ - whilst this has been in development so long that I gave up on ever seeing a generally usable version, perhaps if enough peed-off Windows users bunged the developers a few quid it could help speed progress?
Oh and for those looking to try to run the odd Windows program on Linux, there's not only Wine and PlayOnLinux, but also Crossover by Codweavers https://www.codeweavers.com/
That aside, commisserations to all those going through Win10 woes. Penguinista though I am, there's no call for anyone to gloat over that. I just find it hard to credit, even with my extremely negative attitude toward MS, that MS could have behaved in such a dickheaded way and caused so much utterly unecessary grief to so many.
I just find it hard to credit, even with my extremely negative attitude toward MS, that MS could have behaved in such a dickheaded way and caused so much utterly unecessary grief to so many.
To me this ignoring of user's wishes carries a solid feel of desperation, and the reports of a not-so-spectacular take-up of Windows 10 appear to support that. Microsoft is desperately trying to halt the decline by tweaking every dial at once: cloud services, trying to be Apple with their own hardware but without much in the way of innovation (that has never been their strong suit anyway), collaborating with Google on mobile and a desperate, drunken lurch into subscription territory with Office 365 and Windows 10.
I think it's the desperation for at least ONE steady, trustworthy stream of annual revenue that must have prompted this ill advised idiocy with Windows 10.
I'm not a Windows user either - we got out of that years ago and I'm quite happy with the blend of Linux and OSX we now use.
However, there are plenty of other people out there who have to use Windows for whatever reason, and it annoys me no end that Microsoft is trying to screw them over. I have already put an article on one of my sites and another one will go live tomorrow with the the link to the Block Windows site which has scripts that slow down this idiocy somewhat until they come to their sense - if everyone who reads this posts a link somewhere it'll be hard for Microsoft to get it delisted as spam. I think it's time for a dose of Streisand Effect here :)
Microsoft Windows users have no justification for the "torch and pitchfork" stance in regard to Microsoft's automated and user unapproved - possibly unwanted - upgrades of Windows 10.
These computer users were not forced to adopt and use Windows 7 or 8x, and therefore should have no complaints against the policies and practices of Microsoft, even when most of them are draconian, that users have obediently swallowed "hook line and sinker" over the years.
Get a life, by either changing to another desktop/laptop or tablet Operating system (OS) and possibly hardware, or shut up and take your (distasteful) medicine from Microsoft.
When I got the blue screen I was not doing anything amazing just surfing ,and I believe that that blue screen may well be a built in type of fake blue screen that simply then gives MS the chance to prod you/me to upgrade to Windows 10. Sorry Bill but I do not want to upgrade yet and I will choose when/if I want to. Perhaps such devious methods may at some point be in breach of the Computer Misuse Act and thus a criminal offence .
When I got the blue screen I was not doing anything amazing just surfing ,and I believe that that blue screen may well be a built in type of fake blue screen that simply then gives MS the chance to prod you/me to upgrade to Windows 10.
Sorry, A/c, but I think we'd need to know a bit more about the BSOD error that you got before we chalk another one up to Microsoft here. There's a limit to how far paranoia can be justified!
Just checked after reading this, and there it was, KB3035583, in the optional updates, ticked again. I had previously uninstalled and hidden that update. Will now be keeping an eye on this daily, and watching out for the Upgrade to Windows 10 "optional" update, cheers Reg.
Somewhat annoyingly, I have just sent a freshly-minted W7 laptop out into the wilds of the in-laws' house, taking care to hide 3035583 first. No doubt the next time I see it, it'll be infested with W10.
Has anyone started a class action lawsuit against Microsoft illegally downloading software onto private computers without the expressed permission of the user?
I for one have CHOSEN NOT to upgrade my computer past Windows 7 XP. I will Not upgrade to an O/S that charges me for everything I already have with the O/S I have. Windows 10 is NOT FREE. Microsoft will nickle and dime users to death giving the users no choice as to what they want by downloading anything Micosoft decides to download and charge you for.
