Microsoft has confirmed that it is pushing out Windows 10 to Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 users – even those ones who haven’t opted to avail the free upgrade option.
The confirmation was received by The Inquirer after it contacted Redmond based on the information provided by one of its users who saw the entire image of Windows 10 OS on this computer even though he had not opted to receive the free upgrade.
With Microsoft busy getting its Windows 10 installation numbers to the next level every single moment, one of its key points on the agenda was pushing free Windows 10 update to all home users who own a licensed copy of one of its prior OS. With as many as 75 million installations in less than a month it seems that it’s strategy is paying off as market share of Windows 10 has zoomed past that of OS X, Windows 8 and 8.1.
However, it seems that it might not be satisfied with the number of opt-ins received as it has come to light that users who didn’t opt for the upgrade are also being treated with a free copy of Windows 10 just in case the user decides to upgrade to the OS at a later date. That’s what happened with one of the readers of the Inquirer who reported the matter to the publication.
The reader observed that there was a particular folder, labelled ‘$Windows.~BT’, on his system with approximately 3.5GB to 6GB of size. In the Windows Update log, he repeatedly saw a failed to upgrade to Windows 10 entry and this is because he didn’t opt for the free upgrade.
There is no obvious reason as to why would a system, which has not opted to receive the update, be storing the Windows 10 installation images. The Inquirer asked Microsoft for comment and that’s when it became clear the no matter what, Microsoft will push out Windows 10 installation images to users’ systems just in case.
In response to the publication’s questions, Microsoft representative replied that all users who have opted for automatic updates through Windows update will, Redmond will ensure that upgradable devices get ready for Windows 10 by downloading the files they’ll need if they decide to upgrade.
“When the upgrade is ready, the customer will be prompted to install Windows 10 on the device”, Microsoft said.
This is something that either very few people or no one knew about. Though there is nothing wrong in such a strategy, Microsoft is basically keeping its fingers crossed just in case. Windows 7 is not out of support yet and it won’t till a few more years, so what if the user doesn’t decide to upgrade till 2018? All the original files as well as the subsequent updates to Windows 10 will be dumped on user’s system, clogging up the hard drive.
What’s your take on this? Please, let us know in the comments section below.
I can’t believe you wrote this because of what one reader said, rather then investigating it yourself. although, I can see how it lets you write this without taking much responsibility.
Here another reader with first hand experience. The ‘get windows 10 app’ is pushed to everyone that is eligible, but It doesn’t download Win10 until you hit the reserve a copy button in that app. I have seen this many times when installing Windows 10, Furthermore I have two machine that I haven’t told to reserve a copy and the download folder hasn’t been created.
Think about it, If Microsoft downloaded Windows 10 to all the billion plus eligible PCs regardless of reservations, the internet would grind to a halt, those that reserved a copy would have to wait because the lines where clogged delivering bits to people that don’t want it.
Hi – I broke the original story over at The INQUIRER. Microsoft confirmed this to me. It was not based on one reader’s experience and is not dependent on reserving – if you have automatic updates, it WILL download Windows 10 – that’s from the horse’s mouth.
The remarks about are out of context of the conversation, there are no quotation marks and the Microsoft representative must have a name. There is still plenty of room for misunderstanding All the comments above can be used to back up my argument as well as your conclusions. The answer isn’t here, look at machines that you’re sure no one has “click reserve a copy” and see what you find.
“but It doesn’t download Win10 until you hit the reserve a copy button in that app.”
You’re either a liar or stupid. I’ve seen dozens of W7 systems with KB3035583 installed where no one has reserved anything (including several of my own), and every damn one of them has a 7GB folder with the W10 installer in it named C:$windows.~BT.
This morning there are people all over the net reporting the same thing as I am.
Is the name calling really necessary?
I’m not one for name-calling – but I resent the implication that my direct quote from Microsoft is wrong. I’ve got a full email box of people who have said “thank you, I thought it was just me”. Its also been picked up by the national papers who have got their own quotes from Microsoft. I respect your right to doubt – but its definitely true!
They pushed it to me too, Mike.
I believe you. Must be that they haven’t gotten it out to all one billion machine yet.
duplicate
How do we uninstall it? Which update was it?
uninstall KB3035583, reboot, then check updates again and when it comes back, uncheck it and hide it so it doesn’t reinstall. Also, DO NOT allow automatic installation of updates, select manual installation.
To get rid of the 6GB folder, you must used cleanmgr, using the Clean Up System Files option after it makes its initial scan. after the second scan using the clean up system files option, you’ll see one or two of the categories showing +GB sizes, though you can pretty much safely nuke all the categories if you wish, though I tend to leave the setup logs and error categories alone so you can see these in Event Viewer.
