An American man from Albuquerque, New Mexico, is suing Microsoft for 600 million dollars… or a copy of Windows 7.
The original story on TheRegister says the lawsuit, which was filed this past Wednesday (February 14), came about after Frank Dickson’s ASUS 54L Windows 7 laptop was upgraded to Windows 10 (presumably automatically via Windows update, the story doesn’t say), which he said made the machine “non-functional”, and “deleted the backup in the process”.
On discovering this Dickson contacted Microsoft for a replacement copy of Windows 7, who told him he should contact ASUS as that was his machine’s OEM; he refused, saying the ‘original supplier is untrustworthy’, and that the only way to ensure he was getting a ‘quality’ copy of Windows 7 would be if he got it through Microsoft.
The suit says if Microsoft doesn’t give Dickson what he wants within 30 days of his filing, then they must pay compensatory damages of $600 million.
The paperwork filed on Dickson’s behalf lists both Microsoft (and its CEO Satya Nadella for reasons unknown) as defendants. But the claimed sum of $600 million is written as “$6,000,000,000” which, you might have noticed, is not 600 million dollars, but 600 billion.
Here’s what makes this a rather questionable move. Firstly, the demand of “$600 million or a copy of Windows 7” is just plain unnecessary – this problem is solvable.
Second, fixing the problem is easy: roll the OS back to Windows 7 – a functionality Microsoft has long provided so long as your Windows 10 upgrade happened in the last 30 days – or re-install Windows 7 from scratch using the original product code that should still be on the machine.
Third, with such a clear error in his filing it’s unlikely the claim will get very far.
If a rollback is out of the question, all Dickman needs to do is download the Windows 7 ISO from Microsoft’s website, use the Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool to create a bootable USB drive with the OS on it, and reinstall the operating system; drivers for his laptop can be found on the ASUS website. These are all publicly-available resources which can help him solve his own problem.
Here’s the process, step by step:
- Go to this page to grab the Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool. Install it.
- Download the Windows 7 ISO from this page (it’s a direct link to Microsoft’s website and thus 100% legal).
- Plug in a USB drive that has 4GB of storage (or more).
- Fire up the Download Tool, and point it toward wherever the .ISO file is stored, and tell it to use the USB drive you’ve just plugged in.
- When the process completes, reboot the machine, ensure it’s able to boot from a USB drive (the option will be in the BIOS somewhere), and let it boot from said drive.
- Install Windows 7 by following the on-screen instructions, entering the OEM key printed on the sticker on the machine when prompted.
None of this is rocket science; it’s a little inconvenient, admittedly, but it’s not so bad that it warrants a lawsuit.
Yes, people haven’t appreciated Microsoft’s push for them to install Windows 10 (despite it being a very good OS in its own right), and Windows 7 remains a very popular OS even now, 9 years after its initial release, but surely this didn’t warrant filing a lawsuit and claiming millions in damages.
[Source: The Register][Image – Alan Dean]
