Class Action Lawsuit Launched Over Forced Windows 10 Upgrades (courthousenews.com) 347
Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes The Register:
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, filed in Chicago's U.S. District Court on Thursday, charges that Microsoft Windows 10 [installer] 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... The attorneys representing the trio are seeking to have the case certified as a class action that includes every person in the U.S. 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.
Microsoft responded that they'd offered free customer service and other support options for "the upgrade experience," adding "We believe the plaintiffs' claims are without merit." But the complaint argues Windows 10's installer "does not check the condition of the PC and whether or not the hard drive can withstand the stress of the Windows 10 installation," according to Courthouse News, which adds that the lead plaintiff "says her hard drive failed after Windows 10 installed without her express approval, and she had to buy a new computer."
Microsoft responded that they'd offered free customer service and other support options for "the upgrade experience," adding "We believe the plaintiffs' claims are without merit." But the complaint argues Windows 10's installer "does not check the condition of the PC and whether or not the hard drive can withstand the stress of the Windows 10 installation," according to Courthouse News, which adds that the lead plaintiff "says her hard drive failed after Windows 10 installed without her express approval, and she had to buy a new computer."
Awesome! (Score:3)
Maybe this will allow people to decide updates again.
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Or switch away from MS products
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Go get 'em! (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft deserves this and much more for their draconian tactics and forcing consumers to upgrade or update without consent or ability to refuse.
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Right, it's my 92 year old grandmother's fault she didn't fire up the task manager and kill the process.
benefit for attorney? (Score:5, Insightful)
This case sounds like a case something where the consumer would get a $10 coupon to the Microsoft marketplace and the attorneys would earn $3 million.
Re:benefit for attorney? (Score:4, Interesting)
consumer would get a $10 coupon to the Microsoft marketplace and the attorneys would earn $3 million.
I understand why attorneys do it, but why do the judges approve the "Here's a $10 coupon that costs us nothing and requires you to buy something for $50 from us (in which case we'll earn $30 on this transaction)" settlement?
Re:benefit for attorney? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because judges were attorneys before they were judges?
Re:benefit for attorney? (Score:5, Insightful)
Judges are better about coupon settlements today because of how absurd it used to get. The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 made some useful changes. It certainly still isn't perfect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Class actions are useful because they are fundamentally the only way companies get forced to behave in the interest of large groups of consumers who would never bother to sue individually. There are definitely drawbacks in that they rarely substantially help those past consumers, but sometimes they do drive change within a company and drive better practices within a company--either directly as part of a settlement agreement, or just because of the risk of a class action lawsuit. It's not a perfect system, notably because of the high costs of the lawsuits, but it's probably better than not having it. (To determine that for sure you would obviously need to analyze a great deal of data about distributed harms and lawsuit and settlement costs).
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Sounds like as an individual you would be better off just using small claims court or whatever your local equivalent is, rather than joining the class action. Then you can get your specific loss covered, which is likely to be more than a $10 coupon.
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The purpose of a class action is not to make every class member fully whole. It's to punish the company who harmed the class members (assuming they're found liable), while streamlining the process and not bogging down the courts with thousands of individual cases. The initial representatives of the class, who assume much greater risk/expense/effort than you do by filling out a postcard, will get a larger portion of the settlement. Their attorneys, who do all of the work and front their own time and expenses
Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows 10 update destroyed their data
I haven't seen a Windows upgrade (note: UPGRADE) destroy data in a meaningful way in.....I don't even know how long.
and damaged their computers
That's a neat trick, unless they mean their IDEA of their computer rather than the physical hardware. Windows is shitty, not malicious.
data loss or damage to software or hardware within 30 days of installation
Wait. So, are they claiming it was the forced upgrade that caused it, or.....?
her hard drive failed after Windows 10 installed
Sorry, unrelated. Though, if she could show otherwise, I would actually be shocked beyond belief.
she had to buy a new computer.
Yes, in the same way that I would have to buy a new car if my starter gave out.
I'm
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
I haven't seen a Windows upgrade (note: UPGRADE) destroy data in a meaningful way in.....I don't even know how long.
