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

Megalith

Megalith

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Frank Dickman, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, is suing Microsoft and Satya Nadella for $6bn after his Asus laptop automatically updated from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and "became non-functional." Redmond has 30 days to respond with a digital download and activation code that will allow him to downgrade his machine.

His lawsuit gives Redmond 30 days to give him the software or pay more than a half a billion in damages from a default judgment. "The only sensible remedy is for Microsoft Corporation to supply the OEM version of its operating system by download from its website and confirmed by the key code which came with the computer," Dickman's filing read.
 
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.
 
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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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.
 
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.
 
Master_shake_ said:
if it became non-functional how could he have upgraded back to windows 7?
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rudedog said:
What Master_shake_ said ....
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You two aren't very tech savy windows users I assume? First off, i doubt a windows 10 upgrade made his computer 100% unable period. A few programs might not have worked, or it might have ran "differently" but to upgrade and then never work period again no matter what. Little fishy like Vader1975 said.

He could have used a few methods to get the device back to either a clean install of windows 10 to roll back or do a roll back from a working version of windows 10.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12415/windows-10-recovery-options

I mean one of the sections there even tells you how to roll back to windows 7 or 8.1 as long as you have your key and need to reacquire the install media. So they already have what he is asking for. Which means that he never even bothered to call Microsoft about his issue as they could have rolled him back without any trouble.
 
The point isn't that this guy deserves (or will get) that amount of money (or any money, really). The point is to force Microsoft to show some @#$@# restraint, and big numbers are the only way to get their attention. You can't correct the behavior of a multi-billion dollar company by fining them $2,000.

I have family members who had NO IDEA that they even had Windows 10. No matter how non-tech-savvy one is, that shouldn't be remotely possible.
 
Exavior said:
You two aren't very tech savy windows users I assume? First off, i doubt a windows 10 upgrade made his computer 100% unable period. A few programs might not have worked, or it might have ran "differently" but to upgrade and then never work period again no matter what. Little fishy like Vader1975 said.

He could have used a few methods to get the device back to either a clean install of windows 10 to roll back or do a roll back from a working version of windows 10.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12415/windows-10-recovery-options

I mean one of the sections there even tells you how to roll back to windows 7 or 8.1 as long as you have your key and need to reacquire the install media. So they already have what he is asking for. Which means that he never even bothered to call Microsoft about his issue as they could have rolled him back without any trouble.
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You're really backing the wrong horse in this and missing the point.
 
Yes, there are laptops that are incompatible with 10, mine was one of them. Because there are no proper drivers for 10. And it's not like it was a relic from the 90s. I purchased it in 2012. And is was relatively fresh then as that particular apu was introduced in mid 2011.
 
Any Windows install can go south. Some systems just don't work well or at all with 10.

If the system is not bootable a fresh install may be the only real choice.
 
M76 said:
Yes, there are laptops that are incompatible with 10, mine was one of them. Because there are no proper drivers for 10. And it's not like it was a relic from the 90s. I purchased it in 2012. And is was relatively fresh then as that particular apu was introduced in mid 2011.
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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.
 
thesmokingman said:
You're really backing the wrong horse in this and missing the point.
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And your post doesn't prove that 485 children will be born in New York between 1am and 2am on Nov 13th 2019. So what is your point? See I can make up random things to claim also.

The people I replied to made an incorrect statement of there is no possible way for the person to roll their device back if it is non working. When in fact there are ways to do system restores from either the recovery mode or from the boot media. Or if all else fails you acquire the media (like the guy is asking for) and reinstall your old version of windows. So they are already doing what the guy is asking for thus instantly this lawsuit's requirement has been meet by going to pages already linked in this topic. It has nothing to do with backing the wrong horse or missing any point. It is about knowing what is possible.
 
I have a couple of Pentium4 Dell Optiplex GX620 running windows 10 32Bit with 2GB of ram.
 
I get the Windows 10 hate though. Win7 will probably be the last great Microsoft OS that just works. This new SaaS model seems to be the way things are headed. It's pretty gross.
 
bugleyman said:
The point isn't that this guy deserves (or will get) that amount of money (or any money, really). The point is to force Microsoft to show some @#$@# restraint, and big numbers are the only way to get their attention. You can't correct the behavior of a multi-billion dollar company by fining them $2,000.

I have family members who had NO IDEA that they even had Windows 10. No matter how non-tech-savvy one is, that shouldn't be remotely possible.
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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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Not all Windows upgrades go smoothly. Sounds like this was one of them and the guy wants to stick it to MS to make a point. This person was able to successfully recover some loss via small claims, but not enough to make up the loss.

Customer wins $10K judgment from Microsoft over unauthorized Windows 10 upgrade

I've had family friends upgrade to windows 10 without them knowing it, (they called because the interface changed to what they were not used to), so MS tricking unwitting users to upgrade is working.
 
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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I have an HP Elitebook with Ivy Bridge i7 that originally came with Windows 8. Windows 10 and Windows 10 Anniversary update worked great, but after updating to the Creator's Update the start menu broke. I wiped the system, put a fresh install of Creator's Update, and the Start Menu remained broken. Since the Anniversary Update would have updated itself back to Creator's Update automatically, I ended up putting 8 back on it.

It's not a driver issue, just a Windows issue. So it's totally believable to me that certain hardware can randomly act weird, because I have first-hand experience.
 
