Windows 10 is FORCING ITSELF onto domain happy Windows 7 PCs

Windows 7 PCs are being force fed a diet of Windows 10, breaking a promise made by Microsoft. The problem is affecting domain-attached Windows 7 PCs not signed up to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) for patches and updates, but looking for a Microsoft update instead. The upshot is PCs, ranging from 10s to hundreds at a …

[psychonaut]

Re: Gray hairs

I havent had a single call about this yet. (Its Now sunday). Tomorrow will be the proof of the pudding but so far theres no issues that i know of. I hope it stays that way...will let you all know if that changes.

[nematoad]

Re: Gray hairs

"Tomorrow will be the proof of the pudding but so far theres no issues that i know of. I hope it stays that way..."

Good luck and I hope that you get through this mess without too much trouble. Whatever they are paying you is probably not enough.

You know I used to miss working in support when I first retired, after this I'm just glad that I am out of the firing line.

[psychonaut]

Re: Gray hairs

just for consistency....posted above and now here too...

hi dk and anyone else who cares....

no problems reported today, bar 3 people who were new customers to me, who had decided to upgrade to 10 and it borked their machines.

i think this is really constrained to a small portion of domain machines, not a single call from any of my, at least for sure 650 win 7 customers definately not on domain (data taken from hosted security platform that tells me what os they use) , probably more in the realm of over 1k machines as not everyone has seen the light of not using notron or mcafee....

hope everyone else is ok...sleep well!

[dkersten]

Re: Gray hairs

I have yet to find a single KB associated with the download. You will see a windows update icon in the system tray and if you arrow over it, it will pop up with "Downloading XX%" You can't left or right click the icon, and opening windows update does NOT show it is downloading anything. You can check for new updates and have no new updates, and you can look at installed updates and there isn't a single one even remotely close to 3+gb. (I've heard 3, 3.5, 4.3, and 6.5 gb, but I think 6.5 is the size of the temp file after it starts the upgrade process).

This is NOT a KB update, this is a mostly silent download that can't be controlled with Windows Update.

[Zog_but_not_the_first]

So...

I'm forced to park Win 7 updates until I can check them out via a third party in case it's a "stealth install" of Win 10.

[herman]

I find it mind boggling that all these supposed 'administrators' don't know how to block traffic in a firewall.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously?

What percentage of Windows administrators would you allow to touch your network devices? I know quite a few Windows admins, but I can count on one hand the number of said administrators that I'd trust on the firewall.

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Blocking traffic is the wrong solution, because you still want patches for your current OS version..

[Henry Wertz 1]

Madness

"Zero sympathy here either. People doing half a job on the cheap causing issues for themselves, or the poor sod who takes over in in the future."

Zero sympathy for running Windows. But the expectation that one should have to vigilantly check all updates, because the vendor may decided to treat a MAJOR OS UPGRADE as equivalent to an update, is ridiculous. Nobody should expect this, and I've never heard of any other vendor doing this. Ubuntu and any other Linux OS I know of that allows upgrades from major version to major version, will tell you when a newer OS is available, but it doesn't just start updating it, and makes it clear it's not the same as the regular updates. OSX, same. I don't object to informing that an update to Win10 is available, but autoselecting this update is pure madness on Microsoft's part.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Madness

I don't think 'madness' is the right word.

[Pronounce]

The MS Decision Makers Need a Swift Kick to the Nards!

They are making my Win7 machines unusable and my life hell.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Why?

Why don't I use MS products? Does this give you a hint? My wife is an Apple fiend - even has an iWatch (probably was first in line to get one). Me, I am a Linux/Android maven. If I can't see the source code, I don't trust it! Simple as that.

[bazza]

Re: Why?

"Me, I am a Linux/Android maven. If I can't see the source code, I don't trust it! "

You've got access to Google's proprietary source code for their proprietary blobs like Google Play Services that they add to Linux to make Android? Care to share that with us?

"Simple as that."

So it would seem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Commiserations

- to all those struggling with the problems this has caused. Hearing of these problems now means that if asked advice by a friend I could not in good conscience reccomend Windows to them at all. It's Linux or BSD (or possibly Haiku or Reactos if either gets sufficiently well finished for average users to grapple with ) from now on.

It's been a very sad 12 months or so for IT, Windows 10 looks to be the wee-flavoured icing on the poo-flavoured cake.

[Anonymous Coward]

users will be delighted the network nazis have been foiled and they can get the s/w they want from the Store

[Anonymous Coward]

If only...

Actually, you CAN'T get Windows 7 from the store.

No wait, that's not what I want either...

[bazza]

For What It's Worth...

Microsoft aren't the only outfit forcing unwanted things on their customers.

Whilst not engaging in the practise to quite the same degree, RedHat are busily driving the Linux world in a direction that is not wholly acceptable to a very large proportion of the community. Systemd is probably going to become unavoidable at some point. At least RedHat's GNOME 3 looks like it might descend into irrelevancy (it is busily disappearing up its own pretentious arse), with Cinnamon being a prime candidate to replace it.

And as for Apple, well if you want to stay secure you have to take the new versions of OS X and iOS. Which doesn't always work out so well for the hardware and applications you already have... Though I suppose if an organisation is swanky enough to have gone the Apple route for its corporate IT then it probably wouldn't blink at all when the IT manager comes in and says that they have to replace all the hardware or applications to avoid being wide open to a hack.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a shift in concerns

If the above comments are anything to go by (particularly dkersten's), Windows 10 upgrades are causing a mountain of grief for admins across the world.

