Windows 11 Users Herded Toward 23H2 Via Automatic Upgrade - Slashdot

Posted by msmash

• Engage "do not update" brakes until the guinea pigs have flown.

• Joke (Score:5, Insightful)

  by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Thursday February 22, 2024 @12:32PM (#64260304) Journal

  This forced upgrade for "eligible" systems is a joke. There is no legitimate reason for it. All this will do is force tens of thousands more tons of e-waste into landfills as people chuck perfectly good systems because they've been conditioned to be afraid their machines will collapse if they're not on the latest and greatest pile of shit coming from Microsoft.

  I laugh every time I see a movie with people using computers which just work without them being incessantly harassed with ads or notifications or, in the current case, having an "upgrade" forced down their throat.

  At this point any time Microsoft says they will no longer support five year old equipment they should be required to properly dispose of the user's equipment, at their own expense. Since they claim it's theirs to do with as they want, they should be the ones to clean up the mess.

  • Re:

    Why would someone throw out a perfectly good computer just because the latest shovelware from redmond won't run on it? I mean just stick with 10, or even 7. there is no real reason to """"upgrade""" to 11 other than some dick from redmond says so.
    oh no, they won't get a cunty half baked "AI" copilot to annoy them, how will they ever manage?

    what a joke.

    • 1 hidden comment

    • Re:

      Cue a billion "security" theater specialists screaming bloody murder about killing babies because only the latest bugfixes are safe from clicking that stupid invoice from the company you never did business with.

      • Re:

        Yeah, you can't really fix stupid. as long as MS allows the user to interact with the computer, someone will find a way to exploit that for financial gain.

      • Re:

        Oh, cute. It's one of "you". You know, the delusional chuckledinks who love to pretend that haxors, etc, are fake news. Speaking as someone who has to deal with your infested garbage spewing spam, playing host to botnets and pretty much everything else out there.... get an urgent grasp on reality. We really don't need you or whatever minsicule molehill you've decided to die on.

    • Re:

      This might even create a market for the older hardware, if that's the only way you can prevent being upgraded....

    • Re:

      > Why would someone throw out a perfectly good computer just because the latest shovelware from redmond won't run on it? I mean just stick with 10, or even 7.

      Chormium no longer supports anything older than Win10. Chromium is used in lots of third party software, not just web browsers, so viable alternatives are not immediately obvious if they exist at all.

      If your favorite software - or worse, software that your business relies on - stops supporting your current OS, and the new required OS doesn't support

  • Re:

    MS isn't requiring new hardware for this OS update. At least not according to The Reg anyway.

    I'm currently running preview builds on a desktop from 2019 if that tells you anything.

  • Re:

    Forget about properly disposing equipment. How about unsupported software is no longer protected by copyright and becomes public domain. Unsupported hardware loses all patents. The purpose of copyright and patents is to enrich society and compensate the inventor not to preserve the revenue stream of the holder.

    • Re:

      Except in this case you're literally proposing 100% of all software become public domain. Few if any developers support outdated releases. It makes perfect sense to say you should be on the most recent version to expect support since that version is the one the support systems are built for and often have fixes in place for various problems on earlier versions.

• One thing I had trouble extracting from the summary, is just what negative impact there will be for some users having to take in this update.

  I am personally also against updates you cannot block, but it would be nice to know why a person who had been updated might be upset, or potential issues that could occur so those of us who help others with computer issues know what kinds of problems to look out for.

  • Re:

    Point to the latest Microsoft Windows Update that did NOT create a massive backlash in the userbase. Excuse me while I don't hold my breath waiting.

    They'll flip user preferences to defaults everywhere they can. They'll "upgrade" bits of included software to be less usable and more "have you tried whizbang report-home version?" They'll essentially shit all over the user experience because that's what they want to do, and tell you it's for your own good. Anybody not expecting that, or worse, expecting positiv

  • Re:

    I updated a while ago to that version. None of my settings were reverted, but the stupid screen asking if you want the shit settings back to default or if you wanted to keep using what you had set came up on the first start after the update.

    The only major gripe I have so far is that for the last few months some icons on the taskbar just go transparent until you focus and minimize them when using full screen applications or switching between virtual desktops. Including Microsofts own applications. Shit has b

  • Re:

    Windows 11 is a lot worse than Windows 10 at handling headphones, from what I've seen. You plug some in and instead of just working, some apps don't get the memo and sometimes the system doesn't figure out that you did anything at all.

  • Re:

    Nothing, I updated to it a while ago on my gaming machine, works just the same as 22h2 with the few added bells and whistle that I turned off (Co-pilot, Dynamic Lighting).

• If I lock down my PC but Microsoft manages to install updates despite my wishes, are they guilty of hacking into my computer and can I collect damages?
  • 1 hidden comment

  • Re:

    Depends on country. In the UK, it may constitute a violation of the Computer Misuse Act, especially if something stops working as a result (ie: actual damage to operations).

