Anti-Poaching Rangers’ PC Shuts Down By Forced Windows 10 Upgrade In Africa
We have had Windows 10 upgrade/update botch up live TV weather show as well as livestreaming of a game but in both cases it would just be a pest. It just happens that another Windows 10 upgrade, this time in the remote bushes of Central Africa could have proved fatal.
While there are many cases where the upgrade to Windows 10 has begun all of a sudden and disturbed users in the middle of their work, but nothing equals to what happened in the Central African bush recently.
According to a member of the Chinko Project, an effort in the Central African Republic (CAR) that is supposed to protect wildlife in the region and provide rangers support in their fight against poachers, disclosed that the Windows 10 upgrade began on one of their computers and consumed all the bandwidth.
Windows 10 secretly copied nearly 6GB of data to launch the installer on a very slow shared Internet connection that’s particularly implemented for directing anti-poaching rangers in the field, according to a Reddit user zambuka42. He says that the upgrade started all of a sudden and thus disconnected the computer, exposing rangers to pointless dangers.
“Aside from the fact that we pay per MB, and already share a slow connection, if a forced upgrade happened and crashed our pc’s while in the middle of coordinating rangers under fire from armed militarized poachers… blood could literally be on MS’s hands,” he describes that activated donations that could support their fight against poachers.
However, it is not entirely Microsoft’s error here because as the aforesaid Chinko Project member describes that the system wasn’t designed to use a metered connection (which would have or else stopped the download of Windows 10 files) and the IT guy wasn’t using any technique to block the upgrade to the OS.
“I just came here recently to act as their pilot… but have IT skills as well. The guy who set these pc’s up didn’t know how to prevent it, or set a metered connection. I am completely livid,” he adds.
A screenshot attached to the post demonstrates GWX Control Panel being installed on Windows PCs to block further efforts to upgrade to Windows 10 without permission.
In order to encourage adoption of the new OS, it is very certain that Microsoft is pushing aggressively for Windows 10 upgrades. Therefore, in cases like these where disconnecting a PC is very serious, users need to be very careful. While Microsoft itself offers methods to block the upgrade, the safest way is obviously to turn to apps such as GWX Control Panel that does all the work for you.
