Posted on 03/26/2017 8:29:32 AM PDT by dayglored
Updated Three people in Illinois have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, claiming that its Windows 10 update destroyed their data and damaged their computers.
The complaint [PDF], filed in Chicago's US District Court on Thursday, charges that Microsoft Windows 10 is a defective product and that its maker failed to provide adequate warning about the potential risks posed by Windows 10 installation – specifically system stability and data loss.
Microsoft "failed to exercise reasonable care in designing, formulating, and manufacturing the Windows 10 upgrade and placing it into the stream of commerce," the complaint claims. "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."
The attorneys representing the trio are seeking to have the case certified as a class action that includes every person in the US who upgraded to Windows 10 from Windows 7 and suffered data loss or damage to software or hardware within 30 days of installation. They claim there are hundreds or thousands of affected individuals.
The complaint enumerates a number of alleged problems with the way the Windows 10 update presents itself to Windows users, noting that it "often installs itself without any action being taken by the consumer."
Microsoft recently changed its Windows update behavior to allow for more user input. "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," wrote John Cable, director of program management in the Windows servicing and delivery team in a blog post earlier this month.
"What we heard back most explicitly was that you want more control over when Windows 10 installs updates."
According to the complaint, Windows 10 installed itself onto plaintiff Stephanie Watson's computer without her consent and then erased data, some of it related to her work. She hired Geek Squad to repair the machine, with only partial success, and ended up having to purchase a new computer.
Plaintiff Robert Saiger, the complaint says, consented to the Windows 10 update, only to have his computer stop functioning. He lost data, then lost time and money, while incurring aggravation attempting to recover the data.
Plaintiff Howard Goldberg "elected to accept Windows 10 after declining over 6 months of daily prompts requesting him to download it." After three attempts to do so, the result was a non-functional computer and lost data.
Last June, a California woman won $10,000 after a Windows 10 update disabled her PC. In September, UK-based consumer group Which? noted that Windows 10 updates were being deployed without consent, despite Microsoft's insistence that users have a say in the matter.
Microsoft was unable to comment at time of publication. ®
Microsoft doesn't think much of the lawsuit. "The Windows 10 free upgrade program was a choice designed to help people take advantage of the most secure, and most productive Windows," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email to The Register. "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. We believe the plaintiffs’ claims are without merit."
3-22
Microsoft forcing Windows 7 and 8.1 users to install Windows 10
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3536970/posts
3-23
Microsoft will kill some Windows 7 and 8.1 support in April (Apr 10 Patch Tuesday)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3537563/posts
Can i boroow $200? lol
[[Although I had a recent issue with sleep mode (lazy SOB refused to wake up - lol)]]
I had that problem with linux- found out it was due to generic video card driver- had to get the card specific driver before the comp would wake up from sleep- dunno if that is hte case for windows or not?
Can’t has!
My next-door neighbors had their machine upgraded to 10 without ANY input from them.
So I would kind of consider that to be a problem.
Thanks
The main legal elements contract law and the “buyer beware necessity” requiring due diligence on the buyers part, but together they require some necessary level of transparency in the contract, and in what is available for the buyer to address due diligence on their own part.
I think the Windows 10 update process failed in the later and the former. It was really a “pig in the poke” without the ability to truly see the pig until it already had control of your machine.
However, there was an easy solution that was available.
And yet, again, Microsoft tried to NOT make that fact readily apparent (I had to research on the Internet to even know the option existed) and DID NOT MAKE that solution a PROMINENT feature it told the consumer about in the beginning and as part of the notifications in the update material.
If the consumer exercised the backup and restore utility within the first 30 days of the update, there remained in the system a restore point image, saved by the update process, just before the update. Restoring to that point would bring everything in the OS back to the point just before the update. It would have given someone back their Win 7-8 system. But after the 30 days, that restore point was deleted and no longer available.
Beyond the first thirty days, such a restore to before Win 10 still existed, IF the consumer themselves had exercised the backup and restore feature, creating a restore point image at an earlier time. It could have been used to at least restore the OS to that point. I always do one just before and after every Windows update and every program/software change.
Again, Microsoft, like all the arrogant technologists is intentionally NOT fully transparent about their products and helping you NOT have, use, install, keep, run features and functions you don’t want.
