Windows 10 Upgrade Blocking

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Introduction

Here at Puget Systems, there has been a lot of talk about the free Windows 10 upgrade process available to users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. While Windows 10 is a great operating system in many ways, there are several reasons you might not want to upgrade a system. Perhaps your system only has drivers that were not designed for Windows 10, or you might have software that may not be compatible with Windows 10. If you fall into any of these categories and will not be doing the update, this guide will help you to disable the notifications and pop-ups, as well as if you like, changing your Windows Updates from Automatic to Manual or to disable the upgrade through the group policy manager to try to stop the update downloading automatically.

How to remove the GWX (Get Windows 10) prompt

This is a picture of what the Get Windows 10 Icon looks like:

 

 

When you hover over it, it says "Get Windows 10". In order to remove this icon you need to remove the Windows update that installs the Get Windows 10 program and prevent it from simply re-installing the next time you update your system.

  1.  Open the installed Windows Updates by clicking the Start button, typing in "view installed updates", and opening it from the menu
  2. Find and select the update that includes the string "KB3035583" then click "Uninstall" and confirm any confirmation boxes that come up
  3. Once this is done, immediately reboot the computer and then open Windows Update by clicking the Start button. In the search box, type "Update", and then, in the list of results, click "Windows Update"
  4. In the left pane, click "Check for updates"
  5. When Windows finds updates for your computer, click the "Important" and "Optional" update links. You will be looking for an update that includes the string "KB3035583"
  6. Right-click the KB3035583 update, and then click "Hide update". The next time you check for updates, the update won't be automatically selected or installed. Confirm any confirmation boxes that come up 
  7. Check the rest of your Windows updates and if there is anything that says "Upgrade to Windows 10" or something similar, also hide that update.
  8. Click "OK" to exit out of the screen. and that is it! You are finished!

Now, if you get through all of that and you still see the notification, you can go with the final thing to try, which is manually deleting the files.

  1. Open task manager by right clicking on the taskbar and clicking task manager, then clicking on GWX.exe and telling it to end task.
  2. After that, if you have a 64bit version of windows which most of you do, open file explorer and navigate to C:\Windows\SysWOW64. If you are on 32 bit Windows it is in C:\Windows\System32.
  3. Once here, find the folder called GWX and delete it by right clicking on it(and only it) and selecting delete and then confirming you are sure. Once it deletes. reboot the system and you should see that it is completely gone!

Group Policy Upgrade disable (Windows 7 Pro or 8.1 Pro only)

If you have Windows 7 Professional or Windows 8.1 Professional, you can use the group policy editor to be able to disable the actual upgrade. As Microsoft says:  "Windows Update will not offer you an upgrade to the latest version of Windows"

1) Click Start and type in "gpedit.msc" without the quotes and press enter
3) Navigate to Computer configuration>Administrative Templates>Windows Components>Windows Update
4) Double-click "Turn off the upgrade to the latest version of Windows through Windows Update*.
5) Click Enable and then click OK and close the Windows.

Manual Updates.

In addition to this, Microsoft has now made the Windows 10 upgrade itself a normal Windows update that is listed as a recommended  update. What this means is that by default, it may auto download 6GB of data to your drive and ask you if you are ready to install Windows now or later. If you truly do not want 10. You can change your updates from automatic to notify me and check your windows updates weekly and just make sure to go in and hide any updates saying Windows 10 just like you did with the above instructions.

In addition, you can change your automatic update settings to these settings which will not let Windows updates install it automatically but I would not recommend it unless you are comfortable manually doing your Windows Updates as this will disable automatic patching that resolves security fixes.

Again, only do this if you are comfortable with maintaining your security patches on your own on a regular basis.

  1. Open Windows updates by clicking the Start button, typing in "Windows Updates" and clicking on it.
  2. Click "Change Settings" on the upper left of the screen.
  3. Go to the drop down menu under Important updates and select "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them"
  4. Click ok on the bottom of the screen.
  5. About once a week, I would recommend checking and installing all the recommended and important updates. Optional updates I would recommend not installing.

 

Unfortunately Microsoft really really wants people to upgrade, and for the time being we may have to have a little discomfort when saying no.

Additional Resources

Here are some additional resources regarding Windows 10 that you may find useful.

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