Update to be released to Windows 7 and 8.1 systems this week

Jun 28, 2016 09:44 GMT  ·  By

The free upgrade to Windows 10 promo is coming to an end next month, and Microsoft has finally decided to tweak the way Windows 7 and 8.1 users are being offered the new operating system in order to make the push less confusing.

An update for Windows 7 and 8.1 computers will be released later this week in order to modify the behavior of the “X” close button in the Windows 10 upgrade prompt.

At this point, clicking the X button when the upgrade to Windows 10 has already been scheduled doesn’t make any difference, while after the new update, doing it will mean that users do not confirm that they agree with the upgrade.

Lisa Gurry, Microsoft’s senior director for Windows, has stated that Microsoft wants to make the upgrade process as smooth as possible, and the update will be released later this week for all systems.

“We’re working really hard to address it,” she is quoted as saying. “We’re working hard to deliver a Windows that everyone will really love.”

Forced upgrades no more

Microsoft has been often accused of being too pushy with its Windows 10 upgrade offer, and many customers complained that their PCs ended up running the new operating system without them even choosing to install it.

More recently, the company agreed to pay $10,000 in damages to a woman who sued Microsoft after her business computer got upgraded to Windows 10 and started experiencing performance issues, a thing that affected her work.

While there’s no evidence that Microsoft decision to deliver a patch that would make refusing Windows 10 upgrades much easier is in any way related to this lawsuit, there’s no doubt that it could help address similar cases in the future. There are many users out there very frustrated with Microsoft’s aggressive Windows 10 push, so more lawsuits could follow quickly, given the fact that the company agreed to pay damages in this one.