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Relevant followup article. http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/15/microsoft-stops-automatic-windows-10-upgrades-says-default-checked-update-was-a-mistake/ http://ve

by bargl 11y ago

Relevant followup article. http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/15/microsoft-stops-automatic-windows-10-upgrades-says-default-checked-update-was-a-mistake/ http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/15/microsoft-stops-automatic-... TLDR: It was a mistake and Microsoft stopped it.

Animats 11y ago
They say it was a mistake. Do you believe them? Was anyone at Microsoft fired? Did Microsoft offer a way to undo an unwanted install of Windows 10?
- smt88 11y ago
  > Was anyone at Microsoft fired? As a tech worker, I don't want to live in a world where tech workers are fired because they make a small, fixable mistake. > Did Microsoft offer a way to undo an unwanted install of Windows 10? Yes. You can downgrade Windows 10 to whatever you installed it on top of. I think this has been possible since the Vista -> 7 upgrade.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    > Yes. You can downgrade Windows 10 to whatever you installed it on top of. I think this has been possible since the Vista -> 7 upgrade. It's been possible with every version of Windows, I believe. Windows 95 would rename your old Windows directory. And earlier versions didn't try to control the hard drive, as they weren't your OS - though 95 didn't try to own it fully, it lacked a My Documents directory and expected you to make your own root directory folders to store file!
    - mappu 11y ago
      The SR2 update for Windows 95 introduced a My Documents folder (along with FAT32 support). Wasn't it possible to store user files in C:/Windows/Profiles/{username}/ , too ?
      - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
        > The SR2 update for Windows 95 introduced a My Documents folder (along with FAT32 support). OSR2 did indeed do that, but it was a later addition. And Windows NT 4 never got My Documents. > Wasn't it possible to store user files in C:/Windows/Profiles/{username}/ , too ? I think so, but I don't know if the OS really especially encouraged you to store things there.
  - CamperBob2 11y ago
    As a tech worker, I don't want to live in a world where tech workers are fired because they make a small, fixable mistake. The quality of work coming out of the Windows Update group has been seriously problematic lately. It's well past time to fire some people.
    - togusa 11y ago
      I agree. This is the fourth major issue. Firstly they told everyone that they're not going to fully describe updates any more. Then there was the whole telemetry thing. This was closely followed by a test update was pushed out recently as well which caused major administrative panic. Now this. I'm not sure that firing people is the right approach but this is not acceptable.
    - shmed 11y ago
      Right, because pushing major updates to hundreds of millions of users, each using different hardware, with different OS versions, different level of customization on that OS and different software installed is SUCH a trivial thing to do. No room for small (repairable) errors that might affect a handful of people under certain circumstances.
      - CamperBob2 11y ago
        It's not trivial, you're right -- which is why you put your A-level people on it. Windows Update is Windows now... yet every week it seems they push another broken, malformed, or generally customer-unfriendly update. Their new policy of suppressing release notes is just (brown) icing on the cake. The end result of all this stupidity is to incentivize users to turn off automatic updates. Everybody with an Internet connection will suffer for that.
    - krylon 11y ago
      For the past 2.5 years, I've been working as sysadmin / helpdesk monkey at a mostly-Windows shop. On Debian or CentOS, updates are simple - if any updates are available, you install them. End of story. On Windows, as I have learnt the hard way, simply installing all available updates is pretty much begging for trouble. During my training at Deutsche Telekom, when I heard that they had a whole team whose only task was testing Windows updates, I thought they were being wussies. Now, I envy them. The reality for me is more like checking online discussion boards to see if anyone was dumb enough to just install all the updates, yet smart enough to figure out which ones caused them trouble, then only approving those updates nobody has complained about. It is kind of like playing Russian roulette. As as Unix-person looking at the Windows world from an outsider's perspective (kind of), I am kind of shocked that this is the OS powering approximately 90% of corporate desktops. Imagine