Microsoft brings Win10-style forced updates to Win7 and Win8.1

[Wild Zontargs]

TL;DR: after October, Microsoft will only offer Windows 7 and 8.1 users three options for updates:

* All updates released that month
* All "security" updates released that month
* No updates

There's a new telemetry update in your "security" patch? Tough shit. You want Driver Update A, but Driver Update B causes random blue-screens? Deal with it.

Further simplifying servicing models for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1

Monthly Rollup
From October 2016 onwards, Windows will release a single Monthly Rollup that addresses both security issues and reliability issues in a single update. The Monthly Rollup will be published to Windows Update (WU), WSUS, SCCM, and the Microsoft Update Catalog. Each month’s rollup will supersede the previous month’s rollup, so there will always be only one update required for your Windows PCs to get current. i.e. a Monthly Rollup in October 2016 will include all updates for October, while November 2016 will include October and November updates, and so on. Devices that have this rollup installed from Windows Update or WSUS will utilize express packages, keeping the monthly download size small.

Over time, Windows will also proactively add patches to the Monthly Rollup that have been released in the past. Our goal is eventually to include all of the patches we have shipped in the past since the last baseline, so that the Monthly Rollup becomes fully cumulative and you need only to install the latest single rollup to be up to date. We encourage you to move to the Monthly Rollup model to improve reliability and quality of updating all versions of Windows.

We are planning to add these previously shipped patches over the next year and will document each addition so IT admins know which KBs have been included each month.

Security-only updates
Also from October 2016 onwards, Windows will release a single Security-only update. This update collects all of the security patches for that month into a single update. Unlike the Monthly Rollup, the Security-only update will only include new security patches that are released for that month. Individual patches will no longer be available. The Security-only update will be available to download and deploy from WSUS, SCCM, and the Microsoft Update Catalog. Windows Update will publish only the Monthly Rollup – the Security-only update will not be published to Windows Update. The security-only update will allow enterprises to download as small of an update as possible while still maintaining more secure devices.

Update documentation changes
To bring consistency to the release notes model introduced with Windows 10, we will also be updating our down-level documentation to provide consolidated release notes with the Rollups for all supported versions of Windows. We’ll extend and provide release notes for monthly rollup updates and also the security-only updates that will be introduced from October 2016.

[Grumman]

TL;DR: after October, Microsoft will only offer Windows 7 and 8.1 users three options for updates:

* All updates released that month
* All "security" updates released that month
* No updates

There's a new telemetry update in your "security" patch? Tough shit. You want Driver Update A, but Driver Update B causes random blue-screens? Deal with it.

It's actually worse than that: option 1 is not "all updates released that month," it's starting off as "all updates released since this stupid fucking idea was implemented" and will one day be "all updates, ever." So if there's a shitty change in November's Monthly Rollup, it will also be in every single Monthly Rollup from then on.

[SpottedKitty]

Does this mean the Rollup downloads will become the norm, and will just get bigger and bigger every month? I already have a couple in my Optional Update list for this month that I never bothered with, totalling over 30MB. How long until these download sizes get completely out of hand?

These M$ antics are beginning to give me a certain amount of sympathy for the Luddites...

[Wild Zontargs]

It's actually worse than that: option 1 is not "all updates released that month," it's starting off as "all updates released since this stupid fucking idea was implemented" and will one day be "all updates, ever." So if there's a shitty change in November's Monthly Rollup, it will also be in every single Monthly Rollup from then on.

Good point. This bit here:

Windows will also proactively add patches to the Monthly Rollup that have been released in the past. Our goal is eventually to include all of the patches we have shipped in the past since the last baseline, so that the Monthly Rollup becomes fully cumulative and you need only to install the latest single rollup to be up to date.

That means that eventually, it'll be "any update EVER released for Windows, any "security" update EVER released for Windows, or never update Windows again". That telemetry shit, and all the "buy Windows 10" ads they crammed into Internet Explorer? They're coming back. Yuck.

