OT: Windows 10 - stop upgrade

[Jeff Barnes]

Anyone wishing to stop Windows 10 from automatically installing can use this nice little utility from Gibson Research:

https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

It is small, does not need to be installed and works quickly.
It will also give you the option to remove the installation files (if they were downloaded).

[TimStone]

I am puzzled by the desire to stop Windows 10 upgrades. I have Win 10 on all of my devices / computers, and have assisted friends, family, and clients to get to Windows 10.

In normal operations I find people have little, or no, problems with Windows 10. The negatives I read about it are with people using highly modified hardware. They complain about issues they have, but the same people complain about the sunshine on a beautiful day, and rainfall in the middle of a severe drought.

Windows 10 may have problems but they are resolved quickly, and on normal machines, it will work great. The problems are addressed and resolved. Microsoft wants the world on Windows 10 because it will be much easier to support one OS than many different versions. Right now the upgrade is FREE. Blocking it for yourself, or a client, means when they "see the light" and want to do the upgrade, they will have to pay $200 USD for it.

Before blocking it, I would suggest people do their own research and not rely on other's opinions. I've worked with every OS since CP/M and DOS ( early 1980's ) and I think this is the best package ever produced to run normal personal and business computers.

[Jeff Barnes]

Hi Tim,

I wasn't posting an opinion, just a utility for anyone who wishes to stop Windows 10 from installing.

In my situation, I deal with specialized medical equipment. A lot of medical equipment is not tested or supported to run on Windows 10.
We have had many customers that received the upgrade and the medical software no longer functions.

There may be others out there with the same type of situation. Just sharing

[Randal]

Tim:

From what I understand people are angry by the way MS has pushed the upgrade on them. The upgrade notice window that appears has a very small link you can barley read you have to click to not install the upgrade. But the reason people are mad is because if they click the red X in the upper right hand corner to close the window MS interprets that as an affirmation you want the upgrade and proceeds with the upgrade, thereby changing the normal windows behavior. Kind of sneaky and underhanded.

Randal

[TimStone]

Randal,

I don't think anything is sneaky or underhanded. I've spent a lot of time in detailed conversations with MSFT, and have been a tester of every version since the beginning, including Win 10 on phone, tablet, and desktop. A lot of people will be furious when they realize the negative commenters have cost them a lot of money when they suddenly decide they want the features of Win 10 and can no longer get it for free. The trolls have been complaining that the updates were too hard, and too difficult to find and begin, so Microsoft heard that and made it easy / semi-automatic and now the same people complain the update is being pushed out. Soon they will complain that Win 7 support has ended. These people are NEVER happy and make everyone aware of their dissatisfaction.

Jeff,

Microsoft has actually shown that very old software works fine in Windows 10. When I hear a company has not certified their software for 10, it tells me they are not working in the best interests of their clients. In the past, many of these companies substituted their own .dll's for Windows .dll's, and the modifications created problems. Many of us work hard to stay compatible with the latest OS because that means our clients will continue to benefit into the future. So we use what is available. FWH users know that Antonio works hard to encourage and support the latest OS. That is why many of us now build with Harbour / MSVC 2015, and FWH 16.04. The focus is on providing the best capabilities to our clients through our work. However, many of those big money companies enjoy their luxurious profits, and do not invest in newer technology. It amazes me how many still use Visual Basic 6 for their work. That is a very old system, but it's paid for and they do not reinvest in newer technology.

I'm off on my soapbox ... but it is OT. I'm just an old guy very tired of all the complainers who frequent the MSFT related forums. It is different here ... this is a group of hard working people who focus on helping each other. I'm just sharing in case some here have not fully evaluated the comments they may have seen elsewhere.

[cnavarro]

Jeff
Thank you for your contribution

Tim
I totally agree

[Antonio Linares]

very good contribution, thanks

[James Bott]

Tim,

I can think of two good reasons you might not want to update to Win 10.

