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Windows 10 to be a recommended update in early 2016

105 points by tehmaco 11y ago

andor 11y ago
If they really wanted to make it easy to update, they could offer a downloadable installer image that installs cleanly with any Windows 7-10 license key. And by downloadable I mean an ISO image on a website, not through a "media creation tool" that requires the same operating system. It's much easier to install/update some Linux distributions, and I don't think that's in their best interest.
- ac29 11y ago
  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10I... Not a "media creation tool", doesnt require windows. Just the ISO.
toxican 11y ago
> Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device. Oh great! Can't wait to get a million phone calls about this one.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  Telcos demanded this feature. ;-)
ep103 11y ago
Can anyone give a non-biased, fact based report on what Microsoft tracks and sends to their servers on Windows 10? I've seen a lot of stories claiming that Windows 10 is free because it tracks just about everything, and sends it all to MS servers.
- Asmod4n 11y ago
  Windows Search is looking up everything you type on bing. The AV solution sends memory dumps to Microsoft.
  - agentdrtran 11y ago
    Doesn't that kind of make sense though? I just turned off Bing integration and the AV sending memory dumps makes sense if they want to improve detection.
    - rbanffy 11y ago
      I imagine Microsoft will eventually amass a humongous porn stash from those memory dumps. You can hope it's anonymous, at least. ;-)
    - Asmod4n 11y ago
      In older versions of their AV solution you could choose what to send to Microsoft, down to even not sending where the File is located, just what it detected. There was not even a option to send Memory Dumps. Now its all or nothing.
    - marcosdumay 11y ago
      Except that "memory dump" means anything you have, and text typed at the browser includes most of your passwords.
    - ionised 11y ago
      Turn off Bing integration and SearchUI.exe still attempts to make connections to Microsoft servers even though it should be operating completely locally. I blocked it with my (third party) Firewall, which I shouldn't have to do.
  - UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
    > The AV solution sends memory dumps to Microsoft. Both error reporting and Windows Defender asked you if you want to upload additional information (e.g. memory dumps).
pcunite 11y ago
My understanding is you get a prompt. You must click a "Next" or something to that effect to actually upgrade to Windows 10.
- Asmod4n 11y ago
  If it looks anything like the UAC prompt/normal Windows Dialog Users will just click allow.
- DangerousPie 11y ago
  Yes: > Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device. Before the upgrade changes the OS of your device, you will be clearly prompted to choose whether or not to continue. And of course, if you choose to upgrade (our recommendation!), then you will have 31 days to roll back to your previous Windows version if you don’t love it.
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    I guess the follow-up question is: Will it keep asking you to upgrade after you say no?
    - vetinari 11y ago
      Is there even "No" button? Or just "Upgrade now" and "Upgrade later"? As far as I remember, in gwx there was no such option as "no, thank you, I will keep my current OS".
falcolas 11y ago
<horse class="dead"> If this were like any other Windows OS upgrade in the past, I'd be OK with this. But... it's not. It adds a lot of tracking, reporting, and some (currently innocuous) uncontrollable communication back to Microsoft. I guess it really is time to do the cost/benefit analysis of a single company collecting all of this information from my gaming rig. </horse>
- JohnTHaller 11y ago
  You also lose Windows Media *Center, which some of us paid extra for so we could easily connect our Xbox 360 to our Windows PC without extra steps or ongoing fees.
  - UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
    You have a typo: Media Center, not Player.
    - JohnTHaller 11y ago
      Quite right. I meant Center. I was still drinking my coffee.
  - soylentcola 11y ago
    While I do lament the loss of Media Center (it has some functions that while not commonly used, are still useful to some people) I've had luck with Plex for media stored on the local network to X360/Chromecast/etc. It works a lot better than the 360's alleged integration with WMC for certain. This is without any ongoing fees but since it's a third party application, it does require the extra step of installing it. I never subscribed to their Plex Pass paid service but after installing the free Plex server and pointing it at my media directories on my desktop and NAS, it's worked great. The ability to transcode was particularly useful because the 360 wouldn't play some formats and it was easier to install Plex than to transcode them all. Either way, this isn't meant to dismiss your legit complaint. Just hoping my experiences can be of use to you or others in the same situation. If you used WMC to handle OTA television viewing and recording, you may be better served by Kodi or some other application.
brianmcc 11y ago
Lesson. It's not a "learning", it's a lesson. Stop inventing nouns we don't need. (I know, the horse has bolted long ago, no pointing harrassing this stable door. I will blame too many choccy biscuits after lunch...)
- talmand 11y ago
  Where I'm from, when someone needed some "learnin'" it usually didn't mean something fun and awesome to the person that needed a lesson. It has its uses.
  - brianmcc 11y ago
    All for new words to help with disambiguation :-)
    - biot 11y ago
      Your sentence appears to be lacking both a subject and verb.
- dietlbomb 11y ago
  This reminds me of college professors calling homework assignments "homeworks". Initially, these professors were all immigrants from India, but the usage spread during my years in grad school. I wonder if this is evidence of a cultural shift at Microsoft caused by hiring so many H1Bs or even influence from their tone-deaf CEO.
- GnomeChomsky 11y ago