At one point, reading the comments I had a sudden flashback to the sort of things I was reading and hearing in my place of work when Conficker was ravaging networks worldwide. Yet it's the OS itself that is the cause for concern!

I only have family machines to worry about and that's worrying enough: you all have my sincere sympathies.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: What a shift in concerns

You make some very good points.

The rub comes with MS themselves.

Will they keep on with the stance that everything in the W10 garden is rosy and that all these so called problems are just noise.

Or will they man up and :-

1) Admit that their privacy policy is crap

2) Withdraw W10 from downloading until they sort out a privacy and upgrade policy that does not need a Law Degree from Harvard to understand.

Guess which one is more likely?

A friend of mine called me today asking about the W10 upgrade.

"But it is free!" thay said.

I pointed then at this thread.

A couple of hours later I got a text saying simply "No way Hose"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What a shift in concerns

Perhaps they'll do both. ie do everything to satisfy businesses that their networks and their information are safe with/from Microsoft, while at the same time doing precisely nothing to address the issues for the home users.

Tricky actually, because many businesses are using home/pro versions rather than enterprise, so it's hard to see how Microsoft could treat them and home users differently. Going to be interesting, I think.

..

edit: Ah it's obvious : for a monthly/annual fee Microsoft will promise not to fuck you over.

[Mpeler]

Re: What a shift in concerns - Winficker

Yep, we have a new virus.

Winficker.....

[Destroy All Monsters]

The thought occurs that there must be a global uptick in data transiting through the last mile(s) and possibly the backbones (unless it is just noise in the Netflick/Spotify global heat engine)...

[Mark Allen]

Certainly is

And I know at least one smaller ISP who admitted that this is causing them bandwidth problems when a client was having YouTube hiccups. I was told that: During Business hours non-Business critical traffic is being managed currently to maintain stability for VPNs and VOIP systems. This was directly blamed on the Windows 10 downloads

[Doctor Syntax]

I have very little that needs Windows and that will run on W2K. Time to blow the W7 VM away.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whilst sorting out some junk the other day, I was delighted to come across my old WinXP disk. With visions of sticking it in a VM so that I could run the couple of Windows games not available to run on Linux that I missed, I got to work on installing XP in Virtualbox. Had to try a second time after coating the data side with washing-up liquid then gently wiping it off, this time XP installed fine, and did so in quite a decent time, too, no slower than a fresh Mint install (well, given the advance in hardware ince, one would expect that). So, there I was VM'd XP all ready and waiting, and.. first game installer refuses to work. Even the washing-up liquid treatement wouldn't help. Damn. OK, let;s fish out the disks for teh other game. WTF? Dirty great crack in it, but it looks clean so.. -but no. Nothing I could do would persuade it to do a damned thing.

So now it;s official - I have absolutely NO reason to use any version of Windows at home at all.

Good point someone made elsewhere about systemd in Penguin Territory. Damned shame it's causing such a rift, and unfortunately, I'm amongst those whose technical skills are light enough that I have no real choice in the matter :-(

[ben_myers]

Same with Windows 8.1

Set up a couple of systems with Windows 8.1 for clients. Went through the usual Windows update-reboot-repeat cycle. Clicked once to do the last set of 8.1 updates and, lo, one system said it was downloading Windows 10. What? Could not stop it once started. Had to go back to a known good restore point and, of course, redo the updates again. Then I looked at the list of available updates. No Win 10 update. Oh, good! Then I looked at the so-called Optional Updates and found that the black-hearted bastards at Microsoft had checked off the "Optional" Windows 10 update for me. I promptly unchecked it, hid the update, then found the Ignorance-base, er, KnowledgeBase number for the update that triggers Windows 10 appearing as an optional update. Removed that update, and hid it, too. I really do not want either client to call me complaining that their laptops were now running Windows 10.

Now we all know why so many millions of Windows 10 updates have been downloaded and installed in the last 10 days. Microsoft is forcing it on people.

[ben_myers]

BitTorrent-like malware installed by Microsoft, too

So, once you have installed Windows 10, Microsoft turns your computer into a BitTorrent-like mule to deliver this piece of crap to other victims. This cleverly offloads Microsoft's own servers and sucks away the bandwidth of others, pressed into servitude by the Redmond borg.

[Tom -1]

Windows 10 has brought me a different problem. My laptop attempted to upgrade, but the upgrade failed. That ought not tp be a problem - but in the process of tryinhg and failing it has somehow completely diabled windows update. I doesn't appear to have damaged anything else, but windows update doesn't work at all.

[Kiwi]

@ Tom -1

Windows 10 has brought me a different problem. My laptop attempted to upgrade, but the upgrade failed. That ought not tp be a problem - but in the process of tryinhg and failing it has somehow completely diabled windows update. I doesn't appear to have damaged anything else, but windows update doesn't work at all.

#1 Count your blessings - with updates "broken" you may not have the issues others are :)

#2 tweaking.com's all-in-one repair has often helped people with these sorts of problems. And a hell of a lot of other problems.

[The Quiet One]

Anyone with machines joined to a domain, who is not managing updates with WSUS or SCCM has no business working in IT.