'Windows 10 destroyed our data!' Microsoft hauled into US court Three people in Illinois have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, claiming that its Windows 10 update destroyed their data and damaged their computers. The complaint [PDF], filed in Chicago's US District Court on Thursday, charges that Microsoft Windows 10 is a defective product and that its maker failed to provide adequate …
For more than one reason too. Seriously: Microsoft has made the Internet a more dangerous place to be on, and caused a lot of collateral damage with this enforced update stunt. At least that's my opinion and impression (based on what I saw around me).
Thing is: many people have been thrown offguard and are now very suspicious of the whole upgrade procedure and tons of people I know off have forcefully turned off updates in order to prevent an unwanted update to Windows 10. Thing is: it's a whole lot easier to simply turn off the update process entirely than it is to track down (and block) the updates responsible for the Windows 10 update. I know there are 3rd party tools for that, not my point.
My point is that there are now plenty of legit Windows environments out there which won't be updated any time soon because the owner is fearful of being forcefed with Windows 10. Yet that also creates a risk because they also won't be getting any more security updates either.
Considering the massive amount of stories about exploits and discovered flaws I hope that it won't be too hard to comprehend why this could become a major problem. Sure... Unless you're not on the receiving end of a DDoS attack you have nothing to complain about, right? Yah, but what if you are and you didn't use any intervention from, say, Cloudfare?
When are we going to stop fighting symptoms and instead try to tackle problems at the source, like this one?
For the record: I'm a Microsoft fan (sort off), I seriously enjoy and appreciate some of the products (like Office and Windows 7) but I'm very opposed to their <self-censored> idea of enforcing their Windows 10 crap upon us.
I get that it's a pain in the ass when the computer decides you don't need your data any more, but for me after a very short time all those free upgrade dialogs were just a reminder to make sure I had some recent backups. When it couldn't wait any longer and started upgrading despite me repeatedly rejecting the offer, it was very inconvenient but I didn't lose data.
As much as I hate MS's recent tictacs, can they really be accountable for the loss of someone's data? Maybe a days work but shirley they had a backup of everything else right?
This forced update philosophy wasn't limited to just the initial upgrade though, the whole Windows 10 update behaviour has been really unhelpful for me.
There have been many, many times over the last 18 months when I've needed to access my computer from work, so I do what I need to before I leave the house and by the time I get to work it's off doing it's own thing, rebooting when it wants to and I might not be able to connect to it.
And the addition of Active Hours wasn't very helpful either - Apparently I am only allowed to specify a 12-hour stretch when I am allowed to use the thing. My sleep / wake / work pattern is so fragmented that I can be awake, asleep, at work, and then back to sleep in a two hour period, repeated over and over, all day every day, so changing this every time I take a break is just not practical.
Maybe it's just my behaviour that is unique, I don't know, but it sure can be inconvenient.
As much as I hate MS's recent tictacs, can they really be accountable for the loss of someone's data?
If it can be proven in court that MS upgraded without permission, yes, that will be their responsibility as that is akin to hacking a machine. Microsoft had no permission to change the OS on a machine, which amounts to unauthorised access.
Maybe a days work but shirley they had a backup of everything else right?
You cannot rely on a user doing the right thing as an excuse to your actions. If I kick a ball through a window near a playing field it is still my fault for kicking the ball, you cannot blame the occupant for not installing more robust windows.
"You cannot rely on a user doing the right thing as an excuse to your actions. If I kick a ball through a window near a playing field it is still my fault for kicking the ball, you cannot blame the occupant for not installing more robust windows."
That makes sense. Installing windows 10 probably wouldn't help stop you or the ball, especially when it's not that robust.
@Wiil & @AC - This case hinges on pre-trial discovery. Once Slurp's legal beagles look that internal paper trail they may demand settle at any price. The internal paper trail is likely to show there was a significant internal debate about how to roll out Spyware-as-a-Service aka Bloat 10 on the masses. Also, it would show how close Slurp was going to the edge of obeying the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law. Once this is in open court it is public record. Being public record means it accessible to anyone. Remember this is a civil case which could cost Slurp dearly in direct costs and long term.
No matter what shyterly comments the PR flacks say Slurp could have avoid this mess by letting users deliberately seek out Bloat 10 not force it on them. And all it takes is for one of these suits to stick and go to trial.
@ shade82000, The 12 hour window on upgrades is for the office environment. What it's doing on the home operating system is something I don't understand. Since it has no business is being there.
As I understand it, the best way to deal with this problem with update is set Windows 10 to metered connection setting and then all updates have to be done manually.
Assuming that I've somehow become the owner of a computer with Windows 10 installed for the moment (har har), if that option were removed, I'd expect Micro$ith to pay for its use of my 'net connection at peak times. (Yes, it's metered and yes, the effective cost is higher during office hours.)
" but for me after a very short time all those free upgrade dialogs were just a reminder to make sure I had some recent backups. When it couldn't wait any longer and started upgrading despite me repeatedly rejecting the offer, it was very inconvenient but I didn't lose data."
WTF!!??
And you actually defend MS?
"As much as I hate MS's recent tictacs, can they really be accountable for the loss of someone's data? Maybe a days work but shirley they had a backup of everything else right?"
Sure... As if. I backup my data every now and then. When I have new data to backup. But then there are all the apps that need to be installed. And perhaps the apps won't run under Win 10. Perhaps the user isn't savvy, and must pay to get someone to reinstall 5+ years of apps?
Don't try to shrug off MS behaving like arrogant bullies.
I had to re-read their weasel words several times. Utter disbelief and my jaw is hanging open at their response. Unbelievable...
Why? It's been like that since they gamed DR-DOS as "being 'incompatible' with Windows", and that's some +25 years ago. Windows is a classic example of something of at best mediocre quality sold as gold dust through marketing, golf course bribery and bare faced market manipulation. It works better than the golf ball detectors, but if you take 75% of the claims away you start approaching reality. Anything proclaimed as "secure" should not need extra anti-virus before it goes near the Internet and anything declared as "increasing productivity" should not have to market so well and deceptively against Linux - it suggests they're very worried about it.
In short, good wine needs no bush - if it really was even half as good as Microsoft's marketing tries to imply, Microsoft marketing would be out of a job.
Even more unbelievable is that they will probably get away with it.
Ah, but hell hath no power like an ignoramus exposed. If you get to the top man and sell him Windows, there isn't a chance in hell he's going to admit afterwards that he was wrong (certainly not if he derives a benefit from it, like a much larger budget and more manpower). That's how you subvert whole governments.
And there's where you lose all credibility - "Anything proclaimed as "secure" should not need extra anti-virus before it goes near the Internet and anything declared as "increasing productivity" should not have to market so well and deceptively against Linux - it suggests they're very worried about it."
I haven't used antivirus in decades, and Linux markets against itself. In fact, Microsoft is trying to embrace Linux.
And this, the ignoramus was exposed.
I haven't used antivirus in decades,
It's a binary choice: either install anti-virus against botnets, or be part of the botnet that users need to install anti-virus for. If you ever get bandwidth problems or your machine seems more sluggish than the use of Microsoft software alone can account for, you know what to do.
In fact, Microsoft is trying to embrace Linux
The way in which they are doing it suggests it's more of the same old "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy. Not that that is surprising, after all, it worked for over 2 decades.
And this, the ignoramus was exposed.
Correct, but not in the way you think. Take it from someone who has gone through the pain of having to use Microsoft software since MS-DOS 2 that you need to learn your history.
Really? "Utter disbelief and my jaw is hanging open at their response"? Really?
Their response is "the update was optional". Admittedly that's very misleading because it was hard to not install the update, but still... "Utter disbelief", wtf?
Plus I really don't see the upgrader deleting any files. My bet is it borked the computer and the woman didn't know you could recover files from a hard disk.
Ubuntu has borked my computer before but I don't blame them.
