Microsoft is still being sued over "damaging" Windows 10 upgrades

midian182

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Microsoft probably thought the amount of Windows 10 lawsuits it was facing would decrease after it stopped the aggressive upgrade tactics last year, but it seems this isn’t the case. The company is now being sued by members of the public who say the OS is “destroying” their data and damaging PCs.

Three Illinois residents are seeking class-action status for their lawsuit, which was filed at Chicago’s US District Court. It says Microsoft wasn’t clear about the potential risks that come with installing Windows 10, and that the operating system itself is defective.

The company "failed to exercise reasonable care in designing, formulating, and manufacturing the Windows 10 upgrade and placing it into the stream of commerce. As a result of its failure to exercise reasonable care, [the company] distributed an operating system that was liable to cause loss of data or damage to hardware. " claims the complaint.

The lawyers want the case certified as a class action to include everyone in the US who upgraded from Windows 7 and experienced data loss or damage within 30 days - a figure that could reach into the hundreds of thousands. All three plaintiffs say once they upgraded, which only one of them consented to, their PCs malfunctioned and lost data. In the case of Stephanie Watson, she was forced to buy a new computer.

In an email to the Register, Microsoft said: "The Windows 10 free upgrade program was a choice designed to help people take advantage of the most secure, and most productive Windows. Customers had the option not to upgrade to Windows 10."

“If a customer who upgraded during the one year program needed help with the upgrade experience, we had numerous options including free customer support and 31-days to roll back to their old operating system," wrote the company.

Back in December, Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer, Chris Capossela, admitted the firm had gone too far with its malware-like Windows 10 upgrade methods.

The lawsuit isn’t a unique situation for Microsoft; others in the US and abroad have tried the same thing, including the operator of a Californian travel agency who won $10,000 through a lawsuit that alleged the forced installation caused her PC to become slow and unusable.

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If apple products weren't so stupid expensive and linux had gaming support Microsoft would be irrelevant now. Almost everything behind the scenes in the enterprise market is linux/Unix based. Its really only the office users who "need" windows, but MS office runs in linux just fine so there isn't anything stopping companies from using Linux. They could hire a team of linux support staff with the money they'd save on licensing fees and probably still have money left over.


If MS keeps pulling crap like this alongside user friendly linux distros like Mint(sorry Ubuntu fans, but it sucks) they could very well make themselves irrelevant in a decade or so.

Here's to hoping steam OS makes linux gaming a reality. And for the love of God can developers please stop using Windows APIs like DirectX?
 
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Great Points yRaz! While I always liked "plinking" with some of the different flavors of linux I was always a little surprised that nobody developed a linux based OS similar to Windows. One that would make it easy to install different features, run some windows products, etc, etc. While Microsoft remains King of the Hill, you would think or at least hope that a challenger would rise to the occasion ..... by the way, if the Mars trip doesn't go well, maybe Elon Musk would be up for the challenge! It certainly wouldn't need a barge out in the Atlantic to land on and God knows he could certainly make it reusable with a minimal amount of rework!!!
 
I'm multi-booting Steam-OS, LibreElec(kodi), Debian, Ubuntu and Windows 10. Nowadays I almost never use Windows anymore. Their Windows update made me want to drop it. I only boot Windows when I need to use the Adobe Suite or to play GTA V.
I think that anyways, it's impossible for an OS to do everything perfectly. At least with the different Linux distros you get access to thousands of free programs and a world of new possibilities for free.
I also had Windows 10 on a PC barely fast enough to run it when 10 came out, but with all the updates made since then it's now too slow for 10. It takes it more than 3 hours just to install a few updates. Installing a lite version of Linux (Lubuntu) gave it a new life, so I can still enjoy using this PC in the living room on the TV.
No need to be an expert to install and use Linux but it helps to be a bit tech savvy. Just use Google every time you don't know how to do something and you're good.
 
If apple products weren't so stupid expensive and linux had gaming support Microsoft would be irrelevant now. Almost everything behind the scenes in the enterprise market is linux/Unix based. Its really only the office users who "need" windows, but MS office runs in linux just fine so there isn't anything stopping companies from using Linux. They could hire a team of linux support staff with the money they'd save on licensing fees and probably still have money left over.


