Microsoft Issues Windows 10 Upgrade Warning | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Issues Windows 10 Upgrade Warning

forbes.com

30 pointsFrye52 comments

I'm always impressed by people's creative ability to put a negative spin on almost anything. Particularly to generate hate-clicks.

In this case they're implementing Seamless Updates, which should substantially reduce downtime and improve roll-backs during update installation (a major complaint) but instead of focusing on the benefit, they focus on the disk space loss.

The reason it takes up space on Windows, Android, and Chrome OS is that the reserved area holds a chunk of the operating system which is updated in the background before restart. When a restart occurs, the reserved and active slices are swapped (and reversion can be rapidly conducted for failures/roll-backs).

This is a nice quality of life improvement for a common complaint.

I can go to microsoft.com right now and buy -- not from some third party OEM, mind you, but designed and sold by Microsoft themselves -- a Surface device with a grand total of 64GB of storage. In the context of that device, giving up 7GB means losing more than 10% of the advertised storage space. Which is kind of a lot.

To add to this: the OS already takes up 10-20gb so now it can take close 30gb or nearly half of your hard drive, before you even open the box.

it's a nice quality of life improvement unless you're running low on space. 7+ gb is a lot, especially on embedded devices with low soldered storage - like microsoft's own products! coincidentally instead of offering upgradeable internal storage they upsell really hard on the models with more storage in their surface lineup

if anything, this should be a toggle- if only an opt-out toggle.

fwiw, you can install a linux system including an entire graphical stack with web browser and mail client in that space, twice.

This is also going to be a major pain on my Windows VM's. I often only give those ~32 GB of storage to begin with, since they're only for a tiny handful of programs.

I'm assuming there will be a group policy setting I can change, though, since I'm lucky enough to have Windows 10 Pro...

> fwiw, you can install a linux system including an entire graphical stack with web browser and mail client in that space, twice.

I think you could fit quite a few raspberry pi's with GUI environments into 7g.

The OEM and MS alliance has been going for some time now. MS promises HW push, and the OEM promise to sell hardware only with Windows. I am surprised they didn't round it up to 10G.

> if anything, this should be a toggle- if only an opt-out toggle.

I agree, but that doesn't help sell PC's.

ZFS snapshots would reduce the space requirements.

I'd rather have them display an error message the next time I log in if I didn't have enough space. Otherwise I'm giving up a chunk of disk space that will be unused 99% of the time.

Considering that the Surface tablets don't have that much space to begin with, that's a bit of a sacrifice. I also wonder how they will handle this in Azure VMs running Windows, VMs running on developer laptops, etc.

Had they approached the update issue with more care, people would have been more lenient.

I can't answer this because the most likely location for the answer [1] is locked behind a beta program access or something, but where do they plan on taking the reserved storage from? I assume they're not going to try to repartition the drive? It sounds like they're just using filesystem features to carve it out of an existing partition, but I'd like to be sure. My laptop is currently dual-boot, but if Microsoft starts blindly mucking with partition tables it's gonna go single-boot Linux right quick. (I expect it's not that, but I'd like to be sure.)

As long as they're staying out of the partition table, this sounds like a good idea to me, honestly.

[1]: https://insider.windows.com/en-us/ih/?contentid=2762bf7a-bef...

I have no clue either but my guess is that they will just use a sys file like hibernate or pagefile. Most people will never see it and those of us that peek at hidden, system files once in a while will most likely not be able to mess with it easily due to permissions.

At least I would hope they would do something like that, I agree a method which messed with partitions would be a complete show stopper!

Interesting... Microsoft is forcing everyone to update their machines for quite some time... I've noticed that MS is forcing updates on my machine about a year ago and out of frustration I asked about it on this forum four months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18029216) Please try it. Go to Computer Management/Services and Applications/Services and then stop and disable Windows Updates. It's a matter of days before it will be back and running again. My next machine is going to be Apple.

I presume the first thing you'll do on your next Apple machine is disabling updates.

Don't forget to also disable auto-updates in Chrome/Firefox, since they are enabled by default.

I think the gripe was less about auto-updates than the fact that the OS allegedly un-set OP's attempt at opting out.

Forgetting certain settings is annoying. Forgetting that I want to manually control when my computer downloads gigs of data to apply a patch that- in recent times especially- may very well brick my system... well, I can certainly understand where OP's frustration comes in.

Even at one of my jobs a few years back (which was about 50/45/5 apple / windows / linux shop) we were cautioned against applying major updates from apple within the first month or so of their releases given past issues.

I wouldn't call disabling the Windows Update service as "setting an option" that it's later forgotten. It's more of a thing an inexperienced user does by mistake while messing around. Windows does things behind you back, like magically restore system files if you manage to delete them, and so on, in an effort to keep running. But of course, some people are like "I deleted those files on purpose, so stay the damn out of my lawn"

But I do get your point, and Windows is indeed lacking an option to fully disable updates, even if it does have an option to defer major updates by up to an year.

I definitely understand the reasoning behind automatic updates, especially when it comes to keeping up with security patches.

Some rare times, some of us need finer grained control over these things, though, and it probably shouldn't be called "disable" if the OS will re-enable it at will, without notification.

It's one thing to protect the user from themselves, and another thing altogether to lie to them. It's (generally) the latter that will get people upset.

Windows also collects what pirated software you run and - on buisness success sells you out to the vendor of said software. Guess the crack did not work..