  • Re:

    I don't know. Read the EULA. Hint hint.
• I'll continue to say: “Windows is not for professionals”, and “Windows is for people who pretend to do work, Linux is for people who have to do work.”
  
  There is no defendable reason why you would have to commit a massive update, that is system breaking, automatically without user consent. I don't care if the update fixes 20 pages of CVE's, there is no reason to automatically commit a massive automatic system breaking update. If users want to update, that's one thing, but forcing it

  • Re:

    My work computer got bitlockered today by an errant W11 update.

    Meanwhile all my personal Linux boxes are running smoothly. Illustrates the issue in the clearest way possible, and why MSFT ultimately loses all business from those who know enough to do something about it.

    • 1 hidden comment

    • Re:

      Yep, had that happen a few times, luckily I figured out that by using our AAD as my login, I get the key backed up for me. Something I shouldn't have to ever worry about.

    • • Re:

        None of my Funtoo systems get an update unless I specifically apply it. That's the difference.

    • Re:

      Bitlocker means full disk encryption and TPM. You can get it to work on Linux, but it isn't fun and even a minor update can get you 'bitlockered' out of your computer. Oh, and no decent tooling whatsoever from the systemd folks on it.

  • Re:

    I'm as appalled by the forced updates as you, but I would point out, this is the home user/power user versions. The 'Get Work Done' version remains the LTSC Enterprise edition (there's no Win11 version yet, just 10). This allows more control over telemetry and updates. Win11 LTSC should be coming out later this year... of course, it won't fix all the problems, all the horrendous UI-ruining choices will remain, which is enough to keep me away from it. 10 Enterprise LTSC gets security patches through 2032 at

  • Re:

    There is no reason except greed, incompetence and disdain for the customer to have system-breaking updates at all. You would think that after almost 50 years, MS knows how to do updates. Not so. Windows is indeed not for anybody that is a real professional. I use it for gaming (too lazy to configure it on Linux) and where I am forced to (MS Office) and that is it. At this time, Linux is a lot easier to administrate and keep alive than the MS crap. Obviously, it is also massively more reliable and secure.

• Do they have an automated fix yet for this patch? NO. You can do it manually

• Makes sense. Since Microsoft _still_ has not found out after frigging 48 years how to do reliable and robust updates and are still _routinely_ breaking user systems, nobody but sheep would be willing to install their "updated" sight unseen. Contrast that with my Debian and Gentoo systems where I have had one minor Problem in 20 years with automatic updates every 3 days (Debian) and zero in 3 years with the same (Gentoo). Oh, and on Gentoo they warn you not to do this. Still works a hell of a lot better than

  • Re:

    100%.

    A little over 5 years ago, when it came time to build a new desktop machine, the number of hours/days lost to recovering broken VMs, lost files, jacked up drivers, etc., due to Microsoft updates was the deciding factor in making the move to Linux. I chose Mint because I wanted simple install experience and a familiar GUI layout. I haven't regretted it once. I run Windows (various versions) in VMs if I need to for software development, but the host is Linux.

    That worked out so well that, when a Window

• And here I am on my Linux Mint desktop workstation congratulating myself once again on my move to the Linux world SPECIFICALLY because Microsoft's updates kept screwing up my work environment.

• "Windows 11 users still clinging to the past".. snort:|

• You can evade this upgrade, as I found out by chance. I dual boot Debian and Windows, and the original Windows I had was 10 and I installed it with Secure Boot disabled and kept it that way. I later upgraded via Windows Update to 11 and that worked fine. However I noticed that I could not get recent updates. They would download but always fail to install. I went into the BIOS and enabled Secure Boot and then I was able to update to the newest version of 11 via a downloaded ISO image, and now the PC upg

• When Microsoft EOSs a Win 11 feature set (as they promised they'd do every two years and as they've done for Win11 21h2), all security patches stop. Anyone still running Win11 21h2 has been running unpatched for five months. Microsoft even offers patches for unactivated licenses, so forcing the latest feature upgrade on EOLed feature sets is closing a big security hole.

  Now the lack of security patches still will remain on the (unqualified) machines that had forced a Win 11 upgrade to 21h2. Using registry

• ...around these here parts. Edgelords and knuckle-draggers everywhere.

• I was reading through posts looking for somebody saying that "this is the last straw, I'm switching to Linux!" But all I found was one post from somebody who is already on Linux. Where is the outrage?

• The summary doesn't really talk about what problem is present in 23H2 that is worthy of grave concern.

  In general, it's a good security practice to stay updated. If you don't like Windows updates, you probably shouldn't be on Windows in the first place.

• Windows runs software many businesses require so it's not going away any time soon, but if you want backup against updates you did not desire (and a near-instant way to restore to a previous state) snapshotting a VM is easy even for casual techie users.

  Linux makes a fine host for most OS one might care to emulate. I keep Windows confined to offline VMs only allowed online as needed. That's worked for many years.

  Gaming PCs that need bare metal can be reimaged to a clean state easily enough.