if, following the end of the Cold War, Western car companies had been driven out of business by the Trabbi. That is pretty much what has happened in the PC world. And, yes, I get that Windows is tortured by more combinations of hardware and software than anyone wants to imagine, and QA for their updates must be a living hell. But IIRC, Microsoft also made something like 20 billion dollars in profit last year, so they could easily spend one billion on making Windows update not suck - or at least suck slightly less - and still be disgustingly profitable. The worst thing is that people who have known no other OS but Windows all their lives fail to see how utterly wrong this is. Either they just don't know any better, or it's a massive case of Stockholm syndrome... (Sorry, but I've had that on my mind for a while, and since it was patchday this week, I hope you can understand my need to vent a little...)
  - togusa 11y ago
    > Yes. You can downgrade Windows 10 to whatever you installed it on top of. This doesn't work in a huge number of situations. It just reports failure.
    - smt88 11y ago
      > This doesn't work in a huge number of situations. It just reports failure. What's a "huge number"? I'd say only a tiny minority of Windows users even try to downgrade. I tried to Google this ("windows downgrade failed") and couldn't find many examples. Unless you work at Microsoft and have real data from users, I don't think you (or I) have the data to claim that few or many of these downgrades fail. There's just no way to really know.
      - togusa 11y ago
        I do a lot of voluntary support on reddit. There are literally 10 people a day who this breaks for just on there.
        ZoF 11y ago
        Please link to 10 people experiencing this issue and posting about it in a 24 hour period.
- mynameisvlad 11y ago
  Well, considering that the Windows 10 upgrade is only offered free for the first year, I'd think that it'd make more sense not to automatically upgrade people's licenses for free if it could be charged later down the road. So yeah, I could see how this would actually be a mistake.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Firing people over mistakes is a very stupid thing to do. Mistakes is how you get experience.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    That's a very noble position, but I'm not sure it's a very realistic one. Some mistakes should surely be forgiven in the interests of learning and doing better next time. We might call them "honest mistakes", perhaps actions taken with the best of intentions but which proved to have unexpected and undesirable side effects that could not reasonably have been anticipated. Other mistakes are either not really mistakes at all or are actions taken by someone who might not have intended the final outcome but should clearly have known better. Consider installing a defeat device in a car to actively circumvent regulations, or a government agent or corporate officer abusing their authority for personal gain, or a police officer who has a track record of being more violent than was necessary when dealing with suspects. At some point, the mistake is no longer relatively harmless or something to be tolerated in the interests of overall progress, it's a demonstration of bad judgement that isn't acceptable for someone in that position.
    - Semiapies 11y ago
      It's a more realistic position than the entitled "GIVE ME BLOOD! SOMEONE MUST SUFFER!" response every time there's a minor glitch.
      - Silhouette 11y ago
        But this isn't a minor glitch. Even if it is possible to reliably reverse the effects of unintentionally installing Windows 10, it is going to waste considerable time and resources for everyone who has to do it. In this case, it also seems generous to assume 100% reliable reversal will be possible without knowing the details of the mechanism used, given the subject we're discussing in the first place. Cries for blood and similar hyperbole are unlikely to be helpful in any case, but questioning the position of anyone who thought this was acceptable behaviour or who was responsible and signed off on the update seems fair, and so does expecting Microsoft to provide fair compensation if anyone really does get significantly messed around because of this action.
- blakeyrat 11y ago
  Fired for that?! I hope not.
- joonoro 11y ago
  >They say it was a mistake. Do you believe them? Hanlon's Razor. Which do you consider more likely: someone screwed up (as Microsoft's updates often do) or that Microsoft deliberately started upgrading Windows machines in secret hoping that either nobody would care or that they would be okay with just upgrading a few then stopping and having to make up an excuse to cover it up? It's just absurd.
TrevorJ 11y ago
How does that make it any better?

