A couple of days back there were reports that Microsoft is downloading Windows 10 even on those systems that haven’t opted-in for the free upgrade. Soon after the report broke out there were thousands of users who flocked social media platforms that they too had observed folders ranging from 3-7 GB in size sitting on their computers and not knowing what they were.
Back in early July, well before Windows 10 was launched publicly, Microsoft had revealed ways using which you can stop your computer from downloading a copy of Windows 10 if you didn’t want to go for the free upgrade.
The first is a registry hack that Microsoft itself has revealed. This hack basically suppresses the Windows 10 upgrade completely.
Go to the registry editor and search for this HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate
Then look for DisableOSUpgrade and set its DWORD value as 1. In case you think that you may change your mind sometime in future, you can change the value to 2 as it will enable the upgrade later on.
You can apply group policy as well to disable the upgrades. For Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2: July 2015 go here and Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2: July 2015 go here. System which have this particular Group Policy Object enabled won’t detect, download, or install any Windows OS upgrades.
If you already have this Group Policy Object installed, you can go to Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update Policy and turn off upgrade to the latest version of Windows through Windows Update.
After all this, if you want to get rid of that nagging “Get Windows 10” app, all you need to do is go to the registry editor and find HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade and set the value of ReservationsAllowed to 0.
