I am beginning to see why Patty "hated" (yes, I believe that is the word that she used) Windows 10, MS is taking control of our systems. I purchased my new system with Office 2016. No problems for a few months, in fact, I really liked it. Today I get some kind of a popup when I try to bring up my first Word document, something about allowing MS to track your settings, or usage, or something, I don't remember. I tried to close it by clicking on the X of that popup but that closed the ENTIRE Word document. Tried again, same thing, could not close the popup without killing everything. OK, I evidently had to answer MS's question. It gave me the option of "No", but, I still had to click on "Accept" (it even said that I did, even if my answer was NO). So I did. Bingo, now I am given options on what exactly I want MS to track. I HAD ASKED THEM TO TRACK NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!

So, I do a complete system recovery using Macrium and try again. Same ^#&*ing thing. So I surrendered and accepted the lesser tracking option. But ... there is more.

Next time I reboot, my chosen password sign-on image has changed, it had been mine for months! AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH. No super big deal because I only view this screen for several seconds every day but it makes me wonder ... what else is MS doing to my system? Was Patty right, are these systems no longer ours? Or I am misunderstanding something here, but what?
Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

I run the same Office as you on three systems and have never seen what you have seen. All I've ever seen is a narrow ribbon at the top of an Office app letting me know that there was an update. Other than that I have seen the same type of ribbon suggesting that I enable Office to save to One Drive. In both cases I can click an 'X' at the end of the ribbon or ignore as it does not hinder the operation of the app. Mayhaps it is due to my having set my global privacy settings but I don't recall ever having seen a pop-up in any Office 360/2016 app.

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Same here, I've never had any pop-ups when using Office, I have Office 365. Well, the only box I used to see was when using Excel before I set it to save to OneDrive, after I'd finished I would click the red x to close the program and the box would come up across the middle of the screen asking if I wanted to Save or not, after clicking my answer it would disappear.

I don't have to do that now, as it automically saves to OneDrive, it does this at regular intervals while you work so when you've finished just click the red x and it shuts down.

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Joan Archer
http://crossstitcher.webs.com

I don't know the answer to your questions Acadia because i refuse to run Win10, but i keep getting drawn back to stories such as yours... right or wrong, at the end of the day Microsoft is a business that needs to satisfy a never ending need to supply shareholders with an ever ending need for greater profits.

On the flipside, the end user needs for privacy and quality of service is being eroded.

Where your expectations lie when it comes to do with anything online in the future is likely going to take a lot of time and thought coupled with a lot of change.

Personally I'm looking at something Linux based, what exactly i don't know yet.

Unless Microsoft drastically move their model away from Win10 it most certainly won't be Microsoft.

At time of writing i have circa 18 months until Win7 reaches End of Life... if the day comes when i drop Microsoft it will be a massive change for me... i've tinkered with the competition before but to move lock stock and barrel is almost inconceivable at this point... but there are limits and viable alternatives.

Everything out there is tracking you somehow. On my computer I go to the same few websites everyday, if they know about it, it's no big deal to me. I think your cellphone tracks worse than any computer.

And don't think that Linux will not track. Ubuntu is probably the most popular Linux distr.
https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... -searches/

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LOL. Ok, that MS is tracking me is cool. But they even asked me and I said "No". OK, even that is cool ... but WHY DID THEY CHANGE MY ONE WALLPAPER?

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

I have no idea as to the wallpaper in your case but THINK that I have seen that after a major build upgrade such as the April 2018 one. Such an upgrade/update (not totally sure what it should be called) tends to 'reset' some things that I wish it would not...

Just curious Acadia, do you have your global privacy settings set as you wish? I turn off all telemetry globally then just enable things on a per app basis. For example I have the location telemetry disabled globally but DO enable for the weather and map apps. You can pretty much turn off all telemetry except for basic diagnostics. At least you can do so in the Pro version of Windows 10.

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Your wallpaper may change if you log in with your Microsoft account on more than one machine. It will sync whatever settings you have from one to the other.

Ahhh, Thank you David. I forgot about Microsoft accounts syncing as to stuff like that. Not going to hunt it up right now but there is a way to turn off the sync, is there not?

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Well, I don't have this new system synced with anything, and it is the only pc of any kind in our home with a Microsoft account.

Something weird: my old wallpaper came back this morning so the question now is, will it hang around? The wallpaper that temporarily replaced it yesterday was one that I had never seen before.

Could totally disconnecting the system from power and the modem cause any of this? Been disconnecting everything lately due to electrical storms. But I had done this several times in recent weeks without this happening, yesterday was the first.

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

Heh, spoke too soon. The unfamiliar wallpaper is back and this time I did not disconnect anything from power, just rebooted.

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh. Just realized that my mouse pointer size was changed too. My aging eyes need the larger pointer and after 24 hours I realized, ouch, why are my eyes aching? Bingo.

Now I REALLY understand why our beloved Patty hated Windows 10 except for the security. Going to do a full recovery back to the time before all this ^#*@ hit me and then do some serious rethinking. If I am not mistaken, and I may be, Windows Defender will still update itself even with that excellent NoVirusThanks program installed. One thing is for sure, I will find out. And if not, I will reluctantly go back to a third-party av program. As far as future MS semi-major updates (and major) ... have some serious thinking to do.

This is my pc and I want it to remain that way, thank you very much, Microsoft.
Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

Without a shadow of doubt i can guarantee it won't be Ubuntu, Mint is looking good but any decision is a long way off, i still have hope that MS will backtrack from moving with the current trend of privacy invasion.

The clock is ticking and time will tell.

Problem solved for the MS Word document popup. Like I stated as was going to above, I took my system "back in time" using one of my recovery programs to a time before all of this started. Sure enough once again there were the popups rendering Word unusable.

With the popup on one monitor, I brought up Firefox on the other monitor and searched the Internet. Found it, this problem is only affecting Office 2016 folk. None of you probably need this but here is the fix:
-- In the Cortana search field enter "Task Scheduler", right-click on the app and select "Run as administrator"
-- Expand the Task Scheduler Library, then Microsoft, select Office.
-- Right-click on "OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration" and select "Disable".

The problem went away instantly, I can now use MS Word again.

My Wallpaper problem is gone now too, at least of this posting, but I simply don't know how they could be related. But the fact is, both problems started at exactly the same time.
Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson