Today I got blind-sided by having Windows 11 pushed onto my workstation.

TL;DR: Microsoft is getting more pushy about Windows 11. I reverted an unwanted “upgrade”, but I learned they remove the option to roll-back the install after 10 days.

I know many of us on Lemmy are IT professionals and probably running Linux already for use cases where it makes sense. If so, great. Good for you. So do I, mostly. Feel free to disregard this post. Unfortunately, I have a number of use cases that require me to keep my workstation on Windows (for now.)

Microsoft has been getting increasingly pushy and sneaky about the free (as in beer) Windows 11 upgrade. For me, this was reason enough to refuse to upgrade. In my experience with corporations, if they are pushing anything this hard, it is probably not in my best interests. In case you needed more reasons to decline the upgrade, I assure you there are plenty. I won’t go into that too much here, but I hadn’t planned on ever upgrading, and I despise Microsoft and Windows 11 even more now.

My lame story

About a year ago,IIRC, I set a registry key that purported to block the Windows 11 upgrade on my workstation. Or maybe I set the group policy. I forget which specifically it was as it’s been an eventful year. Whatever it was I had done to block Windows 11, I either fucked it up or they stopped respecting it. Anyway, whatever happened, Microsoft kept nagging me over and over. I’d tell it “No, fuck off.” But Microsoft won’t take “No” for an answer. Eventually, I guess they just stopped asking and just installed it. I use this mostly via RDP, so it’s possible I accidentally clicked something that triggered an upgrade? Not sure on that. I know I didn’t choose to upgrade.

This morning, some stuff that normally runs on my workstation was not running correctly, which usually indicates that Microsoft has forced a reboot for updates again. I’m used to it, so I opened my macbook to remote into the workstation and get everything going again. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that my machine had been enshittified with Windows 11 against my will. Everything looked cartoonish and terrible. (Though it did seem to work for the 30 seconds I used it.)

I didn’t panic, because even a lazy half-assed used-to-be-sysadmin like myself has set up backups and has a recovery drive handy. But that is still a pain in my ass, and I’d rather just get my machine back without the hassle.

After some quick searxing, I immediately found a guide to uninstall windows 11. Fortunately, Microsoft did make this part of the process relatively painless. Fuck Microsoft with a spiked buttplug for doing this in the first place, but at least I was able to get my installation back without having to resort to a manual system restore.

It is important to note here that the “go back to windows 10” option gets removed after 10 days. So if this happens to you, do not procrastinate like I usually do. Instead just go revert to Windows 10 immediately. After 10 days, they remove the windows.old directory and you’ll have to do a clean install to get back to Windows 10.

Key Take-aways

  • Microsoft is pushing Windows 11 hard.
  • It was surprisingly easy to revert back to Windows 10. It took me about 5 minutes.
  • I need to accelerate our migration away from relying on non-free software and services, especially Windows and Plex. Unfortunately, (at the risk of sounding like an IT middle-manager)… There is a long project backlog and the legacy tail is real.

HOW TO REVERT TO WINDOWS 10

aka roll-back or downgrade or windows 11 (courtesy of TomsHardware.com)

  • Navigate to the Recovery submenu of Settings. The fastest way to get there is to search for “go back to Windows 10” and click the top result. You can also browser to Settings->System->Recovery.

  • Click “Go back”

  • Check off one or more reasons for your uninstall when prompted.

  • Click “No, thanks” when asked to check for updates instead of rolling back.

  • Click Next, Click Next, Click “Go back to Windows 10.”

  • Machine reboots, takes a couple of minutes, and then boots back into Windows 10.

If you’re not married to Windows, I implore you to escape while you can.