  I had a couple bosses that eventually gave up on "learnings" and shortened it to "learns". As in, "Let's memorialize the learns so we don't disrupt this value-add in the future."
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
v4n4d1s 11y ago
Currently getting some new hardware with support for VT-d/IOMMU to run Games and other heavily graphic applications in virtualized windows environments. (https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multiheaded-NVIDIA-Gaming-using-Ubuntu-14-04-KVM-585/ https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multiheaded-NVIDI...). I really have to get rid of any microsoft software running directly on my hardware.
- thomnottom 11y ago
  Good read. I looked into this a few years ago when I first started my switch to Linux but never convinced myself to buy a second video card. Now it might be worth a try again as I am loath to dual boot and therefore haven't touched any Windows-only games in a while.
blisterpeanuts 11y ago
I just installed a $79 OEM Windows 7 to an Intel NUC[1], and I have some questions about upgrading. 1. Why upgrade? Windows 7 seems like a good, stable OS that stays out of my way and lets me get work done. Newer versions have these funky tiles and touch interface, neither of which I want or can even use. 2. I've heard if I let my Win 7 install "important Windows updates", one of the updates is nagware to persuade me to update to Win10. Can that be turned off? Will it violate my privacy? 3. The article says you get up to 31 days to try Win10 and still be able to roll back to your previous OS. Why only 31 days? Why not 60? Why not 10,000? Does some irrevocable change occur to the hard disk after 31 days that renders it incapable of supporting Windows 7? 4. Will it cost money to update to 10 after next year? I'm not necessarily opposed to paying for an upgrade if it's worth it -- it's a product that they spent millions of dollars developing, after all -- but I don't like feeling pressured. I'm just barely getting settled in with Win7, after all! 5. Are there any reasons to stay away from 10? I've heard the anti-privacy scare stories. Anything else? E.g. NSA back doors, or removed support for interacting with Linux, or some such? [1] (Originally I bought the NUC to be a quiet, compact Linux server/workstation, but unfortunately the i5 model can't seem to run any of the Linux distros I threw at it, whereas Windows installed flawlessly. My main desktop has become a Mac Mini, actually :) [EDIT asterisks don't work :(]
- pixl97 11y ago
  1. If you have a decent SSD in it, W10 may be faster. It seems to run very well on SSDs. 4. Yes, for 1 year the upgrade is free. After that point you have to pay for the upgrade, just like to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 you had to pay for an upgrade license. 5. Other than Microsoft's weird ideas on how they will push out updates that may affect your privacy it seems to work well enough in the industries I've tested it in. If you have any older 'expensive' software you may want to verify that it is compatible before migrating.
- abalos 11y ago
  1. Windows 10 does offer a lot of performance improvements. Even if you don't like the new interface, under the hood it's much faster. Even Windows 8 was a lot faster. 2. I think there is an option to ignore individual updates. You could probably utilize that to get that to go away. 3. Windows 10 literally saves a copy of your whole system running Windows 7 on the hard disk. That is deleted after 31 days. 4. They claim that it will begin to cost money to upgrade starting next year. Whether or not that becomes reality could go either way. My guess is that yes, it will cost money just like a new Windows 10 build costs money now. 5. You can turn off a good portion of the privacy-invading settings, but it's still fairly invasive. Microsoft as a company has actually been ramping up their support for other platforms which is kind of cool. I haven't heard about any specific back doors in the Windows OS itself, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. The OS is closed source, so it's really anyone's guess.
bargl 11y ago
This may explain how they accidentally turned the auto update on a few months ago (that ended up forcing a few people to upgrade to 10). They were probably changing this from an Upgrade to an Update and it got out into the wild.
carlosrg 11y ago
My sister upgraded to Windows 10 and was greeted by a blue screen every time she tried to turn on the computer. Investigating online it seems it's some kind of BIOS incompatibility but the manufacturer (Packard Bell, doesn't operate in USA but it's relatively well known in Spain) doesn't provide BIOS updates for that model. So we restored Windows 7 and lost an entire day. I'm sure she's going to be very happy when she sees the Windows 10 nag again.
- tdkl 11y ago
  Interesting, my brothers neighbour had the same error on his 1 year old Lenovo. When he started mentioning Windows 10 before the laptop crapped out, I just advised him to go to the shop support and ask them if they will disable the notification when PC is reinstalled.
- acqq 11y ago
  It's even worse than nag: "Early next year, we expect to be re-categorizing Windows 10 as a “Recommended Update”. Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device."
  - carlosrg 11y ago
    I hope they reconsider that, or they're going to have plenty of unhappy customers searching for alternatives.
    - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
      According to Ars, MS is saying their number one support request is how to get the Windows 10 upgrade. Not saying I believe that, just repeating what I read.
      - rjbwork 11y ago
        I definitely believe it. Something free that isn't the windows 8 people hated but eventually adopted? Most people just think "yes plz"
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
halite 11y ago