I will not open my bank account to any corporation in that manner. Also if Gaming companies quit writing games for Windows 7, then they just lose hundreds of thousands of customers who will not update anymore. Suffering the loss of billions od Dollars of revenue.
Enough is enough
But seriously,
those on Windows 7 Professional 64 bit, who are uncomfortable with the recent M$ upgrade attempts should be thinking about what they want to be using within the next year or two, and whether they welcome the prospect of being locked-in to one media vendor.
You already have a PC that can run a free virtual machine application such as VMware, within which you can install another freely available complete operating system, without affecting your present PC operation in any way.
It may be worth the small investment in time, just to see the alternative options that are available.
I'm still using Windows 7 for general use at the moment, but I'm also now using Linux Lite, one of the many free Linux alternatives. Having tried and evaluated it in VMware, I've installed it permanently on an old Notebook PC, and use it just for ALL financial related internet operations ie. bank, Ebay, Amazon etc.
Over the coming year (or two), as I look at equivalent Linux applications, within VMware, I'll decide on whether to do a full migration with my other PCs. But at least now I know there are nowadays highly viable alternatives to Microsoft Windows. Which incidentally probably goes a long way in explaining the aggressive stance being adopted by Microsoft.
Absolutely. Tonight, after months of fighting with XBMC on Windows, I finally ditched MS on the HTPC and installed Kodibuntu. Everything now works as it should. The only pissing about I had to do was temorarily disconnecting the HTPC from the telly and plugging it into a monitor because the TELLY is crap at low res i.e. changing BIOS settings.
The desktop OTOH might take a bit more effort to make the switch!
Every time we have upgraded Windows in the past, a few of our non-MS applications no longer work, disrupting our business until we BUY a replacement application/version and figure out how to migrate data from the previous (working) application.
For MS to trash working applications by forcing an unrequested, untested OS upgrade is corporate vandalism.
I'm sick to death of the stupid Windows 10 "upgrade" nag. Whose computer is this?
I was shopping for Macs online today. I'm not saying "I'm voting with my wallet" or anything like that. I'm simply reporting, after the fact, what my behavior has been this week.
What I've always liked about Windows over Mac was that it gives me a decent amount of control over my personal computing platform. Since leaving DOS, every consecutive release of Windows has had slightly less of that feeling of control.
So, while I'm not in love with it, Windows 7/8 is a way to run my pro audio apps and games on reasonably priced commodity hardware. Windows 10? I don't want anything it has to offer. Obvious bait and switch is obvious. GO AWAY.
But now it seems like every Microsoft(R) Windows(TM) computer in my house is an advertising platform for the new improved Windows 10 upgrade. I reserved a copy on one computer and it keeps trying to auto install as a pre-selected "optional" update that downloads and installs without asking. I hid the optional update and a new version of the Windows 10 Upgrade Update with the same name started to autoinstall *while still hidden*. That was basically the final straw for me.
I need Windows to run my games. For everything else, why do I have it again? (And Microsoft tries so hard to make all their games run badly on Windows, pushing the X360? Do they want me to ditch Microft products entirely?)
Sick of it.
I feel sorry for the smaller games developers who, for whatever reason, have been working on Windows-only games, especially those where their games are still in alpha or beta. This situation is liable to cause them a lot of heartache too. That said, at least it'll show the sense of using a cross-platform development tool. Hell of a way to be shown the truth of that, though.
Windows 7 has just spent almost an hour installing all of 38!!! updates.
FFS. And now I can NEVER upgrade to another Windows which MAY be slightly less annoying.
Can't all software developers simply agree to move to OS X and Linux now, pleaaaase!?
Now it's time to see if Big Brother the sadist MS has sneaked anything in..