This post has been deleted by its author
I got lucky, the wife was away for a month taking care of family and I never thought to check her machine until a few days before she got back. According to the logs when I booted it up for what I thought was the first time in nearly a month I found that the Windows 10 upgrade had failed four times with only the first being just before she left. Mind this was on a machine that was nominally turned off, not hibernating nor sleeping, the entire time and it still managed to try upgrading three times on its own. That was the day I flipped a few registry bits so it would permanently block the upgrade. Sadly that machine is a bit old and she wants a new one - with Windows 10.
Maybe it's time to play with this ReactOS thing.
@Eddy
I have tried various releases of Reactos, up to 4.4. It is still beta software at best, and is unhappy on real hardware rather than a virtual machine.
After my last attempt on real hardware I had to wipe the bios with a specialised program to restore the normal ability to manage bios settings.
I had bought Windows update CDs in the past, a couple of times. No big problems. Then the hard drive needed replacing, I was able to save the data, but the hardware change meant I needed to go back to the start of the stack of CDs, install and register that version, install each upgrade, and then ask myself, "Windows 10?"
I installed Linux
Six weeks later, the company responsible for some software I used announced (with a notice in the back of their cellar, behind a locked door labelled "Beware of the Tiger") that the Linux version of the software was an unsupported beta.
I found other software that worked. Last I heard, they still were not officially supporting Windows 10 users. As for 64-bit code, they have started working on it.
As for installing Windows...
Mandy Rice-Davies applies.
"The Windows 10 free upgrade program was a choice designed to help people take advantage of the most secure, and most productive Windows"
Nice ignoring of context by the spokesdroid: I wonder how you can claim both "secure" and "productive" when data vanishes (i.e. not secure, and that's not mention the massive privacy risks that come along with it) and a machine doesn't even work post upgrade. It makes me wonder how Microsoft measures productivity.
That said, Brexit and Trump have now made Microsoft's approach to marketing the minor offence against reality and facts..
Got my computer in February and have had a lot of issues once windows started updating and now my computer doesn't work and I am told that my operating system is gone thanks to the window in date. So now I wait for software that I paid for to come in and see if that gets my computer running. I would love windows owners to replace my brand new computer that I only use for college school work. So now I have no computer for at least 2 weeks and 4 papers due by next Sunday. I'm beyond irate. This is the second computer that's been ruined from the windows update. I wish someone would do another lawsuit so all of us affected got new computers. I shouldn't of had issues with a new computer.
Everyone gets away with this sort of nonsense.
Seriously, when did you last hear of a software company being successfully sued on the grounds that its product failed to perform as advertised?
This is 20 years overdue, and if they can catch Apple, Google, Oracle, Sun et al in the same blast, that'll be fine with me.
This time may be different because MS had employed weasel tactics to install the update without the user full and active consent. If upgrading to Windows 10 had been an action fully and explicitly initiated by the user, I guess the users would have very little chances. But when clicking on a red x in a dialog box actually starts the upgrade, or the choices shown are "now" or "later", while "don't upgrade" is hidden, mean MS put itself in dangerous waters. If a court judges there is an explicit correlation between the lost data, and the "forced" upgrade, MS may find it needs to cough up money.
How many people were working on things when Microsoft sent out an update and then either
a) Forced Rebooted the machine
b) Gave them 10 minutes to save any work (which may not have been savable in 10 minutes) and then forced rebooted their machines.
Why not include automatic updates in the class action?
.. because there isn't enough money in the world to pay that bill, even if you include future earning for the next decade.
There is a problem with taking Microsoft down completely: it would create too many victims at once. It genuinely made itself too big to sue into the ground..
"It genuinely made itself too big to sue into the ground."
No excuse. If for no other reason it would discourage others from using the same tactic.
In any case, if it did get sued into the ground there'd be good money to be made supporting the victims so someone would be ready to buy up the assets at fire sale prices.
C) failed updates due to untested or poorly tested code that results in an error or unbootable machine.
resulting in data loss, time and money for reinstall and recovery services. ETC. ETC.
D) class action for adding Telemetry to Older OS's in critical updates with NO warning what these will do. or option to stop them. (if you have automatic updates turned on) they are listed as critical security patches when in fact they reduce your personal security and privacy. and now they give little information and purposely obfuscate the full details of what the payload of each update actually contains and affects.
I got caught by that on a machine recently. It wasn't mine, it was a 'generic lab PC' (running Win7) and obviously no one had turned off the feature (which I always did on 'my' machines) because I came in one morning and it had rebooted, proudly telling me that it had done so to install updates, totally trashing what I had it doing overnight.
I seem to have flummoxed my Win10 machine. It keeps telling me it's going to reboot to complete an update once I'm outside my safe 12-hour lockout window. Except I hibernate it while within that window and don't wake it up until the following day when I'm safely back within that window. It's managed a whole week being frustrated so far.
"Windows 10 update will destroy your data and damaged your computers"
It's perfectly clear to me.
"She hired Geek Squad to repair the machine, with only partial success, and ended up having to purchase a new computer [after the Geek tech stole all her nude pix and dox and told her she needed a new computer, and luckily, that Best Buy was having a sale that very day!]"
Whoops! There's a lesson to be learnt here. I'm just not sure what that would be.
This paragraph bothered me as well
"According to the complaint, Windows 10 installed itself onto plaintiff Stephanie Watson's computer without her consent and then erased data, some of it related to her work. She hired Geek Squad to repair the machine, with only partial success, and ended up having to purchase a new computer."
As much as I dislike Windows 10 - how did this cause the plaintiff to need to buy a new computer (unless the new one was Windows 7 but I think this is unlikely). Are 'Geek Squad' incapable of reinstalling an OS? In fact doesn't Windows 10 make reinstalling the OS 'too' easy at times with the recovery centre options?
"how did this cause the plaintiff to need to buy a new computer" how about because changing the data storage removes any possibility of ever recovering the missing data.
Geeksquad atleast are going to be aware that changing a drive where the users is going to be seeking damages would expose them to mitigation as well.
Anyone working in data recovery knows not to the change the original if you want to avoid going to court.
If the machine was provided without an OS image then it isn't as simple as throwing a new drive and and reinstalling. My experience is that home users never create the recovery set until they have a problem so it is more than possible that to get a windows 7 machine by this time she needed to buy a "new" machine with the OS
@Not also known as SC - I suspect the origin of this lawsuit was that the plaintiffs managed to talk to someone socially who is reasonably computer literate who explained what likely happened well after the fact. A suggestion was possibly made to consult a shyster to see if they could find a way to shake some money out of Slurp. From the article none of the plaintiffs appear to be computer literate unless you define it as being able to turn it on and use a couple of programs. And I suspect 75%+ of all users are closer to the plaintiffs' skill level than the posters here.
As with previous versions, win 10 update stores old user profiles and windoze folders in windows.old with an option to rollback so i really don't think they have a leg to stand on. The fact that neither the customer nor Geek Squid could manage the world's simplest data recovery is hardly grounds for a lawsuit.
I personally know of at least two systems where the Win 7 > 10 in-place upgrade failed and would not roll back successfully. In the end the only apparent possibility was a full nuke'n'pave. Fortunately there wasn't much data lost, but there was some.
I am certain that there are thousands of similar cases.
I am also equally certain that there are tens of thousands of people who tried to reject the upgrade but were forced into it, eg by the complete lack of a "Cancel" button in later stages.
Many of those will have wanted to return to Win 7, many of those will not have been able to find out how, and many will have been unable to because the "downgrade" process was not 100% reliable
Even a 1% failure rate would be many thousands of failures.
I also have found that Win 10 rejects many third party programs. At the moment you try to install it win 10 inserts another file called DATA and the installation is stopped. Having had these problems I tried to Dual boot by installing the Win 7, that too was rejected. At a guess its liken to downgrading which is often refused.