I've never been as frustrated with a windows update as this one. First, I've a small machine with SSD that I use as media center running windows 7, this humongous download (which happened overnight without any consent) killed that machine. Since then I've it switched to linux and things are much better. Second I know an elderly couple who doesn't know much about computers. When they got the prompt for upgrade, they didn't even think it was an operating system upgrade. They thought it was another windows update. Next morning they couldn't do anything as the start button wouldn't work, printers were gone, email settings were gone, critical error message when they click edge etc. Now for a tech savvy person, it wouldn't be a problem and you can easily fix these but they live far from city, like about a good 2 hour drive. Since I'm closest to them, this weekend I'll be making a trip there and fixing it wasting around 6-7 hours of my life just because of windows 10. Thanks Microsoft!
- eckza 11y ago
  > 6-7 hours of my life If it makes you feel any better: I went through this EXACT scenario yesterday. My grandfather accidentally installed Windows 10. Fortunately, there's a button in Settings that lets you revert: http://www.howtogeek.com/220723/how-to-uninstall-windows-10-and-downgrade-to-windows-7-or-8.1/ http://www.howtogeek.com/220723/how-to-uninstall-windows-10-... It worked perfectly and only took about 30 minutes. And the man uses his computer for a lot of stuff - personal bookkeeping, Word, Excel, Publisher, electronic document management, etc etc etc - and it's all 100% back to normal.
  - acqq 11y ago
    > It worked perfectly Have you checked the task scheduler? https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1529-4405-b8e3-d1d636f8b71c/task-scheduler-is-broken-after-windows-10-downgrade?forum=win10itprogeneral https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1... Didn't work on my computer. See also http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-glitch-results-in-accidental-windows-1#comment-2312386490 http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-glitch... "These showed up on a plethora of my client's systems a few days ago after I had already removed them, unchecked them and hid them weeks earlier. This is totally unethical, namely re-releasing KB3035583 after hundreds of thousands of people paid technicians to have these removed."
acqq 11y ago
> If you are on a metered connection on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, then you have the option of turning off automatic updates. Can I declare somehow my connection "metered" or is this something MSFT decides?
- talmand 11y ago
  You can turn off automatic updates regardless of your internet connection situation.
  - acqq 11y ago
    On Windows 10 Home not unless it's "metered" connection. But how to declare my connection "metered"?
    - talmand 11y ago
      http://www.howtogeek.com/224471/how-to-prevent-windows-10-from-automatically-downloading-updates/ http://www.howtogeek.com/224471/how-to-prevent-windows-10-fr...
      - acqq 11y ago
        Thanks. Still, automatic updates can't be disabled on the Home edition of Windows 10. So much for "We understand you care deeply." They understand, but they don't want to let you. At least not without paying them premium.
- toxican 11y ago
  I think they're just saying that the option is there with those who have metered connections in mind. IIRC, 8.1 had a few settings for metered connections though.
jussij 11y ago
As someone who just moved to Windows 10 with all new hardware, my advice would be just don't do it! Windows 7 is a much better version of Windows than Windows 10 will ever be so my suggestion would be wait a few years.
- blisterpeanuts 11y ago
  Can you provide some specifics?
  - jussij 11y ago
    I can't provide any specifics other than to say I've used all these version of Windows over my lifetime: Windows 3.x Windows for Work Groups Windows 95 Windows Me Windows XP Windows Vista Windows 7 Windows 10 Of all those systems, Windows 10 is by far the worst system I have had to use. Everything has changed, nothing works like it once did, things that should would just don't work! But wait, not everything is bad. It does boot really fast!!! I purchased all new hardware and took Windows 10 as the $AUD 250.00 OS option. I could have got Windows 7 as a cheaper option and should have done so......
    - UK-AL 11y ago
      Still no specifics
      - jussij 11y ago
        OK, here is an example. I ran into the all too common Start Button not working issue: https://www.techmesto.com/fix-start-menu-broken-windows-10-technical-preview/ https://www.techmesto.com/fix-start-menu-broken-windows-10-t... After about three days I found out this was cause by me changing the location of the users Document and Setting folder, using the Location option as provided by Windows 10 itself. To cut a long story short, DON'T TOUCH the location of that folder as it will break lots of things in Windows 10. Also Windows 10 puts a new GUI layer over everything, so of course all your years of Windows knowledge is lost. And here's another example of why that is just stupid. There is a new GUI to create new user accounts and it is very easy to create new accounts, that is until the button stops working. You click on the button but nothing happens. No message, no nothing. So when that happens what do you do? You spend another two days searching, only to find the solution is to bypass the Windows 10 GUI and hit the old Windows layer using this bit of magic: Open command prompt in Admin mode control userpassword2 Running that command gives you the old Windows 7 user management dialog. Finally, Windows 10 seems to have an annoying intermittent habit of not understanding focus and z-order. You click on a button and nothing happens. You click on the button again and nothing happens. You click on the button a third time and this time you notice the task bar flicker, only to find you have three new instances all hiding behind the current application. That seems to happen a lot in the Settings panels.
cballard 11y ago
I'm an OS X user - why are they waiting so long? Shouldn't it be the recommended OS from day one? I hope that OS updates eventually become like browser updates - they just happen and you don't notice. Seamlessly on the latest.
- prodmerc 11y ago
  Are you kidding? Major OS updates should never be unsupervised/without notice. Every time, there's some major ckup that makes something unusable...
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  That thar is just crazy talk.
acqq 11y ago
