Bloke Sues Microsoft: Give Me $600M, or My Copy of Windows 7 Back

or pay more than a half a billion in damages from a default judgment.
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If only lawsuits happened that way... "give me what I want in 30 days or default judgement means you own me money!"
 
Sycraft said:
Well, I can see why people are skeptical. I mean I've heard of it happening... but I've never seen it and I'm an IT/IA guy for a pretty large organization. I've seen the claims online of "It just suddenly upgraded, I did nothing!" but in the several thousand systems I manage/interact with (which includes lots of non-enterprise BYOD shit) I've never encountered it so I'm skeptical. In all cases where it seemed to "just happen" upon further investigation the user admitted they had clicked yes on something without reading it.
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MS stealthily went through many different iterations of the GWX nagware/trojan. So what you personally may or may not have experienced wasn't necessarily the same for others. Thus "it didn't happen to me" is irrelevant.

Sycraft said:
This guy in particular needs to be told to fuck off. I mean even lets say it happened without him clicking... ok so you didn't go and revert it? You can do that, and I'd figure if you were so mad about it you'd look up what could be done, and find out that reverting was an option. Further, you didn't take any legal action until now, a year or two later? Your laptop was unusable for at least a year and only now you act? Remember that the upgrade program stopped in July 2016.
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No, Microsoft needs to be told to fuck off. Again, he didn't ask for Microsoft to start screwing with his installation of Windows. It was completely unsolicited. Just because Microsoft botched Windows 8 and then tried to rebrand 8.2 as Windows 10 with a whole bunch of mobile crapware in tow, did not create in Windows 7 users any obligation to just accept it. Meaning, Windows 7 installations being overwritten with 10 either through unsolicited auto-installation in some cases, or trickery and deception (red X).

Bottom line, Windows 10 was not critical to the security, stability or or operation of this guy's or anyone's Windows 7 PC. I don't know how that's so difficult for some people to grasp, or where the victim blaming comes from.
 
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I had Win10 bork a Surface Pro 3 during an upgrade from Win8.1, resulting in it requiring a full recovery install. People on here saying, "I have never seen that happen", need to realize, a Win10 upgrade install, can and does, sometimes bork systems to the point of requiring a clean install of the old OS.

The lawsuit and the amount are likely about bringing attention to MS's rather aggressive tactics when it comes to getting people to upgrade to Win10, and not getting a half billion in damages.
 
Archaea said:
Windows 10 doesn’t work with the Alienware m11x because there’s no video driver for the switching function between Onboard and Nvidia 335
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My HP was the same, no driver worked for switching between the low power and performance GPU, so was stuck with the low power GPU which made the laptop not very good to use for anything requiring video, ie facebook, youtube, etc..
 
Vader1975 said:
1 it doesn’t upgrade itself. 2 the usb installer is downloadable. 3 Windows 10 making a laptop nonfunctional? Or did he just not download a few drivers. I find everything about this fishy.
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Actually yes, there were many reported cases where MS did auto upgrade people's Windows 7 to 10 and then claimed it was nothing when it was a bug in their Win 10 updater prompt crap/
 
DPI said:
Whether or not the guy had all his data backed up is irrelevant, victim-blaming BS. Microsoft deployed a malware-like update system that installed a different version of Windows without solicitation or even user intervention in some cases (they stumbled through many different versions of it, that''s why reports about its behavior varied).

When the guy originally agreed to Windows 7's EULA, it did not grant Microsoft the right to just reinstall a different version of windows without permission whenever they felt like it.
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If true then you're correct and Microsoft should take the blame and fix it. But he could be lying and manually upgraded to Windows 10, and now blames Microsoft for a botched Win10 install, due to previous malware, file corruption, etc. already on his PC before the upgrade happened. Getting sue happy for $600 million makes the guy seem like a scammer or he's just a nutcase.

