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Windows 10 "Forced" upgrade:
I hate that this is going to sound like one of those stupid hoax e-mails about the end of the world, but PCWorld, InfoWorld, ComputerWorld, CNet, The Guardian, Forbes etc. are all reporting it, and I've seen the new screen so, here we go ...

For those using Windows 7 or 8 who don't currently wish to upgrade to Windows 10; it seems that MS has changed the upgrade notice so that if you click the red X in the upper right corner to get the notice to go away (I know I've hit that button probably 100 times since the pop-up started showing up), well, the window goes away, but they've changed what the X does, and you have just confirmed that you want the upgrade to happen.

Here's the PCWorld article ...
http://www.pcworld.com/article...kenly-agreed-to.html

I'll be watching for it on the family PCs, but right after telling my eldest son (in college for Comp.Sci.) about it, he fired up his laptop and there was the new pop-up - had I not told him, he probably would be spending his afternoon trying to roll back to W8 as that's the level he's to be at for his courses just now ... he'll upgrade when the courses change the requirements (probably this fall).

As for the rest of the family's PCs that aren't on W10 yet, I've just gone around the house and put a bit of software on to allow me to disable the automatic upgrade until we choose to move. I don't want one of the kids to just hit the good 'ol red X while they're trying to finish an essay (or build a cubist Eiffel tower in MineCraft).

Gibson Research has put out a small utility called "Never10" which is supposed to prevent the update via a switch in the Windows registry - you click the button "Disable Win10 Upgrade" and you're all set (if MS has already downloaded W10 files to your machine, there will be another button visible to allow you to delete those files). If you decide you want W10 in the future, just run Never10 again, and select "Enable Win10 Upgrade"
https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

As with anything on the Internet, please do your own research to be sure the suggestion above is right for you. I'm not saying W10 is good or bad, it seems to get decent reviews; but, if you are not ready to upgrade your machine(s) yet, please be aware of this change and take the steps that work best for you.
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Wow! This just happened to me two nights ago. I was reading some email about 11:00pm and suddenly my laptop locked up and said it was updating to Windows 10! What!! I did a little research and found out that you can go back to your old O.S. As long as you do it within 30 days of the upgrade.

I waited about 30 minutes til the upgrade finished and the license agreement screen came up. Instead of clicking "I agree" I clicked "I don't agree". A window comes up that says they'll have to restore my old windows 7 if I don't agree. I still clicked no and 15min later I had my Windows 7 back. JEESH!!

I'm not opposed to the upgrade. I'm just not ready for all of the brain damage involved in trying to get my printers, plotters and old programs to work with a new operating system just yet.
I have a different experience from you Doug.
I support multiple sites where the main application does not fully support Windows 10. About 3rd of those machines though have either updated to Windows 10 because a user clicked the wrong button or upgraded intentionally, they were all running Windows 7 Professional. Each one so far works with no issues, network printers, scanners, database, network shares, old versions of Word - Excel, etc etc.
The only "problem" for me was I use Logmein to remotely access these pc's. It reported that important updates needed to be installed yet Windows Update said all updates were installed. I had to go to the Dell website to update the drivers. Not such a bad thing but I will have to do that for many machines..
Another pain for me is I schedule these pc's to run a full scan for virus's and malware in the early morning each day. In Windows 10 I now have set that up in the Scheduler, more clicking to setup than before..
I also upgraded to Windows 10 on my Mac's running VMWare. All my programs work well, faster and image boots quicker than Windows 7.
On one Mac / Windows 10, I was unable to click the Start button, known issue, install the latest update and all ok.
You have until the end of July until Microsoft removes the option of a free upgrade to Windows 10, after that ~$100. Maybe they will move that date out.
I recently reloaded an older pc in which the power supply had failed. I upgraded this pc with a Samsung Pro SSD drive to give it a new lease of life. After I installed Windows 7 Pro from DVD it took 2 days until Windows Update even came back and told me it needed it install ~150 updates. Even just selecting one update then took a day before it even started to download that update. Subsequent updates were a bit quicker but it seems Microsoft is deploying its Windows Update servers away from Windows 7 updates.
This is also posted online, even just selecting one update from the Microsoft website does not help.
Another issue I hit with Windows 7 was the syncing of mirrored drives after a reboot. Microsoft's answer was, it will be fixed in the next operating system version. For Windows 7 a fix was a registry change.
One way or another they will "retire" old operating systems.
YMMV

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