Windows 10: updates will be mandatory

The article says for "home users" so does that mean higher grades like a Pro version will have some level of user control? I've seen automatic updates that broke Windows 7 and they led to multiple reformats, which was a huge pain ( I still have automatic updates turned off ).
 
Wow, that title is some serious clickbait... Some clarifications:
  • Only Windows 10 Home edition(s) are subject to mandatory updates. Windows 10 Pro lets the user opt-out.
  • This policy does not apply to mandatory driver updates, you can opt-out of those on both Home and Pro.
 
They won't be able to force jack shit for anything they want to use in a corporate environment.
 
Corporate users should be using Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise, neither of which are subject to mandatory updates...

So yeah, corporate users don't have anything to worry about here.
 
odditory said:
Corporate users don't have anything to worry about because most of them will remain safely on Windows 7.
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Corporate entities seem to skip a generation of Windows. They stuck with Windows 2000 for a long time only replacing Windows NT because it was so long in the tooth. Windows XP was popular, but Windows 2000 lasted well beyond what it should have. Windows XP was again only used so heavily due to the sheer amount of time it remained the dominant OS on the market. Corporations skipped Windows Vista and embraced Windows 7. They skipped Windows 8/8.1 and they'll probably embrace Windows 10 to some degree. It will be awhile before we see significant market penetration as corporations tend to have long validation procedures and deployment strategies but I think they will get there.

Companies had strong reasons not to embrace Windows 8.x. I think Windows 10 will be a worthy successor to Windows 7 in the corporate world. Of course as development cycles seem to be shrinking for Microsoft we may not see anything corporate wise until Windows 11.
 
This makes my life easier, as a software developer, so I'm for it. Most people don't keep their Windows properly up to date so forcing them will make my life a bit easier. No more "error" reports because the user hasn't installed a Windows patch.
 
Quix said:
This makes my life easier, as a software developer, so I'm for it. Most people don't keep their Windows properly up to date so forcing them will make my life a bit easier. No more "error" reports because the user hasn't installed a Windows patch.
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The problem with mandatory updates is they can bone you and your system real fast if an update doesn't work right. So while I am OK with a default behavior of always keeping shit up to date for Joe Average I want the ability to turn that crap off. Your average user doesn't typically have productivity software and extensive hardware / software validations to concerns themselves with.
 
from an admin prompt after boot:
net stop wsusservice

or

go to the services management panel and set windows update service startup type to disabled

or

block the windows update servers in hosts or on the router

or

something else i can't think of right now

There should be multiple ways to stop WU if the user really wants to wait or patch manually.

Most people should leave it on, but automatic update is so annoying when MS assumes it can just force reboot in the middle of anything the user is doing. Big deal that all apps reopen. It kills downloads sometimes and otherwise interrupts usage. People will continue complaining about that.
 
This is just for home editions. I'm on the fence, I'd hope a GPEdit is possible for those that really don't want them. Otherwise, I agree that it should be harder to disable (hence GPEdit). The whole point is allowing the OS to have exploits patched quickly.

I'm sure it'll still be possible to block them via HOSTS modifications. Or other methods (services, as pxc mentioned).

pxc said:
Most people should leave it on, but automatic update is so annoying when MS assumes it can just force reboot in the middle of anything the user is doing. Big deal that all apps reopen. It kills downloads sometimes and otherwise interrupts usage. People will continue complaining about that.
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That was my biggest issue. I can't tell you how many ragequits (not literally) I've had because Win8 decided it's had enough of me postponing while I'm in the middle of Photoshop graphic work or coding something. On top of that, giving the only option to "Reboot & Install Updates" also pissed me off. Sometimes I needed a quick reboot and didn't have time for it to diddley daddle around.

GPEdit fixed both of those for me in Win8. So far, haven't needed it in Win10. It's set to 3am patch and has stuck to it.

There should be an option to delay patches to X time after they release (ie: don't install until 7 days past release date), just in case they get recalled.
 