[Tribble]

Wow. Just wow. So basically, come October WIndows 7 and 8 users will be getting all of the downsides of Windows 10 (no control over updates, the OS sending telemetry info, annoying ads, unwanted downloads of software like candy crush etc) with none of the perks. Plus now that Windows 10 is no longer free they won't be able to upgrade without paying through the nose.

IMO this is one of the worst displays of contempt I've seen a company show to its customer base. You can sum up this change in policy as: "You dared refused to upgrade when we demanded it? Well F&*k You!"

[Simon_Jester]

I can see a lot of business customers being extremely unhappy with this. Creating a situation where it's nearly impossible for anyone BUT the actual IT people to make an informed decision about whether to update a computer, for fear of breakdown of security and privacy, is not going to be a welcome development for those users.

For private users, all this telemetry and privacy-breaching stuff is merely annoying and creepy. But ultimately it's your decision to make whether you want Microsoft stalking you and no one can punish you for that decision, except obviously Microsoft. But for businesses there are going to be liability and security concerns. I don't want my lawyer using an OS with a keystroke logger built into the system if I can help it, for instance.

Is there any word on how that's working out with Windows 10 today?

For that matter, how is Microsoft even benefiting from all this crap? It's not obvious to me how they profit from massively breaching everyone's privacy, unless they have nefarious intent in mind and are just getting us all used to it.

[Ace Pace]

I can see a lot of business customers being extremely unhappy with this. Creating a situation where it's nearly impossible for anyone BUT the actual IT people to make an informed decision about whether to update a computer, for fear of breakdown of security and privacy, is not going to be a welcome development for those users.

Uh... Have you ever been in a corporate network? A big one?

The only people who can be trusted to say what updates to install on a machine are IT people already. It's called WSUS and there's a reason updates are centrally managed in any sane network. I know you're a teacher and after working with some schools here, I weep for your computers.

For private users, all this telemetry and privacy-breaching stuff is merely annoying and creepy. But ultimately it's your decision to make whether you want Microsoft stalking you and no one can punish you for that decision, except obviously Microsoft. But for businesses there are going to be liability and security concerns. I don't want my lawyer using an OS with a keystroke logger built into the system if I can help it, for instance.

This is why Microsoft offers an edition perfectly suited for businesses, it's called Pro and Enterprise and both can disable the telemetry. Funnily enough, that's precisely what my workplace does and it's not even a large company.

Is there any word on how that's working out with Windows 10 today?

From what I can see in customers, just about like Windows 8, it's taking some time but faster than dumping XP. The pain of migration and knowing that at some point Microsoft will EOL Windows 7 means people are actually upgrading faster than before.

For that matter, how is Microsoft even benefiting from all this crap? It's not obvious to me how they profit from massively breaching everyone's privacy, unless they have nefarious intent in mind and are just getting us all used to it.

Bing revenue is up and that's significantly from Cortana searches. To quote from Ars Technica

Search revenue was up significantly, growing by 18 percent in constant currency, thanks to both higher revenue per search and higher search volume. 35 percent of search revenue in March was driven by Windows 10, indicating that the Bing and Cortana integration in Windows 10 is yielding dividends.

Cortana and Bing are both critical if MS intends to be relevant (like it is right now) in any sort of AI application.

[Wild Zontargs]

IMO this is one of the worst displays of contempt I've seen a company show to its customer base. You can sum up this change in policy as: "You dared refused to upgrade when we demanded it? Well F&*k You!"

Carrot didn't work, time for the stick.



Honestly, it's probably just a case of "fuck this 'making our shit compatible with a zillion configurations' noise, make 'em all use the same platform so we only have to support one code-base". I understand it, but it's still a dick move.

-----

This is why Microsoft offers an edition perfectly suited for businesses, it's called Pro and Enterprise and both can disable the telemetry. Funnily enough, that's precisely what my workplace does and it's not even a large company.

