Most Windows users are familiar with a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark inside of it. It means "alert" or "warning", and that the next thing you should do is click on it to fix it.
Now, the Windows logo that represents Get Windows 10 (GWX) shows that alert icon in the system tray. The move is clearly an attempt to create a sense of urgency, to get a few more people to accept the free upgrade before it ends forever.
So what happens if you click on it? You guessed it. It's a countdown to July 29 at midnight. The time zone appears to be local.
If you're still a Windows 7 or 8.1 user, you've likely been fighting off these prompts for most of the past year. You may have even been force-upgraded once or twice and had to roll back.
Microsoft recently made it a bit easier for users to say no to Windows 10, but it wasn't always so easy. In December, GWX began only providing the options to "Upgrade Now" or "Upgrade Tonight" without an obvious way to entirely opt out. Some users modified the registry, but in January, Microsoft pushed an update that rewrote those modifications.
The company made Windows 10 a recommended update in February, which then led to GWX offering the date that a user would be automatically updated. At this point, Windows 10 became something that the user must opt out of, rather than opt into.
Now, all we can hope for is that the new countdown is a self-destruct for GWX, as many users will be very happy to see the app's demise.
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