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pxc said:
Automatic update is so annoying when MS assumes it can just force reboot in the middle of anything the user is doing. Big deal that all apps reopen. It kills downloads sometimes and otherwise interrupts usage. People will continue complaining about that.
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Microsoft has put a lot of thought into updates. Specifically, trying to get users to reboot the computer themselves in a graceful manner, and giving them plenty of time to do it after being notified. There's a 3-day grace period (with plenty of user notification), for crying out loud...

Edit: process flow redacted until i can 100% confirm the process.
 
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Unknown-One said:
Microsoft has put a lot of thought into updates.
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That's good to know! The best it could do is annoy people who for whatever reasons do not wish to reboot on Microsoft's schedule, unlike the option in all its prior OSs (at least 7 and earlier)! I always wanted a desktop OS with the most annoying feature of Fire OS. #drippingwithsarcasm

Like other Windows 8.x annoyances, and likely to still work in 10, the unwanted forced reboot behavior can be worked around in a potentially bad way: net stop "windows update"
 
Unknown-One said:
Wow, that title is some serious clickbait... Some clarifications:
  • Only Windows 10 Home edition(s) are subject to mandatory updates. Windows 10 Pro lets the user opt-out.
  • This policy does not apply to mandatory driver updates, you can opt-out of those on both Home and Pro.
Click to expand...

Pro users can postpone the updates by what was it, two months? Before they are automatically pushed in. Of course you always have the option to block microsoft servers in the firewall :)
 
this is awful...I like to wait 2 weeks or so to install the monthly updates to make sure there are no major issues...there's been a lot of broken updates over the past year and now MS wants to force people to install these right away??
 
polonyc2 said:
this is awful...I like to wait 2 weeks or so to install the monthly updates to make sure there are no major issues...there's been a lot of broken updates over the past year and now MS wants to force people to install these right away??
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Home users get instant updates because they serve as the beta testers for the corporate users. Simple.
 
From the sounds of it only Enterprise editions can prevent them from installing indefinitely. Everyone else just gets a different time delay before it forcefully updates. I don't mind since I always install them (even the bad ones no problems), but I get the choice factor is kind of lame. Seems MS wants to keep going down the road of taking more and more choices away from people.

Real question: are they addressing the update process even more than 7/8 with only restarting when absolutely necessary? Even now half the restarts are BS ones. Also whether that stupid time limited force restart pop up goes away. No idea why they ever gave someone a choice for 4 hours and forcing you to constantly postpone it. Although it was funny to play a game or skype with someone and the machine randomly restarted lol.
 
B00nie said:
Home users get instant updates because they serve as the beta testers for the corporate users. Simple.
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Insider Preview users are the canaries, but that pool of users is likely to shrink so much that Home users effectively do become patch beta testers. That's not much different than it works now.
 
pxc said:
That's good to know! The best it could do is annoy people who for whatever reasons do not wish to reboot on Microsoft's schedule, unlike the option in all its prior OSs (at least 7 and earlier)! I always wanted a desktop OS with the most annoying feature of Fire OS. #drippingwithsarcasm
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They give you a LOT of time to plan around a single reboot. I fail to see the problem here...
 
Unknown-One said:
They give you a LOT of time to plan around a single reboot. I fail to see the problem here...
Click to expand...

Thats not the problem. The problem is the announcement pops you off your game to the desktop just when it shouldn't.
 
Disable Windows Update Service. Man that was hard. Amazes me people don't know simple things about PCs anymore :/
 
Bowman15 said:
That's just plain stupid...
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Ya having control of when to apply updates vs forcing them on people. That's just plain stupid.

I have had Windows update disabled since forever.. It's a useless running background service that downloads and sometimes installs shit. I enable it when I want to update.. Then disable it when its done.
 
Dion said:
Ya having control of when to apply updates vs forcing them on people. That's just plain stupid.