> At any time during the first 31 days, you can go to “Settings->Update and Security->Recovery and Uninstall Windows 10” to return to your prior version of Windows. My computer didn't work with Windows 10, contrary to their claim that it would. The drivers I had on the notebook are "too old" and Intel doesn't support the devices for Windows 8 or 10 but MSFT claimed in their "Update to 10" nagware that it would work. It doesn't. I've discovered that only after two days of the immense number of the restarts of Windows 10, searching for the possible causes and finding the posts related to my hardware on the web forums. And after I returned to Windows 7, it still presents "Upgrade to Windows 10" and to decline I had to uninstall more updates and put some registry entries which I had to search on the web (1). Far from easy to just say "it doesn't work please don't bother me or make the goddamn drivers." Oh, and the return to Windows 7 from 10 actually didn't work too -- it screwed all the scheduled tasks (which were a part of the Windows 7 installation, not the tasks I've made!) (2) --- 1) This comment seemed to be the most useful: "This is totally unethical, namely re-releasing KB3035583 after hundreds of thousands of people paid technicians to have these removed." http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-glitch-results-in-accidental-windows-1#comment-2312386490 http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-glitch... 2) "Task scheduler is broken after windows 10 downgrade" https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1529-4405-b8e3-d1d636f8b71c/task-scheduler-is-broken-after-windows-10-downgrade?forum=win10itprogeneral https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1...
makecheck 11y ago
Also discussed here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10475272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10475272
prodmerc 11y ago
I disabled Windows Updates and I still get the update to 10 notification. Cortana doesn't work in most countries (why? just why? I speak English ffs). 10 will know more about me than Facebook and Google combined (don't really care, but it's a bad thing imo). No thanks, I'm happy with 7.
ionised 11y ago
My recommendation is to completely avoid Windows 10, unless you are a heavy PC gamer. In which case you'll need it eventually for DirectX 12. If you are a PC gamer then install Windows 10 and use only a local account, disable all of its cloud integration, disable all the telemetry and logging and use a third party firewall to block anything else that the OS options do not let you disable. Then use another machine with another operating system like Linux that doesn't behave like it owns you and your entire system, for all your other personal/professional computing needs.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  I'll end up on W10 as it seems inevitable. Mostly I want it as a VMware "KVM mode" (fullscreen, takes over all input) host, due to Windows having better driver, power, and suspend/resume support. I'd love to run VMware directly on Linux but don't like the idea of dicking with drivers for even two hours.
  - ossreality 11y ago
    Oh come off of it. I have installed Linux on dozens of different hardware SKUs in the last three years and never spent a second thinking about drivers other than whether to install xf86-video-intel or xf86-video-ati Besides, you can choose your hardware for both battery life and linux hardware compatibility. Both my Chromebook Pixel 2015 and Thinkpad Carbon X1 (3rd gen) have equal Linux/Windows battery life. The Pixel regularly lasts 6 hours even when doing dev work. Runs windows perfectly under libvirtd. It's so strange and annoying to keep hearing these 10 year old Linux memes repeated all the damn time.
- bostonvaulter2 11y ago
  Are there any good guides for this?
snake_plissken 11y ago
If you want to get rid of the prompt and the upgrade, remove update KB3035583. You'll also want to hide it by right clicking the update and selecting "Hide Update" from within the available updates dialog area. This will stop Windows Update from installing it over and over and over again. Which it will do if you don't hide it. Also, it looks like for those like myself that have done this, it now appears to be a stand alone update with no KB identifier. You can do the same thing to this update; just Hide it! This work around will probably be overridden by some future update, but it will give you temporary respite from this windows 10 upgropalypse.
- vetinari 11y ago
  Don't worry, Microsoft will helpfully unhide it for you, so in the next batch of updates it will get installed. In other words, carefully check the updates. I had to hide it again several times already. I shouldn't have to do that :(
hauget 11y ago
"to be a recommended update" so what the hell is it now? It's impossible to get rid of that damn upgrade notification.
throwawayaway 11y ago
It makes no odds. The most egregious intrusion of Windows 10, the wonderful keylogger 'diagtrack.dll' has been backported to 8.1 and 7 and installs under different than advertised Microsoft KB updates. So it really is time to move to Linux.
xdinomode 11y ago
Linux Mint Master Race!!!!
batrat 11y ago
Upgraded all windows machines to Windows 10. I'm so happy now. Much better. People that say "i moved to linux", we all did this at a point in time But like all Apple users, "I don't have time to troubleshoot, I need to get things done". Windows 10 did this for me till now. Everything works out of the box, no problem.
CyberDildonics 11y ago
Thank god. I don't have windows 10 yet so I have to send microsoft all my keystrokes, browser history and dick pics manually and it's wasting a lot of my time.
fencepost 11y ago
I wish I'd noticed this earlier in the day, but it may be worth looking at GWX Control Panel (http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-stopper-to-permanently-remove.html http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-stopper-t...) which provides simple steps to temporarily or permanently remove the (current) "Get Windows 10" system tray icon along with making the Registry changes to block upgrades from happening in Windows Update. It'll also let you easily remove the downloaded 5-6GB of Windows 10 upgrade files if they're already on the system.