This is really going to fuck over the small/home business users, though. To steal a small IT shop's comment from the forced Win10 upgrades clusterfuck:

We've been getting calls trickling in all week from doctor's offices, dental practices, B&Bs, and roofing companies -- among others -- that have been hit by this and it's a fucking mess.

In some cases the upgrade went OK and the user is just really confused. In others Windows 10 is asking for a login password the user set years ago and hasn't used since, that was fun. In still another it's screwed up access to their shared folders.

I'm >this< close to telling the techs to disable automatic updates completely for all business customers.

These people have absolutely no use for Pro/Enterprise. They just need to do email, Excel, maybe support some quirky web apps or the occasional weird bit of ancient hardware. They want their systems to be secure, but also not to do weird shit they didn't ask for. "Suck it up or learn Linux" isn't much of a solution.

[Wild Zontargs]

Ghetto edit: sounds like there's no separate patch option for anyone, Pro or Enterprise included:

Individual patches will no longer be available after October 2016.

Server admin? Tough shit, you get it too:

These changes also apply to Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2.

[Ace Pace]

This is really going to fuck over the small/home business users, though. To steal a small IT shop's comment from the forced Win10 upgrades clusterfuck:

We've been getting calls trickling in all week from doctor's offices, dental practices, B&Bs, and roofing companies -- among others -- that have been hit by this and it's a fucking mess.

In some cases the upgrade went OK and the user is just really confused. In others Windows 10 is asking for a login password the user set years ago and hasn't used since, that was fun. In still another it's screwed up access to their shared folders.

I'm >this< close to telling the techs to disable automatic updates completely for all business customers.

These people have absolutely no use for Pro/Enterprise. They just need to do email, Excel, maybe support some quirky web apps or the occasional weird bit of ancient hardware. They want their systems to be secure, but also not to do weird shit they didn't ask for. "Suck it up or learn Linux" isn't much of a solution.

This is actually a complex problem. Because while they may not need the feature set of Windows Pro they need the management abilities. If an IT support firm wants to support Windows Home editions, it can do it, but it'll be ugly. It's a shame they're reacting by blaming MS since this was all clearly documented with the upgrade to Windows 10 (heck most of what I'm saying is verbatim from Technet which is free).

I'm not sure what's the best solution there, probably after the IT overhead it's worth moving to Pro editions.

[Simon_Jester]

I can see a lot of business customers being extremely unhappy with this. Creating a situation where it's nearly impossible for anyone BUT the actual IT people to make an informed decision about whether to update a computer, for fear of breakdown of security and privacy, is not going to be a welcome development for those users.

Uh... Have you ever been in a corporate network? A big one?

My apologies.

That said, I'm also thinking about small business users who do not have dedicated IT staff, or whose closest approximation to 'real' IT is someone who has other duties.

The only people who can be trusted to say what updates to install on a machine are IT people already. It's called WSUS and there's a reason updates are centrally managed in any sane network. I know you're a teacher and after working with some schools here, I weep for your computers.

Yes.

That said, our updates ARE centrally managed- to the point where we have things that from my viewpoint are problems, like only one of our browsers actually receiving updates at all. At the same time, though, we have a staff of roughly 60-70 people at my high school and IT is run by one guy who's also the basketball coach. He seems competent enough, but it leaves us a bit underserved in my opinion, especially since we're constantly dealing with county contracts for new software while still using the old hardware.

I think part of the problem is that while corporations have on some level come to accept that hiring one IT guy is a much better way of enhancing the productivity of thirty office workers than hiring one additional office workers, this is not uniformly accepted in education.

The institutional culture in American education is often something like: "The teachers are perfectly capable of making bricks without straw, thankyouverymuch, so why bother hiring a professional straw-gatherer to help them do their jobs? Are they just lazy or something? Why aren't they embracing new ideas and initiatives? We demand progress! More bricks that pass QC standards! Better bricks!"

For that matter, how is Microsoft even benefiting from all this crap? It's not obvious to me how they profit from massively breaching everyone's privacy, unless they have nefarious intent in mind and are just getting us all used to it.

