How to remove "Download Windows 10" icon on Windows 7 System Tray ("official adware")?

Question

Microsoft has slipped adware prompting users to upgrade to Windows 10 into Windows Update, which for some was marked as important. That counts as shady business in my book, more so because as far as I understand it's not free but "free for one year", but even if I'm mistaken, this thing is annoying:

              

                                                                ^{"Download Windows 10"}

It's an icon in the taskbar, which has a menu of four options related to the offer and no option for removing it. The Windows update in which it came is very deceptive too:

        

"Update for Windows 7", "Install this update to solve problems in Windows", etc.; clearly not labelled as what it is, I guess I'm glad it didn't also include a browser toolbar nor change my home page.

The file that runs this is, in my case, "C:\Windows\system32\GWX\GWX.exe". Should I nuke the whole folder? The contents of it are:

                                                       

Or should I just uninstall KB3035583? The description for it is so ambiguous I'm unsure if it's actually something that does more than just provide that icon.

Solution

I managed to solve it (getting rid of the system tray icon) by renaming the folder from:

C:\Windows\system32\GWX

to:

C:\Windows\system32\MicrosoftYouShadyBastards

and rebooting. Which seems to work fine, Process Hacker doesn't show anything wierd running.

Comments

[100rabh]

The upgrade is free for a year for those who have Windows 7/8 based devices. If you choose to upgrade, it's yours forever. It's not free for a year if you choose to upgrade.

[Camilo Martin]

@Sathya Oh thanks for mentioning that! And man, three hour difference for the duplicate. I thought I had searched well before asking...

[Andy]

Is it also adware when your phone tells you there's a new version?

[Camilo Martin]

@Andy No, because the new version is (usually) a minor increment, 100% compatible with everything (*). Computer OSs can not only break everything, but as in the case of Win7 to Win8 break your mind and make your eyes bleed with terrible design decisions. (* Except iOS, I have a friend who will never buy anything Apple for the rest of his life due to half his paid apps breaking. It's a joy to see how happy he is now with Android.)

[Andy]

Ios releases major version changes, as does android (jellybean, kitkat, etc), and those have broken things too. Win8 was more of a visual change than anything else (and was derided because it was different not because it wasn't good). Win10 is not going to really be a major change either, its more like the vista to 7 update (which barely changed anything, yet people loved while hated vista).

[Camilo Martin]

@Andy Win10 is a big change from Win7, on which this is offered. Of course, for anybody using Win8 it's a lot better to have Win10 (and I'll probably migrate to it after watching from a distance).

[Andy]

It looks different, but honestly the technology is mostly the same. Certainly new things like Cortana are added, but much like Vista -> 7, the main things users see are window dressings and some new features. Windows 7 to 8 was not nearly the big jump silly tech bloggers made it out to be.

[Camilo Martin]

@Andy But that's the problem, the UI. Win8 was a touch-based experiment and it failed horribly.

[Andy]

@CamiloMartin Funny, its working great on my tablet. And on my desktop the mouse works too when you click a tile, although on my desktop I usually just start typing the name of the app because its faster). The reason people complained is only because it was different than what they were used to. And Apple didn't do it (if they had done the same thing it would have been hailed as innovative).

[Andy]

How does W8 not get the job done? Its literally a point release to W7, which itself was really just a point release to Vista (Vista + some perf improvements + slightly different color scheme - gadgets = 7). All win8 did was more perf improvements, replace start menu with screen, and add Windows Store apps. It sounds like you opened the Store version of Chrome, and store apps always run full screen. Its not much different than normal chrome but maximized. You can still Alt+Tab or Win+Tab just like you used to; sometimes I use the store app version of things becaue I want to block out...

[Andy]

..everything for a bit (news app comes to mind). I'll focus on reading the news, then get back to work. You sound like someone that never really used Win8 and certainly haven't tried to spend any time to see how the new start screen works.

[joseph_morris]

You can also just kill gwx.exe from the task manager instead of rebooting.

[Camilo Martin]

I actually killed it before rebooting. I think I said that because I rebooted to see if it would re-create the folder or something (it doesn't). There's also some scheduled tasks/events, but they fail to run now so I didn't pay much attention.

[Andrew Leach]

I did this, rather than uninstall the update. If I uninstall, I have to remember not to allow it to reinstall. This way, it's installed and deactivated.

[MrWhite]

I also used this method and simply renamed the folder. It does get rid of the icon in the system tray, however, Windows Update still keeps prompting me to "Reserve your free upgrade to Windows 10 today". Perhaps it is preferable to uninstall the update after all?

[mivk]

There is an "official" way to disable it with a registry entry. See the "copy/paste" command here: superuser.com/a/968392/53547

[basic6]

If you just delete the GWX folder, it might be recreated (and reinstalled) by another Windows Update.

[Camilo Martin]

@basic6 It was (there was some change in the message when Win10 RTM'd), then I just deleted it again.