105 points by tehmaco 11y ago

andor 11y ago

If they really wanted to make it easy to update, they could offer a downloadable installer image that installs cleanly with any Windows 7-10 license key. And by downloadable I mean an ISO image on a website, not through a "media creation tool" that requires the same operating system. It's much easier to install/update some Linux distributions, and I don't think that's in their best interest.

ac29 11y ago
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10I... Not a "media creation tool", doesnt require windows. Just the ISO.

toxican 11y ago

> Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device. Oh great! Can't wait to get a million phone calls about this one.

rbanffy 11y ago
Telcos demanded this feature. ;-)

ep103 11y ago

Can anyone give a non-biased, fact based report on what Microsoft tracks and sends to their servers on Windows 10? I've seen a lot of stories claiming that Windows 10 is free because it tracks just about everything, and sends it all to MS servers.

Asmod4n 11y ago
Windows Search is looking up everything you type on bing. The AV solution sends memory dumps to Microsoft.
- agentdrtran 11y ago
  Doesn't that kind of make sense though? I just turned off Bing integration and the AV sending memory dumps makes sense if they want to improve detection.
  - rbanffy 11y ago
    I imagine Microsoft will eventually amass a humongous porn stash from those memory dumps. You can hope it's anonymous, at least. ;-)
  - Asmod4n 11y ago
    In older versions of their AV solution you could choose what to send to Microsoft, down to even not sending where the File is located, just what it detected. There was not even a option to send Memory Dumps. Now its all or nothing.
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    Except that "memory dump" means anything you have, and text typed at the browser includes most of your passwords.
  - ionised 11y ago
    Turn off Bing integration and SearchUI.exe still attempts to make connections to Microsoft servers even though it should be operating completely locally. I blocked it with my (third party) Firewall, which I shouldn't have to do.
- UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
  > The AV solution sends memory dumps to Microsoft. Both error reporting and Windows Defender asked you if you want to upload additional information (e.g. memory dumps).

pcunite 11y ago

My understanding is you get a prompt. You must click a "Next" or something to that effect to actually upgrade to Windows 10.

Asmod4n 11y ago
If it looks anything like the UAC prompt/normal Windows Dialog Users will just click allow.
DangerousPie 11y ago
Yes: > Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device. Before the upgrade changes the OS of your device, you will be clearly prompted to choose whether or not to continue. And of course, if you choose to upgrade (our recommendation!), then you will have 31 days to roll back to your previous Windows version if you don’t love it.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  I guess the follow-up question is: Will it keep asking you to upgrade after you say no?
  - vetinari 11y ago
    Is there even "No" button? Or just "Upgrade now" and "Upgrade later"? As far as I remember, in gwx there was no such option as "no, thank you, I will keep my current OS".

falcolas 11y ago

<horse class="dead"> If this were like any other Windows OS upgrade in the past, I'd be OK with this. But... it's not. It adds a lot of tracking, reporting, and some (currently innocuous) uncontrollable communication back to Microsoft. I guess it really is time to do the cost/benefit analysis of a single company collecting all of this information from my gaming rig. </horse>

JohnTHaller 11y ago
You also lose Windows Media *Center, which some of us paid extra for so we could easily connect our Xbox 360 to our Windows PC without extra steps or ongoing fees.
- UnoriginalGuy 11y ago
  You have a typo: Media Center, not Player.
  - JohnTHaller 11y ago
    Quite right. I meant Center. I was still drinking my coffee.
- soylentcola 11y ago
  While I do lament the loss of Media Center (it has some functions that while not commonly used, are still useful to some people) I've had luck with Plex for media stored on the local network to X360/Chromecast/etc. It works a lot better than the 360's alleged integration with WMC for certain. This is without any ongoing fees but since it's a third party application, it does require the extra step of installing it. I never subscribed to their Plex Pass paid service but after installing the free Plex server and pointing it at my media directories on my desktop and NAS, it's worked great. The ability to transcode was particularly useful because the 360 wouldn't play some formats and it was easier to install Plex than to transcode them all. Either way, this isn't meant to dismiss your legit complaint. Just hoping my experiences can be of use to you or others in the same situation. If you used WMC to handle OTA television viewing and recording, you may be better served by Kodi or some other application.

brianmcc 11y ago

Lesson. It's not a "learning", it's a lesson. Stop inventing nouns we don't need. (I know, the horse has bolted long ago, no pointing harrassing this stable door. I will blame too many choccy biscuits after lunch...)

talmand 11y ago
Where I'm from, when someone needed some "learnin'" it usually didn't mean something fun and awesome to the person that needed a lesson. It has its uses.
- brianmcc 11y ago
  All for new words to help with disambiguation :-)
  - biot 11y ago
    Your sentence appears to be lacking both a subject and verb.
dietlbomb 11y ago
This reminds me of college professors calling homework assignments "homeworks". Initially, these professors were all immigrants from India, but the usage spread during my years in grad school. I wonder if this is evidence of a cultural shift at Microsoft caused by hiring so many H1Bs or even influence from their tone-deaf CEO.
GnomeChomsky 11y ago
I had a couple bosses that eventually gave up on "learnings" and shortened it to "learns". As in, "Let's memorialize the learns so we don't disrupt this value-add in the future."