As someone who has worked closely with NTFS, I can tell you that it's not far fetched to think that someone's NTFS partition could have been corrupted. There are no backups of the file index (unless they changed it since Win7), so if your file was fragmented and the index is lost then any file that is fragmented will be unrecoverable with the publically available automated tools. However, I can also tell you that losing the filenames and directory structure of all your data can be just as devastating as losing the files themselves.
That's a neat trick, unless they mean their IDEA of their computer rather than the physical hardware. Windows is shitty, not malicious.
If this were 20 years ago, you would be 100% right. Unfortunately, UEFI has made it entirely possible for a ill-tested operating system installer to brick your system.
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If it can be unbricked, it isn't bricked.
Certainly UEFI has provisions for entirely replacing your existing (in this case, failing) hard drive with a brand new blank one and allow you to install an OS on your computer. If not, please point me to the Commodore 64 aisle.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
You can replace your HDD but that won't help because UEFI bootloaders are stored on your motherboard in flash memory.
Secure boot signatures maybe, but the bootloaders are in the EFI disk partition, at least for me:
If the bios does not allow initializing a new blank disk, then that is between you and your vendor.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't seen a Windows upgrade (note: UPGRADE) destroy data in a meaningful way in.....I don't even know how long.
The Windows 7 -> Windows 10 upgrade made one of my customer's computers unable to do anything but an infinite reboot cycle. At that point, though, he finally gave it and paid me to install Kubuntu on his computer. Before that, he was very much opposed to replacing Windows with Linux. Now he says his computer works better than it ever has.
And now tech support, as always happens with my Windows to Linux migrations, has changed from, "I was doing [something innocuous], and suddenly [fill in malicious Windows behavior]" to, "Can you come in periodically for routine maintenance? No, everything's fine. We just like knowing you're still available, and we'll pay you for your time."
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I haven't seen a Windows upgrade (note: UPGRADE) destroy data in a meaningful way in.....I don't even know how long.
The Windows 7 -> Windows 10 upgrade made one of my customer's computers unable to do anything but an infinite reboot cycle.
So in other words, no data was destroyed? Any other Windows 7 or later OS (possibly earlier as well) would still be able to read and write data to the drive and any Linux distribution would be able to at least read it.
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I'm trying my best to migrate to Linux at the moment. Some stuff like installing Mint went very smoothly. Other, really basic stuff is just broken.
- The mouse wheel is horribly broken in Linux. There is no standard way to adjust its sensitivity and every app interprets wheel movement differently, so some (like the terminal) scroll fast and others (like Chrome/Firefox) scroll incredibly slowly. There is no fix for this.
- Initial updates installed quickly, but it asked me if I wanted to overwrite some Gnome c
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The Windows 7 -> Windows 10 upgrade made one of my customer's computers unable to do anything but an infinite reboot cycle.
Being in an infinite reboot loop is not the same as destroying data, and recovery tools exist to get out of that loop and even roll back the update.
You don't want this to succed (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if you are a rampant MS hater, this would set a really bad precedent: That software companies could be liable for data loss caused by things only incidentally related to their software. Talk about a ripe field for bullshit lawsuits.
Don't think OSS would be immune either. The argument of "but I didn't charge for it" doesn't eliminate liability. In fact, it would be something companies could use to try and bully OSS out of existence through bullshit lawsuits.
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>Even if you are a rampant MS hater, this would set a really bad precedent: That software companies could be liable for data loss caused by things only incidentally related to their software.
What world do you live in where they're NOT liable?
If SQL server had a bug that deleted millions of dollars worth of banking data, they'd sure as hell get their asses sued. But when it's a customers data, it's okay?
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If a SQL Server database was lost because the hard drives happened to fail, how is Microsoft liable for the failure of some random manufactures hard drive?
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If SQL server had a bug that deleted millions of dollars worth of banking data, they'd sure as hell get their asses sued. But when it's a customers data, it's okay?
It seems you have the wrong idea of what customer means to $big_companies. Individuals/small companies are just paying beta testers now. I think you'll find the limit at around $500,000 worth of purchase to qualify for the customer rank.
