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Woman sues Microsoft over her forced Windows 10 upgrade and wins

Teri Goldstein of Sausalito, California says that she had never heard of Windows 10 until her PC attempted to install it. The automatic upgrade failed, and now her PC is slow, crashes at times, and could be useless for days.

She did what any normal person would do - she reached out to Microsoft support, which didn't help. Then, Goldstein decided to sue Microsoft for lost wages and the cost of a new PC.

She won a $10,000 judgment against the company. Microsoft had filed an appeal, but dropped it last month.

This may be the first time of note that anyone has won litigation regarding forced Windows 10 upgrades, but it's certainly not the first time that there has been a high-profile forced upgrade. Back in May, a forced upgrade broke a Twitch user's 9-hour livestream. A week earlier, a meteorologist was interrupted during a broadcast with a prompt to upgrade.

These days, Microsoft provides the user with a time and date that the PC will be automatically upgraded. If the user doesn't stop the upgrade before then, the only way to stop it is to disagree to the EULA, at which point the PC will roll itself back.

At that point, anything can happen, and if it's a forced upgrade, users are much more likely to be upset if something breaks upon rolling back.

Source: Seattle Times via ExtremeTech

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