Not that I don’t believe you, but I’m gonna need a citation for that

Apple has the grace not to force a reboot on you in the middle of games, presentations, movies, etc.

Yep, they basically keep your asking once in a while “are you ready?” and let you dismiss it as much as you want until finally you click “yeah, go ahead”.

Pro: they ask

Con: they ask

Still, “how about tonight?” Is preferable to “right now, conference call be damned “

You can go into your storage listing and delete the update from there. Then it won’t nag you anymore

I don't mind it nagging me once a day, I appreciate updates. I just want to do it at my own pace.

The reason I disable Windows updates is because it eats up A LOT of computing power. When you notice that few minutes after turning on your laptop fans are working like crazy for 30, 40 minutes, you know there is something wrong. It's better to just remember to update your system once a month and manually turn on and off the update option. But now you can't even do that. The moment I hear fans are working like crazy I know that Windows somehow overwrought my setting and the 'updates' are running in the background. Cheers!

I don't understand why the updates take up so much space -- 7GB according to the article.

It seems like the old "set your pagefile manually so you never have to worry about it growing/shrinking" trick from Windows of yore - they are grabbing that much so that they don't have to grab more at any time. It's basically a promise that, while those 7 GB are the systems now, you'll never have a problem where you run out of storage space due to an update (assuming after they reserve the initial 7 GB).

It's not a warning - this only affects new PCs shipped with the latest version, not upgraders.

"at this time"

Exactly. Running Windows now is like playing roulette. How will this feature work in a month, "no idea". How will I change this option in the UI, "no idea". Will this option I set for important privacy setting stick after the latest (automatic) upgrade, "no idea. Ad infinitum. :/

It's like using a Google product.

Yep, and the effect of having this happen on a mass scale across all major providers/players in the software/IT field is that humanity is collectively left spinning it's wheels aimlessly (literally million of years in lost real time) instead of going from a to b using a set of tools.

If our cars behaved in similar ways (the gearstick is sometimes in one place sometimes in another and the way the wheel works changes at random while the glove compartment could at any one time be found in a new surprising location) we would see the results instantly but because computing is predominantly desk bound the loss incurred is in many ways silent.

One thing that interests me: How does a Windows 10 install + 7gb reserved space compare with a current Windows 7 install in terms of disk usage? I thought Windows 7 was "fatter" than 10?

I'm fine with this. Android basically works the same way and I don't see anyone complaining about that.

I'm complaining. Android "System" takes up 13GB on my phone. That's too damn much!

Linux has the exact same feature, and has had it since approximately forever. By default, 5% of the disk space on any system partition is reserved for use by the superuser after the main 95% portion is filled up. And system updates run with superuser privileges, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Differences:

- It's configurable.

- The space is reserved for the end user, not the OS manufacturer.

Introducing the Update Prevention Tool.. Continously writting into reserved storage to prevent updates.. in 3.. 2... 1

I am glad that Windows is an opt-out of updates. We all know the majority of people never update anything. Personally I opt out and manually update my systems but most people just need it to happen.

When I set up Windows to encode a video overnight, and I wake up the next morning and the encode isn't finished because Windows decided to restart in the middle, I'm not happy. This basically means I can't use Windows to encode videos, period. (And no, setting Active Hours doesn't work, because the whole point is I want the videos to get encoded when I'm not active!)

The same applies to downloading large files, etc. I realize that updates are important, but it's even more important that I can actually rely on my computer.

You get a notification when Windows plans on restarting somewhere in the future. I just click on it and manually set the restart date 1 week in the future. That's it.

I'm also leaving the computer on for weeks and never had an unexpected reboot with this protocol.

This doesn't work if it's been a while since I last booted into my Windows partition. Windows immediately decides I'm past the point where I can defer. It does show a notification immediately beforehand, but if I'm asleep that isn't useful.

You can disable the Reboot task present under Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Windows > UpdateOrchestrator in the Task Scheduler app

I haven't had a Windows 10 computer just randomly reboot and I work with about 30 PCs.

Respectfully, if you're using the PC's for work I'm guessing they don't get turned off (or stay in alternate OS's) for extended periods.

I'll take a look at task scheduler, thanks.

I see it in my family and loved ones - while it's unfortunate that sometimes windows decides it really needs to restart RIGHT NOW, the fact that it's doing that is the only reason the PC is getting updated at all - they never turn them off and they never update on their own. There should absolutely be options for those of us who know enough to make the choice, but sometimes taking choice away seems like the better option.

Who cares if they never update? Chances are it isn't some critical vulnerability that gets them infected with the garbage software and malware you end up having to deal with anyway.

Put me firmly in the camp against removing control from the person sitting at the computer.

Tell that to the person who got his personal files flushed automagically by a Windows update.

Were they initially pushing that October update, or were those manual requests for update?

Pushing, without changing settings you got it.

Ah, ok. So did that radically affect how many people got it or just the demographic? I'm wondering who received the update before they pulled it vs who would have received it in a opt in environment.

Auto updates only work well when they don't break stuff, and don't cause random reboots.

Microsoft has a pretty bad track record with their updates breaking stuff and causing data loss. I don't trust them anymore.

Unless you buy Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 2016 Server, you can't opt-out.

To disable the Reboot task present under Task Scheduler Library > Microsoft > Windows > UpdateOrchestrator in the Task Scheduler app

Am I wrong that this is an option for all Windows 10 Editions?

For Enterprise/Server you set

[disable] Configure Automatic Updates

or if you really care

[enable] Do not connect to any Windows Update Internet locations

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