It's not entirely "forced". It's more like heavily heavily pushed with the means to avoid it becoming more and more hidden. Still, they exist. That "Never10" utility from GRC seems that it would resolve all issues.

Which is not to say that this is not repulsive practice, but it's still one step removed from "forced". For "forced" - check Apple and their iOS devices. There, as soon as a new version comes out, the old version becomes obsolete, and you can no longer install it / restore your device to it (unless via "jailbreaking" which you would have had to prepare in advance, or it's too late). Clicked "install" by accident when the popup came up unexpectedly? Messed something up and needed to restore the device via iTunes? End of story. You have to go to the new version.

So every time you find Microsoft's policies particularly annoying, just say to yourself - Hey, at least it's not Apple. 😀

I'm sure Microsoft finds their luddite users' reluctance to upgrade equally annoying.

Well, it depends on your definition of "forced". 😀 They changed the upgrade from Optional to Recommended. The thing is, on most systems, Win7 Recommended Updates is enabled.

Never10 is the simplest, best method to block it, because all it does is change two registry keys in accordance to Microsoft's own Group Policy best practices for enterprises. Nothing to install, nothing to keep updated (like GWX Control Panel).

That said, if you want to claim your free upgrade, just image your Win7 system, do the upgrade, then image back to Win7. Your machine is now forever activated for Win10, so if you change your mind in 5 years, you can install Win10 for free then.

clueless1 wrote:

That said, if you want to claim your free upgrade, just image your Win7 system, do the upgrade, then image back to Win7. Your machine is now forever activated for Win10, so if you change your mind in 5 years, you can install Win10 for free then.

About the above, I'm not sure at all if it works like this or not, just writing my concerns here for discussion. I've read elsewhere (again, not 100% trustful sources) that once you upgrade to 10 using a key/installation of a previous version your key is "converted" to a Win10 key, rendering it invalid for the version it was originally issued for. Is there any truth to this? Furthermore, have you ever tried upgrading to 10 and then using again the previous version? Did it stayed activated?

konc wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

That said, if you want to claim your free upgrade, just image your Win7 system, do the upgrade, then image back to Win7. Your machine is now forever activated for Win10, so if you change your mind in 5 years, you can install Win10 for free then.

About the above, I'm not sure at all if it works like this or not, just writing my concerns here for discussion. I've read elsewhere (again, not 100% trustful sources) that once you upgrade to 10 using a key/installation of a previous version your key is "converted" to a Win10 key, rendering it invalid for the version it was originally issued for. Is there any truth to this? Furthermore, have you ever tried upgrading to 10 and then using again the previous version? Did it stayed activated?

I have NOT tried this myself. But I listen to a podcast called Windows Weekly with two very high profile Microsoft analysts (Paul Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley) and they have mentioned this "trick" numerous times, so it should work.

Okay, here is a link that says it definitely works:
http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/q-how-can- … elling-anything

clueless1 wrote:

Okay, here is a link that says it definitely works:

Well, that's good news 😉 Thanks for the link

The main forcing for local guys will be when new games will require DirectX 12 and permanent link to Internet to work. You are playing, while any your personal data can be transfered to NSA with unpredictable results. Win10 is evident malware.

One cool thing about Win10 is that once you activate it on a hardware platform, it is forever activated on that hardware. That means you can do something like:
upgrade from Win7 to Win10, then later, wipe out the drive and do a clean install from a Win10 ISO and it "just activates". No activation hassles. You can make an ISO here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10/

Granted, I choose not to run Win10 on any of my machines, but I have to support it, so I have played with it on test machines a bit. Also, my wife and son run it, and I support them. 😉

Scali wrote:

I'm sure Microsoft finds their luddite users' reluctance to upgrade equally annoying.

Way to falsely frame the situation, work for ms? More than a few things don't work on 10, there's having more than one machine, keeping 7 around just like other OSs, there's not being ms's product and no privacy, collecting everything you do, there's no control of the system. Yeah, no, the only way I'll ever run it is in a VM(on linux /w hw passthrough only for running dx12 games.)

awgamer wrote:

Way to falsely frame the situation, work for ms?

Geez, lighten up.
Besides, it's perfectly possible to upgrade to Win10 as a new installation on a separate partition, and keep your existing Win7 with multiboot. I did exactly that.

Read the fine print. When you upgrade to Windows 10 you are no longer licensed for Win 7 (unless you use Pro).

Take ownership of the gwx folder and denie the system rights to it. Then dump the contents of the folder.

There you have it, no more gwx.

Anyway what I hate about it is that they're pushing gwx on pc apart of a domain.

gdjacobs wrote:

Read the fine print. When you upgrade to Windows 10 you are no longer licensed for Win 7 (unless you use Pro).

I would assume that anyone who even bothers to whine about OSes would use Pro.

I use what I have licenses for. I see no reason to pay additional money for functionality I don't require.

gdjacobs wrote:

Read the fine print. When you upgrade to Windows 10 you are no longer licensed for Win 7 (unless you use Pro).

This is the first I've heard of this, but I'm not an expert in fine print. 😀 I wonder why sites like winsupersite.com and howtogeek are not aware of this? http://www.howtogeek.com/253901/get-windows-1 … ittle-prep-now/ and why MS is not correcting them? Also, they build in a way to roll back to Windows 7 from within 10, which they couldn't do if your Win7 license was no longer valid.

My take: if MS activation works, then they are telling me it's okay. They know best whether or not a product key is valid or not.

clueless1 wrote:

One cool thing about Win10 is that once you activate it on a hardware platform, it is forever activated on that hardware. That means you can do something like:
upgrade from Win7 to Win10, then later, wipe out the drive and do a clean install from a Win10 ISO and it "just activates". No activation hassles. You can make an ISO here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10/

Granted, I choose not to run Win10 on any of my machines, but I have to support it, so I have played with it on test machines a bit. Also, my wife and son run it, and I support them. 😉

Unless Windows 10 is storing something in the UEFI, then I'm not so sure this would work.

Especially for installations that don't use UEFI, or for activations that used the GenuineTicket method.

Windows 10 activates with a hash of the hardware platform. Paul Thurrott guessed it was based on the serial number/hardware ID of the motherboard. So anytime THAT computer with THAT hardware ID reaches out the Microsoft's activation servers, they recognize the hash and say "Yep, you're good! Activated."

sliderider wrote:

I believe it was Squallstrife who was saying that the Windows 10 upgrade was not being forced. There it is. Microsoft did it, just like I said they were.

🤣

My workshop PC runs Windows 7 because of my EEPROM burner's drivers. I configured the Windows Update policies with gpedit to "Only prompt, never automatically download or install", and skipped any of the Win10 upgrade packages. No "forcing" here. The configuration does what it says on the tin, exactly as expected.

This doesn't mean that the whole fiasco hasn't been aggressive as fuck, mind you, I certainly take issue with the overzealousness that's been on show here.

But when it comes to the crunch, there are several ways to not install the upgrade if it's that important to you, and Win7/8/8.1's functionality is not impacted by not installing Win10, at least not until they reach the end of the support lifecycle. I.e. not forced. QED.

Yep I'm still happily running Win7 on my media server here too. I understand that it's more fun to get your knickers in a bunch and run around the internet decrying Microsoft's efforts to ruin your life, but it's really not that hard to reject their advances if you want to.