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Don't think OSS would be immune either. The argument of "but I didn't charge for it" doesn't eliminate liability.
Apparently you haven't read any open source licenses because they took care of liability a LOOONG time ago. Normally the text would be in caps but Slashdot didn't like the caps.
GPL:
in no event unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing will any copyright holder, or any other party who modifies and/or conveys the program as permitted above, be liable to you for damages, including any general, special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the use or inability to use the program (including but not limited to loss of data or data being rendered inaccurate or losses sustained by you or third parties or a failure of the program to operate with any other programs), even if such holder or other party has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
MIT:
the software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. in no event shall the authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection with the software or the use or other dealings in the software.
BSD:
this software is provided by the copyright holders and contributors "as is" and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are disclaimed. in no event shall the copyright owner or contributors be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of this software, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.
Ya, and that will hold up... not (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the deal: All proprietary software has that in there as well. Every piece of software has an EULA that says they are responsible for nothing. Have a look at the MS EULA if you wish, there's all kinds of shit that supposedly limits liability, requires arbitration, etc, etc https://www.microsoft.com/en-u... [microsoft.com].
You can say it all you like, doesn't make it true. I can write an EULA saying "By using this software you agree I get to take your first born child," and yet if I tried, I'd still go to jail because just saying it in an EULA doesn't make it so. You can't disclaim all warranties, all damages, etc by law. For some info on it look up the Uniform Commercial Code.
Ok well all that aside when it comes to an issue like this courts are not known for applying the law one way in one case, and a different way in another. They don't say "Oh we like this nice OSS" and give it one rule and "We don't like this mean commercial software" and give it another. Thus if courts find that software makers are liable for incidental data loss then it will apply to ALL software. OSS has no special get out clause. You don't get to have it both ways where OSS gets a magic liability shield just by putting something in a text document but commercial EULAs aren't worth the bits used to store them.
In fact, OSS will be MORE vulnerable. Commercial companies have lawyers to help them wrangle out of things. They also can always go the real contract route, where you sign an actual contract up front with them before buying (you see this with some enterprise software) which can enforce more stringent terms. OSS that is just distributed on the web doesn't have all that.
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Yes you do (Score:2)
But they didn't do that. They did nearly everything they could to force the Win 10 upgrade down people's throats, including misclassifying it as a security update, constantly pestering people who had already sa
Re:You don't want this to upgrade (Score:2)
What if you had the free choice to contribute to a fund to keep the older software upgraded against security vulnerabilities? Would you prefer that to letting companies like Microsoft decide when the new version supports their marketing plans and the old versions will no longer be supported?
Then again, if I had my druthers, I might still be running Windows 95 or Windows 2000. My choice between those two would probably be based on the size of the relevant support projects...
Windows 3.1 is a tad too retrograd
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It's not a software issue. It's more like malware - malicious intent or recklessness on the part of the author.
Microsoft mislead customers with a malware upgrade app. First they made the "not now" and window close buttons simply schedule the upgrade for later, and then when people complained they just removed the close button. Any reasonable person would have known that forced updates at random times on hundreds of millions of computers was bound to go badly wrong for some significant proportion of them.
You
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
she had to buy a new computer.
Yes, in the same way that I would have to buy a new car if my starter gave out.
If the repair of the starter represented 50-200% of the value of the car then, yes, you would probably feel like you needed to get a new car.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate to burst your bubble, but I wonder if I may be part of this class action. I had a laptop that was Windows 7 for the longest time. It decided to upgrade itself to Windows 10. Cool. For about a month then my laptop refused to boot windows again. I can boot to a usb stick but not to any other partition on the HD. It is very possible that EFI went corrupt after an upgrade. I tried to recover the system and ended up losing all my data. Also, I could not reinstall Windows 7 or 10 ever again. My laptop is effectively bricked.