Tweak42 said:
I've had family friends upgrade to windows 10 without them knowing it, (they called because the interface changed to what they were not used to), so MS tricking unwitting users to upgrade is working.
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What's comedy is when reports of this first began to surface - people waking up to Windows 10 on their PC one morning even though they'd never seen prompts about it or certainly asked for or confirmed the installation of it - the arrogant MS shills here were calling it "tinfoil hat" and "MS haters just making it up". Then more reports came out, more embarrassing headlines and bad PR, and MS came out with "its just a bug" (the bugs always fall in MS's favor). Then when it began hitting business Windows 7 installations, MS finally admitted "yeah we did it on purpose and maybe shouldn't have". Disingenuous assclowns all around.

When you have to trick people into installing your product rather than the product speaking for itself with compelling features that make their own headlines, your product just sucks and you knew it from the beginning.
 
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I actually had a customer with a core2 gateway and 1706-1709 crashed every single boot no matter what we did. After 5 days we stuck with 1703 and registry edited it not to update and it was fine. It turned out to be a known but unacknowledged incompatibility.
 
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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Usually it works out, sometimes it does not. Laptop makers sometimes do some funny stuff with their hardware configurations and sometimes use some oddball hardware in their laptops to save a buck. In any case, an error causing a boot loop is not an uncommon occurrence during windows install.

In any case, the amount is pretty ludicrous, but I suspect the litigant achieved his goal in asking for that much. People are again talking about the problem of MS being a bit heavy handed in pushing installs of Win10, and that those installs do not always work out all that well.
 
i could see my dad here, new phone and has had it replaced 4 times for "not working properly" in a year
 
Vader1975 said:
1 it doesn’t upgrade itself.
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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.
 
I have built thousands of PC and upgraded/updated tens of thousands, and I never witnessed Win10 installing itself. I have also supported tablets and Windows OS professionally and never seen it. I have had complaints about it, but investigations indicated the user made choices without even reading the message or popup. Not saying upgrading didn't happen due to some odd situations, but I've never witnessed it.

As has been pointed out, there were and are any number of ways to resolve his issue and his lawsuit, IMO, is uncalled for and will get nowhere. MS is likely to settle without a second thought, but if he pushes it, they will fight and unless you have a crack legal team, you're going down.

If you don't like Windows, use an alternative or make your own. (Remember, it has to work on billions of devices in an untold number of languages, in millions of environments, flawlessly, for what people would have you believe, decades.)

Not saying Windows can't be made better, but come on, it's frigging complicated.
 
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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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.
 
bugleyman said:
The point isn't that this guy deserves (or will get) that amount of money (or any money, really). The point is to force Microsoft to show some @#$@# restraint, and big numbers are the only way to get their attention. You can't correct the behavior of a multi-billion dollar company by fining them $2,000.

I have family members who had NO IDEA that they even had Windows 10. No matter how non-tech-savvy one is, that shouldn't be remotely possible.
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You know what's sort of F'd up though...we lost two girls to the ineptness of a local hospital and a horribly biased lawyer, and this guy is probably going to win this lawsuit. Justice sucks. I agree with you on the upgrade and not know it though, I've worked on maybe 10 users PC's that were like "I don't know what it is, it just upgraded and now I have a different desktop on the computer (they mean monitor - I've noticed a lot of people think the monitor IS the computer). Heck, I had a user upgrade from 7 to 10 and he specifically DID NOT HAVE ADMIN RIGHTS. So tell me how THAT happened.
 
$600 million is chump change to Microsoft, but this guy will get peanuts if he wins assuming this even goes to court.
 
I made so much money during those days fixing PCs because of that very issue.
 
dark_reign said:
$600 million is chump change to Microsoft, but this guy will get peanuts if he wins assuming this even goes to court.
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If you don't show up to court and without notice, you don't get a chance to appeal
 
alxlwson said:
If you don't show up to court and without notice, you don't get a chance to appeal
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It most likely won't go to court, but it sure makes a great headline. If the guy had all his important data backed up then this would have been a non-issue. Granted everyone isn't a computer tech, but backups are essential.
 
Allowing it to get to the point of a default judgement would be idiotic on MS's part. The guy is likely going to get some hush money and be told to pound sand it's our OS we will fuck it up however we want to if he tries to get them to be less aggressive in their upgrade tactics..
 
What they should to is change the copyright laws so that once the software is no longer supported it has open rights. It doesn't have to become open source, but if it is no longer supported you have no control over any distribution anymore. So once MS no longer supports something like DOS, then anybody that wants to print disks and give it away can. Right now if you want to get a copy of DOS 5.5 and play around with it you can "legally" get a copy of the disks a friend has, because that would be considered pirating the software and if MS wanted to they could prosecute you over it.

It would be interesting to see the install percentages if it became legal for anyone to sell a copy of discontinued W7 while MS is only selling W10.
 
dark_reign said:
It most likely won't go to court, but it sure makes a great headline. If the guy had all his important data backed up then this would have been a non-issue. Granted everyone isn't a computer tech, but backups are essential.
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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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M76 said:
Yes, there are laptops that are incompatible with 10, mine was one of them. Because there are no proper drivers for 10. And it's not like it was a relic from the 90s. I purchased it in 2012. And is was relatively fresh then as that particular apu was introduced in mid 2011.
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Windows 10 doesn’t work with the Alienware m11x because there’s no video driver for the switching function between Onboard and Nvidia 335
 
jojo69 said:
oh really?
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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.

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.

Oh come on.
 
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