Windows 10

[socalwingfan]

I have been struggling with a very annoying issue the last few weeks and have not found a solution so far, so going to see if anyone here has experienced something similar. I have a fairly new HP laptop running an upgraded version of Win 10, and for about a month now, sometimes when I click on a program or app in the in task bar it won't come to the front. Alt-Tab does not work either - the thing that is weird is that it happens at random times, it's not consistent.
At first I thought it was in the power settings or the lock screen, but that proved incorrect. I have uninstalled and re-installed the touchpad drivers a couple of times but nothing is helping. If anybody has any suggestions, I am all ears...

[photon]

Ugh, I hate feeling like I'm in a constant battle with my OS. I wanted to install an app from the store to monitor my printer, and I had to read carefully otherwise it would have changed my entire Windows sign-in from a local account to a Microsoft one. Just from trying to sign in for one app.

Windows 10 is nice, but really if there was any alternative I'd have switched, they used to be just mildly annoying but understandable, now they're outright obnoxious.

[Azure]

So what is the easiest way to do a complete new reinstall of Windows 10 if I don't have any disks? I just did an update on my laptop and it isn't working as good as it could be. I've read that if you do a brand new install of Windows 10 will work much better.

[photon]

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/soft...load/windows10

Just get the media creation tool, you can download it and put it on a USB stick and boot and install from that (assuming your laptop can boot from a USB which it should). It'll get the updated version which lets you install with the key from the previous version of Windows.

[Fuzz]

TorqueDog, whatever the details are of how it happens, the fact that it happens unexpectedly and without being agreed to purposefully is a major problem. When everyone is pissed off about it happening to their computers, you can be pretty sure they didn't purposefully agree to it.

MS conditioned everyone to click the red X to close the annoying window for months and months. Then they changed the behaviour of that. That is 100% on them. And to actually do the update without a final "do you want to upgrade now" message? Really bad form.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

TorqueDog, whatever the details are of how it happens, the fact that it happens unexpectedly and without being agreed to purposefully is a major problem. When everyone is pissed off about it happening to their computers, you can be pretty sure they didn't purposefully agree to it.

MS conditioned everyone to click the red X to close the annoying window for months and months. Then they changed the behaviour of that. That is 100% on them. And to actually do the update without a final "do you want to upgrade now" message? Really bad form.

First off, knowing the details are paramount if you want to understand and subsequently fix the problem.

Secondly, what you've said is incorrect. The behavior never changed. If the window already shows a time and date, the update is already scheduled. It's not asking "Do you want it?", you've already said you do -- either by clicking the Reserve my copy button or Start download, upgrade later or whatever.

If the window says "Upgrade now" or "Start download, upgrade later", then one of two things is going on:
1. You have not opted in. Thus, clicking the red X will act as a 'I don't want the update' button.
2. You have opted in, but the download has not completed. You'll know if this is the case by the presence of the $WINDOWS.~BT folder on the C drive, and the progress indicator of the download in the Windows Update screen. Clicking the red X will not abort this, because the update is not being downloaded by GWX.

Example screen:


Imagine you're a user who did want the update, and then clicked the red X to dismiss the window without making changes to the schedule -- essentially confirming that whatever date was picked is fine by them. It would be counter-intuitive if clicking that red X cancelled the scheduled update. Read the window: It says "Click here to change upgrade schedule or cancel scheduled upgrade".

GWX, upon your accepting the upgrade either by saying you want to "Reserve your copy", "Upgrade now", or "Start download, upgrade later" makes one important change to the registry:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Win dowsUpdate\OSUpgrade
AllowOSUpgrade DWORD set to 1

That little bit allows WU to download Windows 10. And that bit does not get flipped without the user opening the GWX window and choosing to download or upgrade. Period. Run ProcMon and see for yourself. Clicking the red X without opting-in does not make the registry change needed.

The narrative being pushed by tech blogs is FUD. Anyone can verify this for themselves, and in fact I'm surprised that they haven't. The upgrade simply does not opt-in by itself.

[Fuzz]

Just going to have to disagree with you then. If people are being upgraded, many many people, there are stories everywhere, my wife included, and when she put on Facebook, others said it happened to them as well....None of these people asked for or wanted the upgrade. Yet it happened unexpectedly. This tells me that somewhere they were either tricked into agreeing, or MS did it without their permission. Either way it is NOT what the user wanted, and they should have been given a CHOICE before the upgrade. Poping up a window every day where the options change(and they have changed, 3 times) and changing the behaviour of the window while users have become accustomed to dismissing the GD thing and just want it to go awa is not my idea of good design.

I run a network on a domain and I blocked it in group policy last year. You know what happened about a month ago? The nag software showed up on all the domain machines. So I then had to block it with a registry edit and another policy, just to be sure. That's F'n bullcrap and MS can stuff it if they think this is a good idea.

The CLEARLY have an agenda here, and thew more they force it, the less I want to be apart of it. Do you, by chance work for Microsoft?

[spetch]

So is it even worth upgrading too on my home gaming rig? I have it on my gaming laptop and all I get is driver problems cause kernel crashes and resulting screen reboots.

