The Maddening Curse of Forced Updates
I’ll never forget that fateful day in 2010 when I sat mere feet away from the legendary Steve Jobs, eagerly awaiting his every word. But just as the Apple CEO took the stage, my Windows laptop decided it was the perfect time to install a slew of updates – effectively crippling my machine and forcing me to sit there, internally screaming, as I watched the presentation unfold without the ability to participate.
It was the first of three occasions where a forced Windows update would totally derail my workflow at the most inopportune moments. And then Windows 10 came along to add insult to injury. Imagine this: without warning, a prompt pops up on your screen informing you that your Windows 10 laptop is about to restart. Even though you know you’re about to lose access to your computer, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it – the buttons are all grayed out. If you’re really unlucky and Windows is installing a major update, the progress meter may be a tease. Once it reaches 100%, your computer might reboot a second or third time before you finally regain control.
I’ve personally seen this – or something similar – happen five times over the past year. And it turns out lots of people have stories just like mine. There’s software developer Dylan Beattie, whose laptop decided to shut down while he was giving a talk in front of 200-odd developers in Malmö, Sweden, forcing him to wing the rest of the presentation without his slides. Alex Gibson, a 3D printing consultant, no longer trusts Windows to manage his 3D printer after his computer forced a restart near the end of a 6-hour-long print job for a customer. And Lydricsama, a digital artist from Finland, lost hours of work on a commissioned piece she was working on late into the night, leaving her with a bare sketch instead of a mostly lined and colored illustration.
The Perils of Forced Restarts
It’s not just professionals who’ve been victimized by these maddening forced updates. Mark Switzer, a World of Warcraft player known as “Preheat” on Twitch, had his machine restart at the worst possible time – while he was in the middle of beating the game’s final boss in front of a live audience. He says he lost most of his viewers that day, a little bit of money (he’s an official Twitch partner), and the in-game reward for beating the boss. “Overall it wasn’t a huge deal,” he tells me, “just very frustrating to have your computer decide these things on its own.”
And then there’s the case of Alexandria Seabrook, a college student who couldn’t complete an online test for one of her courses because of a Windows 10 update. “It was only 20 questions,” she says. “I could have finished the test on time if it wasn’t for the Windows Update.” She ended up getting a 58 on the midterm and could barely bring it up to a C by the end of the semester. “I don’t like Windows, but I’m a college student,” she laments. “I’m stuck with this laptop literally until it breaks down because I have no money.”
These stories of forced restarts, lost work, and missed deadlines are all too common. When I asked my fellow CNET staffers, many of them chimed in with their own horror tales – from a Windows 8 machine that force-updated during a Skype interview with NPR, to laptops that rebooted in the middle of a liveblog or an expense report.
Microsoft’s Stubborn Stance
You’d think that with all the complaints, Microsoft would be eager to address this issue. But the company seems pretty adamant that forced updates are here to stay. When I reached out to a Microsoft spokesperson, the response I got essentially amounted to: “Tough luck – we think this is super important, so deal with it.”
In fact, Microsoft has been actively removing ways for users to disable automatic updates in Windows 10 Pro and above. The Group Policy tool that used to let you do that is now gone. Sure, you can still schedule a restart, but it involves a lot of work to change the annoying “ready or not, here it comes” default.
And while the next version of Windows will let you stave off updates for a 35-day period if you paid extra for a Pro, Enterprise, or Education-grade copy, my understanding is that even those versions won’t let you cancel an update that’s already been delayed and is now about to occur. In other words, you’ll be helplessly watching your computer turn itself off just the same as usual.
A Better Way Forward
Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that these updates can help keep my PC secure. It’s a heck of a lot better to have Microsoft patching holes in my computer’s software instead of having to deal with the damage after the fact with third-party antivirus software. But I think the company has overcorrected with these forced updates.
We should be able to decide when to get our “vaccines” – not have the doctor walk into our house, grab us by the hair, and shove the medicine down our throats. I think it’s time we send Microsoft a message that this isn’t okay – that the computers we bought and paid for with our hard-earned dollars are ours to use whenever we want, not just when Microsoft says so.
There’s got to be a better way of handling these updates. Perhaps by automatically installing them when a PC and its owner are both asleep, as college freshman Alexandria Seabrook suggested. Or maybe Microsoft could take a page out of the Apple and Android playbooks and let users decide when to update.
I generally like Windows, but if I can’t find a Windows PC that’s always ready for work, my next computer will be a Mac. If you’ve been the victim of a particularly nasty Windows Update, write to the team at itFix. I’ll be sure to include the best stories in a future article, and together, we can send a message to Microsoft that it’s time to fix this maddening curse of forced updates.
