Don't Want Windows 10? You Probably Downloaded It Anyway

[kurupt87]

Pretty sure this happens for domain computers too, which were supposed to be exempt from Win 10 prompts. I at least get the Windows 10 failure to install notifications in my update history on my work comp.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

My friend upgraded to W10, 95% of his games broke.

He downgraded back to W7, his games started working again.

I think I'll stick to 7 for now, there's apparently a problem with W10 not liking DirectX.

Or maybe your friend screwed-up. I've only had minor problems and even then upgrading is a shitty way to judge an OS - a reformat should always be done when changing OS. I remember trying to install GPU drivers and for some reason it not "recognise" Win 10 as my current OS but in fact my previous OS Win 7.

They do mention that Win 10 will be downloaded in the background. If you do not want this to happen you'll have to remove the relevant KBs. You can upgrade at any time using the media creation tool that is available on the MS website.

He most likely did screw up, but that doesn't change the fact that it's much easier to stick with W7, at least for now.

Plus they changed some of the most basic key commands, for what reason? People were fine using ctrl alt del to bring up task manager. Microsoft trying to fix what isn't broken as usual.

 

[Fractral]

If you're worried about your data cap don't have automatic updates on. To then complain that Microsoft is doing what you asked it to do is asinine.

At least on my desktop automatic updates were set to on by default, and I turned them off after hearing about the data collection tools being rolled out. I imagine the people complaining never 'asked' for the updates in the first place.

 

[Sarge034]

Fuck, I knew my comp was running like ass for a while but had no idea why. Best part? Auto update was turned off and now it's not. I thought you'd started to learn after the Xbone MS, I really did.

 

[Callate]

I turned off automatic updates on my Windows 7 laptop after it decided, "No, you're going to restart to install your updates right now." Fortunately, that was some time ago.

(Microsoft, I tried to play nice, I tried to be a good user and keep everything up-to-date and trust that you would operate with my interests at least a tiny bit at heart, but let's face it- you're not good to me. And it doesn't sound, based off of this, like you've changed.)

 

[RandV80]

This is frustrating. Reading this prompted me to finally remove the Windows 10 update notification, I had this in the back of my mind that I didn't seem to be getting any other updates since but now it's confirmed. I have automatic updates turned off, but with this Windows isn't prompting me for any new updates but rather just has the 'Install Windows 10' thing plastered on the front. I have to first click the Check for updates option, and now I see all the updates I missed.

So first I go into the Installed Updates window, find KB3035583 and remove it, then reboot. Now when I open Windows Update, it still prompts me first to install Windows 10 without notifying me of any updates, but when I click the check for updates option it seems to get stuck "Checking for updates..." while running an svchost process that ties up half my CPU. 30 minutes later and it's still checking for updates. When I removed KB3035583 it only took a minute or two, what the hell are you doing Windows? I suspect it's trying to run Windows 10 again, but I'm not seeing any notable network usage in the Task Manager.

 

[bluegate]

Mind if I laugh for a bit?

When are you people in America ever going to fight for consumer rights in regards to those ridiculous data caps and internet speeds in your country? I know that a lot of Americans get a boner from the idea of a free market and capitalism, but damn, how can one still defend that stuff when faced by such a monopoly? The government really did a number on it's people during the cold war...

A mere few gigabytes from Windows 10's install file, big whoop, I would have upgraded, but sadly, NVidia doesn't care to upgrade the drivers of my card to go with Win10, so Win7 for a while long for me then.

 

[jamail77]

To reiterate what others have already implied above, this is the same Microsoft that wanted always online for the Xbox One. So, this doesn't surprise me.

If you're worried about your data cap don't have automatic updates on. To then complain that Microsoft is doing what you asked it to do is asinine.

No, it's not. As others have reported they had automatic updates turned off and it got turned back on anyway without their permission. Even if you do have automatic updates on from the beginning it was heavily implied that wouldn't get you even one bit of Windows 10 from Microsoft itself. Don't take the term 'automatic update' literally to excuse this behavior. It doesn't. Nobody asked for this because they were led to believe this was a separate installation, not apart of automatic updates.

 

[BeerTent]

I'm gonna take a second to go through some posts here...

Pretty sure this happens for domain computers too, which were supposed to be exempt from Win 10 prompts. I at least get the Windows 10 failure to install notifications in my update history on my work comp.

As someone who has experience pushing updates through the network, that's not MS being sneaky, that's a failing on your IT Team. Assuming, your doing any amount of programming, ALL work computers should be running similar hardware, same software, and same version of the OS with the same upgrades. It's easier this way.