Bing revenue is up and that's significantly from Cortana searches. To quote from Ars Technica

Search revenue was up significantly, growing by 18 percent in constant currency, thanks to both higher revenue per search and higher search volume. 35 percent of search revenue in March was driven by Windows 10, indicating that the Bing and Cortana integration in Windows 10 is yielding dividends.

Cortana and Bing are both critical if MS intends to be relevant (like it is right now) in any sort of AI application.

Okay, that's a fair point.

I suppose my main complaint then is this:

For a company like Facebook, its users aren't its clients (in the sense that it makes money from them). On the contrary, the users are the commodity it markets to its real clients. It may work to keep the users happy, but then a slaughterhouse usually wants to keep the cows happy till the last minute too. Likewise with Google and its search users, and so on. This is why they're providing such valuable services to you for free- because they profit not from you paying them for the service, but for the services they can provide other clients by taking advantage of what you do with that free service.

Microsoft created its reputation and massive, preeminent position in the world of computing by treating its users as clients who had bought products and services from it. By building up their telemetry and search engines and so on, they're basically transitioning into a business model where they stand astride the divide between "the user is the client" and "the user is the commodity."

This culminates in a situation where, predictably, we are being exploited by Microsoft in ways that might well make us uncomfortable... and we're paying them for the privilege.

EDIT: Or, in the case of these businesses, having their computers crash and costing them revenue, because they DID NOT actively pay Microsoft for the privilege of having an operating system that doesn't intrusively screw up their computer. Because, again, Microsoft wants to be able to sell its customers to third parties and not just sell its products to its customers.

[Zaune]

These people have absolutely no use for Pro/Enterprise. They just need to do email, Excel, maybe support some quirky web apps or the occasional weird bit of ancient hardware. They want their systems to be secure, but also not to do weird shit they didn't ask for. "Suck it up or learn Linux" isn't much of a solution.

Actually, I'd say if anyone has a business case for Linux it's those sorts of companies. Unless VBA with an Access or Excel backend is an integral part of your workflow you're unlikely to suffer much by transitioning to LibreOffice and Thunderbird, and if those "quirky web apps" only work in Internet Explorer 8 and earlier then they're screwed either way. If they need Windows-only software to control a CNC mill or something, keep one Windows box around for that specific task and don't plug it into the network.

[Broomstick]

That's what we do - we've long had a PC to run our computer-controlled stuff that we NEVER plug into the internet. Keeps our business stuff safe. Nothing is quite so secure as pulling the plug.

[Zaune]

Yeah, I remember you saying as much in a previous Win 10 thread.

That's always been the best defence against intrusion by nefarious third parties; never thought I'd see the day it became a viable option as a defence against questionable behaviour by the OS vendor as well.

[Ace Pace]

That's always been the best defence against intrusion by nefarious third parties; never thought I'd see the day it became a viable option as a defence against questionable behaviour by the OS vendor as well.

This is unfortunately becoming a wider problem, MS is actually late to the trend of fucking over customers. Apple has been locking down it's machines for years, haven't heard about it as much? Maybe because their market share is mostly young people who don't need Pro apps.

Simon, I'll save quoting your first part and I agree completely. I work with some tech oriented educational organisations that skimp on IT staff and it just boggles the mind.

This culminates in a situation where, predictably, we are being exploited by Microsoft in ways that might well make us uncomfortable... and we're paying them for the privilege.

EDIT: Or, in the case of these businesses, having their computers crash and costing them revenue, because they DID NOT actively pay Microsoft for the privilege of having an operating system that doesn't intrusively screw up their computer. Because, again, Microsoft wants to be able to sell its customers to third parties and not just sell its products to its customers.

I'll start from the end. The problem is not that simple. MS does not actually sell your data to third parties, this isn't Google or Facebook. All the information they're collecting goes internally. The problem is far more complicated.

