How to stop Windows 7 offering Windows 10 update?

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#1565627 4-Jun-2016 12:43

I'd prefer to know what was happening on my PC rather than running random executables from the Internet that require admin rights. But that's just me.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3095675 shows how you can hide GWX without editing registry entries or implementing group policy, and that hiding GWX will end the notifications and the scheduled upgrade attempts.

gzt

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#1565640 4-Jun-2016 13:10

Fair comment, but is not exactly random.

coffeebaron

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#1565693 4-Jun-2016 16:04

OK, so I don't want this computer to upgrade; what to I click here??

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yitz

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#1565697 4-Jun-2016 16:31

Task manager, gwx.exe end task :P

Reading KB3095675 as per above, it seems like at this stage since it's not yet scheduled, you should be all right clicking the red 'X' (i.e. close window) . Once scheduled, closing the window doesn't cancel the scheduled update from installing, but the option to cancel the scheduled update should show up.

Short of uninstalling GWX kb update (which will presumably reinstall itself) there's not really an official way to permanently get rid of the unscheduled "Microsoft recommends upgrading to Windows 10" message from coming up, the above article recommends hiding the icon and notifications from the system tray but you'll presumably just have to put up with the message periodically (and not accidentally schedule) until end of July or whenever they decide to stop offering the free upgrade.

Microsoft guy can confirm.

CYaBro

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#1581644 28-Jun-2016 07:25

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3088755/windows/a-lawsuit-over-an-unwanted-windows-10-upgrade-just-cost-microsoft-10000.html

'Nuff said.
Wonder if this will start a lot more lawsuits?

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1101

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#1581765 28-Jun-2016 10:28

Hopefully , this will all be over in a month.
I had to revert another clients PC another back to Win7 yesterday. People in a small business dont have IT savvy staff on hand, so its just a disruption
to their business .
They come in & find the PC is Win10, printers dont work, AV doesnt work, a restart in 10 itself can trigger an Windowsupdate that can take to 3 hours(yes, seen it) before it lets you login . PC I 'fixed' by reverting to 7 from yesterday was simply unstable on 10 .

Im not implying 10 is bad, but when you get this upgrade you dont want or didnt plan for, of course there will be issues the the user simply cant
sort out by themselves.

Im surprised there hasnt been a class action suite over this, given how lawsuit lovin the US is.

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#1582264 28-Jun-2016 19:18

1101:

Hopefully , this will all be over in a month.
I had to revert another clients PC another back to Win7 yesterday. People in a small business dont have IT savvy staff on hand, so its just a disruption
to their business .
They come in & find the PC is Win10, printers dont work, AV doesnt work, a restart in 10 itself can trigger an Windowsupdate that can take to 3 hours(yes, seen it) before it lets you login . PC I 'fixed' by reverting to 7 from yesterday was simply unstable on 10 .

Im not implying 10 is bad, but when you get this upgrade you dont want or didnt plan for, of course there will be issues the the user simply cant
sort out by themselves.

Im surprised there hasnt been a class action suite over this, given how lawsuit lovin the US is.

Just need one lawyer to latch onto it.

mattwnz

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#1582275 28-Jun-2016 19:31

1101:

Hopefully , this will all be over in a month.
I had to revert another clients PC another back to Win7 yesterday. People in a small business dont have IT savvy staff on hand, so its just a disruption
to their business .
They come in & find the PC is Win10, printers dont work, AV doesnt work, a restart in 10 itself can trigger an Windowsupdate that can take to 3 hours(yes, seen it) before it lets you login . PC I 'fixed' by reverting to 7 from yesterday was simply unstable on 10 .

Im not implying 10 is bad, but when you get this upgrade you dont want or didnt plan for, of course there will be issues the the user simply cant
sort out by themselves.

Im surprised there hasnt been a class action suite over this, given how lawsuit lovin the US is.

