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Comment by ShinyCyril | Hacker News Reader

There's been a huge shitstorm on Reddit about Windows 7 / 8 forcing an automatic upgrade to Windows 10 [1] [2] [3] [4], with many accounts of people going away to do something and coming back to find their PCs had updated to Windows 10 without their permission. However I've not been able to find any stories on this from reliable sources. All I've found so far is a forum post on CNET and a submission on Slashdot [5] [6].

Does anyone know what's actually going on with this?

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/4a5edx/psa_window...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/4a7bkp/psa_micros...

[3] https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4a0asv/warning_w...

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/4a59p4/psa_wi...

[5] http://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/forced-to-upgrade-fro...

[6] https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/03/12/1634229/windows-10-...

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Which is odd, because it doesn't install without permission.

Even if you can't see how to avoid installing it (ie you can't read or miss the small type that says "Click here to change upgrade schedule or cancel scheduled upgrade") then you can simply decline the EULA.

However, the level of technical expertise on reddit is noticeably lower than reddit users think, so it may be a much more common problem: PEBCAK ;-)

It appears that this patch was bumped from recommended to important and ended up getting automatically installed. Even SME networks running WSUS were affected if they are configured to allow important patches by default.

Got four auto-updated PCs here at home that qualify for the upgrade and it hasn't happened to any of them.

And given Microsoft's reliance on people accepting its EULA, I'm pretty sure it would not deliberately bypass that....

Otherwise, Microsoft stated that it wouldn't upgrade PCs updated via WSUS, so I'd be interested to see concrete evidence, because that would clearly be a mistake. Not to mention wrong.

Folks over in /r/sysadmin has been complaining for about a week. My understanding if that the upgrade will actually go through unless GPO explicitly prevents the upgrade[0]. And the EULA dialogue will only appear AFTER the installation is complete[1].

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/49nyhl/get_window...

[1]: https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4a0asv/warning_w...

> the EULA dialogue will only appear AFTER the installation is complete

This is true, and it's a waste of time, and it creates unnecessary risk. However, if you decline the EULA, it does roll back to your old OS. I've done this several times and it has worked perfectly so far.

It absolutely shouldn't be happening, but real sysadmins have the means to stop it from happening.

I had windows 7 set to ask permission before installing updates. This morning it downloaded an update and without warning it shut down all my software and tried to restart to install it. I was able to cancel the restart but now I have a nag window that only lets me put off the restart for 4 hours.

This is a work machine and I am absolutely livid. I can't use windows 10 to do the work I need to do, and any time I spend on this is time I am not able to earn my living. As far as I'm concerned Microsoft is trying to steal my legally purchased copy of windows 7 from me.

Quick fix: open a command prompt as admin (Ctrl+Shift+Enter) and type:

net stop "windows update"

That will stop it until you reboot....

After that, uninstall KB3035583 (choose to reboot later when prompted), then run the Disk Clean up tool and select the Clean up system files after the initial scan. Select the Temporary installation files for deletion. Longer version: http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/prevent-windows-10-upgrad...

If you are up to editing the registry via regedit, the key is:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate DWORD value: DisableOSUpgrade = 1

See: How to manage Windows 10 notification and upgrade options https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351

OK, Ed Bott of ZDNet has posted a couple of reg files, DisableOSUpgrade.reg and DisableGWX.reg. Download them, double-click them, and they will change the registry for you.

See: How to block Windows 10 upgrades on your business network (and at home, too) http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-block-windows-10-upgrade...

The two small text files are at https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=!APe8Z7RJNVNc0uM&id=FEA7E...

Came back to my win7 machine to a dialog saying that Windows 10 will automatically update for me in 3.5 hours. There was no actual cancel button, only try again later.

To be honest, when I first saw the win10 update dialog I thought it was malware. The tray icon and the dialogs are stored after windows 8 so they don't look right.

Whatever is going on, you can stop it from happening. Please get the word out about GWX Control Panel!

http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

You can turn off all updates, delete the pre-downloaded update cache, kill the tray notifications, etc. - works wonderfully on several machines I tested!

Source code?

Not my project, but it works. No idea if source is available.

There's no need to install any 3rd party software. Microsoft themselves provide the switch to disable upgrades to Windows 10:

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

(and you can also simply not install/uninstall KB3035583 aka GWX)

With all due respect to this official microsoft solution, it's a huge pain in the complicated ass for casual users to follow. GWX Control panel is just click, click, done - something you can tell your grandma to do.

Unfortunately, it looks like that same tool could make it a bit too easy to disable Windows Updates altogether, which is not a good idea.

I'd rather endure some pain with going through the registry route, but apply a fix that addresses only one particular behavior.

MS isn't respecting the update settings I choose allready. I no longer trust any of the so called "solutions" they are offering.

Edit: in my particular case I tracked it down to a third party install that was forcing a windows update, so it wasn't directly an issue with MS in this case.

There is also a registry fix that I came across recently.. even simpler.

Share please!

You can also turn all outgoing connections off by default in the windows firewall, then whitelist the couple of programs that actually need to access the internet.

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