Microsoft’s Windows 10 Fever Heightens, Windows Update Mistakenly Sparks Upgrades On Windows 7/8 PCs

However, Microsoft hasn’t been without criticism regarding its tactics to get customers to upgrade. Although the upgrade to Windows 10 is free for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users holding a valid license, it is by no means compulsory for customers to perform the update. But that didn’t stop Microsoft from silently downloading the multi-gigabyte ISO for the operating system in the background, “just in case” the user wanted to upgrade to Windows 10 at a later date. Needless to say, that tactic didn’t go over too well.

Microsoft is now coming under fire for another tactic to get Windows 7 and Windows 8 users to upgrade to Windows 10. Ars Technica is reporting that in recent days, Windows Update has been automatically ticking the checkbox to install Windows 10 on supported machines. This behavior is highly irregular, as the Windows 10 update is listed “Optional,” which means it should not be checked by default.

There’s good news and bad news to report with this latest Windows 10 wrinkle.  The good news is that user intervention is still required to complete the installation process. So even if you didn’t notice the checked box, you can still stop your Windows 7 or Windows 8 machine from going through with the update. The bad news is, your Uncle Henry might not have been so lucky and likely just clicked OK a dozen times just to make the prompts go away. And now he’s calling you to ask why his desktop is “different.” 

For its part, Microsoft says that this was simply an oversight on its part. “This is an intuitive and trusted place people go to find Recommended and Optional updates to Windows,” said Microsoft in a statement to Ars Technica. “In the recent Windows update, this option was checked as default; this was a mistake and we are removing the check.” 

We assume that Microsoft is working with great haste to tackle this offending “bug.”