The big problem with the entire Windows ecosystem is that there are literally billions of possible configurations. There are both amazing upsides and horrible downsides. In the past decade the downsides have become progressively worse, especially in the security end. I can't emphasis this enough, the lack of ability from MS's side to test a single specific version of their software leads to three results which we're all experiencing. (a) Patches take a long time to be released. (b) They break things in unexpected ways. (c) They're not comprehensive.
These all originate from a single source, which is that the entire world is fragmented and running different builds of Windows. Everything MS has been doing to updates since Windows 7 is oriented around solving this problem.

Now over to the other part

Okay, that's a fair point.

I suppose my main complaint then is this:

For a company like Facebook, its users aren't its clients (in the sense that it makes money from them). On the contrary, the users are the commodity it markets to its real clients. It may work to keep the users happy, but then a slaughterhouse usually wants to keep the cows happy till the last minute too. Likewise with Google and its search users, and so on. This is why they're providing such valuable services to you for free- because they profit not from you paying them for the service, but for the services they can provide other clients by taking advantage of what you do with that free service.

Microsoft created its reputation and massive, preeminent position in the world of computing by treating its users as clients who had bought products and services from it. By building up their telemetry and search engines and so on, they're basically transitioning into a business model where they stand astride the divide between "the user is the client" and "the user is the commodity."

Microsoft has yet to move anywhere near an add supported model. In fact they're still providing say Outlook.com, a Gmail competitor, for free with no ads. This is a problematic misconception and it's wrong. The vast majority of data MS is sucking up, whether from using online services, search engines, OS telemetry is fed back internally into better product decisions and the AI efforts. The only place this isn't true is anything going through Bing, where, equivalently to Google, they do not provide data but tailor stuff internally.

The problem is two fold. One is a really really horrible messaging mixed with a very hostile press leads to people thinking Windows 10 is some giant ad-driven experience (I kind of wish MS had held off on some of their ad efforts if only to just slowly slide in into this situation.) The other is that MS really feels the clock is ticking on desktop computing in home environments and if they want to both save that situation and try to remain relevant. So everything has to happen rather fast.

[Zaune]

Apple's model is slightly different, though. They offer a complete package of hardware, software and to an extent technical support all in-house, so discouraging people from doing unsanctioned things with their products is not wholly unreasonable; when you're only working with a small number of different hardware configurations it's very unlikely that a mandatory update will cause problems you didn't catch in testing, and making after-sales support conditional on not doing unsanctioned stuff with the equipment is not really that unreasonable in itself. But either way, whether or not you like or agree with Apple's approach it's something you can make an informed decision about buying into.

Contrast Microsoft, who've never really been in the hardware business themselves and have been selling their product on the basis that you could run it on whatever combination of parts you chose to buy from numerous third-parties. Take away the ability to defer applying an update for a few days because it breaks your flightstick's drivers and you're waiting on a firmware update, or something along those lines, and you seriously undermine the case for using or developing for Windows.

[Broomstick]

There's another thing that seems to be missed in this discussion.

Earlier versions of Windows did not need to be connected to the internet. They still don't. You can run any version of any Windows program safely as long as you don't connect to the internet. Use one up-to-date computer to deal with the internet, scan/clean any data that needs to be transferred, and you're gold.

But MS doesn't want you to do that. They are moving to a system where you HAVE TO be connected to the internet, preferably all the time. They want to default saving anything and everything to the cloud. In other words, end truly private computing and make you completely dependent on them to keep your system running, and if you don't keep paying you'll lose access to your own stuff.

I expect machines capable of running independently will become quite valuable at some point.

[Zaune]

That at least is still not an immediate problem. For the time being it's still impractical to ship an operating system install disk that consists only of a bootloader and a script that will download the actual OS from a remote server; you have to have enough data stored locally for it to install in a somewhat functional state, because if you need third-party drivers to connect to the Internet then you need a workable OS to install them on. (I haven't tried this with Win 10, but I'm almost certain they still have a number you can call to do an offline activation if you're too proud to download a cracked version.)

