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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Strangely nobody has ever caught this on video. Just a handful of anonymous people claiming "I totally didn't hit the wrong button in the UI!!"

Now, sure, I'd agree it should be harder to accidentally upgrade your PC. In particular for layman users. But I am generally skeptical that this is any more than just user error until proven otherwise.

I have a Windows 7 PC I use regularly, I too get the upgrade prompts, but it hasn't upgraded itself just as one counterpoint.

Someone needs to catch this on video.

PS - I flagged this article on purpose because I don't consider a random Reddit thread to be a legitimate source.

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No, it's forced. I came home from work and there was pop-up window which I thought was the usual nag screen. It said my Windows 10 download was ready.

Except this one had a count down timer at around 54 minutes left. There was also an option "I need more time...".

I X'd the box closed and went on thinking whatever.

54 minutes later, in the middle of typing an email, the system auto rebooted and "Configuring Update for Wndows 10" screen came up.

I took pictures of it with my cell which are kind of blurry because it's hard to have a steady hand during a good WTH rage.

If that's the dialog I think it is, there should be a cancel button that would then roll back the update. Takes a good long while, and is BS of course, but would land you back where you were.

Of course, they seem to be iterating on the update dialogs. I'm not saying it's to get past those avoiding the update, but it's probably to get past those avoiding the update.

Assuming you are there to respond to the dialog.... if you aren't, then the timer will go off and it will be too late.

That happened to me. I was pushing the update a week away each time it prompted me. But at one prompt I was out in the city.

When I arrived home, the computer was rebooted and upgraded to Windows 10...

The curious thing is that I have Bitlocker on all drives, including the system one, and it asks for the password on boot. Somehow they got over that (probably temporarily saved the key somewhere).

Perhaps typing the email caused you to hit space bar or the return key while the popup install windows 10 prompt was active? I've had this happen with regular reboot messages from windows updates.

> PS - I flagged this article on purpose because I don't consider a random Reddit thread to be a legitimate source.

You should be flagged here then, not because you don't trust Reddit but because you haven't checked any other sources, including these linked in the comments here, long before you posted your comment!

It's documented by Microsoft:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351

"How to manage the Windows 10 upgrade

Automatic scenarios

The Windows 10 upgrade is automatically blocked (that is, no further action is required) on computers or other devices in the following scenarios: .."

Note: no further action is required to stop computer to being upgraded only on Enterprise!

"Non-automatic scenarios

You can manage the Windows 10 upgrade by using any of the following methods."

Managing here means -- you can read slowly the whole article -- the ability to disable automatic upgrade! No action taken -- upgrade happens. Even if you have hidden the previous update! You have to enter the proper new registry entry or group policy:

"administrators who want to prevent Windows 7, Windows 7 for Embedded Systems, Windows 8.1, and Windows Embedded 8.1 Pro clients from upgrading should enable the policy settings that are discussed in this article."

It's not that "no click" is needed, it's that the people who do that click don't have any idea what is going to happen, e.g. they are not the "qualified administrators" of their own computers. Like most of the people who let other people installing them software. Now it's just something like:

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Win10....

Dark pattern par excellence.

Hard to believe but true.

I don't know if this was changed for the external release, but when Windows 10 was rolled out internally to employees at Microsoft, a significant fraction (but not all) employees weren't notified and had their machines reboot without warning. This happened in the middle of the workday and caused a lot of employees to lose half a day, and that's in the happy case where nothing went wrong with the install.

> I flagged this article on purpose because I don't consider a random Reddit thread to be a legitimate source.

Maybe you also won't consider a random HN thread to be a legitimate source, but if you ask MS employees you're sure to find some who were either hit by this or know someone who was hit by this.

Are employees at Microsoft using Windows Update or WSUS? That anecdote doesn't make sense because enterprise users have a completely different update pipeline with completely different controls (i.e. an administrator using WSUS can purposely force an update installation).

Just to be clear are you or are you not claiming to be a Microsoft employee?

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3043526/microsoft-windows/m...

It's a mainstream journalist so mileage might vary quite highly, but probably a little more trustworthy than a Reddit thread. At first they talk about the Reddit thread but then say they caught it on their own box.

I highly doubt that the people on Reddit and HN are just making this up. It's not like an "Automatic Update" is that remarkable of a claim. Forbes[1] a few days ago and others recently wrote about this very issue. So far it seems like a pretty real problem. Sucks it's messing with so many. :/

[1]http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/09/12/microsoft...

Dark patterns http://darkpatterns.org

"I clicked 'update security' and it gave me Windows 10!"

Microsoft did bundle the IE banner upgrade advertiser with security updates recently, and that was uncool/unacceptable.

But I've never seen an update security button that actually INSTALLS Windows 10, and that is specifically what this complaint is about, the upgrade starting on its own.

As I said if there is a bug that causes upgrades to occur without permission then people need to provide production steps. If there isn't a bug and Microsoft is doing it on purpose then why is it only impacting so few people? And how can we exclude user error?

there's a distinction between user error and forced-on-purpose

that's what I was getting at.

For example, if there was some UI which says.

"Get the Newest most Secure version of Windows (Download Now)"

with some fine print which says you will be installing windows 10 as part of the security upgrade

would that be considered 'user error' or user-hostile-design?

The IE security upgrade with the Windows 10 ads went out in the same push that seems to have turned on more aggressive auto-upgrade behaviour, so lots of people -- including media -- are conflating the two.

I wonder how many people are going to disable future security updates thanks to the media coverage?

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