1) As a developer, you may have a test PC that you need to keep an older version of Windows on so you can test under the same conditions as a customer.

2) My main computer is a laptop and whenever it comes out of sleep mode, or hibernation mode, or boots up, it looses all the touchpad settings. It then takes about 8-10 mouse clicks to reset the touchpad. For me anyhow, the computer is totally unusable when the touchpad is set to the defaults (the cursor jumps all over and the screen zooms out and in). Granted this may be a driver issue or a Windows 10 issue, or both. But there are many days when I wish I hadn't upgraded to Win 10 just because of all this aggravation. The touchpad settings worked fine under Windows 8.

Ops, it just happened to me again, and I had to reset the touchpad settings. The entire screen just vanished because I accidentally touched the touchpad.

And yes, I have spent hours and hours looking for a solution to no avail . Many others are having this same problem.

James

[TimStone]

James,

What type of computer ? In the days of Win 8, I found a Gateway notebook that seemed to be great. However, there was a significant issue with the touch pad. I contacted Gateway and they were disinterested in resolving it. ( It would have been a simple fix ). I even went to the CEO who sent me back to the same disinterested tech support person who gloated about it. I sent the computer back to Amazon. They didn't charge me a restocking fee. Instead, the attitude of Acer / Gateway so irritated them, they pulled the listing completely off their site and likely shipped their entire stock back to Gateway.

The problem was very simple. When allowing the screen background to run in slideshow mode ( which changes the image once every 3 hours ), the touchpad only worked for the left half of the screen. Gateway's position was "don't activate that feature in Windows".

I've seen very similar responses from Samsung on their products. In fact, my AIO desktop did poorly when going from Win 7 to 8, then improved a bit in 8.1. It works beautifully with 10 and is my Fast Track Insider machine for testing. As Microsoft pushed out 10, they were able to push Samsung to update drivers on older machines.

Your problem is likely an issue with a lazy or disinterested manufacturer. I would suggest an email to the Microsoft CEO explaining the problem. That is not overkill. It gets assigned to a very competent person in that office who gets the right fix for you by putting you in touch with a person who actually will handle the problem and get it fixed. Likely they will need to go to the manufacturer and push for the correct drivers.

My Surface Book and Surface 3 have absolutely no problems with touch pads, and I've also upgraded numerous notebooks for others and not one has touchpad issues.

Tim

[James Bott]

Tim,

I have about a year old HP laptop with a Synaptics touchpad. It worked great until I upgraded to Win 10. I like Win 10, but this touchpad issue is a constant irritant.

I upgraded to Win 10 about 6 months ago. The touchpad driver has an option to disable the touchpad whenever a USB mouse is connected--but it has no effect. My only other option is to disable the driver, but it gets re-enabled upon returning from sleep, hibernate or rebooting.

There was an automatic driver update just last week, but it didn't fix the problem.

I cannot find anywhere to report this to Microsoft or Synaptics. It seems Synaptics has no provision for customer support, I assume they want you to contact the hardware vendor. Sure, then HP just has to go to Synaptics. There are lots of others with HP & Synaptics having the same problem (according to various internet forums). Microsoft seems to only have phone support and I don't care to wait on hold for a hour just to report a problem.

Of course, this could be a Windows issue, a driver issue, a hardware issue, a software conflict issue, or ? And yes, it might not directly be a Win 10 issue at all, but I didn't have it until after I upgraded.

James

[James Bott]

Jeff,

It just occurred to me that I hijacked your message thread (unintentionally). My apologies.

Tim,

We should discuss this further offline.

James

[TimStone]

I will email you a path to try ...

[Rick Lipkin]

To All

Probably going to be a moot point .. the free Windows 10 upgrades officially will end July 29, 2016.

Rick Lipkin

[Antonio Linares]

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-draws-flak-for-pushing-windows-10-on-pc-users/

[norberto]

Hi, Microsoft change options to update, or decline :

http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/28/12049 ... ion-change
or
http://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-changi ... -feedback/

Regards