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

v4n4d1s 11y ago

Currently getting some new hardware with support for VT-d/IOMMU to run Games and other heavily graphic applications in virtualized windows environments. (https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multiheaded-NVIDIA-Gaming-using-Ubuntu-14-04-KVM-585/ https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Multiheaded-NVIDI...). I really have to get rid of any microsoft software running directly on my hardware.

thomnottom 11y ago
Good read. I looked into this a few years ago when I first started my switch to Linux but never convinced myself to buy a second video card. Now it might be worth a try again as I am loath to dual boot and therefore haven't touched any Windows-only games in a while.

blisterpeanuts 11y ago

I just installed a $79 OEM Windows 7 to an Intel NUC[1], and I have some questions about upgrading. 1. Why upgrade? Windows 7 seems like a good, stable OS that stays out of my way and lets me get work done. Newer versions have these funky tiles and touch interface, neither of which I want or can even use. 2. I've heard if I let my Win 7 install "important Windows updates", one of the updates is nagware to persuade me to update to Win10. Can that be turned off? Will it violate my privacy? 3. The article says you get up to 31 days to try Win10 and still be able to roll back to your previous OS. Why only 31 days? Why not 60? Why not 10,000? Does some irrevocable change occur to the hard disk after 31 days that renders it incapable of supporting Windows 7? 4. Will it cost money to update to 10 after next year? I'm not necessarily opposed to paying for an upgrade if it's worth it -- it's a product that they spent millions of dollars developing, after all -- but I don't like feeling pressured. I'm just barely getting settled in with Win7, after all! 5. Are there any reasons to stay away from 10? I've heard the anti-privacy scare stories. Anything else? E.g. NSA back doors, or removed support for interacting with Linux, or some such? [1] (Originally I bought the NUC to be a quiet, compact Linux server/workstation, but unfortunately the i5 model can't seem to run any of the Linux distros I threw at it, whereas Windows installed flawlessly. My main desktop has become a Mac Mini, actually :) [EDIT asterisks don't work :(]

pixl97 11y ago
1. If you have a decent SSD in it, W10 may be faster. It seems to run very well on SSDs. 4. Yes, for 1 year the upgrade is free. After that point you have to pay for the upgrade, just like to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8 you had to pay for an upgrade license. 5. Other than Microsoft's weird ideas on how they will push out updates that may affect your privacy it seems to work well enough in the industries I've tested it in. If you have any older 'expensive' software you may want to verify that it is compatible before migrating.
abalos 11y ago
1. Windows 10 does offer a lot of performance improvements. Even if you don't like the new interface, under the hood it's much faster. Even Windows 8 was a lot faster. 2. I think there is an option to ignore individual updates. You could probably utilize that to get that to go away. 3. Windows 10 literally saves a copy of your whole system running Windows 7 on the hard disk. That is deleted after 31 days. 4. They claim that it will begin to cost money to upgrade starting next year. Whether or not that becomes reality could go either way. My guess is that yes, it will cost money just like a new Windows 10 build costs money now. 5. You can turn off a good portion of the privacy-invading settings, but it's still fairly invasive. Microsoft as a company has actually been ramping up their support for other platforms which is kind of cool. I haven't heard about any specific back doors in the Windows OS itself, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. The OS is closed source, so it's really anyone's guess.

bargl 11y ago

This may explain how they accidentally turned the auto update on a few months ago (that ended up forcing a few people to upgrade to 10). They were probably changing this from an Upgrade to an Update and it got out into the wild.

carlosrg 11y ago

My sister upgraded to Windows 10 and was greeted by a blue screen every time she tried to turn on the computer. Investigating online it seems it's some kind of BIOS incompatibility but the manufacturer (Packard Bell, doesn't operate in USA but it's relatively well known in Spain) doesn't provide BIOS updates for that model. So we restored Windows 7 and lost an entire day. I'm sure she's going to be very happy when she sees the Windows 10 nag again.

tdkl 11y ago
Interesting, my brothers neighbour had the same error on his 1 year old Lenovo. When he started mentioning Windows 10 before the laptop crapped out, I just advised him to go to the shop support and ask them if they will disable the notification when PC is reinstalled.
acqq 11y ago
It's even worse than nag: "Early next year, we expect to be re-categorizing Windows 10 as a “Recommended Update”. Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device."
- carlosrg 11y ago
  I hope they reconsider that, or they're going to have plenty of unhappy customers searching for alternatives.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    According to Ars, MS is saying their number one support request is how to get the Windows 10 upgrade. Not saying I believe that, just repeating what I read.
    - rjbwork 11y ago
      I definitely believe it. Something free that isn't the windows 8 people hated but eventually adopted? Most people just think "yes plz"

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

halite 11y ago

I've never been as frustrated with a windows update as this one. First, I've a small machine with SSD that I use as media center running windows 7, this humongous download (which happened overnight without any consent) killed that machine. Since then I've it switched to linux and things are much better. Second I know an elderly couple who doesn't know much about computers. When they got the prompt for upgrade, they didn't even think it was an operating system upgrade. They thought it was another windows update. Next morning they couldn't do anything as the start button wouldn't work, printers were gone, email settings were gone, critical error message when they click edge etc. Now for a tech savvy person, it wouldn't be a problem and you can easily fix these but they live far from city, like about a good 2 hour drive. Since I'm closest to them, this weekend I'll be making a trip there and fixing it wasting around 6-7 hours of my life just because of windows 10. Thanks Microsoft!