I honestly would be saying the same thing that you did IF I hadn't experienced the same issue that lady who had to buy a new one did. Because I am an expert, I know I can install a new OS. But the fact that I cannot reinstall Windows (first reboot puts the system into a hung state) is telling. I also had to buy a new laptop because I need Microsoft products to do my job. It's not like I had time to send it in for warranty repair and twiddle my thumbs while they send me a new laptop. Plus that laptop was an i7-2600k. It wasn't a slouch, I still played CS:GO and BF4 on it up until it decided to not turn on again -- I didn't want a new laptop, I NEEDED it.. So it's entirely plausible and now I am going to resurrect that machine and maybe consider joining in on this adventure.
-dk
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I'm surprised that no manufacturer/retailer has sued Microsoft for all the warranty support they had to do related to failed upgrades.
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How on earth did this garbage comment get +5?!
I had a laptop that was Windows 7 for the longest time.
How long, exactly? Long enough to be out of warranty?
It decided to upgrade itself to Windows 10. Cool. For about a month then my laptop refused to boot windows again.
Correlation does not imply causation. Your HDD failed. That is why you could boot from USB but not install to HDD. It would have failed no matter what OS you were running.
Because I am an expert, I know I can install a new OS.
New definition of expert: someone who cannot diagnose a simple hardware failure. You don't mention any attempt to install any OS except Windows. If you had, you would almost certainly have found that any OS would have failed to boot from your
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Having had the starter fail twice in a vehicle that I owned, your analogy is interesting.
My starter failed the same way both times. The first time I replaced the starter, I bought a replacement for the starter. No internal parts were available. The second time, I was more aware and I bought some copper pieces (cost: a few cents) via eBay, took the solenoid apart and replaced the copper connectors.
Now, the simple fact is that a re
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Correlation and causation are science. Law is about tying actual loss to an action. Sometimes there are experts, but they are opinions based on reputation or experience, not scientists.
Your reply is irrelevant, and displays ignorance and idealism. Sure it would be great if things worked that way. Start a revolution and begin your own country, then you can tell us how it should work.
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Perhaps they mean like what the Win 10 upgrade did to my Compaq laptop: Bricked it in such a way that it was impossible the even boot from the Windows disk, wipe the drive and start over.
I pulled the drive and copied my files off, but not everybody knows how or has the equipment to do that.
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There is a case where an "undefined language condition" caused a C++ program to destroy a computer. (Well, such was reported in, I believe, "Effective Modern C++", though without sufficient data to track down the actual case.)
Given that, there's nothing unreasonable in saying your computer was destroyed by an MSWindows "upgrade". I don't know that it's true, but it isn't intrinsically unreasonable. More likely, the system could consume so much disk space that a complete version couldn't be written to dis
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, I've had to deal with multiple situations where an upgrade or repair created a new user and made the previous user account invisible. Windows doesn't just create a new account, it actually changes access permissions of the old user account folder so it can't be accessed even by the administrator account. To the layman, the "Documents and Settings" or "Home" folders just disappear without a trace. It can take some screwing around with filesystem permissions (via a Windows PE boot disk) to get access
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That's a neat trick, unless they mean their IDEA of their computer rather than the physical hardware.
If it rendered the computer unusable, then that's the same thing from the user's point of view, who then has to spend money to have someone fix their computer — money they may not have.
Windows is shitty, not malicious.
Uh, no. It's spyware which cannot be disabled. That's not the same as eating your data, but it is malicious.
It's all about perspective (Score:2)
Just to point out the obvious:
The average non-Slashdot type will not know how to do much with their computer other than use it. Barely.
When it ceases to do what they want, in their eyes, the computer is broke.
Not, maybe a driver needs to be installed. Or the OS needs to be reloaded, or specific pieces of hardware need to be replaced.
The damn thing is broken. Period. Fix it.
They go to Best Buy armed with that information and tell the associate " My computer is broken " and are kindly steered towards the
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't seen a Windows upgrade (note: UPGRADE) destroy data in a meaningful way in.....I don't even know how long.
Because YOU haven't seen one does not mean it did not happen ever.
That's a neat trick, unless they mean their IDEA of their computer rather than the physical hardware. Windows is shitty, not malicious.
Well the summary already told you that the HD was destroyed. It's possible an update does that. Some Windows 10 update horror stories have had the machine on a continuous reboot loop. [cnet.com] That would trash a weak HD pretty quick. So yes physical hardware can be damaged.