[... Incompatibility with older software...]

He most likely did screw up, but that doesn't change the fact that it's much easier to stick with W7, at least for now.

Plus they changed some of the most basic key commands, for what reason? People were fine using ctrl alt del to bring up task manager. Microsoft trying to fix what isn't broken as usual.

I want to try and resolve this issue... What kind of software incompatibilities are we talking here? Games from 1992? I've been running some older stuff from the XB1 era, and the most I've had to do was set compatibility mode to force run as admin. Some games prefer to have their compatibility mode set to the operating system that they were initially released for. Working on some customer's computers, I've always been able to get software to work, or it's some archaic tax program that needed a newer subscription to avoid an audit.

Also, what keyboard bindings do you mean? Doing a quick cursory check, all of the standard bindings are the same. Some OS changes make Win+Arrow and Alt+Tab a little different, and showing off some more information as they're used, but Ctrl+Alt+Del is unchanged since... Well, Windows XP. We've always had that little menu. Now we've got a mono-color backdrop.

I turned off automatic updates on my Windows 7 laptop after it decided, "No, you're going to restart to install your updates right now." Fortunately, that was some time ago.

(Microsoft, I tried to play nice, I tried to be a good user and keep everything up-to-date and trust that you would operate with my interests at least a tiny bit at heart, but let's face it- you're not good to me. And it doesn't sound, based off of this, like you've changed.)

If you want to re-enable auto-updates (Or not, but I do strongly suggest combing through updates and getting most of them.) there's a registry hack you can do, that prevents windows from doing the "We must install updates in 15 minutes. Don't like it? TOUGH SHIT!" prompts.

-----------

As for the privacy concerns? All of this data-mining, and people screaming and running with chickens with their heads cut off...

I get it. I really do. I don't like it either.

But this is the world we live in. People chose this with their actions. If you still want to fight something that is so inevitable, and carries positively no consequence to you, then so be it. If people ask me how, I'll help them out and see what I can do to keep them on older equipment and software. But this is inevitable. Like, who here has an IT background... Who actually looked at the trends in social media and reality TV and is now looking a this saying...

"I never saw any of this coming."

I would never have been able to predict when, It could have been 8.1, it could have been 7 or even Windows 11... But I knew that data-mining would have extended to Windows. Because you can't make something based on bio-metrics, and not have some form of data-mining involved to improve the system. Our OS hosts an exceptional amount of data about who we are, and how we affect the world's trends. People would probably die over the money that information could provide.

Who am I to judge? I've got a points card and a Gmail account. I'm just as guilty as all of those with Skype and Facebook. Or any other email provider, or the people who fill out surveys, or sign their name when they donate, or people who browse the internet, and have a Steam/Origin account...

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Thanks for warning us about something that already happened to everyone over a month ago.

I'd say Valve needs to double down on improving Linux support and populating the Steam-for-Linux store with quality big-budget games, but they've already lost interest in actually working on it and moved on to their VR nonsense.

 

[SilverUchiha]

Turned off my automatic updates ages ago. I kept having my internet restart when I had projects open or videos full-screened and I couldn't see the notification. Pissed me off when it kept doing it and I wouldn't catch it before it closed everything. So I just said,"Fuck it." You'll update when I say to and never any other time.

 

[aceman67]

My friend upgraded to W10, 95% of his games broke.

He downgraded back to W7, his games started working again.

I think I'll stick to 7 for now, there's apparently a problem with W10 not liking DirectX.

I upgraded to Windows 10 and 100% of my games continued to work. Did your friend, oh I don't know... Bother to upgrade his video drivers? The Default one installed by Windows Update (for ATi and nVidia) is out of date does not have the optimizations that nVidia and ATi put in their newest drivers.

It was iffy the first day or two but ATi came through in the end with proper drivers and everything worked. I'm talking games like Skyrim loaded with 60gb of mods, Grand Theft Auto 5, Farcry 4, Dragon Age Inquisition, Telltales Walking Dead Se1&2, Wolf Among Us, Game of Thrones, World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo III, Star Trek Online, Guild Wars 2, and many others.

If he was smart and grabed his win10 product key, I bet real money that if he installed Win10 as a fresh install, and updated his drivers properly, his games would all work.

 

[RandV80]

To reiterate what others have already implied above, this is the same Microsoft that wanted always online for the Xbox One. So, this doesn't surprise me.