[Mike F]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Just going to have to disagree with you then. If people are being upgraded, many many people, there are stories everywhere, my wife included, and when she put on Facebook, others said it happened to them as well....None of these people asked for or wanted the upgrade. Yet it happened unexpectedly. This tells me that somewhere they were either tricked into agreeing, or MS did it without their permission.

.....

Or they clicked something in a dialogue box without reading it or understanding it. You cannot seriously believe every computer user takes the time to fully inform themselves about every choice they make when operating an OS.

[Fuzz]

What happens is that if you have "recommended updates" turned on the dialoug box changed, and instead of offering the update, and closing the box would not agree to it, it then TOLD the user when the update would occur, and closing the box agreed to that. When users are conditioned to close the damn box every day, I see this as an underhanded manoeuvre.

It would be like, if you lock your house every day, all your life, then the bank changed your locks to lock automatically so when you lock your door, it actually unlocks it. But they told you in a document that looked like junk mail.

[Fuzz]

Oh, and in response to TorqueDog's assertion that if you do absolutely nothing that you won't get upgrade, this article explains why that is wrong:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/30734...upgrading.html
and is exactly why so many users are getting upgraded while not explicitly agreeing to it.

[cam_wmh]

An agenda? How far away, until M$ starts monthly subscription costs for their OS?

[TorqueDog]

The PCWorld article repeats something I already explained. If you are already being presented a time and date, the upgrade has been agreed to and scheduled. Clicking the red X is to dismiss what is an informational window. It is not asking you "Yes" or "No", it is saying "Here's what's going to happen, click to change the upgrade schedule or cancel, or you can just do it now".

If you get a window without a time or date, then either you opted-in and it's still downloading (check for the $Windows.~BT folder) or you haven't opted-in.


The required registry key that enables WU to download the Upgrade, as shown above, does not change on its own. The GWX application changes is upon acceptance of a) a reservation of Windows 10, b) a click of the 'Upgrade now' button, or c) the 'Start download, upgrade later' button.

If you already did one of those three things, you will be presented with a time and date for your upgrade to occur, and you need to cancel by clicking on the "Click here to change upgrade schedule or cancel scheduled upgrade".

Again, you're more than welcome to see how the app works for yourself. Boot a VM, run ProcMon and try it if you think I'm wrong. It takes ~15 minutes to set up the VM, and you can leave it running as long as you want. If you don't tell it you want Windows 10, you'll never be upgraded. I've been running this test since March. The VM has run 24/7, only restarting when my machine restarts or updates itself with a new Insider build, and it's set to automatically power on at boot. Updates are automatic, automatic recommended updates are turned on. It still runs Windows 7.

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

The required registry key that enables WU to download the Upgrade, as shown above, does not change on its own. The GWX application changes is upon acceptance of a) a reservation of Windows 10, b) a click of the 'Upgrade now' button, or c) the 'Start download, upgrade later' button.

This is my issue with it...for my wife's laptop, we reserved Windows 10, but have been hesistant to upgrade it. Nowhere along the way did we assume it would automatically want to change from simply reserving to scheduling it as an update to run with no further input from us. She has been faithfully clicking X on every pop up from the GWX application for months, and I've been watching the web to see how the update has gone for various people compatibility wise.

I'm still not convinced I want to deal with upgrading her 6 year old laptop and the resulting fallout if some of her laptop specific drivers aren't working nicely (specifically relating to the touch sensitive menu bar and subwoofer on that particular version of the Dell XPS laptop that you can see here), and it was only by luck that I happened to catch the pop up myself this time and see it had indeed scheduled an update. Knowing what I did from this thread, I knew to cancel the scheduled upgrade.

There's still some time to mull it over, but I'm leaning towards leaving her laptop on Windows 7. For reference, my desktop has been running Windows 10 just fine and I love it.

[jammies]

I'm all for blaming Microsoft as much as the next guy, but user error is even more likely, and thus I'll go with that.

[Fuzz]

Did you miss this part?

Earlier this year, however, Microsoft pushed the Windows 10 download out as a Recommended update. That means anybody using the default Windows Update setting—as you should be!—automatically received the installation bits and a prompt to install the new OS, which again could only be refused by exiting via the X in the corner of the pop-up’s window.

Which has been my experience watching it. Do you have updates set to recomended? I'm also not convinced a VM proves anything other than at this moment, you are experiencing that behaviour. MS changed it so frequently over the last year you can't really replicate all the changes.

[psicodude]

Not to sound like a jerk or anything, but welcome to technology in 2016. I understand why some people would rather stick with an older OS, but the fact of the matter is that huge tech companies like MS, Apple, Google, Samsung, etc. are tired of supporting 5+ year old operating systems. I am certain that some of it has to do with pushing new features in the hopes of driving sales, but a lot of it has to do with security updates and moving consumers to a better product overall. MS has a compelling product with Windows 10 and they know most people will benefit from upgrading.