Update: 15 updates failed.. Lol, MS.. They sure know how to screw up.
yup, I hid KB3035583, and after doing the security updates, which only took some 3 hours thanks to many failures and reboots (contrast with Linux installing updates in 15 minutes with imperceptible CPU usage), it's there, unhidden again!
Not ticked, because I never install any optional/recommended stuff. Just security stuff.
Won't be long until Windwos 10 is a security update, I bet!
In the MS details for the KB3035583 update at https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/3035583 the status is recorded as "Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section."
The "Applies to" section lists Windows 8.1 Pro, Windows 8.1, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 .
What problem? Whose problem?
I had no problems with my Win7 SP1 installations before this latest onslaught of fraudulent "updates"
So, just three weeks ago, as the shit of W10 "upgrades" and the telemetry snooping hit the news, my GF, a long-time XP and W7 user, took an USB stick, downloaded Mint and one of the Pendrivelinux tools, and went ahead. First a netbook, as a test, then the main laptop. I had been nudging her towards Linux a few times, but she always replied that the effort of switching (not just the OS, but all the programs and the way she worked with them) would be greater than the bother she had with Windows. The bother had clearly reached a critical level with the W10 pushiness and the telemetry snooping.
Yesterday she hosted a small workshop (five attendants) for people who might want to look at Mint, try it out, and get help installing if they wanted.
Removed the w10 updates, hid them. Didn't he registry changes. Removed the spywaretelemetry updates. Last weekend made sure all was right with my machine. Played some and shut it down.
Today notice a thing with a name like compattelrun.exe or something (can't recall right now) which was keeping my disks busy. Did some hunting and found out it was another "w10 compatibility checker" for win7. Only after a quick look I found threads where people were saying it was running on 8 and 10 machines as well. MS were their usual helpful selves, telling people both but to trust them for their own protection.
So I went in and removed the updates related to it and.... WTF? Kb305583 or whatever it is installed on my system. Despite removing it, hiding it, registry set to no upgrades and updates set to "off". It still got in.
Any one in NZ wanting to take this case? By turning off updates I explicitly stated that MS could not change my system. By putting this in they're in breach of our laws.
Tomorrow my network goes *nix only. No more DHCP, will not let windows on the network at all. Will be interesting to see what happens from there. I have 3 other OS's on that box that are safe so won't physically disconnect it. Will be interesting to see if it manages to get around that.
We're taking as much as 7 machines a week back from 10 now. Which is 100% of the win10 machines that come in to the shop. Not one customer wants it. We have seen a few bricked ones as well, a couple of HP machines that stop booting almost like a RAM failure only they don't boot with new ram. Have found a 1gig stick (only 1!) Will let them boot, flash the bios, fixed. Just don't let 10 boot again, or it'll be bricked again.
/end rant
I fixed(?) the problem on my machine. it only required a live chicken, rum, cigar....
Then I went to http://www.ftc.gov and lodged a formal complaint. I'm sure to hear from them soon... At least I feel a little better now.
Glad once again that I have Windows confined to a VirtualBox guest on my Linux Mint 17.2 setup. VirtualBox lets me create snapshots so I can roll back in case this happens, yet again.
This whole situation reminds me of a poster or t-shirt I saw years ago at a Linux con that said
"In a world without walls, who needs Windows?"
Got Linux?
http://linuxmint.com | http://distrowatch.org ==>> for myriad other choices
What's in it for them? What heretofore "free" features become "for pay" under Win X?
And where on earth did M$ ever get the idea that all computers running Windows are home computers? Or is this more a case of system people not understanding that Windows is not (and never has been) an industrial grade OS. Windows is not a suitable host for many critical applications simply because it's so unstable (still! after ~25 years! can M$ do anything right?), to say nothing of M$'s update shenanigans.
There's an apocryphal story of a Win machine being used in a hospital o.r. In the middle of a long operation, the computer cheerfully announced it had phoned home and was installing updates, following which a reboot would be necessary.
