Microsoft embarrasses itself with Windows 10 pop-up that hogs the desktop urging an upgrade to Windows 11 – then promptly crashes
Windows 10 users, start planning for Windows 11 now – by watching Microsoft’s pop-up pushing an upgrade crash.
Microsoft has pushed out another pop-up urging Windows 10 users to upgrade
In this case, though, there are reports of the pop-up locking up
It’s not a good look having a full-screen nag crash, especially given all the problems with bugs in Windows 11 24H2 right now
In a rather embarrassing turn of events for Microsoft, its latest bid to urge Windows 10 users to upgrade to Windows 11 has gone awry because the pop-up in question crashes.
This is a full-screen pop-up, of which we’ve seen very similar (if not identical) variants before, which urges you to ‘Start planning for Windows 10 end of support’ ahead of the End of Life date for the OS which is October 2025.
It’s a multi-panel nag to upgrade to Windows 11 (if you proceed to click through it all), and rather in-your-face as it takes up the entire desktop (usually following a cumulative update for Windows 10).
The fresh wrinkle here, though, as Windows Latest reports, is that this pop-up is crashing for some Windows 10 users, as flagged up by a denizen of X (@ems_konto).
>application pops up to tell me to upgrade to windows 11>immediately crashesthanks microsoft pic.twitter.com/DuEQSVCk24December 31, 2024
So, what we have here is a message urging you to start planning what you’ll do when Windows 10 support runs out, telling you to prepare now, and that the Windows Backup app can help you transfer all your files to a new Windows 11 PC.
And then the pop-up window immediately freezes, becomes unresponsive, and informs the user that ‘Reusable UX Interaction Manager is not working’ – whoops.
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
Analysis: An unfortunate error to say the least
This is rather unfortunate because Microsoft is pushing folks to plan ahead in good time and upgrade to Windows 11 one way or another (it hopes), and the very piece of code doing this then crashes – which, the more cynical might suggest, could be read as a flavor of what’s to come if you do go ahead and upgrade. Given all the bugs that have been plaguing Windows 11 24H2 of late, certainly (particularly those hitting PC gamers).
Granted, this is code within Windows 10 crashing – it’s nothing to do with Windows 11 – but the impression that’s made by a Microsoft program urging you to ‘upgrade to Windows 11’ and then locking up completely is obviously not a good one.
We haven’t ever encountered a nag screen crashing in the many years we’ve been using Windows – since Microsoft first implemented these kind of nudges, which have become increasingly bigger shoves to upgrade – so this is a first as far as we’re aware. And presumably something Microsoft will be keen to fix quickly, and a mistake that’s not to be repeated.
You may also like…
A Chrome-killing browser will be OpenAI’s next big shot at Google, according to a new report
Windows 11’s feature to allow typing with your Xbox controller has vanished in a blow for owners of handheld gaming PCs
Windows 11 remains an unloved OS – but why won’t people upgrade?