Thanks. Weird thing is I already uninstalled/hid that one, but the folder came back. Might be KB3083324?
KB3083324 is a mystery update. You didn’t happen to actually request a reservation did you? If so, it’ll keep trying to reload forever, even if you nuke KB3035583. To get rid of the reservation, try these things:
How to Fix Infinite Windows 10 Reinstalls After Rollback From a W7/W8 W10 “Upgrade” and How to Fix Certain Other Rollback Issues
I just had a client who unwittingly allowed W10 to “upgrade” her W7 system. She asked me to roll W10 back to W7 because W10 was so fundamentally broken and slow it was unusable. Here’s my story of that rollback.
First, the W10 All Settings menu was broken right from the get go after the W10 “upgrade”, so until I fixed that, it was impossible to access Update and Security to perform the rollback.
Looking at Event Viewer, every time I tried to open All Settings, SynTPEnh.exe, one of the Synaptics touchpad driver helper programs, crashed.
Figuring that was causing the problem, I removed the Synaptics touchpad item from add/remove. For good measure, while I was at it, I removed Norton, figuring that might be problematic, as well as a few other applications like icloud, quicktime, and itunes, figuring they would be restored during the rollback anyway. Turns out that was a HUGE mistake though the rollback would have been impossible without removing at least the Synaptics software.
At any rate, after rebooting after removing all of this stuff, All Settings started functioning for the first time, and I could perform the rollback with Update and Security.
And then the nightmare began.
First, rolling back did not undo the original W10 reservation, so no matter what I did, I could not keep W10 from redownloading and reattempting to reinstall. Searching the web, I found no solution, but did find MANY people nearly in tears with the same problem. Looking at how all this works, it looks to me like probably everyone who rolled back from W10 is going to find that their reservation does not get cancelled and that W10 is going to attempt to reinstall forever.
But I finally came up with a solution that I think should work to solve this problem for everyone.
1. Make a Restore Point for insurance.
2. From the Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories, start a cmd window in Administrative mode by right clicking Command Prompt to expose the context sensitive drop down menu and left click on “Run as Administrator”. Leave the cmd window open for subsequent commands, and after each reboot, immediately reopen cmd in Administrator mode like this for subsequent commands.
3. Set automatic updates to Never check for updates: cut & paste into the open cmd window:
REG ADD “HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionWindowsUpdateAuto Update” /v AUOptions /t REG_DWORD /d 00000001 /f
4. Disable and stop the Windows Update service (wuauserv): cut & paste into the open cmd window:
sc config wuauserv start= disabled
(note that the space after “=” is critical)
When that’s done, cut and paste into the open cmd window:
net stop wuauserv
5. Now remove KB3035583: cut & paste into the open cmd window::
wusa /uninstall /kb:3035583 /norestart
Note, at this time, if you wish to go ahead and remove the recent plethora of W10 spyware that Microsoft has installed on your W7/W8 systems, you can repeat the above command as follows:
wusa /uninstall /kb:3022345 /norestart
wusa /uninstall /kb:3068708 /norestart
wusa /uninstall /kb:3075249 /norestart
wusa /uninstall /kb:3080149 /norestart
wusa /uninstall /kb:2990214 /norestart
wusa /uninstall /kb:3012973 /norestart
wusa /uninstall /kb:2952664 /norestart
wusa /uninstall /kb:2976978 /norestart
(Note that not all of these will be on all systems.)
6. Restart the system. Note that sometimes after removing the above updates, the restart can take a LONG time, sometimes even hours; be patient, it should eventually complete.
7. Now delete C:$WINDOWS.~BT via cleanmgr (“cleanmgr” cut and pasted into the cmd window), using its Clean Up System Files option which appears after cleanmgr makes its initial (lengthy) scan. After the second (lengthy) scan from using the Clean Up System Files option, you’ll see one or two of the categories showing +GB sizes, though you can pretty much safely check all the categories for deletion if you wish (though I tend to leave the setup logs and error categories alone so you can see these in Event Viewer). Good instructions for doing this can be found at addictivetips DOT com/windows-tips/what-is-the-windows-bt-folder-on-my-hard-drive/
8. Delete the C:WindowsSoftwareDistribution folder, which btw can’t be deleted without first doing Step 4. Also, don’t worry: when you eventually restart Updates, SoftwareDistribution will be recreated.
Cut & paste into the cmd window:
rmdir /s /q “%SystemRoot%SoftwareDistribution”
9. Fire up regedit from the cmd window, and search for and remove all keys named GWX (and gwx). An easy way to do this is to use the match whole string option of regedit’s search box. Also the search is case insensitive so all GWX/gwx will be found in one search no matter which way you type it. There will be 4-6 instances of this key in the registry.