I would have taken the PC to a local computer repair shop or freelancer rather than make a big deal over it.
 
tetris42 said:
It certainly HAS in the past. I've seen it happen to a friend's computer, where it was literally running Windows 7 in the morning, we were gone for the day, when we came back, 10 had installed. Now I'm sure you'll find something to say he agreed to in it his scheduler at some point, but he's really not the type to do that, he tends to run a pretty tight ship on his system. That was a couple years ago though. I suspect MS doesn't push out all updates equally, to let a certain portion test the waters for them and get feedback before deploying them to the entire userbase.
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nope Forgetting you clicked a little box that popped up is not Windows upgrading itself.
Yes people don't read what the system says. Yes people are trained to click past things. Yes they clicked upgrade.
 
dark_reign said:
If true then you're correct and Microsoft should take the blame and fix it. But he could be lying and manually upgraded to Windows 10, and now blames Microsoft for a botched Win10 install, due to previous malware, file corruption, etc. already on his PC before the upgrade happened. Getting sue happy for $600 million makes the guy seem like a scammer or he's just a nutcase.

I would have taken the PC to a local computer repair shop or freelancer rather than make a big deal over it.
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Yeah, fuck that noise. I wouldn't pay to fix damage cause by someone else. Lawsuits are fine, MS is always free to settle.

Also, this guy doesn't seem like a nutcase at all. It seems like all he really wants is his PC restored after their bullshit automated and unapproved upgrade. His demands summed up are:
1) Just fix my shit and make it right. Realistically this would be a pretty minimal cost for them.
2) If you aren't going to do the right thing then I'm going to try to fuck you over hard.
 
Vader1975 said:
nope Forgetting you clicked a little box that popped up is not Windows upgrading itself.
Yes people don't read what the system says. Yes people are trained to click past things. Yes they clicked upgrade.
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Again, Win 10 had several updates that DID IN FACT auto upgrade your system, it was all over the news!
 
SticKx911 said:
Because taking responsibility is not the american way. Sue for EVERYTHING. Lol

Kidding aside, even if this was lawsuit worthy....600m? Really. That’s absurd. Should have went with something in the few thousand range and possibly gotten a “we don’t have time for this” payout.
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Digitize every record... and the second some law firm realizes they can use AI to basically determine every case the legal system might start making sense.

Until then, we graduate millions of lawyers per year under massive debt, and they have to pay for it somehow.
 
Mine auto updated and I was explicitly trying to prevent it... Went to work with Windows 8.1 and came home to Windows 10.. I was super pissed because it was on my htpc and I was using media Center..
 
Vader1975 said:
nope Forgetting you clicked a little box that popped up is not Windows upgrading itself.
Yes people don't read what the system says. Yes people are trained to click past things. Yes they clicked upgrade.
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Wrong... I disabled that shit every chance I got and it still did it.. I already had read the goddamn news at that point.

Only took about 20 minutes to fix though.
 
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I had to install GWX control panel to prevent the constant nagging and shadow download of the Win10 "upgrade" files on the two machines I do not want to "upgrade". It was too easy for someone to accidentally upgrade. Updates still occasionally bring the nag screens back and I have to run GWX configuration again to get rid of it.
 
Araxie said:
damn, that can't be right, even my mom old HP DV6000 which it's a piece of shit from 2006 work flawlessly with windows 10. in fact it works better than win7 even with generic windows drivers as it doesn't have windows 10 drivers..

that laptop came with Windows Vista then was upgraded to windows 7 and then straight jump to 10, never a single issue despite how old it is.
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obviously if it worked on this one single laptop it should work on every computer ever built, right?
 
Friends wife called me this morning. She tried to do a win 10 upgrade and now has no os found.

Over 500 miles, obviously can't remote in. Told her don't go to best buy.
 
Elf_Boy said:
Friends wife called me this morning. She tried to do a win 10 upgrade and now has no os found.

Over 500 miles, obviously can't remote in. Told her don't go to best buy.
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fixing computers is like fixing cars...don't tell anybody you know how to do it or they will assume you are their personal mechanic/pc repair person and on call 24/7 with no other obligations in life and you only work for free.
 