If MS keeps pulling crap like this alongside user friendly linux distros like Mint(sorry Ubuntu fans, but it sucks) they could very well make themselves irrelevant in a decade or so.

Here's to hoping steam OS makes linux gaming a reality. And for the love of God can developers please stop using Windows on APIs like DirectX?
Add to the lack of gaming support to Linux, a lack of support for engineering industry in general (I.e. CAD/CAE, FEM, etc) ... I don't forsee any change soon ...
 
The PC industry is obviously colluding with Microsoft and other major corporations like Adobe, to keep a good chunk of the market inaccessible to a free OS like Linux. It's a symbiotic relationship.
"I sell yours, you sell mine, with planned obsolescence in mind, and lets keep away from stuff that's free"
 
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Add to the lack of gaming support to Linux, a lack of support for engineering industry in general (I.e. CAD/CAE, FEM, etc) ... I don't forsee any change soon ...
True, but if the demand is there it won't take long to make optimized linux ports. Especially if a lot of people really get behind one distro like Mint.
 
Unfortunately you guys seem to forget about Active Directory. That is really the only reason businesses and schools are staying with M$, and they only reason they remain in the lead. Microsoft Office has little to do with it, as it has been pointed out there is Office for MacOS and you can use Office 365 on Linux, which works fairly well.
 
Unfortunately you guys seem to forget about Active Directory. That is really the only reason businesses and schools are staying with M$
When there's a will there's a way. I assume there are several countries that don't trust M$ enough since Snowden to keep using Windows in their government offices. Same for their most important corporations in fear of industrial spying. M$ is the worst option if one wants, at all costs, to avoid viruses, worms, rootkits, and zero day exploits.
 
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IMO, the suit should go far beyond this.

Having converted to Windows 10, pretty much every single "update" since July 2016 has broken something in one of my PCs. Shared WiFi, auto hibernation, overwriting custom modem entries for caller-ID, and one "update" left my PC with a black screen only showing the mouse cursor. I image backup before I allow any update, and at this point, I've rolled back to just before the "anniversary" update, and turned off all updates since I am running pro.

Needless to say, I have spent hours trying to remedy whatever breaks, but sometimes, it is just plain broken and cannot be fixed. That's why I went back to my image update.

M$ simply seems unable to release an update to 10 that does not break something. I also work with someone who lost three days, twice, no less, trying to get out of the 10 update nightmare.

I have not tried to apply an update in a while because it takes so much time if something fails - which seems routine. I might try one again soon, but I am not all that hopeful it will break something again.

This, too, all takes time and I already know there are many other users out there that have been affected by 10 updates like I have.
 
Unfortunately you guys seem to forget about Active Directory. That is really the only reason businesses and schools are staying with M$, and they only reason they remain in the lead. Microsoft Office has little to do with it, as it has been pointed out there is Office for MacOS and you can use Office 365 on Linux, which works fairly well.

There are other Active Directory Solutions :grin:

Regardless, migrating the end user to a new platform is more painful and expensive than ALL other considerations - - even if the OS were to be given away! Resistance to change the killer of progress.
 
No issues here with win 10 pro. upgraded my pc from win 7 pro to win 10 pro. been using it for like 2 yrs. havent ran into anything that was the fault of windows.

all my programs and games loaded just fine.
still no issues today.
 
My PC is two years old, and the whole upgrade process from Windows 7 to Windows 10 went pretty smooth. I had no issues with my computer breaking down, or any data loss. I think those people that were affected, were either unlucky or not computer illiterate at all.
 
There is nothing wrong with Windows 7, "What percentage is Windows 10 O/S a better computer all-rounder than 7, or XP." .. ?
Faster, what is 'faster', 'quicker' what do the words relate to 'better', no, not better, or faster, Windows 10 is a bland 'lame horse' all the un-necessary junk tied on and fixes force-fed doesn't make it a better system than any other in history, the opposite is a fact.
Window X (10 = X) sadly needing a P replacement.
 