Wait. So, are they claiming it was the forced upgrade that caused it, or.....?
Er what?
Sorry, unrelated. Though, if she could show otherwise, I would actually be shocked beyond belief.
Hello, continuous reboot?
Yes, in the same way that I would have to buy a new car if my starter gave out.
This relies on the premise that replacing your starter is not more than the cost of the car. Your analogy is not great as there are cars on the road today that replacing the starter is more than the car. Now in computers it is more likely because how valueless older computers are compared to new ones. It may not be worth it to the user to repair an old computer as opposed to replacing it.
I'm torn between hoping she succeeds (as I consider Microsoft a bad actor in the whole upgrade situation) and hoping she gets laughed out of court so hard she ends up with skid-marks that spell out "LOL".
I would say you learn about the exact details of the situation otherwise people will be laughing at you for not knowing them.
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And what you saw was the user's settings being destroyed by the upgrade, not their data. I'd count that in the OP's favor.
good bet that the judge had the same experience (Score:3)
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and everyone else associated with this suit.
gonna be a hard time finding an impartial jury.
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Linux and Mac users?
Wouldn't they have to show damages? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Hm. I'm interested to know the metrics behind "was pretty painless".
I've heard some fairly bad horror stores from folks that run > 3,000 windows desktops. I'm not a windows guy so I don't know if the horror was self inflicted, caused by their admins not doing something right, or if the blame can be laid at Microsoft.
I will say that a OS that takes specific, non-trivial processes to not automatically and preemptively molest the install base is likely something I wound not give approval to.
I said in anothe
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One of my customers had to fork out for installation media because the Win 10 upgrade hosed the recovery partition - well, not hosed, because I could see it with gparted on another machine, but the customer's machine failed to access it, and none of the available tools would convince the bios that there was indeed, a recovery partition.
I'd call that damage. Win 10 had no business doing anything beyond looking at other partitions on the drive.
A bad hard drive isn't MS's fault (Score:4, Insightful)
"does not check the condition of the PC and whether or not the hard drive can withstand the stress of the Windows 10 installation," according to Courthouse News, which adds that the lead plaintiff "says her hard drive failed after Windows 10 installed without her express approval,
If your hard drive dies during an OS install, it was on its way out and would have soon died anyway.
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No, not necessarily. It could be the computer would have been just fine taking the new OS install, however the computer was likely blocked up with dust and such, so the old spinning rust drive got overheated while doing all those file writes and died.
Seen it happen. Even SSDs aren't immune to heat damage, and the airflow in systems that have them tend to be even poorer.
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How is what you wrote in any way "No, not necessarily". Your scenario is pretty much a practical example of the GP's general statement.
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True, but also irrelevant from a legal perspective. The court will likely view it as the hard drive had a finite lifespan, and the heavy strain of installing Windows 10 used up whatever it had remaining and denied the owner the opportunity to spot the failure early and save what data she could.
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True, but also irrelevant from a legal perspective
Actually it's very relevant. Installing an OS isn't a major workload for a HDD. If this is what pushed it over the edge, then maybe not installing it would have bought the computer a couple of days or a week of extra run time. To get to this state it would have been throwing SMART errors out the wahzoo.
It's like suing the government because your car which hadn't had a service in years and had 500000km on the clock was only driven on flat land and just so happened to die while being driven on a hill, and the
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I can tell you it makes ANY drive get seriously HOT.
If you're drive is getting hot from moving back and forth along the platter you should fix your hardware. That's before mentioning the wide scale study Google did that showed disk failure was not correlated to drive temperature within the rated operating conditions. If you managed to exceed those by reading data from the drive, fix your hardware.
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Strange logic. If you aren't in the middle of an OS install, your sick HD will throw errors and give you a chance to back up your data.
That hasn't been my experience -- typically when the hard drive starts throwing errors, you're lucky to get anything off it at all, let alone a good backup of your data. Though that's why we have backups... and for those that don't think they need backups, that's why we have data recovery firms.