I have had Windows update disabled since forever.. It's a useless running background service that downloads and sometimes installs shit. I enable it when I want to update.. Then disable it when its done.
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Should have said that in your "stupid" post...
 
Liger88 said:
From the sounds of it only Enterprise editions can prevent them from installing indefinitely. Everyone else just gets a different time delay before it forcefully updates.
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I wanted to see what the options are for Pro. Ars posted this yesterday:

Windows 10 Pro users will have a little flexibility; they'll be able to switch from the mainstream release to the Current Branch for Business (CBB). This will give some control over when updates are deployed. While the CBB will essentially track the consumer release, it will allow feature updates to be held back for some amount of time; Anderson quotes a Microsoft executive saying that companies will have around eight months to prepare for each new feature update. Delay the feature update any further and they'll also be prevented from receiving security updates.
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Someone would never have to update Windows 10 Pro if they don't want to. It will just keep Windows from getting security updates if the user chooses not to install *feature* updates. lol
 
Dion said:
Maybe read all the other post next time. Or even the topic :/
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Yeah...sorry I couldn't read you mind. Disabling Windows updates is a stupid idea period. You could easily forget to re-enable them and most people should install them anyway for security reasons alone.
 
If Microsoft is going to force this on home users, then I really hope that they improve their testing of updates. They had to revoke way too many last year (at one point, it seemed like they were pulling one or two every month) to be forcing mandatory updates.
 
On the one hand, fuck MS for this kind of bullshit. It's *my* computer, fuck off.

On the other hand, this is kind of awesome. a) For home users who are the dumbasses and get infected and infect others, this will be great. b) For software vendors who's software breaks because of this, it will also be great; it will force them to fix their shit and do their job right or folks will stop buying their shit.
 
I just hope that they give some indication about how long the updates will take when a reboot happens. Being able to delay the reboot is great, but sometimes it's difficult to know when to reboot if there is an unknown variable of having to wait 10+ minutes for extra update stuff to occur during the reboot. Many times I've simply rebooted right away, because with an SSD many systems reboot in like 30 seconds or less - then I end up twiddling my thumbs while the updates finish up their BS.
 
I'm using Wndows as a glorified Xbox anyway so I can well just disable the windows update. I can nuke the install at any time anyway and have Steam download the games again if something catches on. All internet banking etc. sensitive stuff is done either on linux or osx.
 
pxc said:
Someone would never have to update Windows 10 Pro if they don't want to. It will just keep Windows from getting security updates if the user chooses not to install *feature* updates. lol
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Yeah it'll be interesting how it plays out because essentially it enables the MS marketing department to trojan new "features" in under the guise of security. MS doesn't ever want a XP/7 scenario where it's customers that have the control and power over feature adoption.

"Well you want to be secure and up to date don't you? Hello Bing Bar. OH you disabled Cortana, let's just re-enable her while we install this important Cortana security update. We understand some users found a powershell command to uninstall Cortana and the App Store, let's go ahead and securely remove that option for security purposes. Oh we see you switched your default search away from Bing? That's fine but we have to perform a security update and will need to change it back. There now you're secure. Doesn't that feel better?"
 
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DPI said:
Yeah it'll be interesting how it plays out because essentially it enables the MS marketing department to trojan new "features" in under the guise of security. MS doesn't ever want a XP/7 scenario where it's customers that have the control and power over feature adoption.

"Well you want to be secure and up to date don't you? Hello Bing Bar. OH you disabled Cortana, let's just re-enable her while we install this important Cortana security update. We understand some users found a powershell command to uninstall Cortana and the App Store, let's go ahead and securely remove that option for security purposes. Oh we see you switched your default search away from Bing? That's fine but we have to perform a security update and will need to change it back. There now you're secure. Doesn't that feel better?"
Click to expand...

That's my biggest fear in this mess. Feature updates that can't be disabled. After the fiasco of Win8/8.1, where users gave MS a big middle finger over their UI changes, now all MS has to do is make changes like that mandatory. Not loving that thought... :(
 
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