by bargl 11y ago

Animats 11y ago

They say it was a mistake. Do you believe them? Was anyone at Microsoft fired? Did Microsoft offer a way to undo an unwanted install of Windows 10?

smt88 11y ago
> Was anyone at Microsoft fired? As a tech worker, I don't want to live in a world where tech workers are fired because they make a small, fixable mistake. > Did Microsoft offer a way to undo an unwanted install of Windows 10? Yes. You can downgrade Windows 10 to whatever you installed it on top of. I think this has been possible since the Vista -> 7 upgrade.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  > Yes. You can downgrade Windows 10 to whatever you installed it on top of. I think this has been possible since the Vista -> 7 upgrade. It's been possible with every version of Windows, I believe. Windows 95 would rename your old Windows directory. And earlier versions didn't try to control the hard drive, as they weren't your OS - though 95 didn't try to own it fully, it lacked a My Documents directory and expected you to make your own root directory folders to store file!
  - mappu 11y ago
    The SR2 update for Windows 95 introduced a My Documents folder (along with FAT32 support). Wasn't it possible to store user files in C:/Windows/Profiles/{username}/ , too ?
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      > The SR2 update for Windows 95 introduced a My Documents folder (along with FAT32 support). OSR2 did indeed do that, but it was a later addition. And Windows NT 4 never got My Documents. > Wasn't it possible to store user files in C:/Windows/Profiles/{username}/ , too ? I think so, but I don't know if the OS really especially encouraged you to store things there.
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  As a tech worker, I don't want to live in a world where tech workers are fired because they make a small, fixable mistake. The quality of work coming out of the Windows Update group has been seriously problematic lately. It's well past time to fire some people.
  - togusa 11y ago
    I agree. This is the fourth major issue. Firstly they told everyone that they're not going to fully describe updates any more. Then there was the whole telemetry thing. This was closely followed by a test update was pushed out recently as well which caused major administrative panic. Now this. I'm not sure that firing people is the right approach but this is not acceptable.
  - shmed 11y ago
    Right, because pushing major updates to hundreds of millions of users, each using different hardware, with different OS versions, different level of customization on that OS and different software installed is SUCH a trivial thing to do. No room for small (repairable) errors that might affect a handful of people under certain circumstances.
    - CamperBob2 11y ago
      It's not trivial, you're right -- which is why you put your A-level people on it. Windows Update is Windows now... yet every week it seems they push another broken, malformed, or generally customer-unfriendly update. Their new policy of suppressing release notes is just (brown) icing on the cake. The end result of all this stupidity is to incentivize users to turn off automatic updates. Everybody with an Internet connection will suffer for that.
  - krylon 11y ago
    For the past 2.5 years, I've been working as sysadmin / helpdesk monkey at a mostly-Windows shop. On Debian or CentOS, updates are simple - if any updates are available, you install them. End of story. On Windows, as I have learnt the hard way, simply installing all available updates is pretty much begging for trouble. During my training at Deutsche Telekom, when I heard that they had a whole team whose only task was testing Windows updates, I thought they were being wussies. Now, I envy them. The reality for me is more like checking online discussion boards to see if anyone was dumb enough to just install all the updates, yet smart enough to figure out which ones caused them trouble, then only approving those updates nobody has complained about. It is kind of like playing Russian roulette. As as Unix-person looking at the Windows world from an outsider's perspective (kind of), I am kind of shocked that this is the OS powering approximately 90% of corporate desktops. Imagine if, following the end of the Cold War, Western car companies had been driven out of business by the Trabbi. That is pretty much what has happened in the PC world. And, yes, I get that Windows is tortured by more combinations of hardware and software than anyone wants to imagine, and QA for their updates must be a living hell. But IIRC, Microsoft also made something like 20 billion dollars in profit last year, so they could easily spend one billion on making Windows update not suck - or at least suck slightly less - and still be disgustingly profitable. The worst thing is that people who have known no other OS but Windows all their lives fail to see how utterly wrong this is. Either they just don't know any better, or it's a massive case of Stockholm syndrome... (Sorry, but I've had that on my mind for a while, and since it was patchday this week, I hope you can understand my need to vent a little...)
- togusa 11y ago
  > Yes. You can downgrade Windows 10 to whatever you installed it on top of. This doesn't work in a huge number of situations. It just reports failure.
  - smt88 11y ago
    > This doesn't work in a huge number of situations. It just reports failure. What's a "huge number"? I'd say only a tiny minority of Windows users even try to downgrade. I tried to Google this ("windows downgrade failed") and couldn't find many examples. Unless you work at Microsoft and have real data from users, I don't think you (or I) have the data to claim that few or many of these downgrades fail. There's just no way to really know.
    - togusa 11y ago
      I do a lot of voluntary support on reddit. There are literally 10 people a day who this breaks for just on there.
      - ZoF 11y ago
        Please link to 10 people experiencing this issue and posting about it in a 24 hour period.
mynameisvlad 11y ago
Well, considering that the Windows 10 upgrade is only offered free for the first year, I'd think that it'd make more sense not to automatically upgrade people's licenses for free if it could be charged later down the road. So yeah, I could see how this would actually be a mistake.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
Firing people over mistakes is a very stupid thing to do. Mistakes is how you get experience.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  That's a very noble position, but I'm not sure it's a very realistic one. Some mistakes should surely be forgiven in the interests of learning and doing better next time. We might call them "honest mistakes", perhaps actions taken with the best of intentions but which proved to have unexpected and undesirable side effects that could not reasonably have been anticipated. Other mistakes are either not really mistakes at all or are actions taken by someone who might not have intended the final outcome but should clearly have known better. Consider installing a defeat device in a car to actively circumvent regulations, or a government agent or corporate officer abusing their authority for personal gain, or a police officer who has a track record of being more violent than was necessary when dealing with suspects. At some point, the mistake is no longer relatively harmless or something to be tolerated in the interests of overall progress, it's a demonstration of bad judgement that isn't acceptable for someone in that position.
  - Semiapies 11y ago
    It's a more realistic position than the entitled "GIVE ME BLOOD! SOMEONE MUST SUFFER!" response every time there's a minor glitch.
    - Silhouette 11y ago
      But this isn't a minor glitch. Even if it is possible to reliably reverse the effects of unintentionally installing Windows 10, it is going to waste considerable time and resources for everyone who has to do it. In this case, it also seems generous to assume 100% reliable reversal will be possible without knowing the details of the mechanism used, given the subject we're discussing in the first place. Cries for blood and similar hyperbole are unlikely to be helpful in any case, but questioning the position of anyone who thought this was acceptable behaviour or who was responsible and signed off on the update seems fair, and so does expecting Microsoft to provide fair compensation if anyone really does get significantly messed around because of this action.
blakeyrat 11y ago
Fired for that?! I hope not.
joonoro 11y ago
>They say it was a mistake. Do you believe them? Hanlon's Razor. Which do you consider more likely: someone screwed up (as Microsoft's updates often do) or that Microsoft deliberately started upgrading Windows machines in secret hoping that either nobody would care or that they would be okay with just upgrading a few then stopping and having to make up an excuse to cover it up? It's just absurd.

TrevorJ 11y ago

How does that make it any better?