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Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

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Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#321

Am I the only one who leaves the Windows Update service entry disabled under the "services" settings? Seriously, it's that simple. I check once a week, tops.

I wouldn't say disabling all security updates is a good solution.

What would you say?

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#323
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could keep patching XP to avoid the security issues. This is more about taking control away from users than anything else.

And I could keep fixing my 92 Toyota Corolla to keep it on the road, but at some point it becomes more effective to just move on. There are some things inherent in older software that go beyond a simple patch, design decisions that may have made sense at the time but don't today. The only real way to go about that is how Apple does it, releasing a huge service pack that makes pretty major changes to the OS. And at th…

But I can fix problems with a '92 Corolla. If Microsoft were to open source XP or Windows 7, perhaps the community would relieve Microsoft of the maintenance burden.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#324
post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing here is that Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 all improved the Windows Update restart timing logic and made it more transparent. (There's a section that states "A restart is planned, Windows has determined the most likely idle time to try the restart is 3:43am" now, for instance.) In this case it's Windows 7's Restart logic that is old/bad (and long has been), not Windows 10, but Windows 10 of course is ge…

Windows 7 would forcibly shut down and reboot, without warning or indication, if you delayed updates long enough. Any laptop I owned with 7 could and often did spontaneously restart, no matter what I was doing. I'm not shy about installing updates, but if I'm busy working I would delay it a couple times. Then I'd not use the laptop for a few days (with it in sleep mode), by then I'd have forgotten about the update. I…

Disable the "Windows Update" service. Problem solved.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest issue with Windows Update (specifically) is that it has absolutely no clue what a laptop is. If I'm on a laptop, I'm likely to be out working from site to site, so don't force me to keep my laptop ON so updates can install! Ugh. This is just stupid-headed engineering.

I love the "We will install updates at 3:30am". I'd really like to see you try. My laptop will be in my bag in the hotel room at 3:30am. Hilton will be really happy with you burning the building down when you remotely switch on my Thinkpad with no ventilation.

Woke up one morning to a very hot Thinkpad in my bag. Windows 10 did exactly that. Extremely frustrating.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#326
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, there is never a good time to restart. That is simply an artifact of the sad historical circumstances that led to the current state of operating systems. I don’t particularly enjoy waking up to all my programs are closed because Windows decided that tonight was the night that it restarted. It’s slightly better on MacOS, where programs using MacOS-specific APIs can restore their state on startup, but th…

For the record, Linux does not do this, and it is an operating system.

Microsoft restarts because updates are in files that are "locked" and can't be switched-out until the system is rebooted. After you install the update, but before you reboot, your system is still running the old known-buggy code.

Linux doesn't lock files; instead it creates in-memory copies of them. So the updater can update the on-disk version without any troubles. But if you think about it, it has the exact same problem: until you reboot, your Linux box is still running the known-buggy code.

So there's absolutely no technical reason Windows needs to reboot more than Linux. The only difference is that Linux developers decided "meh, the user can reboot when they want". But unless you reboot after installing your Linux updates, your computer still has the bugs.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was either not fully thought out, or Microsoft's analysis figured that it would cost less to do it this way. Anecdote: When I worked dispatch, the local Network Operations Center pushed out an update that forcibly rebooted all of our Windows workstations...including the machine that ran inbound emergency calls. The admins at the NOC didn't think that anyone would dial 911 at three in the morning. No malfeasance, b…

See, this is a GREAT comparison, because thinking, "No one will call 911 at 3am" EASILY falls into the realm of destructive negligence. Like "I didn't realize these cars could be hit from the side!" or, "I didn't realize how much worse I drive when I am drunk, officer!" In the 3am 911 case, those admins could EASILY have cost LIVES with their decision. If that inbound call handler's machine had updates waiting, or mo…

I'm working in Antarctica and we BARELY caught one of our science systems a couple hours before it was about to kick off that stupid auto-upgrade. It would have broke a very expensive and custom box built to run these experiments, which was transported down here at great cost. If I hadn't been wandering by checking on something else I'd never have seen the window and it would've wrecked some poor grantee's years and years of work, just like that.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say disabling all security updates is a good solution.

Read a little more carefully: I update when I want my laptop tied up with an inconvenient process. Scheduled, not never at all .

Ah, yes sorry. I've heard this advice given often for the "Windows 10 problem", but given to users who definitely would never bother/know to update manually.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never had a Windows laptop boot up for scheduled updates. In that event, it always waitied for the next manual boot.

If the computer is sleeping it can wake up. Not sure about hibernate.

It can't in hibernate because it's the state as shutdown. The deep sleep introduced in new versions of Windows might still be able to wakeup though.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was either not fully thought out, or Microsoft's analysis figured that it would cost less to do it this way. Anecdote: When I worked dispatch, the local Network Operations Center pushed out an update that forcibly rebooted all of our Windows workstations...including the machine that ran inbound emergency calls. The admins at the NOC didn't think that anyone would dial 911 at three in the morning. No malfeasance, b…

See, this is a GREAT comparison, because thinking, "No one will call 911 at 3am" EASILY falls into the realm of destructive negligence. Like "I didn't realize these cars could be hit from the side!" or, "I didn't realize how much worse I drive when I am drunk, officer!" In the 3am 911 case, those admins could EASILY have cost LIVES with their decision. If that inbound call handler's machine had updates waiting, or mo…

A computer that reboots to update to Windows 10 could also have updated to install a bug patch; it was set to auto-update.

If a computer system is so mission-critical that it should never updated, well, Windows has a setting for that-- so turn it on!

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