I've long thought that M$'s problems stem from its earliest days when organizational confusion was just funny, but it's not funny at all today. Most poorly managed company I've ever heard of. Needs a bevy of old farts in buzz cuts and nerd packs with one job: to say "No, you are NOT doing it that way" to the youngsters when they come up with their latest ill-thought-out idea for "improvements".
What the world needs is an OS that is 100% stable and free from software churn.
What's in it for them? What heretofore "free" features become "for pay" under Win X?
The idea of "Windows as a Service" moves towards the idea that you would effectively rent the OS for a limited period rather than pay for an installation that would last forever, support notwithstanding.
And where on earth did M$ ever get the idea that all computers running Windows are home computers? Or is this more a case of system people not understanding that Windows is not (and never has been) an industrial grade OS. Windows is not a suitable host for many critical applications simply because it's so unstable (still! after ~25 years! can M$ do anything right?), to say nothing of M$'s update shenanigans.
I don't believe that they do think that Windows is a home computer system exclusively. It's just that the corporates have yet to join in with us as yet. Your statement about the stability of Windows, however, is a bit of a generalisation given that some versions have been infinitely more reliable than others. OK, perhaps not as much as, say, a corporate Unix distro, but getting there. If anything, a lot of the instability has been introduced by - ironically enough - updates!
There's an apocryphal story of a Win machine being used in a hospital o.r. In the middle of a long operation, the computer cheerfully announced it had phoned home and was installing updates, following which a reboot would be necessary.
There are tons of stories like that knocking around. Ask any BOFH or experienced helldesk bod!
I've long thought that M$'s problems stem from its earliest days when organizational confusion was just funny, but it's not funny at all today. Most poorly managed company I've ever heard of. Needs a bevy of old farts in buzz cuts and nerd packs with one job: to say "No, you are NOT doing it that way" to the youngsters when they come up with their latest ill-thought-out idea for "improvements".
I suspect that is part of the problem. Another is money and corporate greed. Another is that Microsoft have never really been at the forefront of technological initiative; they tend to take an idea that's already out there and repackage it in their own image. A bit like a favourite brand of turd polish.
What the world needs is an OS that is 100% stable and free from software churn.
You'll never get it. Too much software drift, too much interference from corporate and marketing execs, too many people to please. The best you can hope for is something that stays up and does what you want it to do, more or less.
From : http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getAllAnswers.do?reference=E-2015-011725&language=EN
Directive 2005/29/EC on Unfair Commercial Practices requires traders to provide in clear, unambiguous and timely manner material information that consumers need in order to make an informed transactional decision. According to the directive, commercial communications may not be misleading. Subject to detailed assessment of the specific case and verification of the relevant facts, a commercial practice that consists of presenting as a security update what is in reality a downgrade of the functionality of a product, could constitute an unfair commercial practice in the sense of Directive 2005/29/EC.
Complaints about unfair commercial practices should be reported to the competent national enforcement authority. The Consumer Protection Cooperation network established under Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 lays down the framework for cooperation between national enforcement authorities. It allows authorities to carry out coordinated enforcement actions in case of intra-Community breaches which harm the interests of consumers in more than two Member States.
Ok.. they now they say they'll remove it for those who haven't reserved a copy. Should we believe them?
Personally, I'm glad they backtracked. It'll buy me some time to research, install and test my next OS. I'm leaning towards Mint but haven't decided as I do have a software, driver, and dongle issue to resolve on some off-the-wall equipment. (A laser cutter... needs a dongle, the controlling software, and a vector based drawing program.)
However, until the change over is made, it'll require vigilance on my part...
AC posted: "My other grumble is remote access. For better for worse, RDP is Windows star player here. I have tried X2GO and TeamViewer, but they're a tad flaky (especially with the lockdown that is PolKit, which stops you making changes over a remote session. "
Look for Remmina, better than the Microsoft client, with excellent support for RDP protocol.
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