I just don't understand what microsoft are playing at doing this. They should be making it hard for people to upgrade, rather than easy, because it can cause major problems. Spent an afternoon fixing my parents PC after they did an upgrade by mistake.

nunz

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#1582291 28-Jun-2016 19:46

mattwnz:

1101:

Hopefully , this will all be over in a month.
I had to revert another clients PC another back to Win7 yesterday. People in a small business dont have IT savvy staff on hand, so its just a disruption
to their business .
They come in & find the PC is Win10, printers dont work, AV doesnt work, a restart in 10 itself can trigger an Windowsupdate that can take to 3 hours(yes, seen it) before it lets you login . PC I 'fixed' by reverting to 7 from yesterday was simply unstable on 10 .

Im not implying 10 is bad, but when you get this upgrade you dont want or didnt plan for, of course there will be issues the the user simply cant
sort out by themselves.

Im surprised there hasnt been a class action suite over this, given how lawsuit lovin the US is.

I just don't understand what microsoft are playing at doing this. They should be making it hard for people to upgrade, rather than easy, because it can cause major problems. Spent an afternoon fixing my parents PC after they did an upgrade by mistake.

Your wish has almost been granted - the first case against Ms has been won.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/81523749/microsoft-pays-out-14300-over-unwanted-windows-upgrade

networkn

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#1582294 28-Jun-2016 19:49

coffeebaron:

OK, so I don't want this computer to upgrade; what to I click here??

This is completely disgraceful! MS never seems to learn. People don't want this crammed down their throats.

If you want people to want it, make it so good they can't live without it, don't trick them or harrass them into having it.

networkn

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#1582298 28-Jun-2016 19:54

nathan:

I'd prefer to know what was happening on my PC rather than running random executables from the Internet that require admin rights. But that's just me.

As opposed to MS deciding to just copy files to your computer without telling you, and incessantly naging you to upgrade?

It's a little much to make a comment like that, when MS employs methods which essentially make it so hard NOT to get Windows 10, that a fair number end up with it completely by accident or because they can't find the button that says " I don't want it, I don't need reminding about it".

When big companies behave like this, it makes people even less trusting of them.

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nunz

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#1582302 28-Jun-2016 19:57

nathan:
nunz:

nathan: The WU setting that allows all users (ie standard users) to install updates from WU does not allow a standard user to install Windows 10

If you want to stop a local admin from installing Windows 10 thru WU set this key

Subkey: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
DWORD value: DisableOSUpgrade = 1

And then watch MS over write it .... See articles above.

But that's missing the point- MS SHOULDNT be doing this in the first place and forcing IT to play silly beggers trying to stop them is a waste of resource, time and money.

Whose Pc is it? theirs or ours? EXACTLY.

The OS respects that key, we don't overwrite it, it has worked since July 2015 and continues to work. If you're an administrator you have permissions to HKLM to modify that key.

See articles referenced before - it is not respected, is often over written etc.

Look i dont want 4 - 6GB of crud on my limited space SSD drives, I dont want to download 6Gb of crud on slow / mobile / costly connections.

I dont want windows 10 and to waste time removing crud I dont want.

If I want a new OS Ill go out and buy one - that's how it has worked for 30-40 years but now Ms thinks they know best.

It's like Office365 - I kept saying no I dont want to go from 2013 to 2016 version of outlook, it kept popping nag screens and then auto upgraded and now i have the slowest piece of crud, spend more time waiting than reading, outlook 2016 sucks using active sync. And the fixes dont fix it ( https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2441551) Another example of MS pushing changes that break stuff.

nunz

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#1582305 28-Jun-2016 19:58

yitz: Task manager, gwx.exe end task :P Reading KB3095675 as per above, it seems like at this stage since it's not yet scheduled, you should be all right clicking the red 'X' (i.e. close window) . Once scheduled, closing the window doesn't cancel the scheduled update from installing, but the option to cancel the scheduled update should show up. Short of uninstalling GWX kb update (which will presumably reinstall itself) there's not really an official way to permanently get rid of the unscheduled "Microsoft recommends upgrading to Windows 10" message from coming up, the above article recommends hiding the icon and notifications from the system tray but you'll presumably just have to put up with the message periodically (and not accidentally schedule) until end of July or whenever they decide to stop offering the free upgrade. Microsoft guy can confirm.

