14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 10 will be offered as a free upgrade to PCs running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 within the first year after launch, and it appears that the company is already testing the way it plans to deliver this upgrade.
The company has recently shipped an update labeled as KB3035583, which, according to its description, “enables additional capabilities for Windows Update notifications when new updates are available to the user.”
While it also does exactly what it says, it turns out that there's a little bit more hiding in this update that's offered as optional for computers running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
Digging into update files
myce.com has discovered more information in the files that the said update is downloading on users' PCs, and it appears that, after all, KB3035583 is nothing more than a Windows 10 notifier and downloader.
Basically, here's what KB3035583 does, once installed on your computer. First of all, it checks the running version of the operating system on your computer and looks for the availability of Windows 10, thus determining whether you should get to see upgrade notifications or not.
If Windows 10 is available (which should only happen later this year), Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users should see a notification to upgrade to the new operating system. Upon clicking this notification, Windows 10 download and installation start automatically, and everything is performed without user input.
Surprisingly, the notifications that this update would send are labeled as “advertisements,” but we're pretty sure that you won't get to see any ads on your system, besides the said upgrade notifications.
Right now, users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 can also upgrade to Windows 10 Technical Preview using an automatic downloader, so the final version of the tool is expected to work in a similar way.
Needless to say, those who don't want to upgrade to Windows 10 can always ignore the update and hide it completely to make sure that it doesn't show up in Windows Update and they click it by mistake. Microsoft is offering it as optional, so that shouldn't be a problem for now.