My PC is two years old, and the whole upgrade process from Windows 7 to Windows 10 went pretty smooth. I had no issues with my computer breaking down, or any data loss. I think those people that were affected, were either unlucky or not computer illiterate at all.
Hmm; I suspect non-standard hardware configurations like self built
 
There are other Active Directory Solutions :grin:.

Nothing that offers the level of control that AD does though. AD is more than just user management, it is also computer management. Group policy is a pretty huge benefit for the enterprise. Who else offers anything similar?
 
Nothing that offers the level of control that AD does though. AD is more than just user management, it is also computer management. Group policy is a pretty huge benefit for the enterprise. Who else offers anything similar?
You're certainly correct there - - the MS Perversion of the standard Active Directory program expanded from User to Systems management. Really cool for the enterprise admin, but also still a perversion of what the AD was intended to do.
 
More information on the suit is required. What did Windows 10 do the the hardware that required a "new computer." What were the computers, how old were their parts. Microsoft warns that in an upgrade you might lose your data and to do a backup. You can't sue because they didn't warn you 40 times. If they don't know wtf they're doing, they shouldn't upgrade.

That said... The upgrade pressure shouldn't have occurred. It shouldn't have ever come to a point where it auto downloaded the upgrade. It should have been a light-weight alert, no extra software to install, to tell you of the features. They should have took every activated win7 and win8x licence and upgraded it in there system to allow for windows 10. And in the message, offer a link to download the upgrade with the hardware tester attached to it.
 
My PC is two years old, and the whole upgrade process from Windows 7 to Windows 10 went pretty smooth. I had no issues with my computer breaking down, or any data loss. I think those people that were affected, were either unlucky or not computer illiterate at all.
Hmm; I suspect non-standard hardware configurations like self built
Yes. There are plenty of cases out there for anyone who would like to inform themselves.

Just because others have not experienced problems does not mean that they do not exist. When someone experiences these problems and searches for an answer, then they realize that they do exist, and are wide-spread. In fact, the lawsuit referenced in this article is evidence of that as I see it.

10 updates, from my viewpoint, are horrible. I had the same, custom hardware configuration with 8.1, and had no problems whatsoever with updates for 8.1. Even my upgrade from 8.1 to 10 went flawlessly except for the fact that the upgrade to 10 overwrote entries that I made in my registry to get caller ID working so I could display caller ID info on my screen with YAC Caller ID - http://yac.software.informer.com/. It's an HTPC. I chose to allow automatic updates for a while after upgrading to 10, and even they worked. Then, updates started breaking things even though I have not made any hardware changes.

For whatever reason, I feel like we are back to the days of Windows 3.1 and Windows NT where updates were notorious for breaking something and even trashing computers.
 
I don't think anyone said Windows 10 doesn't have zero problems, what is being said is that there are people out their like myself that have no issues with their computer cause of Win 10. It is working fine and as intended. Always has since day 1.
I have not had any issues with windows updates breaking anything, also Microsoft have said for a long time that updates may change things even more so with Windows 10 due to various changes to the OS.

Windows Update will be getting it's own changes later this year. Nothing is ever perfect and no one can ever predict what will or wont happen with every piece of software. Issues will likely occur but that's more natural and in some cases it's up to said software to fix it's own problems. MS may changes things, it's their OS and have the right to but it's also the responsibility of the user and the software you use to make sure the software is up to date.
 
I just fixed a new dell that completely borked itself after a windows 10 update. granted it was a stupid killer networks wifi card that seemed to be the root of it. but the fact that it completely made the notebook unusable for the owner is utterly insane.
It used to be, since at least XP anyways, fairly rare that a windows update would actually cause a major issue, but for the last year it has been happening more and more often., to a much wider variety of hardware.
drives me nuts that we are basically stuck with windows 10 now, since they decreed no more windows 7 or 8 shall be sold(in essence anyways).
 
The PC industry is glad that some users are having problems with Windows 10 on older hardware. That way you have to spend money on newer devices and hardware. One might ask if it's done on purpose or if it's a consequence of M$ mostly testing their new OS on newer hardware.
 
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