I bought a new laptop with win 10 in stalled but upon switching it on the windows update was busy updating. After the install was completed I could now continue. However I closed the computer and when I opened it I had problems which ended up with BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH. The machine was sent for repair and I finally got it back 5 months later. on 6/8/2016. Switched it on and yet again windows 10 update was forced onto the machine. Now I tried to reinstall my programs and found them rejected, simple programs like Spy hunter, AVG, ASC9, if it was not from MS then you can't have it. Anyway during these attempts the machine came up with a blue screen that prevented any kind of repair. It refused the MS reinstall programs which was downloaded using my old faithful Win 7 laptop. Then the machine had to be returned for the exploding battery problems and now for the BLUE SCREEN now outside any warranty.
Windows 10 was given out to the public as a Beta and the public now tested it. Windows 10 is full of unwanted advertising and a program to report all your personal data back to MS. NO! windows 10 is not secure.
win 10 update stores old user profiles and windoze folders in windows.old with an option to rollbackSo I take it you've never seen: "...refers to a location that is unavailable. It could be on a hard drive on this computer, on a network, or on a different computer on your home network. Check to make sure that the disk is properly inserted, or that you are connected to the Internet or home network, and then try again. If it still cannot be located, the information might have been moved to a different location."
Oddly, Linux can see and copy the files, but not Windows. Nor can you delete the folder in Windows. When Windows fucks up, it does so big-time. BTW, none of the suggested fixes on the interwebs worked for me.
Yes I agree that I've seen that message, I've seen upgrades fail, I've seen clean Win 10 installs fail and I've seen rollbacks fail.
BUT
I've done hundreds of windows upgrades and have NEVER lost access to the old data. It stores it in windows.old. .Whilst I wouldn't expect Joe Average to be able to recover it, ANY even semi-capable IT outfit who CHARGES should be able to reinstall previous Windows version, the old user profiles and if necessary pertinent registry data.
I've done hundreds of windows upgrades and have NEVER lost access to the old data. It stores it in windows.old.While what you say is undoubtedly veridical, it marks you out as a bit of an amateur. I've been using Windows since Win 286 and there's one thing I learnt very early on. Upgrading Windows is vastly inferior to a clean install.
You can't reinstall the previous Windows version if you lack install media and the Product Key. The PK is on the power adapter for my Zenbook and it's not beyond the realms of possibility to leave such plugged into an hotel wall on the opposite end of the planet. Or for wear and tear to obliterate the PK (overzealous office cleaners).
>While what you say is undoubtedly veridical, it marks you out as a bit of an amateur.
Probably and that's the main reason I got out of that area of IT. Kept getting told how to do a better job by experts..
>Upgrading Windows is vastly inferior to a clean install.
I'd agree, upgrading Windows IS vastly inferior. But I never said it was my first choice and I never said I never do clean installs. But did customers always pay me to do backup their data (I did anyway), perform a clean install, migrate their user data and reinstall their applications? Beside, they've often lost the install media and didn't have the savvy to photograph the product key that was fading away on the bottom of their notebook or power supply. So economic reality won. I'd also like to point out that most of the time I'd receive the laptop/workstation AFTER windows 10 (or previous versions) had updated and borked.
>You can't reinstall the previous Windows version if you lack install media and the Product Key.
That's for that Captain Obvious, but exactly what has that got to do with my original post?
Yes, sometimes I had to use install/recovery media, bootable linux, mount a hard drive on another PC or whatever it took. Points I was trying to make was
a) Doing an upgrade, Windows stores data in windows.old
b) That anybody CHARGING folks to fix borked Windows 10 updates should be competent enough to have the means of accessing that data.
c) I never lost anybody's data from a Windows update..
I probably should have stated that yes, the windows update rollback is often a dog and I probably just got lucky with point c. However its amazing how many laptops are out there with perfectly good customer data in a windows.old folder that end users have no idea exists because some muppet has charged them an arm and a leg to fix their failed windows upgrade, not bothered (or known) how to transfer their data and just told them that it's gone and it's all Microsoft's fault.
exactly what has that got to do with my original post?FWIW that was aimed at several other posters here rather than your good self. Reinstalling w7 is not necessarily all that easy.
And yes, I think you've been lucky. Clients can be maddeningly obtuse. One I had set up to backup her data automatically decided to purchase a new machine. To "make the transfer quicker", she deleted all the backed up data. There must have been maybe 100 MB of data on the several gigabyte hdd! Unfortunately the outlook.pst file was unrecoverable.
I'm just so glad I'm retired.
That's the prime requirement for being expected to support friends and family.Actually, demand for my support has declined since retirement. First, I only provided support for WinXP and Win7. Then following the GWX fiasco, I demonstrated Cinnamon Mint on various friends' PCs. All were more than happy with Mint and none have needed support since.
Also made a habit of lending my Mac Mini to people considering upgrading their hardware. Most changed from Win to OSX and needed no subsequent support from me. I'm a lazy fucker at heart :-)
"I'm just so glad I'm retired."
That's the prime requirement for being expected to support friends and family.
I'm excused - I tell them a truth, "I retired before Windows 10 came out, and I don't use it."
As I have posted before, I was horrified and started to plan retirement when I looked at beta versions of Vista.
it's all Microsoft's fault.
It is, they upgrade your PC without crystal clear instructions how to avoid the upgrade ... whatever happens next due to the upgrade process is MS' fault - equivalent to unauthorized changes to a computer.
They are liable, and they will pay ... this is gonna be dear, expect license & Azure prices to increase
I've done hundreds of windows upgrades and have NEVER lost access to the old data.
Sorry, but with Win10 in order to fix a failed mandatory (Win10) update I have often had to resort to the option: restore to factory defaults... After one of these without the use of disk recovery tools, I've never been able to access the old data...
I just checked my metrics... 781 7->10 upgrades, 1655 clean 10 installs since Aug 1, 2015. Of those, 3 upgrades failed and had to be rolled back, 1 unsuccessfully and was determined to have a daily hard drive, 22 clean installations failed and had to be started over, and if those, 19 were due to driver updates, 3 due to bios firmware that needed updating. Numbers don't lie; the process is too easy.
Whilst I wouldn't expect Joe Average to be able to recover it, ANY even semi-capable IT outfit who CHARGES should be able to reinstall previous Windows version, the old user profiles and if necessary pertinent registry data.
PC are basically commodity consumer products. The fact that keeping them functioning demands the services of a paid professional IT staff IS the problem. Moreover, getting a professional fix is not guarantee that the system will stay fixed--as anyone who has tried to find answers from the Microsoft Community has probably observed. (One of the prime examples is the 100% Disc Usage issue, One of the more amusing aspects of that is that so-called "experts" routinely blame Skype and Chrome for the problem, with splendid disregard for the fact that Skype and Chrome are not installed on a given user system.)
It appears that this particular problem can be generated in a number of different ways. With continual updates (not necessarily MS's) fixes fail.
IT providers and users alike have lost sight of something fundamental. The network--INCLUDING THE USERS' DEVICES--is the system. Its configuration and state at any given instant is effectively indeterminate and indeterminable. Such a system in intrinsically un-secure and un-securable.
As witness El Reg Article Dishwasher has directory traversal bug.
When my internet connection had an issue, (following a new modem the day before), I found on my main PC that a troubleshoot followed by a reboot fixed it. So I did the same on my laptop ... too late I realised it may have been "Restart and Update" .. spinning dots scenario from the Win 10 Anniversary update ... system restore "couldn't find save point" (another known bug) and though I could get into safe mode and back up that day's work the update completely screwed up this time to the point where even the distro created at the time of the Win10AU wouldn't install either. I tried a second time and the Windows.old folder has now also disappeared.
I sympathise that unlike Apple they have 15m+ combinations of hardware to be compatible with. However I'm not the only one faced with either (another) 2 days on the 'phone to Microsoft or paying for tech help (when I've finished moving home).