I'd like to point out that this has always been Microsoft. I get the impression that there's a generation of gamers that grew up with the original Xbox as the primary association with the Microsoft brand and were left with a positive view of them up until that big infamous Xbox One announcement. But they've been doing this sort of shit for over two decades now. Maybe in different environments but same sort of crumminess.

I'm not saying people should boycott them or anything, they just need to recognize that this has long been a near-monopolistic corporation who's primary function is profits for shareholders. If they can make an extra buck at your expense and get away with it they'll do it, and it's always been that way.

 

[Rad Party God]

My friend upgraded to W10, 95% of his games broke.

He downgraded back to W7, his games started working again.

I think I'll stick to 7 for now, there's apparently a problem with W10 not liking DirectX.

I've tried almost every single one of my games, from DX6~7 (the oldest game I have that doesn't need an emulator, a wrapper or a source port to still run in modern OS'es is StarCraft) to DX11 and each and every single one of them worked perfectly fine in Win 10, in fact, some of them worked a lot better than they did with Win 8.1.

In fact, friggin' Dungeon Keeper II worked, right out of the box, without any fix, at a flawless 60 fps and that game had a massive framedrop at the main menu on both Win 7 and 8.1, it was especially a pain in the ass to get running in 8.1!

Of course, drivers are all up to date.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

[... Incompatibility with older software...]

He most likely did screw up, but that doesn't change the fact that it's much easier to stick with W7, at least for now.

Plus they changed some of the most basic key commands, for what reason? People were fine using ctrl alt del to bring up task manager. Microsoft trying to fix what isn't broken as usual.

I want to try and resolve this issue... What kind of software incompatibilities are we talking here? Games from 1992? I've been running some older stuff from the XB1 era, and the most I've had to do was set compatibility mode to force run as admin. Some games prefer to have their compatibility mode set to the operating system that they were initially released for. Working on some customer's computers, I've always been able to get software to work, or it's some archaic tax program that needed a newer subscription to avoid an audit.

Also, what keyboard bindings do you mean? Doing a quick cursory check, all of the standard bindings are the same. Some OS changes make Win+Arrow and Alt+Tab a little different, and showing off some more information as they're used, but Ctrl+Alt+Del is unchanged since... Well, Windows XP. We've always had that little menu. Now we've got a mono-color backdrop.

The ones he told me about specifically were Left 4 Dead 2, Rocket League and Skyrim. The games would start to run, but quickly cancel after 1 or 2 seconds, without any kind of error message, they would just stop the exe. from running. A bit of Google searching (possibly, I still don't know) narrowed the problem down to problems between DirectX and Windows 10, although it didn't seem like a widespread issue. He tried forcing an install of different versions of DirectX but nothing worked. As soon as he reverted back to Windows 7 all of his games magically worked again, first time without hassle.

When I told him to ctrl alt del to bring up the task manager he said it didn't work, a quick Google search told me what key command he needed for Windows 10, it was completely different. A quick Google search just now told me ctrl alt del isn't enabled by default.

This video shows you how to turn on Ctrl-Alt-Delete in Windows 10.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

My friend upgraded to W10, 95% of his games broke.

He downgraded back to W7, his games started working again.

I think I'll stick to 7 for now, there's apparently a problem with W10 not liking DirectX.

I upgraded to Windows 10 and 100% of my games continued to work. Did your friend, oh I don't know... Bother to upgrade his video drivers? The Default one installed by Windows Update (for ATi and nVidia) is out of date does not have the optimizations that nVidia and ATi put in their newest drivers.

It was iffy the first day or two but ATi came through in the end with proper drivers and everything worked. I'm talking games like Skyrim loaded with 60gb of mods, Grand Theft Auto 5, Farcry 4, Dragon Age Inquisition, Telltales Walking Dead Se1&2, Wolf Among Us, Game of Thrones, World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo III, Star Trek Online, Guild Wars 2, and many others.

If he was smart and grabed his win10 product key, I bet real money that if he installed Win10 as a fresh install, and updated his drivers properly, his games would all work.

The very first thing I told him to do was update his Nvidia drivers, don't even need Google for that one, been told a fair few times already.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

My friend upgraded to W10, 95% of his games broke.

He downgraded back to W7, his games started working again.

I think I'll stick to 7 for now, there's apparently a problem with W10 not liking DirectX.

I've tried almost every single one of my games, from DX6~7 (the oldest game I have that doesn't need an emulator, a wrapper or a source port to still run in modern OS'es is StarCraft) to DX11 and each and every single one of them worked perfectly fine in Win 10, in fact, some of them worked a lot better than they did with Win 8.1.