Even now in Win 10, they don’t tell you, prominently, that you can get rid of Cortana, permanently. You merely find its file folder where it is installed and then delete it. After you reboot it is no longer there and “updates” don’t reinstall it; they merely bypass it because it is no longer there.
I had a hell of a time with the 1067 Anniversary update. I tried over and over for months. I had added a SSD. I ended up having to unplug D:, an HDD.
Post Upgrade my D: was changed to F:.
“Knowledge” bump !!
I partly agree, insofar as regular backups should be de rigueur for anyone who does anything important on a computer. And in addition to "data" backups, I consider restore-to-metal full-disk images part of any correct backup strategy.
That said, most users don't do backups. Or they do them occasionally. And almost none actually do a test restore to prove they can USE their backups.
But the other part of "partly agreeing" is that Microsoft knows this about their users, but they ran this cr@p campaign anyway.
Microsoft was absolutely cognizant that they were pulling the rug out from under 100's of thousands (possibly millions) of Win7 and Win8.1 customers.
They have no excuse for their abusive proactive approach to this upgrade.
All said, I doubt this suit will get much traction, or if it does, that anyone will get anything from it, other than the lawyers.
Interesting. You're not the first person I've heard of who had drive letters change post-upgrade.
Woe to the poor user who installed had any applications on a drive that got changed -- the applications won't run any more from the new location (all sorts of Registry paths are wrong), and you can't even un-install the applications because they're not where they used to be, so the uninstalls fail.
It's not quite as bad with data files, but it's still a PITA.
I have no idea why this happened to you, or those folks, but it seems real odd.
I will be using Windows 7 til they pry it from my cold, stiff, dead fingers.
:)
You are far from alone in that respect. :-)
> "...poor user who installed had any applications..."
SHB: "... poor user who had installed any applications..."
“Contributory negligence on the part of the plaintiffs. Anyone who consents to a major upgrade and does not back up their programs and data before proceeding cannot recover for damage to their programs and data. MS is right about this one.”
Except it wasn’t consensual. It takes a fair degree of IT savvy (registry hacking and firewall blocking) to prevent M$ forcibly updating your PC to Win10. It’s the IT equivalent of rape. Not only does ‘No’ mean ‘No,’ not specifically saying ‘Yes’ also means ‘No.’
Microsoft’s behavior in the marketplace has been dictatorial, brutal, and uncaring, for a very long time, but you seem to be casually dismissive of that behavior, and the injurious effects it’s caused to millions of individuals for so long, and particularly during this current roll-out of the Win 10 operating system.
It doesn’t seem to bother you that this company, which unfortunately wields an inordinate level of power over ordinary people’s lives, has an increasingly toxic relationship with the broad public.
That’s just disturbing.
Microsoft has no integrity.
When they force fed Win10 to its customers and clients, they then forced companies to spend time and money either relearning or repairing their equipment.
So, in addition to lost data, there was also unnecessary lost time and lost productivity as companies either adjusted to Win10 or from undoing the damage forced upon them reverting back to their normal before the update.
I've been using their stuff long before Windows was invented, but I don't trust Microsoft's products anymore. I don't trust the company anymore.
But I doubt they'll miss me much.
There aren't that many other choices for consumers, so Microsoft can do as it pleases and people will still end up buying Microsoft.
Microsoft’s behavior in the marketplace has been dictatorial, brutal, and uncaring, for a very long time, but you seem to be casually dismissive of that behavior, and the injurious effects it’s caused to millions of individuals for so long, and particularly during this current roll-out of the Win 10 operating system.
It doesn’t seem to bother you that this company, which unfortunately wields an inordinate level of power over ordinary people’s lives, has an increasingly toxic relationship with the broad public.
That’s just disturbing.
Windows sleep mode has been a problem since at least Windows 98 days. I get calls every month at work because Windows either is not accepting the password to log back in from their screen lock even though the nt password is not locked or takes several minutes to wake up.
I have the person power off and on then we turn off the power options. BTW Microsoft will turn them back on at some point!
When you install Windows 10 you originally had 30 days to go back to the earlier Windows. Now it is 15 days.
Cost me over 10k in upgrades I didn’t want and a good week of down time when one of my machines was forced upgraded. There was no option when machines were left on overnight. And no... Their roll back did not work. FUMS
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