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When I say "throw errors", I include such things as random bluescreens and corrupted files, which would prompt me to immediately back up whatever I can. You're not going to notice those early warning signs when a full-blown OS install is in progress, especially if the install keeps crashing and rebooting until the HD is destroyed.
If you wait until you see corrupted files to make your backup, how do you have any confidence in your backup? How do you know you haven't just saved corrupted copies of all of your files?
lolwut?!! (Score:2, Insightful)
whether or not the hard drive can withstand the stress of the Windows 10 installation,
Sounds like something a computer illiterate would say. If copying files to a hard drive is "too stressful" than it was already dying.
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To me it sounds like there wasn't enough spare space, and you ended up with an incomplete install that was unbootable *because* it was incomplete.
No sympathy for Microsoft here (Score:5, Interesting)
Chillen, don't run win10. It may be the most secure, for various definitions of secure (e.g. telemetry), but it sure as shit ain't the most stable. Worst of all, M$ will decide when your machine reboots. They don't need for you to say "um, yep, this is a good time to reboot", nor "um, no, give me time to save my files and shutdown". Nope, you will close your laptop, go to bed, and wake up to a rebooted system.
FUCK THAT SHIT
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=change+wh... [lmgtfy.com]
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They don't need for you to say "um, yep, this is a good time to reboot", nor "um, no, give me time to save my files and shutdown".
Sure they do. A window pops up and asks you if you want to reboot now or later.
Nope, you will close your laptop, go to bed, and wake up to a rebooted system.
Wait, so overnight when no one uses a computer and no software is running indicating that there's a block on the system is not a good time to reboot? On top of that there are unsaved files in this state?
I think this is covered by KB3000001 - User to stupid to use a computer.
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Yesterday, I got such a message. However, on another occasion, I didn't and it rebooted while I was using the damn thing. It probably showed the message when I was away from the machine and it disappeared before I got back, and it WAS outside the "active hours" of 8-5, but it's my home box! I'm on that outside of 8-5!
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I'm pissed too (Score:2)
Windows 10 keeps forcing driver updates, which keeps fucking up my graphics drivers, and the only way that I've been able to find to bypass this is a registry hack to tell Windows Updater that my PC is on wifi while on ethernet, then to tell it the wifi connection is metered and to disallow updates on a metered connection.
The problem is that I don't want updates disabled, I want to APPROVE updates - and Windows 10 is a cunt about taking away choice.
I haven't done the registry hack yet because I shouldn't fu
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Yah, I have the same problem. The approved win10 wifi driver is buggy, It frequently goes into a state that can only be recovered by disabling the device via device manager, or rebooting. None of the windows 10 self repair/diagnosis options can recover it, instead frequently leaving me with a message to the affect that the problem is likely my wifi AP. Rolling back the driver to a win8 era option fixes it for the month or so it takes M$ to decide to "upgrade" it.
The general consensus between a few sysadmin
Different class action lawsuit (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'd like to see a class action lawsuit addressing the Windows 10 keylogger.
You'd like to see a class action against a feature that provides improvements to handwriting / text recognition through an automated learning system that takes inputs from your corrections and processes them in a central database? A privacy feature that is so carefully hidden that it is listed in an area of settings called "privacy"?
I'd like to see less stupid people on Slashdot but we can't all get what we want.
Mwahahaha! (Score:3)
If the drive has sufficient free space, and has available drivers, the worst it can do is trash all the data on the hard drive.
If you don't have those two requirements and for some unknown reason I've never heard of, it allows the install to go ahead anyway, the worst it's done is trash the data on the drive.
(I've done both those situations, and windows will refuse to install. Sure, there may be a command switch to force it too, but that isn't the softwares fault you chose to shoot yourself in the foot.)
Software doesn't destroy hardware. (Ok, there actually have been some very rare and very specific instances in history where that could be done, barring the use of robotics or explosives and the like, but those were fixed very rapidly after being discovered. So it's effectively a non-issue)
If the hard drive failed, it's not the fault of the software, the hardware died. If it couldn't handle the stress of reading/writing a few gigs, it was already on deaths edge and in the process of committing computer suicide.
HD dead and replaced the computer. That's like running out of gas and buying a new car!