10. Still in regedit, clear out all keys and values from HKLMSOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindowsWindowsUpdate EXCEPT what’s shown below. If the optional ElevateNonAdmins or NoAUAsDefaultShutdownOption don’t exist, ignore. If DisableOSUpgrade doesn’t exist (and it probably won’t) create it as a DWORD with value 1.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindowsWindowsUpdate]
“ElevateNonAdmins”=dword:00000001
“DisableOSUpgrade”=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindowsWindowsUpdateAU]
“NoAUAsDefaultShutdownOption”=dword:00000001
11. Still in regedit, clear out all keys and values from HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionWindowsUpdateOSUpgrade except what’s shown below. If DWORD values AllowOSUpgrade or ReservationsAllowed don’t exist or have values of “1”, create them and/or set to “0”. Set DWORD OSUpgradeState to “1”. Don’t worry about OSUpgradeStateTimeStamp.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionWindowsUpdateOSUpgrade]
“AllowOSUpgrade”=dword:00000000
“ReservationsAllowed”=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionWindowsUpdateOSUpgradeState]
“OSUpgradeState”=dword:00000001
“OSUpgradeStateTimeStamp”=”2015-09-10 05:15:58”
12. Reboot
13. Set automatic updates to: Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them: cut & paste into the open cmd window:
REG ADD “HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionWindowsUpdateAuto Update” /v AUOptions /t REG_DWORD /d 00000002 /f
14. Re-enable and start the Windows Update service (wuauserv): cut & paste into the open cmd window:
sc config wuauserv start= auto
(note that the space after “=” is critical)
When that’s done, cut and paste into the open cmd window:
net start wuauserv
15. Now check for updates via Windows Update in Control Panel, and you should no longer see Windows 10 try to download and install, but instead normal W7/W8 updates should be working again. Be sure to uncheck KB3035583 (and any of the others you remove in Step 5), and then right click on them and select Hide, so they will never come back.
However, for me, the REAL nightmare began!
As it turns out, when you roll back from W10, the old W7/W8 registry is restored but NOT any modified and/or deleted Program files. Thus, there’s a complete mismatch between the restored W7/W8 registry and any programs altered or deleted when in W10.
In my case, after the rollback to W7, icloud, Norton 360, Quicktime, iturns, Citrix and others had registry entries as if installed, but all of the installation files were missing.
Naturally, none of these would reinstall because of the (corrupted) apparent pre-existing installation, and of course they couldn’t be uninstalled since the uninstaller files were missing.
So I used several tools such as zuninstaller and Windows Cleanup Utility to remove the Add/Remove objects, and manually removed other entries from HKLM/SOFTWARE. ccleaner might have been very helpful here, but I don’t really trust it.
But worse, thousands of the “restored” registry entries had been corrupted in HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionInstallerUserDataS-1-5-18Components by having no ownership! Thus they could not be overwritten when reinstalling the programs.
I spent hours using powerful features in Registrar Registry Manager (RRM) Home Edition to find these keys and remove them in bulk. RRM was particularly vital because it could remove the no-owner keys, whereas regedit could not. Basically, once I found a bad key in Components, I did a search for all instances of that key in Components and then did a bulk delete with RRM.
Eventually, I was able to reinstall the programs I had uninstalled in W10.
Bottom line, Windows 10 itself is an absolute and total travesty, and rolling it back is likely to be a complete nightmare. Windows 10 is BY FAR the worst OS ever made by Microsoft, much worse than even W8.x, because W8.x can be made to behave pretty decently with Classic Shell and a few other tweaks, and does not have half the programs moved into the dumbed-down app mode and half the controls split beteen Control Panel and half in the dumbed-down app mode All Settings.
Wow. Thanks! Yes, I did “reserve” an update and burned an install CD for later use. But haven’t pulled the trigger yet. Thanks for this info. But would this apply to me since I didn’t actually perform the OS10 upgrade, I just reserved it and had the ~BT folder created.
If the damn thing keeps reloading no matter what you do, then, yes, most (perhaps all) of what I posted would probably apply.
Just carefully follow all of the steps. If some are not needed, then no harm, no foul. Make sure to do a restore point before starting.
No interest at present, or for some time to come, in updating to Win 10.
Not just because it’s not yet robust, but because I also have many programs on my laptop which work beautifully with Win 7 that will not have had Win 7 compatible updates yet.
These would be things like video and music converters, sound and screen recorders, and half-a-hundred other free progs that replicate functions which MS would otherwise make you pay for.
(BTW, Apple’s even worse for this latter point!).