Confirmed: How to stop Windows 10 forcing itself onto PCs – your essential guide

The Register ^ | Jan 8, 2016 | Iain Thomson

[catnipman]

There’s WAY more to this than claimed in the article.

I’ve made some tools to help put an end to this coerced Windows 10 installation nonsense. They can be downloaded from here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_hrA7ihzIPlVXpRUnJyc1AyNkU/view

The three included tools uninstall the Windows 10 nagware and the Microsoft “telemetry” (spyware) “updates” from Windows 7 and Windows 8.x Operating Systems if they are installed, prevent the updates from being reinstalled, and remove the Windows 10 installer folder $WINDOWS.~BT if it is present.

These tools must be run from an account with Administrative privilege, which is the case (unfortunately) for most accounts. They can also be run from a non-Administrator account by right-clicking them and then left-clicking on “Run as Administrator”.

The tools are most effective when run in the following order:

1. Run PreventW10InstallationUAC.exe to set Microsoft Update to “manual only” mode and modify a couple of registry variables that tell the OS to never allow a newer OS to be installed. This tool will run quickly unless you accept the optional request (recommended) to make a System Restore Point before the tool makes it changes, in which case the Restore Point will take a while to make.

Note that after this procedure finishes, no more Microsoft updates will be applied unless you manually request a check for updates and then decide which updates to accept, though making such decisions requires knowledge that the average user usually does not possess. However, for mature operating systems I personally believe that blindly accepting Microsoft updates at this juncture has more downsides than upsides.

(If you DO want to attempt to manually check for updates, you’ll first have to change the Windows Update setting from “Never Check for Updates” to “Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them” before you click the “Check for updates” button.)

2. Run RemoveW10NagwareTool.exe to remove a set of Microsoft updates that relate to Windows 10 nagware (”white flag”) popup, Microsoft spyware, and the Windows 10 installer itself if any of them have been installed. Detection and uninstallation can take a few minutes to complete.

If any of this set of updates is found, you’ll need to reboot the system.

It might also be necessary to run this tool again after rebooting if the nagware update had previously been slated to be installed AGAIN, in which case after rebooting, you’ll STILL see the Windows 10 (”white flag”) nag. If that’s the case, just run this tool again and reboot again, and then run PreventW10InstallationUAC.exe again.

3. Finally, after you’re sure the Windows 10 nagware has been removed, run RemoveW10Folder.exe to detect and remove the Windows 10 install folder if it is found.

[huldah1776]

Bmp4L8R

[CyberAnt]

Great .. just what I wanted to hear.

Actually, I have printed out the info you highlighted; I’ll try to figure it out. Before I do anything they suggest, I have a few discs, and I think I’ll download all the important documents I have, plus all the chapters of my books .. just in case.

If I run into trouble .. who is there to call .. nobody.

[Kirkwood]

I am serious. I’m not going to spend in excess of $100,000 to get a team together to write and debug all new programs to replace the ones I use to run my business. Win7 runs Virtual XP, so why not Win10?

[publius911]

Bookmark

[Dalberg-Acton]

Bump

[TChad]

Make sure you follow all the steps, but essentially you have to:

Just to be clear, accordiong to Microsoft, DisableOSUpgrade and ReservationsAllowed are REG_DWORD values.

If anyone wants the "reg.exe add" commands to handle that, I'll post them.

[chulaivn66]

I thank you profusely for your efforts and the link. I used those programs and they killed everything having to do with the W-10 upgrade. Unfortunately tidbits were left in numerous places although I admit it appears they no longer needle me in any way. I hated going to 8.1 with a new laptop but W-10 was a sorry mess and I dumped it. Thank you once again.

[onona]

Ping for later ! Thanks

[Irishguy]

honestly not trying to start a battle here but about to upgrade a pc at home and when i do im out. going to ubuntu...have been using it on a htpc and a server for a few years now and its working really well...so i think its time to swap for me...

[Squeako]

Windows 10 installation bookmark

[JDoutrider]

Bookmark

[McGruff]

Just use this tool:

GWX Control Panel

This is a free tool that can remove and disable the ‘Get Windows 10’ notification area icon on Windows 7 and Windows 8. Recent versions can also disable ‘Upgrade to Windows 10’ behavior in the Windows Update control panel and do much more. See the user guide at the Ultimate Outsider blog. You can still download GWX Control Panel as a standalone executable if you don’t like installers. Please see the “GWX CONTROL PANEL RELEASE NOTES” section at the user guide for MD5 and SHA-1 checksums of all official releases.

http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads/

I’ve done it on 3 of my PCs with no problem.

[Drago]

Another vote for GWX (”Get Windows 10”) Control Panel...tried it on my Mom’s Win 7 PC and works great at keeping Win 10 at bay!

http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-stopper-to-permanently-remove.html

[VaRepublican]

ping

[American in Israel]

Thanks

[Skooz]

bfl

[trebb]

I'm one of the ones who hasn't seen notice 1 to upgrade to 10. Been running 7 on a Dell for close to 4 years now w/o a glitch.

My Gen 4 (short for "last ditch, no other internet available") is slow and has a small bit bucket so I don't need any extraneous downloads/calls home to suck up the few resources I have.

[snippy_about_it]

Bkmrk

[Batman11]

PFL