And no matter how hard MS and others may push the cloud, they have yet to lobby any local or national government to outlaw external hard drives.

[SpottedKitty]

They want to default saving anything and everything to the cloud. In other words, end truly private computing and make you completely dependent on them to keep your system running, and if you don't keep paying you'll lose access to your own stuff.

I'd really like to watch someone with the ability to make them sit on their tail end and listen explain to M$ the meaning of "legally, commercially, and/or politically confidential information". They just don't seem to be capable of understanding the concept.

As it applies to anyone that isn't them, of course...

[Ace Pace]

They want to default saving anything and everything to the cloud. In other words, end truly private computing and make you completely dependent on them to keep your system running, and if you don't keep paying you'll lose access to your own stuff.

I'd really like to watch someone with the ability to make them sit on their tail end and listen explain to M$ the meaning of "legally, commercially, and/or politically confidential information". They just don't seem to be capable of understanding the concept.

As it applies to anyone that isn't them, of course...

People just don't read the thread... Microsoft understands this. This is why professional versions of Windows either default or can easily be changed to not transmit personal data. Your home version also does not send your files unless you decide to keep them in OneDrive, which is precisely equivalent to any other cloud provider.

[Tribble]

People just don't read the thread... Microsoft understands this. This is why professional versions of Windows either default or can easily be changed to not transmit personal data. Your home version also does not send your files unless you decide to keep them in OneDrive, which is precisely equivalent to any other cloud provider.

Perhaps you had a different version of Windows 10 Pro than I did because I distinctly remember that sending personal info was the default behaviour. I also recall that updates tended to have the nasty habit of turning settings back on after I had turned them off, requiring me to check every so often to make sure that it hadn't gone back to the defaults. Also, IMO it's not that easy to change the privacy settings. The number of screens required to do so is much higher than in Windows 7 / 8, and some of them are more or less hidden to the average user. Hell, a couple of the settings can only be accessed via a special website. And the Anniversary update is going to be making things more difficult - Cortana can now only be disabled via group policy / registry editing, and Windows 10 Pro users will no longer be able to disable the lock screen or block Windows applications and ads from installing.Come the anniversary update, only the Enterprise and student versions will still have the ability to turn of that crap off. If you are a small business using Win 10 "Pro", you can look forward to seeing things like Candy Crush and other ads popping up on your machine.

[Ace Pace]

People just don't read the thread... Microsoft understands this. This is why professional versions of Windows either default or can easily be changed to not transmit personal data. Your home version also does not send your files unless you decide to keep them in OneDrive, which is precisely equivalent to any other cloud provider.

Perhaps you had a different version of Windows 10 Pro than I did because I distinctly remember that sending personal info was the default behaviour. I also recall that updates tended to have the nasty habit of turning settings back on after I had turned them off, requiring me to check every so often to make sure that it hadn't gone back to the defaults. Also, IMO it's not that easy to change the privacy settings. The number of screens required to do so is much higher than in Windows 7 / 8, and some of them are more or less hidden to the average user. Hell, a couple of the settings can only be accessed via a special website. And the Anniversary update is going to be making things more difficult - Cortana can now only be disabled via group policy / registry editing, and Windows 10 Pro users will no longer be able to disable the lock screen or block Windows applications and ads from installing.Come the anniversary update, only the Enterprise and student versions will still have the ability to turn of that crap off. If you are a small business using Win 10 "Pro", you can look forward to seeing things like Candy Crush and other ads popping up on your machine.

Sorry, haven't had time the past few days to respond.

All the factual stuff is true and that's simply pathetic on Microsoft's part, though as you said, most settings are modifiable in Pro versions. Except the ads, I right clicked on one and said "no more ads" and I've yet to receive any more, so not sure what's the precise situation there.

The latest problems in the Anniversary update do point to a serious methodical flaw where MS seems to be jumping ahead in just ignoring the real world in terms of testing. Fun times await people, regardless of whether they work in IT or not.