Not a happy customer. (Case law in the UK, dating back to the mid-90s also states that software must be "fit for purpose").
I have a dog, it's a good dog and I can tell it what to do and it does it. I sometimes have to tell that damn dog to shut up but it still does it's job.
I was forced to get a new dog that wouldn't do as it's told, I tried the new dog but I found it was shitting in my garden so I got rid of the dog and got my original dog back who still I like a lot but one day I may have to put it down.
So here we are at an impasse, I wasn't forced to take the new dog as others were but they didn't know how to say no or check there wouldn't be other problems if they said yes.
I hope this lawsuit succeeds and I'll keep my dog for a while until it gets lame and then I'll completely move to a different type of dog.
I'm still wondering what happened to government agencies worldwide that were supposed to protect us from the kind of BS like GWX? Surely they couldn't all have been asleep at the wheel seeing as a lot of them were probably affected by this as well as the average user?
Now I'm waiting for the fertilizer to really hit the fan regarding this (already started by the looks of it):
http://www.infoworld.com/article/3183583/microsoft-windows/microsoft-will-kill-some-windows-7-and-81-support-in-april.html
Especially seeing as MS is actually including code in the latest monthly preview to detect new processors and deny access to Windows Update - trouble is, the code is apparently detecting older processors as well. Oops... another "sorry, we made another mistake" excuse coming up, I'm sure. Yeah, right.
Will someone please sue these f***ers out of existence? PLEASE!
A few months ago, after the Win10 "update or die" fiasco was over, I TRIED turning Win Update back on.
M$ promptly decided two of my four PCs (all running legit copies of Win7 64Bit Pro, were fake, and did their best to cripple them.
Same happened to my sisters PC, also running Win 7 64bit Pro.
ON THE OTHER HAND
My wife has a copy of Win7 64Bit Pro CHINESE edition - 99% certain it is a pirate copy, as I never found anywhere selling genuine disks in my time there.
Not only did she never suffer the forced Win10 attempts, but M$ still havent messed her system up by saying it is fake.
From now on, if it is M$, I get a pirate copy.
Anon, obviously.
An anonymous friend's pet rabbit had a questionable version of Win 7 installed on one of it's computers for about 5 or 6 years. As long as KB971033 was hidden the OS ran perfectly for all that time including installing all other updates. I was informed that it never saw a single GWX notification, until......
The rabbit then bought a $15 key from Amazon because it wanted to go through the upgrade process to validate it for installation at a later date. Almost as soon as it validatd the licence key, the reminders began.
It's insane that the pop-up ridden spyware laden version was the legit copy, and the one he could trust not to start downloading nd installing crap was the dodgy copy.
Pirate versions are better, always have been...
License enforcement code is *DESIGNED* to cause a denial of service condition, the sole purpose of such code is to act against the interests of the user. Pirate versions have this junk removed and work much better.
It's been the same for years, even back in the Amiga days the pirate versions didn't require you to hunt down the manual and read a tiny code, and let you make backup copies of the disks so you didn't lose them to corruption.
Same thing applies to movies, the pirate versions don't have unskippable warnings or commercials, and don't have arbitrary restrictions on where, when or on what you can play them.
Pirate versions are better, always have been...Not so. Many prate versions of software contain code you definitely don't want running on your system. Conversely, until WinXP MS software wasn't copy-protected. Heck, you could purchase an upgrade version of Word 6 for example, and so long as you had a file called word.exe on your system, run the upgrade. Word.exe could just be a text file renamed to word.exe.
As for movies, I just "pirate" my legitimate version with DVD Fab to remove the unwanted crap :-)
This post has been deleted by its author
I don't know if this one is limited to Win10, but it is jaw dropping:
http://blog.robertelder.org/zipping-corrupts-eclipse-workspace/
Seems "Windows 'Send to Compressed (zipped) folder' utility has a mandatory optional feature to automatically not include certain folders in the archive without telling you."
The one that caught me out recently is the default 4GB size limit on the recycle bin in Windows 10 AU1607.
This option is hidden away in the recycle bin properties (right click on on icon). So if you accidently delete multiple items whose total size is greater than 4GB, they aren't recoverable even if you had the disk space to store such files in the recycle bin.
Now that is fcuking madness, as a policy choice by Microsoft. MS need to switch this default option off. If there is disk space store the recycle bin files, they should be stored.
That is uniquely dreadful and seems a strong candidate for Worst Offender regarding the 'law of least astonishment'. Back in XP, it would choke on their half-baked idea of symlinks in NTFS (made with NTFSlink-- 3rd party thing for making/deleting/etc), but they sorta fixed that in Vista (maybe not only so they could make \Documents and Settings also link to \Users, a name that finally made any sense)-- so now it chokes on dot folders, realnice. OTOH I never needed that particular Send To nonsense-- in the Win95 days I would put shortcuts in that folder to use as an "Open With..." substitute before Open With existed, but the Windows compressed folders are Somebody Else's Problem. It was always easiest to just do it with WinRAR or 7zip or anything that would add itself via "Add to archive..." to all folders' context menus. That 3rd party things do infinitely better than Windows' official internal functionality is just the opposite: no surprise.
"...a class action that includes every person in the US who upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and suffered data loss or damage to software or hardware within 30 days of installation"
I can understand if the upgrade procedure somehow caused data loss or 'damage to software' but I haven't heard of Windows 10 either damaging hardware or causing data loss.
If the class action succeeds, can every Joe Sixpack out there claim compensation if e.g. their hard drive broke within 30 days or if they were infected with Locky or other data encrypting malware? That's what the class action claim states...
Also, the fact that the Geek Squad couldn't fix her computer, and she had to buy a new one means that either the "Geeks" don't know how to install an OS or that her computer just died during the upgrade procedure - case of bad luck?
A couple of recent examples of a software update nearly causing hardware damage - sadly though, neither is M$
The latest AMD gfx driver update bjorked both AOD and the MSI programs for controlling my RX470 gfx card; changing the fan speed settings so the card was running VERY hot. With both of the programs that can alter the fans speeds broken, I had an anxious few hours until I could find a fix.
Acronis update failed, leaving a background process using 70% of the total cpu time across 6 cores; once again temps went through the roof, as 4 of the cores were running nearly 100% JUST on this one process.
I was also muttered BS at the claim consumers had a choice; Micro$hit even went so far as setting a wake-up call to install WinFail a few hours after you had finished with the PC for the day.
I actually caught my mums PC waking up and starting the install; I managed to stop it, but now it constantly claims it has an update that requires a reboot, and wont allow any other GENUINE Win7 updates to install.
BTW, for people thinking of getting the Chinese version; the main issue with it is that you can ONLY set the location and time zone to China.
If only the Tiny7 project had been continued.
"...a class action that includes every person in the US who upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and suffered data loss or damage to software or hardware within 30 days of installation"
I can understand if the upgrade procedure somehow caused data loss or 'damage to software' but I haven't heard of Windows 10 either damaging hardware or causing data loss.
It's the sort of thing any lawyer would put in without even having to set the brain in motion for two reasons: firstly it saves having to investigate whether any hardware failures did happen so if someone does turn up with such a corner case they've already got it in there and secondly it cuts Microsoft off at the pass if they try "it was a hardware issue" as a defence.
Also, the fact that the Geek Squad couldn't fix her computer, and she had to buy a new one means that either the "Geeks" don't know how to install an OS or that her computer just died during the upgrade procedure - case of bad luck?
Had a HP AIO machine with something off. When the Win 10 update happened there was also an attempt at a BIOS update soon after (that's what I suspect was happening anyway). The result was that the machine would ONLY boot with a couple of specific RAM modules. It originally presented with HP beep codes suggesting a RAM problem. It was a fluke that I had the appropriate RAM module in stock. If I didn't have that module, I'd have tried a few modules and a few combinations, checked the HP site for specs on what RAM the machine could take (in hopes that while it must have been a motherboard fault maybe a different combination could've worked), and given up and told the customer that their machine was dead and they should try for a warranty or CGA replacement.
