title: Get rid of the Win 10 upgrade nag icon link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2015/08/22/get-rid-of-the-win-10-upgrade-nag-icon/ author: phil2nc description: post_id: 10054 created: 2015/08/22 12:16:34 created_gmt: 2015/08/22 16:16:34 comment_status: closed post_name: get-rid-of-the-win-10-upgrade-nag-icon status: publish post_type: post

Get rid of the Win 10 upgrade nag icon

I'm an IT professional. The last thing I need is some commercial behemoth harassing my children and tricking them into being disobedient to their parents. To all parents similarly situated I offer a way to fight back below. We have exactly 3 Windows machines in the house. All of them on Windows 7. After thoroughly reviewing the pros and cons, I decided it would be best for my family if those machines were not upgraded to Windows 10. But Microsoft, apparently, thinks it knows best, and continues to harangue my kids with the ubiquitous Windows 10 upgrade icon on the taskbar (and the big popup that opens every time they log in). Now Microsoft has been quite clear over the years that once a child reaches 13 years of age, their parents have nothing to say about their use of Microsoft products. Anyway, as I've learned over the years, technology can be a force for liberation. In my case Googling "windows 10 nag icon" brought me to Remove Windows Nag Icon To Upgrade To Windows 10, and the simple batch script (Remove_MS_Upgrade_To_Windows_10_Nag.bat) it discusses to remove the offending icon. It involves using a fairly blunt force method: renaming the executable that displays the icon so it can't run. Genius. This solution works, at least so far.

Echo off

taskkill.exe /F /IM "gwx.exe"
takeown /a /r /d Y /f "%windir%\System32\GWX" && icacls "%windir%\System32\GWX" /grant administrators:F
robocopy "%windir%\System32\GWX" "%windir%\System32\GWX_Old" /E
rmdir /s /q "%windir%\System32\GWX"

takeown /a /r /d Y /f "%windir%\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\Setup\GWXTriggers" && icacls "%windir%\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\Setup\GWXTriggers" /grant administrators:F
rmdir /s /q "%windir%\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\Setup\GWXTriggers"

exit

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