I've never been as frustrated with a windows update as this one. First, I've a small machine with SSD that I use as media center running windows 7, this humongous download (which happened overnight without any consent) killed that machine. Since then I've it switched to linux and things are much better.<p>Second I know an elderly couple who doesn't know much about computers. When they got the prompt for upgrade, they didn't even think it was an operating system upgrade. They thought it was another windows update. Next morning they couldn't do anything as the start button wouldn't work, printers were gone, email settings were gone, critical error message when they click edge etc. Now for a tech savvy person, it wouldn't be a problem and you can easily fix these but they live far from city, like about a good 2 hour drive. Since I'm closest to them, this weekend I'll be making a trip there and fixing it wasting around 6-7 hours of my life just because of windows 10. Thanks Microsoft!
<horse class="dead"><p>If this were like any other Windows OS upgrade in the past, I'd be OK with this. But... it's not. It adds a lot of tracking, reporting, and some (currently innocuous) uncontrollable communication back to Microsoft. I guess it really is time to do the cost/benefit analysis of a single company collecting all of this information from my gaming rig.<p></horse>
I just installed a $79 OEM Windows 7 to an Intel NUC[1], and I have some questions about upgrading.<p>1. Why upgrade? Windows 7 seems like a good, stable OS that stays out of my way and lets me get work done. Newer versions have these funky tiles and touch interface, neither of which I want or can even use.<p>2. I've heard if I let my Win 7 install "important Windows updates", one of the updates is nagware to persuade me to update to Win10. Can that be turned off? Will it violate my privacy?<p>3. The article says you get up to 31 days to try Win10 and still be able to roll back to your previous OS. Why only 31 days? Why not 60? Why not 10,000? Does some irrevocable change occur to the hard disk after 31 days that renders it incapable of supporting Windows 7?<p>4. Will it cost money to update to 10 after next year? I'm not necessarily opposed to paying for an upgrade if it's worth it -- it's a product that they spent millions of dollars developing, after all -- but I don't like feeling pressured. I'm just barely getting settled in with Win7, after all!<p>5. Are there any reasons to stay away from 10? I've heard the anti-privacy scare stories. Anything else? E.g. NSA back doors, or removed support for interacting with Linux, or some such?<p>[1] (Originally I bought the NUC to be a quiet, compact Linux server/workstation, but unfortunately the i5 model can't seem to run any of the Linux distros I threw at it, whereas Windows installed flawlessly. My main desktop has become a Mac Mini, actually :)
[EDIT asterisks don't work :(]
> At any time during the first 31 days, you can go to “Settings->Update and Security->Recovery and Uninstall Windows 10” to return to your prior version of Windows.<p>My computer didn't work with Windows 10, contrary to their claim that it would. The drivers I had on the notebook are "too old" and Intel doesn't support the devices for Windows 8 or 10 but MSFT claimed in their "Update to 10" nagware that it would work. It doesn't. I've discovered that only after two days of the immense number of the restarts of Windows 10, searching for the possible causes and finding the posts related to my hardware on the web forums.<p>And after I returned to Windows 7, it still presents "Upgrade to Windows 10" and to decline I had to uninstall more updates and put some registry entries which I had to search on the web (1). Far from easy to just say "it doesn't work please don't bother me or make the goddamn drivers."<p>Oh, and the return to Windows 7 from 10 actually didn't work too -- it screwed all the scheduled tasks (which were a part of the Windows 7 installation, not the tasks I've made!) (2)<p>---<p>1) This comment seemed to be the most useful: "This is totally unethical, namely re-releasing KB3035583 after hundreds of thousands of people paid technicians to have these removed."<p><a href="http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-glitch-results-in-accidental-windows-1#comment-2312386490" rel="nofollow">http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-glitch...</a><p>2) "Task scheduler is broken after windows 10 downgrade"<p><a href="https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1529-4405-b8e3-d1d636f8b71c/task-scheduler-is-broken-after-windows-10-downgrade?forum=win10itprogeneral" rel="nofollow">https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1...</a>
My sister upgraded to Windows 10 and was greeted by a blue screen every time she tried to turn on the computer. Investigating online it seems it's some kind of BIOS incompatibility but the manufacturer (Packard Bell, doesn't operate in USA but it's relatively well known in Spain) doesn't provide BIOS updates for that model. So we restored Windows 7 and lost an entire day. I'm sure she's going to be very happy when she sees the Windows 10 nag <i>again</i>.
> Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device.<p>Oh great! Can't wait to get a million phone calls about this one.
I disabled Windows Updates and I still get the update to 10 notification.<p>Cortana doesn't work in most countries (why? just why? I speak English ffs).<p>10 will know more about me than Facebook and Google combined (don't really care, but it's a bad thing imo).<p>No thanks, I'm happy with 7.
<i>Lesson</i>. It's not a "learning", it's a <i>lesson</i>. Stop inventing nouns we don't need.<p>(I know, the horse has bolted long ago, no pointing harrassing this stable door. I will blame too many choccy biscuits after lunch...)
It makes no odds. The most egregious intrusion of Windows 10, the wonderful keylogger 'diagtrack.dll' has been backported to 8.1 and 7 and installs under different than advertised Microsoft KB updates.<p>So it really is time to move to Linux.
Upgraded all windows machines to Windows 10. I'm so happy now. Much better. People that say "i moved to linux", we all did this at a point in time But like all Apple users, "I don't have time to troubleshoot, I need to get things done". Windows 10 did this for me till now. Everything works out of the box, no problem.
As someone who just moved to Windows 10 with all new hardware, my advice would be just don't do it!<p>Windows 7 is a much better version of Windows than Windows 10 will ever be so my suggestion would be wait a few years.
If they really wanted to make it easy to update, they could offer a downloadable installer image that installs cleanly with any Windows 7-10 license key. And by downloadable I mean an ISO image on a website, not through a "media creation tool" that requires the same operating system.<p>It's much easier to install/update some Linux distributions, and I don't think that's in their best interest.
Thank god. I don't have windows 10 yet so I have to send microsoft all my keystrokes, browser history and dick pics manually and it's wasting a lot of my time.
I wish I'd noticed this earlier in the day, but it may be worth looking at GWX Control Panel (<a href="http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-stopper-to-permanently-remove.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-stopper-t...</a>) which provides simple steps to temporarily or permanently remove the (current) "Get Windows 10" system tray icon along with making the Registry changes to block upgrades from happening in Windows Update. It'll also let you easily remove the downloaded 5-6GB of Windows 10 upgrade files if they're already on the system.
This may explain how they accidentally turned the auto update on a few months ago (that ended up forcing a few people to upgrade to 10). They were probably changing this from an Upgrade to an Update and it got out into the wild.
My recommendation is to completely avoid Windows 10, unless you are a heavy PC gamer. In which case you'll need it eventually for DirectX 12.<p>If you are a PC gamer then install Windows 10 and use only a local account, disable all of its cloud integration, disable all the telemetry and logging and use a third party firewall to block anything else that the OS options do not let you disable.<p>Then use another machine with another operating system like Linux that doesn't behave like it owns you and your entire system, for all your other personal/professional computing needs.
Can anyone give a non-biased, fact based report on what Microsoft tracks and sends to their servers on Windows 10? I've seen a lot of stories claiming that Windows 10 is free because it tracks just about everything, and sends it all to MS servers.
If you want to get rid of the prompt and the upgrade, remove update KB3035583. You'll also want to hide it by right clicking the update and selecting "Hide Update" from within the available updates dialog area. This will stop Windows Update from installing it over and over and over again. Which it will do if you don't hide it.<p>Also, it looks like for those like myself that have done this, it now appears to be a stand alone update with no KB identifier. You can do the same thing to this update; just Hide it! This work around will probably be overridden by some future update, but it will give you temporary respite from this windows 10 upgropalypse.
> <i>If you are on a metered connection</i> on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, then you have the option of turning off automatic updates.<p>Can I declare somehow my connection "metered" or is this something MSFT decides?
Currently getting some new hardware with support for VT-d/IOMMU to run Games and other heavily graphic applications in virtualized windows environments. (<a href="https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multiheaded-NVIDIA-Gaming-using-Ubuntu-14-04-KVM-585/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multiheaded-NVIDI...</a>). I really have to get rid of any microsoft software running directly on my hardware.
I'm an OS X user - why are they waiting so long? Shouldn't it be the recommended OS from day one?<p>I hope that OS updates eventually become like browser updates - they just happen and you don't notice. Seamlessly on the latest.