You can see my original post at https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/2681764 if you wish.
As to "lost data" and "everything is in windows.old" crapola... I learnt very quickly that when you create a set of backup disks just after doing the 10 update, it would wipe out windows.old (or wherever the recovery data was kept) as a part of the process.
I am surprised any lawyer would take this case. It is in the US, and in the US, the EULA is a binding contract. This case cannot go anywhere. Have you read that abomination? You basically give up all your legal rights except arbitration.
This is why I don't have to address any of the abhorrent behaviors in Win10-- I refuse to use it based on its EULA alone.
Perhaps they can successfully sue tech sites who recommended Win10 or suggested it wasn't nefarious. I hope so-- maybe it would put an end to shills who parrot the MS propaganda regarding this malware.
Even if that were true (it isn't), those who were upgraded to Win10 automatically did not agree to the Win10 EULA as they were not guven the opportunity to reject it.
MS (and others) will never go to court to enforce the EULA on a consumer because they might lose, and if they did it would quite possibly be the end of the company.
You don't bet the farm unless you really have to.
had a machine running legit Win8.1 Tried update to Win10 several times. Always failed leaving a functional (Classic Desktop) Win8.1 and destroying my download allocation for month. Had to blow disk away after extracting license keys and install Win10 from scratch. Even M$ failures fail...
a Microsoft spokesperson said [...] "Customers had the option not to upgrade to Windows 10."
Oh yeah, I had that option. I said "No thank you" but you kept asking me every day anyways.
I disabled the start-up items but you kept restoring them.
I deleted the GWX folder but you kept putting it back.
I removed and blocked the updates but you kept putting out new ones.
FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR
ON EVERY COMPUTER I OWN
Of course that there were some pretty slippery tactics used by Microsoft to hoodwink people into agreeing to these upgrades has been overlooked by the party that provided the boilerplate statement.
That it intentionally broke Office 2007 installations (which incidentally install just fine on 2007 for almost all purposes) and thus left people worse off in a productivity sense is irrelevant.
That the advertised ability to rollback didn't and doesn't always work, and sometimes it breaks in such a way you can't boot the PC during install, after install or somewhere inbetween is not relevant either.
Sure people should have backups and such, but Windows 10 has caused a lot of misery for a lot of people, and we still have to deal with various problems it has every day - the forced updates break software left right and centre in my experience.
Still, it was "free"
"She hired Geek Squad to repair the machine, with only partial success, and ended up having to purchase a new computer."
err - what? last resort, reinstall the OS. no hardware damage was done. how on earth did she have to buy a new machine? what a bunch of muppets
dont get me wrong, i hate windows 10, but it makes me a lot of money - is still not fit for purpose, so i end up repairing as lot of machines (and usually suggest them to buy a win 7 license or reinstall 7 back on if they have "upgraded" to 10 and now have massive issues)
(untitled)
Before upgrading to W10, if you're not sure of the consequences after the update it would be better to partition your HD then move your serious data to the other side of the computer. So that after any damage you'll have nothing to lose. Microsoft has already given many options on computer to save customers data, If only you're computer literate, you must know all this.
Win81 has 2 reserved and 2 recovery partitions, and a system partition ... leaving just the primary partition. Turning off hibernation and deleting HYBER.SYS, turning off swap, etc., do not allow for the splitting of the primary partition. Your choices are limited to using an external drive or a complete wipe, or trying to use another OS to repartition the drive.
I suspect Microsoft code for MBR Partition Table mgmt was (and probably still is) broken, so that when you have extended partitions not in physical order, some of them are just being lost in the process of updating / rewriting an MBR Partition Table.
That happened at least to me. Ubuntu (on my multiboot machine) created own extended partitions this way (and saved on one physical disk sector). After upgrading w7 to w10, Ubuntu was gone off my machine. I restored the PT by hand and repeated the process several times to prove there is a bug in MS code. I have recorded this on video too (though still unereleased).
I am sad to see it is so hard to make M$ remunerating for bisheaviour of their software.
Should that have happen with ReactOS (https://twitter.com/reactos), it would be acceptable for me because they are software still in alpha. Plus, they are free to install.
Geek Squad recommended that their customer buy a totally new computer? I'm not defending Microsoft, but when your personal files are deleted, you don't need to buy a computer. And they didn't bother even looking with a program like Recuva? Considering that most hard drives nowadays are 1 TB and older computers might have 100 GB minimum, and the Windows update takes only a few gigabytes and the personal documents were lost in the middle of the upgrade,there is a good chance the files could still be recovered.
I've been running W7 in a VM for a couple of years, installed Never10, so left Automatic Updates on as I sometime need to connect it to the net. Then along come the "critical" [telemetry] updates that constantly un-hide themselves so I have a script that I run after any auto update that uninstalls telemetry, *again*!
An hour or so after I ran the uninstall script this week W7 starts complaining it's not activated and the only option is to activate by phone.
F.O.A.D. Microsoft, really, just F.O.A.D.!!!1!!11
Ever since the Windows 10 "upgrade" was disabled, 7 updates are a lot slower especially on x64.
I upgraded to W7 x64 from x32 on this machine specifically to boost performance before going to 10.
Had to resort to third party tools just to get machines fully patched, which is fine but very time consuming and does not actually solve the problem.
Does anyone know exactly why the 4GB limit appears, also is there a known problem with CPU usage?
Since upgrading this quad core AMD machine has run hotter than Hell, fan maxes out about 50% of the time when using Firefox.
Again the usage seems clustered around a few processes, notably WSE is known to be a data and CPU hog when doing anything.
A compressed image of my hard drive on another hard drive is kind of the best immediate antidote but it is not quite as good at *being* my computer and getting work done THIS MORNING. If M$ wanted to pay me minimum wage for the time I spent cleaning up after their premeditated non-accidental bullshit, I would be just that much less likely to put Mint on that laptop we need to unbox pretty soon.
And lo and behold, I shall gain the owner's permission before commencing to install the Mint of Linux; and yea, the Windows of Microsoft shall remain unmolested, and shall boot unhindered upon the bidding of my associate; who, having applied electrick power, shall at once be invited to choose the system of operation which is initialized forthwith.
Because that's how I roll.
Of course after I downloaded a bucket of fresh Mint, I learned it comes with systemd. (sigh) Probably it doesn't matter as she won't be forming sysadmin habits and just needs something that just works (and runs Yoshimi, haha). The notebook is really an Atom-based Acer convertible with 2GB and a 32GB SSD so dual booting may be a cramped non-starter anyway.
No - despite users declining the upgrade, Microsoft has initiated the upgrade on one of my computers and on a friends. It was not a problem on mine as I have most of my data on a home Linux based server. I did not lose any data on the computer, but there was an issue with the video driver Microsoft chose and one application was uninstalled by Microsoft. My friend had issues with the upgrade which required a successful revert back to Windows 7.
It is not user fault when the user declined the upgrade, yet Microsoft forced the upgrade anyway.
... a colleague/friend/relative [delete whichever is inapplicable] and a couple of things came up.
While ASUS obtained permission to put the CoA/PK on the power adapter of my Zenbook, disconnecting it is most likely a breach of the MS EULA. Further, when I used my OEM w7 DVD in conjunction with the ASUS supplied PK I was definitely in breach of the MS EULA. I imagine the data recovery business in question might very well play things by the book. A missing CoA or restore media means a whole new OS is required and I seem to recall w7 licences being very difficult to purchase recently.
The problem with w10 I had was also experienced by my friend. He solved the persistent "you appear to have a graphics problem" by installing the correct driver from AMD. Needless to say, on the first mandatory "upgrade" from MS, the problem reappeared as MS appear to disapprove of correctly working video drivers.
and 31-days to roll back to their old operating system.
Now if that would also restore the lost data then it might be a viable option.