I get that MS has pulled some shady tricks here, but I don't see how they are much worse than Apple or Google. You may claim that you can stay on iOS 7 forever, but the fact is that most apps won't work with it anymore. In effect, Apple is forcing you to upgrade and nags you on a daily basis. Heck, my TV upgrades itself every few months and a bunch of stuff changes. I suppose I could block the updates somehow, but how long until the Netflix app quites working?

Forcing consumers to upgrade isn't a bad thing, IMO. Technology is moving at unprecedented speeds and endpoint devices have to keep up. It's not always feasible to constantly patch the OS and, I would assume, becomes more expensive to support as the years drag on. Microsoft's somewhat unique challenge is, and always has been, creating a seamless upgrade process that supports millions of combinations of hardware. I think they have done a better job at this than the past, but it's still far from perfect.

Edit: I should add that MS definitely has an agenda here: Windows 10 is tightly integrated with several of their big revenue generating services such as Office365 and their new universal apps. They have learned from their competition that attracting and keeping customers in your ecosystem is where the real money's at. Quite frankly, the MS ecosystem on Windows 7 or 8 is pretty weak. but there is a ton of potential with Windows 10. Forcing consumers to upgrade is just short term pain for long term gain.

[Wormius]

I can appreciate some of this, but business users do not like forced upgrades. It's extremely disruptive. The other thing is with Apple and Android, people are aware that there are updates available and what the new features are, and in general people are clamoring to get the newest flavour of iOS or Android. This wasn't going on with Windows 10. I can understand after the flop of Windows 8, those people would want windows 10. But those users with Windows 7 are pretty content with the operating system they have.

I guess that is maybe a defining traits about Windows users is expecting stability. Especially, especially the business users and we live in an age where people know if there is an update available and can make an educated assessment of whether they want to upgrade to a newer version of the OS or not. That's fine if MS doesn't want to support Windows 95/XP/7. It happens to lots of software over the years. It just seems like an odd ploy by MS and in an era where people are becoming more protective of their privacy and security, the optics don't look good.

[Fuzz]

When you buy an Apple or Android device, you know it comes with updates an sometimes new OS's. When we all bought and payed for Windows 7, that's what we expected. There was no expectation that MS would force an update to a new OS stuffed with ads and tracking. By forcing the update, they are in effect stealing what we bought and giving us back what some of us consider a lesser OS. And because they DO have an agenda(as you point out), and it sure as #### isn't to the benefit of the consumer, that's why people are angry.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Did you miss this part?

[insert stuff I already addressed]

Which has been my experience watching it. Do you have updates set to recomended? I'm also not convinced a VM proves anything other than at this moment, you are experiencing that behaviour. MS changed it so frequently over the last year you can't really replicate all the changes.

Did you miss this part?

I ran a little experiment to test the veracity of claims that simply opening the GWX dialog and closing it without any further interaction would result in a download or an upgrade taking place. I have a Windows 7 Pro retail guest on Hyper-V (Home Premium and Pro SKUs are eligible, Enterprise is not). It is fully updated, opted-in for recommended updates, and I have the GWX icon showing on it. The GWX dialog displays "Microsoft recommends upgrading to Windows 10". It has been running since... I think early April 2016, maybe even March. It has not been upgraded. I have opened GWX, I've read some of the informational panes, and then closed it with the red X. No upgrade has been scheduled or performed, and the machine runs 24/7.

This is a very simple piece of software (or, pieces as it is comprised of a few different EXEs that handle different pieces of the opt-in experience) designed largely to get user permission to flip a some registry keys, the single most important of them being the AllowOSUpgrade DWORD from 0 to 1.

The Windows Update service simply will not download the upgrade bits without that registry change, and the only thing that will change it is as I described above. Dismissing the window with a red X when opt-in has not occurred does not opt you in. Conversely, dismissing the informational window notifying you of your upgrade time/date schedule does not cancel the upgrade. That would be like clicking the red X while Windows Update is downloading hotfixes to dismiss it and it cancels your updates.

You say you run a network with a domain, how much experience do you actually have with end users? In my early days, I chased more than my fair share of red herrings because I took user issue reports at face value, failing to realize that people lie; either unintentionally, or because they don't want to be held responsible for what they did. Some users simply don't see the connection from the first action they performed having an impact on the result, and thus it isn't relevant to the issue, so why mention it? Some people genuinely don't remember. Others know they did something and who wants to get into trouble? I get it, I understand it, but that doesn't change reality, and that's why digging into and repro-ing issues is important. Understanding the conditions under which something will happen is handy when you have to work backward from "this happened" to "user did this".

Originally Posted by Fuzz

When you buy an Apple or Android device, you know it comes with updates an sometimes new OS's. When we all bought and payed for Windows 7, that's what we expected. There was no expectation that MS would force an update to a new OS stuffed with ads and tracking. By forcing the update, they are in effect stealing what we bought and giving us back what some of us consider a lesser OS. And because they DO have an agenda(as you point out), and it sure as #### isn't to the benefit of the consumer, that's why people are angry.

There's no expectation that anyone would force an upgrade, and no one is forcing the upgrade. The process is opt-in. It actually has to be.