download and run GWX Control Panel, check all the options to remove stuff and set it to keep track of new infestations.

nathan

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#1582420 29-Jun-2016 08:29

nunz:

nathan:
nunz:

nathan: The WU setting that allows all users (ie standard users) to install updates from WU does not allow a standard user to install Windows 10

If you want to stop a local admin from installing Windows 10 thru WU set this key

Subkey: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
DWORD value: DisableOSUpgrade = 1

And then watch MS over write it .... See articles above.

But that's missing the point- MS SHOULDNT be doing this in the first place and forcing IT to play silly beggers trying to stop them is a waste of resource, time and money.

Whose Pc is it? theirs or ours? EXACTLY.

The OS respects that key, we don't overwrite it, it has worked since July 2015 and continues to work. If you're an administrator you have permissions to HKLM to modify that key.

See articles referenced before - it is not respected, is often over written etc.

Look i dont want 4 - 6GB of crud on my limited space SSD drives, I dont want to download 6Gb of crud on slow / mobile / costly connections.

I dont want windows 10 and to waste time removing crud I dont want.

If I want a new OS Ill go out and buy one - that's how it has worked for 30-40 years but now Ms thinks they know best.

It's like Office365 - I kept saying no I dont want to go from 2013 to 2016 version of outlook, it kept popping nag screens and then auto upgraded and now i have the slowest piece of crud, spend more time waiting than reading, outlook 2016 sucks using active sync. And the fixes dont fix it ( https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2441551) Another example of MS pushing changes that break stuff.

we've never seen this registry key being overwritten by anything that's from Microsoft

its in HKLM so it requires local admin permissions to modify.

If you don't want Windows 10:

-- Snip --

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GWX]

"DisableGwx"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]

"DisableOSUpgrade"=dword:00000001

-- Snip ---

Copy and paste the part between the "-- Snip --" labels, save it as a .REG file, import it.

As described in https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3080351, the first registry value disables GWX, so you won't see the icon or any pop-ups suggesting to upgrade. The second value is specific to the Windows Update control panel and blocks the installation of Windows 10 from that angle.

That's it. That's really all you need.

Or don't run as local admin, only local admins can upgrade.

Also the experience through Windows Update is about to change to be more clear

Jaxson

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#1582442 29-Jun-2016 09:28

1101:

People in a small business dont have IT savvy staff on hand, so its just a disruption
to their business .
They come in & find the PC is Win10, printers dont work, AV doesnt work, a restart in 10 itself can trigger an Windowsupdate that can take to 3 hours(yes, seen it) before it lets you login . PC I 'fixed' by reverting to 7 from yesterday was simply unstable on 10 .

Im not implying 10 is bad, but when you get this upgrade you dont want or didnt plan for, of course there will be issues the the user simply cant
sort out by themselves.

This was my experience with a family member and friend also. Obviously it's a lesson to backup your files regularly, probably cloud based nowadays to be sure, but the point remains that this pushed itself out and then the resulting config just wasn't stable. In this case the start bar had an error, so then that wasn't useable, meaning even turning the unit back off and on again wasn't easy. Googling showed others with the same situation and no obvious solution. That coupled with files that disappeared, which should have been there in the backup folders but just weren't, (again more googling and finding others with the same situation occurring), just meant the whole thing was a day or so of frustration that's left a bitter taste. Just before tax return season as well, it was horrible for the end user.

A reg edit to avoid is nice, but let's be honest, that's only available to a select few users with the knowledge to undertake that modification. It's not exactly front end/user friendly is it. A button like no thanks, I'm not interested right at the start would have been nice.

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