I was properly sceptical about the process, I let it update a Win7 VM to Win10 just to see what it was like. I was ready to throw the whole thing out in under an hour. I still have the Win10 VM, but it only gets turned on occasionally to update it and see what other bad stuff MS has introduced.
(Apologies to the US dairy industry's funny Got Milk? campaign.)
My first experience losing data on a PC was in 1983 on a Franklin Ace 1200 (Apple ][ clone). Since that time, I have embraced the aphorism:
"There are two kinds of computer users; those who have lost data, and those who are about to."
Microsoft's reprehensible behavior aside, one of the problems that has always dogged personal computing is the unspoken reality of owning a personal computer: you are now a System Administrator. And as a sysadmin, YOU and YOU ALONE are responsible for the protection of your data.
The fact that MS have done a very poor job of providing tools with the base OS to perform backups (with a capability to actually restore them at need) is perhaps the real crime here.
Contrast this with the *many* other OS's that existed over the intervening years that MS have offered products which provide backup tools with the OS; indeed said products would have been unsaleable in their target markets absent such a capability.
The version I heard goes "There are two kinds of users: those who keep backups, and those who have never lost data to disk failure."
I sorta disagree on the sysadmin status: when I use Windows (or occasionally OSX) I'm a Herd Member.
I run Funtoo, so I am definitely a sysadmin and for that matter probably an amateur distro maintainer. (amateur: lots of the work is already done and there's only 1 user whose expectations matter; distro: literally everything in MY system is there because I decided it should be or could be)
Incidentally, I don't have to protect the data on my system from my system, as (apparently) one does with Windows-- which may, in semi-rare cases, emancipate that which it was intended to make accessible.
"Ended up having to purchase a new computer" ?
And i'm sure that new computer came with windows 10 preinstalled, so microsoft got exactly what they wanted - a new sale.
If a company screws you like that, you should vote with your feet and not give them any further business, but microsoft are so entrenched they know they can get away with screwing their customers like this.
So what incentive do they have to improve anything? Absolutely none.
Welcome to capitalism, the only thing stopping most companies from totally screwing their customers in the name of profit is the fear of losing those customers. MS have very little risk of losing customers because the customers are hopelessly locked in.
Joe thats not true. You can always get a MAC or use a LINUX operating system. UBUNTU is a free distribution. I also dont see why you repalced your computer becasue of a software malfuntion. Did you not have your original operating system and disc? There is something missing that your are not telling us.
a Microsoft spokesperson said :"Customers had the option not to upgrade to Windows 10. <snip>We believe the plaintiffs’ claims are without merit."
To quote the ever lovely Mandy Rice Davies* "He would say that, wouldn't he?".
This looks to be good viewing for a while, buy your shares in popcorn manufacturers now.
*Readers across the pond may care to google her... - er, enter her name into a search engine, yer honour....
Paris, you may google her, too.
I gort lucky. My computer treats the upgrade the way my body treats a foreign substance. It attacks it and refuses to let it get a foothold. I OD'd on stupid pills and yried to install Win10 on my laptop. The attempt failed three times. Each time it was because my computer refused to allow the exe to run.
Not always true - I had one computer where Microsoft checks were hunky-dory, yet after the upgrade the only screen resolution available was 800x600, which looks kind of funky on a 1920x1080 monitor. I put in a different video card rather than try to search for a driver that might work with the old card.
"Microsoft had no permission to change the OS on a machine, which amounts to unauthorised access."
Uncertain. If you are using Windows 7, 8, or 10, have you actually read the license? Some of the terms are quite heinous. My recollection is that the license gives them the right to modify the software on the system in any way they see fit, with or without notice, and they disclaim the software actually being able to do anything.
That said, the fact that they would keep hassling people over and over to upgrade (not a "never ask again option") I *do* hope they get the book thrown at them.
I hope that millions of people join this class action against Microsoft, I am only sad that UK users will not be able to join it.
This issue was covered on the BBC Radio 4 You and Yours Consumer show, they had more people calling to complain that this happened to them than ANY other issue EVER, they have been broadcasting for donkey's years.
I have a laptop a friend gave me to repair that was ruined, it does not respond to the usual repair and recovery options. The only thing to be done is to download a copy of old OS and try to find drivers. Microsoft did not just just trash the data, they trashed the recovery partitions for the old OS.
This is NOT just about the value of lost data, Windows 10 is an advertising and affiliate platform, companies pay to advertise on the start menu and when you use the Microsoft installed icons that use 3rd party services Microsoft gets a cut of subscriptions.
So this was NOT done on some pretext for a better OS, it was done for MONEY.
I would not mind if Win10 had been more secure, the one machine I have it installed on is continuously updating, I am at the point where I can looking at how I can block updates or any Microsoft interferance with my PC by using a 3rd party firewall and blocking them on my router.
Hello All,
Some if not most of you need a reality check. I read one post that said that Microsoft tried to update there PC when it was completely off. Shows you how stupid some of you are. " First things first" you as the user DO NOT own the software. You pay for a LICENSE to use the software. What this implys is if you read your licenseing agreement Microsoft has the right to update change or deny the right to use the software. Just because you think you own your computer does not mean you own the software that is running on it. And no Microsoft well not be found liable for something that you as the Consumer should understand and read first. Also why would you run any computer and not have a backup of your files. Or atleast a backup of your most important data. Its not Microsoft fault you lost your data because you did not back up your PC or understand and read your licensing. If you had a HD failure you would have lost the DATA aswell. Are you going to file a lawsuit against WD or Segate for your HD failure. Most of you complain about how bad Microsoft is then you keep using it and not save a BACKUP. Seems a few screws short in my book. Looks like most of you are trying to blame MICROSOFT for you not beeing educated enough to be using a PC.
Of my friends (many of which I give free I.T. support), the vast majority "upgraded" to window 10 unaware that they were doing so or what was going on. My upgrade was by choice. On my two systems, I waited for the last day of Sept. 2016 to "upgrade" after cloning my boot drives to have backups of my Win 7 installs. One computer had no issues, another did but things got better as the computer was restarted and updated over several weeks.
Same thing with the anniversary update. I waited for several months to install this. One computer had no issues, the other did. Creating an additional account on that computer and over a few restarts, things worked themselves out.
Now, if M.S. just had a real quality control department and let the user really control things on their own computers.
As far as updates go, I disable the Windows Update Service and only enable it when I choose to do updates.
With SONY selling their computer VAIO division and no longer updating drivers for Windows 10 and finally fixing the problems and then to start a Backup of my VAIO hard drive and before it finished Window Update installed the Windows 10 update and restarted killing the backup and then the message please do not turn off your PC ... Failed to update System rolling back the update and restarting only to download the same Windows Update again.
I have to delete the \Windows\SoftwareUpdate directory again and again to stop the restarts.
Why would the Windows Update not allow a Backup process finish before updating?
Also for all of you Windows 10 users, do not forget to turn off the Apps Background do what I want anytime I want setting. Notifications, locations, contacts, calendar, news, ...
How many people work in the Windows 10 group at Microsoft.
I have a friend who is a school teacher and was working on her Windows 7 laptop on a Word document. She left the document open while she went to bed to get a couple hours sleep with the intent to finish the document when she was a little more alert. When she returned, she was greeted with the screen indicating that the Windows 10 upgrade was in progress and the computer would reboot several times. That was true - Windows 10 did complete the upgrade and her data was right where she left it, but Word would not open. She was able to transfer her document to a thumb drive (with much of the edits lost).
Granted, she should have saved the document and closed Word before taking the nap, but she had religiously declined the Windows 10 upgrade nags. We were able to successfully revert back to Windows 7. On the first login, the document she was working on when Microsoft thought she needed to upgrade popped open in Word without us telling Word or the document to open.
I took the option to upgrade with 3 PC's. Within a few minutes of looking at this distasterous product on all 3 PC's I discovered a wide range of faults and failures including such as killing the internet, disabling programmes, altering configurations etc..
