No More Forced Windows Updates, Promises Microsoft

Microsoft will stop Windows 10 forced automatic updates

After a truck load of complaints from angry users, Microsoft has finally changed its mind and will stop sending forced updates to user’s PCs. Starting with the Windows 10 Creators Update, your machine will no longer display easy to miss reminders about updates and then install it automatically. You will now get to control when any new updates will be installed. This news broke back in May and at the time, it was being pegged as Microsoft listening to its users. However, reports have recently come out that this action might have been in response to the lawsuits that were filed against Microsoft for pushing updates to machines without user knowledge.

Lawsuits

During the one year period when Microsoft allowed a free upgrade from Windows 7 & 8 to Windows 10, Microsoft downloaded GBs of data onto user machines that were eligible for the update. This led to many angry Windows users filing lawsuits against the company. In 2016, a consumer rights body in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, took Microsoft to court over these downloads, claiming that the company would download up to 6 GB of files onto machines without user consent. After approximately a year of legal proceedings, the German wing of Microsoft has voluntarily agreed to not download files on to user machines without consent. The German rights group has welcomed this news, but also said that the delay in implementing the change was not acceptable.

“We would have wished for an earlier backdown, but [Microsoft’s statement] is a success for more consumer rights in the digital world,” said Cornelia Tausch, CEO of the Consumer Center in Baden-Württemberg.

How it will now work

Once the update is available, instead of a small prompt, users will now receive a full screen prompt that will give you 3 options viz. Restart Now, Pick a time and Snooze. Even if you do not do anything, your machine will not take any action automatically as is the case right now. On hitting Snooze, a user can delay the update for up to 3 days until 35 days have passed. Once those 35 days are up, users can delay the update even further by hitting Remind me Tomorrow.Therefore, a user can delay the update indefinitely.

As we mentioned earlier, reports of this first broke out in May with Microsoft releasing a statement on their blog post that made it seem like Microsoft was listening to its users. An excerpt of the blog post is as below:

Prior to the Creators Update, Windows 10 made most of the decisions for you regarding when updates would be installed and didn’t provide ways to tailor the timing to your specific needs. What we heard back most explicitly was that you want more control over when Windows 10 installs updates. We also heard that unexpected reboots are disruptive if they happen at the wrong time.