eckza 11y ago
> 6-7 hours of my life If it makes you feel any better: I went through this EXACT scenario yesterday. My grandfather accidentally installed Windows 10. Fortunately, there's a button in Settings that lets you revert: http://www.howtogeek.com/220723/how-to-uninstall-windows-10-and-downgrade-to-windows-7-or-8.1/ http://www.howtogeek.com/220723/how-to-uninstall-windows-10-... It worked perfectly and only took about 30 minutes. And the man uses his computer for a lot of stuff - personal bookkeeping, Word, Excel, Publisher, electronic document management, etc etc etc - and it's all 100% back to normal.
- acqq 11y ago
  > It worked perfectly Have you checked the task scheduler? https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1529-4405-b8e3-d1d636f8b71c/task-scheduler-is-broken-after-windows-10-downgrade?forum=win10itprogeneral https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1... Didn't work on my computer. See also http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-glitch-results-in-accidental-windows-1#comment-2312386490 http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-glitch... "These showed up on a plethora of my client's systems a few days ago after I had already removed them, unchecked them and hid them weeks earlier. This is totally unethical, namely re-releasing KB3035583 after hundreds of thousands of people paid technicians to have these removed."

acqq 11y ago

> If you are on a metered connection on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, then you have the option of turning off automatic updates. Can I declare somehow my connection "metered" or is this something MSFT decides?

talmand 11y ago
You can turn off automatic updates regardless of your internet connection situation.
- acqq 11y ago
  On Windows 10 Home not unless it's "metered" connection. But how to declare my connection "metered"?
  - talmand 11y ago
    http://www.howtogeek.com/224471/how-to-prevent-windows-10-from-automatically-downloading-updates/ http://www.howtogeek.com/224471/how-to-prevent-windows-10-fr...
    - acqq 11y ago
      Thanks. Still, automatic updates can't be disabled on the Home edition of Windows 10. So much for "We understand you care deeply." They understand, but they don't want to let you. At least not without paying them premium.
toxican 11y ago
I think they're just saying that the option is there with those who have metered connections in mind. IIRC, 8.1 had a few settings for metered connections though.

jussij 11y ago

As someone who just moved to Windows 10 with all new hardware, my advice would be just don't do it! Windows 7 is a much better version of Windows than Windows 10 will ever be so my suggestion would be wait a few years.

blisterpeanuts 11y ago
Can you provide some specifics?
- jussij 11y ago
  I can't provide any specifics other than to say I've used all these version of Windows over my lifetime: Windows 3.x Windows for Work Groups Windows 95 Windows Me Windows XP Windows Vista Windows 7 Windows 10 Of all those systems, Windows 10 is by far the worst system I have had to use. Everything has changed, nothing works like it once did, things that should would just don't work! But wait, not everything is bad. It does boot really fast!!! I purchased all new hardware and took Windows 10 as the $AUD 250.00 OS option. I could have got Windows 7 as a cheaper option and should have done so......
  - UK-AL 11y ago
    Still no specifics
    - jussij 11y ago
      OK, here is an example. I ran into the all too common Start Button not working issue: https://www.techmesto.com/fix-start-menu-broken-windows-10-technical-preview/ https://www.techmesto.com/fix-start-menu-broken-windows-10-t... After about three days I found out this was cause by me changing the location of the users Document and Setting folder, using the Location option as provided by Windows 10 itself. To cut a long story short, DON'T TOUCH the location of that folder as it will break lots of things in Windows 10. Also Windows 10 puts a new GUI layer over everything, so of course all your years of Windows knowledge is lost. And here's another example of why that is just stupid. There is a new GUI to create new user accounts and it is very easy to create new accounts, that is until the button stops working. You click on the button but nothing happens. No message, no nothing. So when that happens what do you do? You spend another two days searching, only to find the solution is to bypass the Windows 10 GUI and hit the old Windows layer using this bit of magic: Open command prompt in Admin mode control userpassword2 Running that command gives you the old Windows 7 user management dialog. Finally, Windows 10 seems to have an annoying intermittent habit of not understanding focus and z-order. You click on a button and nothing happens. You click on the button again and nothing happens. You click on the button a third time and this time you notice the task bar flicker, only to find you have three new instances all hiding behind the current application. That seems to happen a lot in the Settings panels.

cballard 11y ago

I'm an OS X user - why are they waiting so long? Shouldn't it be the recommended OS from day one? I hope that OS updates eventually become like browser updates - they just happen and you don't notice. Seamlessly on the latest.

prodmerc 11y ago
Are you kidding? Major OS updates should never be unsupervised/without notice. Every time, there's some major ckup that makes something unusable...
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
That thar is just crazy talk.