Stoly said:
I have a couple of Pentium4 Dell Optiplex GX620 running windows 10 32Bit with 2GB of ram.
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Sounds painful :p

I did upgrade several old Dell D830 laptops I had at the office to Windows 10 (2.0 dual core, 4 GB ram, NVidia video), and gave them out free to employees.
Little slow, but they ran noticeably faster on 10 than on Windows 7 and where perfectly useable for basic email/web.
 
hlfbkd420 said:
Mine auto updated and I was explicitly trying to prevent it... Went to work with Windows 8.1 and came home to Windows 10.. I was super pissed because it was on my htpc and I was using media Center..
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Sorry, but it didn't upgrade on it's own. You (or someone else) must have clicked something to accept the upgrade.
Of course Microsoft tried various ways to trick people into accepting the upgrade, so even if you though your where clicking not to upgrade, at least one of their tricks worked.
 
nutzo said:
Sorry, but it didn't upgrade on it's own. You (or someone else) must have clicked something to accept the upgrade.
Of course Microsoft tried various ways to trick people into accepting the upgrade, so even if you though your where clicking not to upgrade, at least one of their tricks worked.
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I don't think you understand English... No one clicked the button. Live in denial... But you really should unglue your lips from Microsoft's ass.

Unless..... It was you that did it...
 
nutzo said:
Sorry, but it didn't upgrade on it's own. You (or someone else) must have clicked something to accept the upgrade.
Of course Microsoft tried various ways to trick people into accepting the upgrade, so even if you though your where clicking not to upgrade, at least one of their tricks worked.
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You really do not get it do you,it was in the news a hundred times over about Windows 10 auto installing and was even proven by several tech sites to happen, get it through your thick skull.
 
nutzo said:
Sorry, but it didn't upgrade on it's own. You (or someone else) must have clicked something to accept the upgrade.
Of course Microsoft tried various ways to trick people into accepting the upgrade, so even if you though your where clicking not to upgrade, at least one of their tricks worked.
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So, "You must have done or said something to get yourself raped".

The bottom line is many people woke up one morning to a different version of Windows that they either never asked for, or didn't realize they were agreeing to when they CLICKED A RED X - but regardless, did not want.

"But they could just roll back" - no, actually a lot of non technical users didn't know how, because the option was buried, and MS designed it that way. And many people that did try to roll back ended up with a non-bootable, corrupted Windows that had to be reinstalled from scratch because the rollback process was buggy.

It's ponderous that there are still people victim blaming and arguing this, even after Microsoft already admitted to doing all of this intentionally and deceptively.
 
M76 said:
I hope you're not suggesting that I'm incompetent or not telling the truth.

No, my Lenovo z575 came with such hardware modifications that it only works with the AMD catalyst driver supplied and modified by them. I couldn't even install official AMD drivers because the computer would just freeze on boot. There was a method of hacking the official drivers to not crash, but that only worked until AMD decided to abandon the catalyst line of drivers. So yes, there is no proper windows 10 AMD driver for that particular hardware configuration. And since ASUS also built some dodgy laptops back in the day Windows 10 breaking the computer this way is not at all implausible to me.
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my z51 refused to load amd direct drivers then i did something and suddenly it worked and i could install any amd drivers not sure what happened to clear the lock from my laptop... try formatting...


Bottom line is all i would give him is a for dummies direction set for downgrading.
 
MrGuvernment said:
You really do not get it do you,it was in the news a hundred times over about Windows 10 auto installing and was even proven by several tech sites to happen, get it through your thick skull.
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And if you think about it, what's worse and more brazen - auto-install, or the fact they actually focus grouped the GWX popup so the programmers could optimize tricking loyal windows users so they wouldn't, and eventually, couldn't opt out?

If they'd auto-installed alone, they could have at least clung to a "unintended bug that only affected a small number of users" defense, and there might have remained a lingering doubt that a few people believed. But they erased all doubt when they admitted to continually tweaking the GWX nagware throughout its waves of deployments, to become increasingly more deceptive and inescapable. Beyond a certain point there was literally no way to opt out of WIndows 10 installing if you weren't technical enough to kill the GWX process in task manager and run a third party tool to remove KB3035583 -- and THEN be aware enough to keep checking the internet for which new KB update they disguised and reissued GWX with. They did this a number of times.
 
