Microsoft just forced restart my Windows PC again to install more unwanted apps

Windows 10 had restarted my computer without permission yet again — to install yet another forced OS update onto my solid-state drive.

The craziest part: When my machine finished rebooting, it now contained the exact thing I’d been writing about before I was rudely interrupted. Microsoft had installed unsolicited, unwanted web app versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook onto my computer.

OK, it’s not as bad as when my entire computer screen got taken over by an unwanted copy of Microsoft Edge.

No, this time, Microsoft is merely sneaking unwanted web apps onto my PC — and using my Windows 10 Start Menu as free advertising space. Did I mention that icons for Microsoft Office apps have magically appeared in my Start Menu, even though I’ve never once installed Office on this computer?

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These aren’t full free copies of Office, by the way. They’re just shortcuts to the web version you could already access in any web browser of your choice, which doubles as advertisements to pay for a more fully-featured copy.

Because they’re web apps, it’s not like they take up any space on my computer, and I don’t really mind them in my Start Menu. They’re among the least offensive bloatware I’ve seen, and I never really look at the Start Menu anyhow — my taskbar and search bar have long been enough for me.

Nonetheless, they’re the latest proof that Microsoft doesn’t respect your ownership of your own PC, the latest example of Microsoft installing anything it likes in a Windows update up to and including bloatware, and the latest example of Microsoft caring more about the bottom line than whether a few people might lose their work when Windows suddenly shuts down their PC. Luckily, I didn’t lose any work today, but someone did it recently:

Keywords: microsoft forced restarts, microsoft potentially unwanted applications, microsoft teams unwanted install