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posted by martyb on Saturday October 31 2015, @07:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the Do!-Not!-Want! dept.

Ben Funk over on TechReport has linked to a Terry Myerson blog post where he states that in early 2016, the "Windows 10 Upgrade" update will be changed in status from "Optional" to "Recommended". Therefore, if you haven't changed your Windows 7 system from automatically installing updates to manually notifying, but not installing, now is a good time to make that change, and audit every single "patch" you see. There have already been reports of users unknowingly experiencing ISP bandwidth overages due to downloading a massive 3 GB file due to the "Optional" update that was not requested, but Microsoft seems to be throwing caution to the winds.

In the blog post, Myerson has this statement: "Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device. Before the upgrade changes the OS of your device, you will be clearly prompted to choose whether or not to continue. And of course, if you choose to upgrade (our recommendation!), then you will have 31 days to roll back to your previous Windows version if you don't love it." Historically, Windows has been far cleaner to install on a blank disk than to upgrade in place, so this sounds like a recipe for many support calls. There also seems to be no backtracking on any of the privacy concerns, or perhaps taking the "zero telemetry, selective update install" functionality promised (but not yet delivered) to Enterprise customers, and extending it to consumer licensees who value their privacy.


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 31 2015, @04:20PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 31 2015, @04:20PM (#256915) Journal

    Ya know what? I've experienced just about the same thing. So - how did you determine that was the fault of systemd?

    My experience with failing to boot was blamed on kernel 4.2. I attempted to install 4.2 repeatedly both in Debian and in Arch, and every time, I met with failure. I finally managed to get Arch booted under 4.2, using the boot parameter acpi=off. Now, sometimes when I reboot, it just boots, other times, it goes to that black screen.

    The last update led to a bootable system, but I couldn't input anything with either the ps2 or the USB keyboard. Mouse worked, but with no password, I couldn't get into the system. Then, I had a screensaver kick in, and when I attempted to log back in, no input from the keyboard again.

    I won't argue that it may or may not be a systemd problem, but I'd like to know how you arrived at that conclusion.

    Maybe all this time, if I had simply unplugged and plugged the keyboards and mouse, I might have solved my problem?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday November 01 2015, @05:41AM

    by Thexalon (636) on Sunday November 01 2015, @05:41AM (#257103)

    Why it was systemd:
    - The same hardware and similar kernel version running an OpenRC based system worked fine.
    - The kernel output log showed nothing out of the ordinary.

    The conclusion I drew: Some of the units systemd was starting up relied on the mouse being available, and rather than, say, start up everything except those units and start a text-mode login if needed, systemd just tried to start those units, discovered it couldn't and deadlocked.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.