In fact, friggin' Dungeon Keeper II worked, right out of the box, without any fix, at a flawless 60 fps and that game had a massive framedrop at the main menu on both Win 7 and 8.1, it was especially a pain in the ass to get running in 8.1!

Of course, drivers are all up to date.

The very first thing I told him to do was update his Nvidia drivers, don't even need Google for that one, been told a fair few times already.

I'm sure Windows 10 will run great for most people, I'm not trying to say that Windows 10 utter shite and shouldn't be used, I'm just saying that for the sake of simplicity it's better to stick to the OS you know.

 

[BeerTent]

[... Incompatibility with older software...]

He most likely did screw up, but that doesn't change the fact that it's much easier to stick with W7, at least for now.

Plus they changed some of the most basic key commands, for what reason? People were fine using ctrl alt del to bring up task manager. Microsoft trying to fix what isn't broken as usual.

I want to try and resolve this issue... What kind of software incompatibilities are we talking here? Games from 1992? I've been running some older stuff from the XB1 era, and the most I've had to do was set compatibility mode to force run as admin. Some games prefer to have their compatibility mode set to the operating system that they were initially released for. Working on some customer's computers, I've always been able to get software to work, or it's some archaic tax program that needed a newer subscription to avoid an audit.

Also, what keyboard bindings do you mean? Doing a quick cursory check, all of the standard bindings are the same. Some OS changes make Win+Arrow and Alt+Tab a little different, and showing off some more information as they're used, but Ctrl+Alt+Del is unchanged since... Well, Windows XP. We've always had that little menu. Now we've got a mono-color backdrop.

The ones he told me about specifically were Left 4 Dead 2, Rocket League and Skyrim. The games would start to run, but quickly cancel after 1 or 2 seconds, without any kind of error message, they would just stop the exe. from running. A bit of Google searching (possibly, I still don't know) narrowed the problem down to problems between DirectX and Windows 10, although it didn't seem like a widespread issue. He tried forcing an install of different versions of DirectX but nothing worked. As soon as he reverted back to Windows 7 all of his games magically worked again, first time without hassle.

When I told him to ctrl alt del to bring up the task manager he said it didn't work, a quick Google search told me what key command he needed for Windows 10, it was completely different. A quick Google search just now told me ctrl alt del isn't enabled by default.

This video shows you how to turn on Ctrl-Alt-Delete in Windows 10.

I'm going to take some time to do some research on this. However, I can confirm that a heavily modded Skyrim can run okay on 10 without hassle. Rocket League has also run without issue, reports multiple users over my TS. Cannot confirm anything about L4D2, however, a cursory Google search comes up with issues pertaining drivers.

The upgrade process doesn't state anything about drivers, so I'm extremely heavily banking this on a drivers related issue, considering that I lost multi-monitor support until I reinstalled my drivers.

What is his video card? When it comes to CTRL+ALT+DEL in my searches for more information, this is largely with the login screen. (Requiring a hardware action to log in.) However, users with the GTX660 are also reporting the inability to bring up the emergency menu within Win10. Everything else I'm looking for turns up Powershell and registry hacks.

Honestly, these issues seem a bit far-fetched. I'd need to see the problems, before I can fix them. If he wants to try Win10 again, let me know. Once the install is complete, we can fix any additional issues provided he has Steam and is okay with a Teamviewer session.

 

[snave]

And is anyone surprised at this. Microsoft since WIndows Vista has shown increasing levels of disconcern with the wants and needs of their users in favour of pushing their own agenda. Oh you liked the start menu. Tough tits you'll use Metro and like it. mean it's not unlike the Xbone... at launche. Don't like Kinect Well you're gonna get it anyway and you can't turn it off. SO sucjk it.

Don't wanna download W10... well we're gonna dloa it and chew up your bandwidth and HD space for no reason anyway.

To top it off they also quietly added updates to Windows 7 and 8 that added the data collection and tracking features from Windows 10. I didn't upgrade to 10 specifically because of privacy/security concerns, so I guess thanks for proving me right Microsoft. It's nice to know they've moved from simply being tone-deaf to actively removing the concept of choice.

Was that what this weeks chained updates were about? They've been causing utter havoc at work.

 

[Metalrocks]

good thing i turned updates off since its obnoxious to wait longer for win (still use win 7) to start up or shutdown, plus several restarts. not surprised with this though. M$ always tries to force their stuff on to everyone. im not upgrading to win 10 any time soon or in the future.