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DPI said:
And if you think about it, what's worse and more brazen - auto-install, or the fact they actually focus grouped the GWX popup so the programmers could better optimize how to trick people and not let them opt out?

With auto-install they could at least cling to a "unintended bug" defense, and there might have remained a lingering doubt that it was actually true. But they erased all doubt when they admitted to continually tweaking the GWX nagware throughout its active deployment to become increasingly more deceptive and inescapable - beyond a certain point there was literally no way to opt out of the WIndows 10 install without killing the GWX process in task manager and running a third party tool to remove it.
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but the reality is windows 10 is functional it does not make it non functional and if it does it removes itself every time i tried on a pc that was not having it...
 
Exavior said:
and why didn't he just roll back to windows 7? I had a machine that i upgraded, then found that it didn't support a program i needed so rolled it back without any issue.
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Roll backs and even upgrades tend to leave an OS in a shit state, well thats my experience with them.

I have never had an upgrade or downgrade that didnt cause me problems, so I avoid them at all costs and install whatever OS on a clean hdd instead.
 
Archaea said:
Windows 10 doesn’t work with the Alienware m11x because there’s no video driver for the switching function between Onboard and Nvidia 335
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Some functions were dodgy on windows 7 already with the hacked drivers. Hybrid crossfire didn't work for example. but it was still better than running on drivers from 2012.
 
nutzo said:
Sorry, but it didn't upgrade on it's own. You (or someone else) must have clicked something to accept the upgrade.
Of course Microsoft tried various ways to trick people into accepting the upgrade, so even if you though your where clicking not to upgrade, at least one of their tricks worked.
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My wife clicked the "red x" which apparently means "upgprade me!" rather than "close dialogue box".

The next day we found her desktop in a infinite reboot loop. Trying the rollback produced the same issue.

Rather than spend hours re-installing the OS on a Q8200, I picked her up an I5-3570 from Ebay for $94. Add SSD, reinstall on that. She's still on Win7, and no plans to upgrade...

For her laptop we bought her a mac.
 
jojo69 said:
FFS, the MS suckup denial in here is making me ill.

Did they not live through the same MONTHS of dodging the tricks weekly that the rest of us did?

Thank god for never10.
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It is a shame we had to download 3rd party software to keep Windows from nagging us to death.
Then there is killing the telemetry updates they pushed out to for Win7, but that is an whole other thread.
 
Microsoft should be afraid -- very afraid. They've messed with Dickman.

Wonder what symbol is on that cape? :facepalm:
 
I'm sure that Microsoft will simply point to the paragraph in the Windows terms and conditions that allow them to do this and shield them from any sort of legal action. Probably something like.

"Microsoft reserves the right to modify your operating system in any way and for any reason without your consent."
 
NeoNemesis said:
I'm sure that Microsoft will simply point to the paragraph in the Windows terms and conditions that allow them to do this and shield them from any sort of legal action. Probably something like.

"Microsoft reserves the right to modify your operating system in any way and for any reason without your consent."
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Pray they don’t alter the deal further.

Microsoft is Darth Vader. Makes total sense.
 
DPI said:
Thank you. The myopic "guess he just wants to get rich" posts are missing the big picture here. No he doesn't want a bunch of money. The only way to get a monolithic megacorp like MS to take notice or change their behavior is the threat of a jury deciding against said megacorp and awarding plaintiff a scary enough sum of money.

Microsoft hasn't been held accountable for the entire GWX debacle and "red X" upgradegate - where they fooled unsuspecting users into installing 10 by changing the functionality of the red X button in to ACCEPTING the update, making it literally impossible to opt out of the update and/or having the prompt never reappear. Total bullshit.

MS's director of marketing offering a half-hearted "apology" after GWX/Red-X had already done its damage, "Well I guess we went too far and we shouldn't have" doesn't get them off the hook. They resorted to malware/trojan tactics to spread Windows 10 to unsuspecting users, then actually congratulated themselves for how "users love 10 and are flocking to it!" I'm amazed its taken until now for there to be a significant suit brought against them for all their bullshit.
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Amen. Unfortunately one guy suing in this way isn't quite what I'd hoped for. I've been praying for the day to come when small businesses will band together and class action em. Fact is, pro is no longer pro and their their backwards approach to everything 10 feels like so much more of an abuse of their Monopoly than what they were sued for before.
 