2 PC's took about 20 minutes each to install WIN10 but my main PC took over 7 hours so I knew it was going to be a disaster. It did serve to identify that the upgrade package was filled with faults.
In all three cases I chose to do a roll back. In all three cases the roll back was a total failure to such an extent I had to reinstall backup WIN7 OS's.
Of course, because it was Windows, there was 100% chance it would fail to update properly and a 100% chance it wouldn't be able to roll back successfully which is why I did the backups. (Why do I do OS backups? Because on dozens of tests the WIN restore programme has proved totally incapable of restoring. In fact I've never gotten a successfully restored comment from WIN which is why WIN restore is disabled on all my PC's.)
I have absolutely no doubt that they can perfom an upgrade in a court room to almost any PC and that upgrade will have major destructive flaws. And if they roll back it will be a PC full of bugs. So any comment from Microsoft will easily be proven false.
I think the phrase "I had a successful upgrade" could be attributed to not knowing enough about PC's to be able to offer a reliable comment.
I look after a Community computer room, and often get asked for help from struggling users who got upgraded from Windows 7 etc to Windows 10.
Trashed Data often has occurred. I don't attempted to repair the OS as its vastly inferior to any Ubuntu which I regard as a professional product.. Which cannot, in my view, be said on most of Microsoft's offering on Desktop PCs .
One of the methods I use is to remove the Disc out of the desktop PC or Laptop. use GP Parted to wipe the hard disc, create a partition and format it to NTFS using all of the discs capacity.
Put is back the computer. Put an installation disc in the dvd player or memory stick and find a way of booting from it and install Ubuntu 17.04 which is available 13th April. Its worth the wait !
Note its free of charge !!!
Professional operating systems all use a mostly Unix variant. aka Solaris, BSD Linux.
In my opinion Microsoft won't be offering Desktop/Laptop OSs within 3 years, so so might as well get started now. With Microsoft out of the way computer operating systems choice is Linux or Apple Macs (its core is BSD) , hopefully companys will stall installing that retuned and offer that for sale.
Others may disagree with me, but very few who met some of the grimmer aspects of Windows 10 !
I upgrade one or two computers a month for those who ask for help in the community I support free of charge.
Sad for those who must have software that only run on Windows. Buy a second hand Windows 7 box and turn updates off as every so often one o9f the updates may well be toxic.
As an engineer I like stuff that just works.
Win10 update is doing scary things:
Once it just added a new partition to my harddisk, so changing the naming of the volumes. As one was an encoded partition, it shocked me that I can longer mount that! All my work seemed to got lost... then I found I had to mount another partition to access my data...
Even Windows 10 Enterprise version is so aggressive on updating, that if not completely disabled (disable Windows update service and Windows modules installer service), then you can't use your computer for work, as all it does after turning on the PC is upgrading! CPU and hard disk is busy updating, not possible to work...
It's time to take back control over our computers.
Or maybe just run win 10 in a virtual box inside Linux - which is not for the everyday user for sure.
It is interesting that no matter now much effort goes into warning people to always keep multiple current backups of their data in at least two separate locations, people still insist in living on the edge :)
If the data is important, why wouldn't you make sure you take copies of it? USB drives are cheap, cloud storage is also cheap and free up to 5-15 GB. Microsoft even offers one drive which will sync your data with the cloud.
In addition, at any point, a system component may fail resulting in a non-functioning machine. In particular, if the hard drive fails. Why would you not keep another copy of your data on another drive as well?
It takes very little time to organise these things.
Insofar as Windows 10 goes, it's a good operating system. It has it's faults, but it was largely given freely to people. It's relatively straight-forward to use and very flexible. Linux is also good as are the apple offerings.
Now, we go about suing people for our inability to follow instructions or take responsibility. We then complain when our freedoms are increasingly denied because the costs of litigation are so great.
We humans are a stupid bunch. No wonder. We're at 8 billion, facing the 6th mass extinction with billions starving and billions more yet to face starvation, and we're arguing over operating systems :)
I would love to see the addition of all the horrible user interface experiences we have been forced to endure to the class action…
(before I do, I would just like to state that I have always been an early adopter of all MS OSes over the years. I have always disliked Mac and Linux UIs as they were never as usable as the MS equivalents. That was until W8...)
Forcing all users to use a single configuration profile that appears to be prioritised for pads and tablets. This simple fact reduces the usablility for enterprise desktop and laptop usage to having to use a compromised, simlified (toy?) UI as a business tool, when the overall experience is aimed at casual users with big clunky buttons for touch use. It is NOT FIT for a business tool any more. The majority of users don't have touch-enabled devices - so provide an option for K+M users to turn off the 'touch' features. Overall, It's like having your carefully selected Snap-On tool-kit confiscated and giving you 'My First Tool Box' instead.
Some issues that make it (W10+O2016) a far from easy to use environment:
1 Font rendering inconsistencies - some fonts are 'monochrome smoothed' others are 'colour smoothed'. The mono-smoothed characters are far less readable than those with colour processing. Apparently this is defended for the reason that colour-smoothing cannot give consistent results on 'some rotated displays' because of the arrangement of the pixels in the display panel. Fine, but at least give us the option of controlling the rendering strategy for desktop/laptop use. And, if there IS a problem with colour-smoothing, then why is it still used in some places and not others?
2 Grey fonts on grey backgrounds, blue fonts on blue backgrounds, almost invisible icons and activity selectors, and inconsistent application of all of these. This is a fundamental OH/HSE issue for very many users. This is especially bad in Office 2016 suite, with Outlook probably the worst. Not only that, but grey text used to be reserved for 'inactive' configuration options 'greyed-out'. Go to an O2016 configuration screen and apply that paradigm. It's just SO much more difficult to work with, and gives rise to significant eye strain. Maybe that's the plan? Force people to have to leave their screens to give them a rest?
3 Far too subtle shading on menu bars and other functional areas. Screens that were easy to set up on W7 now require much tinkering with colour rendition to give any sort of acceptable delineation.
4 Removal of many configuration options that enabled users to fine tune their business tool environment for their optimal experience. Removal of Aero and transparency 'because of processing overheads' make little sense on laptops and desktops and just makes the identification and selection of active windows that much harder. Please please. Please allow us to configure our own working environments. or at least make it possible for third party devs to make alternative tools to enable users to achieve this.
5 If the introduction of a 'new' UI paradigm was the purpose, then make it consistent -(ly bad). There are still many W7-style elements right beside W10 styles. Smacks of being still 'in development'.
6 Drag-active zones and resize handles are inconsistent. On windows without a coloured title bar, it’s impossible to see where the drag zone is. Resize handles are centred ON the edge on the top edge of windows, but are OFF the edge on sides and bottom. Ugh.
7 And it’s still buggy and crashes. Even as I type, my ‘Start Menu’ has stopped working again.
OK. I could go on. (And often do) This thing is just not ready for corporate usage yet.
If this is true what M$ said here ""Customers had the option not to upgrade to Windows 10" then I like to know WHY I decline upgrading 2 of my computers that had Win 7 on them. Then one morning both was upgraded after I have decline numerous times during the free upgrade period! Like to hear the BS excuse why many Win users had the same experience happen to them like it did to me from this "Microsoft spokesperson".
"This is why my windows 8.1 installation is on a 60gb SSD that I make sure to constantly keep at only around 2gb of free space.Have fun background downloading Windows 10 onto that, Microsoft."
You haven't thought this through very well. All MS has to do is delete a few of your "unnecessary" files before the DL.
Serves you right. What kind of a bloody IDIOT would run Windows 10, OR Windows 8.
If you need a new computer and can't get Windows 7, install Ubuntu or another Linux OS.
If people stop BUYING anything that RUNS Windows 10, Microsoft will give us back Windows 7, believe me. Or they'll just go out of business and good riddance.