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Why does every OS installation warn you not to power-off during installation if the worst possible error can be fixed simply by reinstalling?
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Re:suure (Score:4, Interesting)
At the very least, whatever sketchy consultant or low rent big box store nerd herd operation sold this lady a new computer instead of a replacement hard drive would be wise to get their legal contingency fund sorted out before it becomes established in a court of law that that was a mistake...
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(and said lady's law firm starts looking for their next class action target)
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hard drives breaks; needs to buy whole new computer...
It used to be a ridiculous idea, not anymore.
If you look at the new macbooks, the SSD is soldered to the motherboard and that's if you can access the motherboard at all.
And even on laptops where you can actually change the hard drive, more and more often, it involves removing delicate clips and ribbon cables, sometimes glue.
And to make things even harder, there is all that stuff with locked bootloaders so that you may not even be able to reinstall the system yourself on a new hard drive.
Re:suure (Score:4, Interesting)
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Friend of a friend got hit with an unwanted Windows 10 upgrade. Tried it for a while on the advice of Microsoft who said it was "better", but hated it. Lots of stuff didn't work. Asked my friend about reverting it because he didn't want to make things worse. By the time the friend gets there it's past the 1 month grace period and the old OS has been deleted.
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Ah. I see you have no Thunderbolt card, no gaming mouse or keyboard, no soundcard that offers more than onboard quality, no flight stick/pedal system, no head tracking device, no VR system, ...
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You get one, the FBI gets one and god knows who else does.
Re: suure (Score:5, Funny)
I solder all my connections. Removable plugs are for people who don't make commitments.
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Are you aware that you simply unplug the old hard drive and plug in the new one? Soldering is unnecessary and not advisable.
Many modern tablets and laptops have soldered down flash drives. How are you unplugging those again?
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So hard drives now come with the OS preinstalled with the correct drivers?
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Yes pumpkinhead.. because Microsoft never voided good programming practice.. and was never deceitful about presenting an upgrade to Windows 10 to their users. Get back under your rock you useless troll. Obviously you are uniformed as to the lengths that MS went to increase the percentage of Windows 10 users.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3073457/windows/how-microsofts-nasty-new-windows-10-pop-up-tricks-you-into-upgrading.html
Peace out you uniformed pisshead.
Nothing in that article refutes my assertion that the people that are tricked into upgrading are the same kind of people that can't replace a hard drive on their own.
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Re: suure (Score:2)
If the computer even had a dvd drive.
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Download an install image ... how? The only machine in her household probably capable of doing this is not capable of anything at the moment when she'd have to download the image.
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And how do you like the US so far, Mr. Trump?
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Proof, please. Where has there been a fatal accident involving a self-driving car, and people "looked the other way"?
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So how about we leave the hyperbole for another occasion. Clearly, there have been no cases where a driverless car actually killed anybody, and certainly there is no evidence that people looked the other way when the cars failed to live up to promises. The fact that these cases are well documented would, in fact, tend to argue exactly the opposite.
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We allow self driving cars on the road that may kill people and look the other way every time there is an accident, yet nail Microsoft to the wall for making a bad software design choice.
People aren't being forced to immediately forego their use of a more traditional motor vehicle in favour of an under-tested self-driving alternative.
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Calling an operating system new technology with risks totally unknow...
Wow, just wow!
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Ok, fine: you move to an island with only human drivers. I'll happily stay where I'm at with dramatically safer self-driving cars(complete with LIDAR and ultrasonic sensors that never blink or fuck with the radio instead of watching the road).
My only condition to this agreement is that once nearly all of the occupants of Luddite Island have been killed by:
-drunk drivers
-teenagers
-senior citizens
-chronically sleep deprived workaholics
-and people who choose not to wear their corrective lenses when driving
that
Re:Found the APPS! (Score:2, Funny)
ONLY luddites can luddite luddites, so this APP lawsuit against ludditey Ludditedows 10 will be destroyed by Ludditeald Trump, who will Make Luddites Ludditey Again!
Luddites!
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the difference was, it was a forced upgrade, many people "upgraded" cause they clicked the wrong thing on the nag screen that kept popping up