Vader1975 said:
1 it doesn’t upgrade itself. 2 the usb installer is downloadable. 3 Windows 10 making a laptop nonfunctional? Or did he just not download a few drivers. I find everything about this fishy.
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Last time I tried it, the ISO for Windows 7 could not be downloaded from Microsoft without a retail Windows 7 key.

Yea, there's heidoc.net, but that's not the official way to do it (and I bet Microsoft doesn't like it very much).
 
Unless things changed, an OEM key won't allow you download access from Microsoft anymore. You need a retail key or contact your OEM which will charge you for the recovery disks (At a nice premium!)
Also, if the computer can't be used anymore, you can't blame him for been unable to search for solution.. and YES a win10 upgrade can render a laptop DOA (Until you re-image it again).

Average Joe won't know how to fix this and shouldn't need to given the user friendly self-claimed OS that is Windows.
 
DPI said:
So, "You must have done or said something to get yourself raped".

The bottom line is many people woke up one morning to a different version of Windows that they either never asked for, or didn't realize they were agreeing to when they CLICKED A RED X - but regardless, did not want.

"But they could just roll back" - no, actually a lot of non technical users didn't know how, because the option was buried, and MS designed it that way. And many people that did try to roll back ended up with a non-bootable, corrupted Windows that had to be reinstalled from scratch because the rollback process was buggy.

It's ponderous that there are still people victim blaming and arguing this, even after Microsoft already admitted to doing all of this intentionally and deceptively.
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The world is full of liars and thieves. Always do your research and be able to refute whatever nonsense they spew. They create a narrative to get what they want. They are tricky and misuse and accidentally say the wrong words too. It's nothing new, it's the way the world is. It does suck though.

Microsoft is untrustable at this point, and unfortunately usually there is no alternative but to use their "software".
 
dark_reign said:
If true then you're correct and Microsoft should take the blame and fix it. But he could be lying and manually upgraded to Windows 10, and now blames Microsoft for a botched Win10 install, due to previous malware, file corruption, etc. already on his PC before the upgrade happened. Getting sue happy for $600 million makes the guy seem like a scammer or he's just a nutcase.

I would have taken the PC to a local computer repair shop or freelancer rather than make a big deal over it.
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There is plenty of evidence that it was started automatically, or the trick red X that has been discussed that actually meant "OK", for the first time ever in software, and was a downright dirty trick. He should not have to get it fixed and pay anything for a repair shop to fix it. Do you pay for everyone's mess up any time you are not responsible? That makes no sense. Corporations need to be held responsible for their bad decisions. A small slight here and there can be tolerated, but messing up the entire OS is far from a small slight.
 
dark_reign said:
If true then you're correct and Microsoft should take the blame and fix it. But he could be lying and manually upgraded to Windows 10, and now blames Microsoft for a botched Win10 install, due to previous malware, file corruption, etc. already on his PC before the upgrade happened. Getting sue happy for $600 million makes the guy seem like a scammer or he's just a nutcase.

I would have taken the PC to a local computer repair shop or freelancer rather than make a big deal over it.
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Eh, nobody should have to incur the expense of taking their computer to a repair shop, when they never asked Microsoft to start screwing with their PC in the first place. The guy is not an isolated case. Many people had their PC's hijacked by Windows 10. And Microsoft already admitted to "going too far" in their malware-like forced distribution approach.
 
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ManofGod said:
so, when exactly did this "auto install" occur?
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I not a lawyer, but it's easy to prove that auto installs happened. There is a woman that won in small claims court when it installed and caused her damage she could prove.

https://www.computerworld.com/artic...oft-over-unauthorized-windows-10-upgrade.html

It will be interesting to see how it turns out. MS to this day still does the same thing, updates all the time and you can't stop it and you have to move to the next version when it is out or jump a bunch of hoops to keep it from updating and then you get no security fixes if you do that, and of course MS won't help you if you aren't on at least the oldest supported version.
 
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