In any case, if you have a head, you knew perfectly well Windows 8 or 10 would destroy your system. It does that to everyone sooner or later and always has.
"If you need a new computer and can't get Windows 7, install Ubuntu or another Linux OS."That's not a particularly useful suggestion if the software you need to run will only run under Windows. Ditto for hardware for which there are no *nix drivers.
I often recommend people purchase Dell refurbs that come with Win7.
My ASUS Zenbook was a factory refurb. I paid $AU700 when they were still selling for $AU1,300.
This article is about litigation. Do these plaintiffs have a case - does the law suit have merit? Will justice be served?
It is obvious that Microsoft has done significant damage with their coerced upgrade to Windows 10 on consumer's W7 and W8 systems. I say significant because the majority of consumers are not tech savvy which MS took advantage of. For this we have several examples where the user was tricked into accepting W10. An upgrade sent via a support service caught these users unaware and at a disadvantage. The recommended setting (default setting) for windows update is 'automatic download/install' , so these users were under the assumption that their purchased license (W7 or W8) was merely being maintained. MS counted on this misconception.
Microsoft delivered an OS upgrade through a support mechanism. This is what caused the damage. They may argue that it was a free offer to upgrade the user's system and it was clear that it was a new license agreement. This is going to be the crux of the suit - the user agreed to a new EULA. The W7 and W8 EULA only speaks to support as maintenance and support and does not reference the service as a delivery agent for the company's latest OS, free or not. When the user clicked 'I agree', when the W10 EULA was presented, the users were, in all their innocence, accepting an update that they believed to be merely maintenance. It was a ruse, and they fell for it.
I believe that MS can not win this case as a class action suit as there are a huge number of users who have horror stories regarding this GWX fiasco. The losses are immense and this law suit could be joined by a massive number of really pissed off users. The judge will ask the parties if they will settle and I think it is obvious that MS will say yes. MS will not be put in the position of publicly accepting wrong doing. The plaintiffs get their losses and lawyers get a payday. These few plaintiffs, though genuinely victimized, are pawns in a legal system that is bereft of morality and justice.
"The judge will ask the parties if they will settle and I think it is obvious that MS will say yes. MS will not be put in the position of publicly accepting wrong doing."
And if the class refuses to settle because not only do they WANT MS publicly shamed but it can also feed the mill for a criminal case which could turn up the heat on MS. If the government itself gets involved (due to their use of Windows and so on), it may even push into a case where Microsoft could be compelled to turn over source code for national security reasons.
I'm personally tempted to take the gray way out, but as my current system started on 8, I'm concerned it could get dicey, and I know such a gamble will be a one-way trip. And no, I can't use a Linux distro because of all the games I have that are strictly Windows-only (as in not even WINE works on them, and 3D virtualization is iffy, especially on newer games), plus I've had bad experiences with Linux lately: lots of spontaneous reboots and so on.
PS. Has any egghead found a way to create an alternate route to installing security updates such that all the crap has been pruned off so you know you're just getting what you need?
The problem with this is if you "consented" to the upgrade then you are bound by the EULA which basically takes away any rights to have an OS that works or will maintain your data safely. Those warnings are writ large in the agreement and legally binding - they should probably read click here and give up all hope. That brief period when you might have found you were updated without consent was just that a brief period crying a year later is unlikely to cut it. Failing to back up your data is a gross dereliction of duty in a business and trying to pass the blame marks you out as incompetent something that will no doubt be given as evidence.
"you are bound by the EULA which basically takes away any rights to have an OS that works or will maintain your data safely"That's certainly not true under Australian consumer law. Legal rights cannot be abrogated by a contract.
"Products must be of acceptable quality, that is: [be] safe, lasting, with no faults, look acceptable and do all the things someone would normally expect them to do."Emphasis mine.
Oh come on now. Who expects Windows to be rock solid, stable, and not lose data in this day, and age? Those are all things I'd normally expect Windows not to do. Anyone thinking otherwise is delusional. This is the company that unleashed Windows 98 and Vista onto the world after all. The definition of insanity is upgrading Windows over, and over, and hoping for a decent OS someday.
One of my less affluent clients has a workstation as a basic file server. This workstation is headless and I am the only person who even knows how to login to it, never mind the only person who has the password to login to it.
It was built with Windows 7 so imagine my surprise when I logged into it one day and discovered that it was running Windows 10!
There is absolutely no question that nobody authorised this upgrade. It was set to update automatically as many months often go by without me logging into it, but I certainly did not even see the upgrade nag screen on that particular PC.
Several of my other clients claimed that Windows 10 had installed itself, and up till that point I didn't believe them...
Not had great experiences with Windows 10 upgrades.
My Asus EeePC netbook passed the 'Windows 10 compatibility' check - the upgrade failed twice, on the third 'success' the Asus Power Management failed to update (and still doesn't work), the WiFi regularly fails and completely locks the machine to the point where only a hard reset gets it back (so now I run wired at home and WiFi only if I have to). Even from sleep it wakes itself up and tries to install updates (having downloaded them in the background when its been connected to the net via wired ethernet?) - twice it's done this while its been in its travel bag which has cooked it while its been trying to update.
My 14yo daughter got sick of her Win7 machine nagging her so accepted the T&Cs and the upgrade (including all the tracking nonsense) - even though MS know she's only 14 because I'm the designated adult on her MS Live account and they prevent her accessing certain apps without my permission - nor did MS think to email to tell me she'd accepted the upgrade...
My 9yo's HP 250 G3 seems happy enough but that came with W10 out of the box.
Users should be aware that Microsoft owns Windows, and can do whatever they want with their product. Microsoft never sold a line of Windows to anybody, ever. They merely license its use. It is totally a their bat, and their ball situation. If anyone doesn't like that they should find a new sand lot to play in. Willful ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law. I mean read the damned EULA already, don't just blindly click, I Accept. Actually comprehend what you're agreeing to. Yeah I know, no one reads that stuff. Well I have, and I don't even run Windows.
Heck by just running Windows 10 you've already agreed to a class action waiver. Go to court and you'll be the defendant in a breech of contract case. Suckers.
Uk readers may have a read here :
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/284454/oft143.pdf
Not sure what applies in the good old USofA.
Edit, here we go, here's something:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/supmanual/cch/ftca.pdf
I disagree completely that "updating" to windows 10 was voluntary. They relentlessly pursued me to "update" and when I refused for months it was forced on me. Since then every single "update" has destroyed my computer (I am on my 4th computer now) and external hard drives and I have lost untold amounts of data, those, and the facts that virtually all of my non-microsoft programs have been rendered un-usable and that windows 10 is a vast information/tracking/spyware program that you can't turn off. There is no way that microsoft could not know that what they are doing would not have the destructive results that have occurred to me.
By forcing me to comply with its imposition of windows 10 my property has been damaged and my Rights unlawfully stripped from me. I am VERY motivated to sue microsoft/join a class action lawsuit against microsoft and seek damages that will hurt them badly (i.e. NOT just a slap on the wrist).
I "upgraded" a quite recent Sony Vaio with a board fault (two second repair on micro-crack in trace on DVD drive powe and re-greasing/cleaning of CPU and GPU + fan) 1TB HDD/2*4GB Ecowhiner (tm) RAM.
Touchpad is a bit wonky but this isn't hard to fix by adjusting a pair of screws under the HDD slot.
Despite my misgivings it did run fairly well and to make things fair I did the "official" 7-8 then 8-10 upgrade path to get licensing etc sorted out.
Only major problem so far is that it regularly crashes with the sad-face 10 BSOD when I unplug a USB device from the left hand ie USB 3 ports.
It does run hot but thats not unexpected on what is essentially a Pentium 987 Sandy Bridge.
Maybe I should post a dump of exactly what happens when it does crash, so far only occurs on certain
devices like SDR, some optical mice and coincidentally an Arduino R3.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
