Some time ago someone here was helpful enough to tell me how to get rid of the pop up boxes that would show up trying to get me to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. It involved uninstalling a Windows Update or two (or three or four, I just can't remember).

What I do remember was that it worked. For awhile. And I was told to prevent it from coming back, only install the IMPORTANT updates on Windows Update, not the OPTIONAL ones. And that's what I did. And for some time all was good, no spamming, and that little icon in the tray that you see NOW BACK in the screen shot was gone.

But, as you can see the icon is back, Windows is spamming me now more than ever about upgrading, and I did NOT, NOT EVEN ONCE, install an optional update, only the important ones.

So what can I do to get rid of it? Or is there no way now as the Microsoft assholes are basically forcing us to live with their damned spamming. (And please, please, please no damned "switch to Linus" answers okay? I use my computers for gaming only, and the day Linux will run ALL of the games available for Windows will be the day I switch to Linux, not before. As you should be able to tell, I'm NO FAN of Microsoft. But I am a fan of computer gaming, and the FACT is Windows is still the OS that offers the most games to choose from.)

Mine's doing it again too (my laptop that Windows says is too crappy to run Win10, but it pesters me with near-full-screen ads regularly.)

I heard there's no way to disable it permanently. If you do, it'll just come back. But I could be wrong.

Unfortunately you'll just have to keep playing "whack-a-mole" with Windows updates & research each new update before deciding whether to install it or not, to make sure it's not yet more GWX nagware. Either that or put up with the regular harassment, or submit to Microsoft's demands and "upgrade" to Win10 :/

I do hate Microsoft. I wish I were techie enough to use Linux, because this would be the straw that would get me there. But I am almost sure, no, actually I'm just about absolutely certain, that I'm not competent enough to run Linux on a daily basis and get it to do what I want (play my games... period). I'm sure I could probably get it up and running, could probably ask for (and receive) help here when I needed it, but would on a daily basis run into so many issues that I would be unable to solve on my own that I just couldn't do it. I don't really understand Windows, but I can, on 99 out of 100 days, get it to do what I want (run my games... period).

inb4 John defending Windows (sorry man ;)

Assuming there aren't new patches for it - "patch KB 2990214 for Windows 7 and KB 3044374 for Windows 8.1" are the nagware patches. You can uninstall it if they keep working there way on. It will be interesting to see if they add a patch to disable that one once the free upgrade year passes or if they just keep hounding everyone to upgrade.

I do web dev so I had to upgrade one system to get a hold of the Edge browser and see what that was about. Now I get nagged to try Office 360. Everything is just getting so aggressive.

One thing that struck me years ago when using Linux was the complete silence, the utter lack of commercialization. I don't think it's as true now as it once was, but you can install things without 90% of them trying to smuggle in the Yahoo! Spigot douche-baggary "Legitimate" applications aren't trying to psych you into clicking giant, glowing buttons that serves their interest while trying to hide "no" and "cancel" options as low contrast text off somewhere you're not looking.

It's really almost weird when you step into a place and their aren't 100 people yelling stuff and digging through all of your pockets for loose change. Of course you can still get on the internet. No shortage of noise and snake oil salesmen there.

Just curious, but what distro did you end up going with? What window manager (KDE, etc)? 90fps down to 10fps seems like an extreme drop unless you are using the open source drivers. Although, I guess if you have an old system, newer Linux versions probably have a lot more stuff going on than your old OS did.

Lots of my fps are good, but Heroes of the Storm, using Wine (via Playonlinux) runs quite poorly.

I have a Core 2 3.0GHz, nVidia GTX 650Ti, 4GB RAM, 64 bit system.

The Windows issue was apparently its desire to occupy my cores for updates without my permission. So it would make my PC unusable for over an hour quite regularly.

Is there more than just an icon in the tray? I have that, but I don't even notice it. But I rarely shut down my PC, so is there some big nag screen that pops up when you boot up the machine?

Yeah, there are no guarantees with WINE beyond you will have weirdness, and some disappointments

I got this .bat which uninstalls some updates, including, as I call it, "the annoying fucking popup" one.

As always with this stuff, be careful, double check the commands, google those updates in case you need it and bla bla bla.

wusa /uninstall /kb:3068708
wusa /uninstall /kb:3075249
wusa /uninstall /kb:3080149
wusa /uninstall /kb:971033
wusa /uninstall /kb:2952664
wusa /uninstall /kb:2990214
wusa /uninstall /kb:3021917
wusa /uninstall /kb:3022345
wusa /uninstall /kb:3035583
wusa /uninstall /kb:2505438
wusa /uninstall /kb:2670838
wusa /uninstall /kb:3068707

I got this in a .bat which I run after I have slipped and installed some annoying/useless shit. These are all the telemetry updates I have dig up, mostly from here.

What I do is update "at full", run the bat, refresh the updates and blacklist the "new" ones which appeared. I have just reinstalled and worked for me. Good luck!

My ./play.it project is targeted at people like you, who just want to install their games on Linux without hassle.
Even if you’re not thinking about giving a try to Linux yet, feel free to suggest your favourites games to be added to the project. That way when you’ll feel ready for the big jump your games will already be supported ;)

Here's what I did for a Windows 7 Home Premium computer. I've got automatic updates on and I haven't deleted any of the Windows updates (that forces Windows 10 installer onto the disk)....

BUT, I did manage to get that icon to "hide" from showing up on the taskbar.

1) Click the arrow button on the taskbar that shows hidden icons. (I think it's the icon next to the Windows 10 Upgrade icon for you.)

2) Click "Customize..." on the little window that pops up.

3) Scroll down until you see the "GWX: Get Windows 10" and select "Hide icon and notifications" from the drop-down list to the right of the icon & description.

4) Click OK.

=======

From what I've read, if you delete the updates responsible for that icon and the hidden Windows 10 upgrade filling up your hard drive, they will only come back the next time your computer updates... Hence the reason why you must disable auto updating and only update crucial updates manually.

Well, I'm currently testing out an experiment. Can I leave the main $Windows.~BT folder (the Windows 10 upgrade installer) but "gut" the majority of space-taking files? So far, I've trimmed the file down to just 1.5 GB. The rest of the files seem to be securely locked from deletion. In this way, I hope to fool Windows into believing the installer is on the disk and therefore does not need to be re-downloaded.

I can't be sure whether this one's the cause ( https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3112343 ), but the fact that it just came out today and more or less has a 'supports new update scenarios, does a better job as spyware, blah blah' description makes me think it's suspect. It's rated as Important, so it would get installed if you haven't given yourself some form of manual control.

The other possibility is that one of the earlier updates re-enabled itself or at least un-hid itself (which would make it auto-selected if it's Important or higher); the Win10 upgrade ones seem to be particularly insistent about coming back again.