acqq 11y ago

> At any time during the first 31 days, you can go to “Settings->Update and Security->Recovery and Uninstall Windows 10” to return to your prior version of Windows. My computer didn't work with Windows 10, contrary to their claim that it would. The drivers I had on the notebook are "too old" and Intel doesn't support the devices for Windows 8 or 10 but MSFT claimed in their "Update to 10" nagware that it would work. It doesn't. I've discovered that only after two days of the immense number of the restarts of Windows 10, searching for the possible causes and finding the posts related to my hardware on the web forums. And after I returned to Windows 7, it still presents "Upgrade to Windows 10" and to decline I had to uninstall more updates and put some registry entries which I had to search on the web (1). Far from easy to just say "it doesn't work please don't bother me or make the goddamn drivers." Oh, and the return to Windows 7 from 10 actually didn't work too -- it screwed all the scheduled tasks (which were a part of the Windows 7 installation, not the tasks I've made!) (2) --- 1) This comment seemed to be the most useful: "This is totally unethical, namely re-releasing KB3035583 after hundreds of thousands of people paid technicians to have these removed." http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-glitch-results-in-accidental-windows-1#comment-2312386490 http://au.pcmag.com/windows-10/39165/news/oops-update-glitch... 2) "Task scheduler is broken after windows 10 downgrade" https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1529-4405-b8e3-d1d636f8b71c/task-scheduler-is-broken-after-windows-10-downgrade?forum=win10itprogeneral https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/80e4f83d-1...

makecheck 11y ago

Also discussed here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10475272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10475272

prodmerc 11y ago

I disabled Windows Updates and I still get the update to 10 notification. Cortana doesn't work in most countries (why? just why? I speak English ffs). 10 will know more about me than Facebook and Google combined (don't really care, but it's a bad thing imo). No thanks, I'm happy with 7.

ionised 11y ago

My recommendation is to completely avoid Windows 10, unless you are a heavy PC gamer. In which case you'll need it eventually for DirectX 12. If you are a PC gamer then install Windows 10 and use only a local account, disable all of its cloud integration, disable all the telemetry and logging and use a third party firewall to block anything else that the OS options do not let you disable. Then use another machine with another operating system like Linux that doesn't behave like it owns you and your entire system, for all your other personal/professional computing needs.

MichaelGG 11y ago
I'll end up on W10 as it seems inevitable. Mostly I want it as a VMware "KVM mode" (fullscreen, takes over all input) host, due to Windows having better driver, power, and suspend/resume support. I'd love to run VMware directly on Linux but don't like the idea of dicking with drivers for even two hours.
- ossreality 11y ago
  Oh come off of it. I have installed Linux on dozens of different hardware SKUs in the last three years and never spent a second thinking about drivers other than whether to install xf86-video-intel or xf86-video-ati Besides, you can choose your hardware for both battery life and linux hardware compatibility. Both my Chromebook Pixel 2015 and Thinkpad Carbon X1 (3rd gen) have equal Linux/Windows battery life. The Pixel regularly lasts 6 hours even when doing dev work. Runs windows perfectly under libvirtd. It's so strange and annoying to keep hearing these 10 year old Linux memes repeated all the damn time.
bostonvaulter2 11y ago
Are there any good guides for this?

snake_plissken 11y ago

If you want to get rid of the prompt and the upgrade, remove update KB3035583. You'll also want to hide it by right clicking the update and selecting "Hide Update" from within the available updates dialog area. This will stop Windows Update from installing it over and over and over again. Which it will do if you don't hide it. Also, it looks like for those like myself that have done this, it now appears to be a stand alone update with no KB identifier. You can do the same thing to this update; just Hide it! This work around will probably be overridden by some future update, but it will give you temporary respite from this windows 10 upgropalypse.

vetinari 11y ago
Don't worry, Microsoft will helpfully unhide it for you, so in the next batch of updates it will get installed. In other words, carefully check the updates. I had to hide it again several times already. I shouldn't have to do that :(

hauget 11y ago

"to be a recommended update" so what the hell is it now? It's impossible to get rid of that damn upgrade notification.

throwawayaway 11y ago

It makes no odds. The most egregious intrusion of Windows 10, the wonderful keylogger 'diagtrack.dll' has been backported to 8.1 and 7 and installs under different than advertised Microsoft KB updates. So it really is time to move to Linux.

xdinomode 11y ago

Linux Mint Master Race!!!!

batrat 11y ago

Upgraded all windows machines to Windows 10. I'm so happy now. Much better. People that say "i moved to linux", we all did this at a point in time But like all Apple users, "I don't have time to troubleshoot, I need to get things done". Windows 10 did this for me till now. Everything works out of the box, no problem.

CyberDildonics 11y ago

Thank god. I don't have windows 10 yet so I have to send microsoft all my keystrokes, browser history and dick pics manually and it's wasting a lot of my time.

fencepost 11y ago

I wish I'd noticed this earlier in the day, but it may be worth looking at GWX Control Panel (http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-stopper-to-permanently-remove.html http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-stopper-t...) which provides simple steps to temporarily or permanently remove the (current) "Get Windows 10" system tray icon along with making the Registry changes to block upgrades from happening in Windows Update. It'll also let you easily remove the downloaded 5-6GB of Windows 10 upgrade files if they're already on the system.