From the don’t force shit on me I don’t want and prevent me from saying NO department.
Forgive my off-topic rant, but this will be useful for others having this same problem. One of the things I hate about Microsoft recently is the idea that Windows 8, 8.1, and the upcoming Windows 10 is the greatest thing since sliced bread. If you own a Windows based tablet, or a Windows phone, it probably is (I own a Windows 8 based tablet, and I’m able to use it just fine, because Windows 8.1 is a touch based operating system).
But a problem occurs with Windows 8, 8.1, and the upcoming Windows 10 as a desktop operating system. IMHO, it’s mostly useless as a desktop OS and gets in the way of working as I am accustomed to. I use a mouse and keyboard, with a 27″ monitor, not a touchscreen. I use Windows 7 because it works, is stable, and defensible from malware.
Imagine my surprise after recently doing “Microsoft Update” and I get this icon in my system tray:
Clicking it gives you this advertisement:
OK, I can forgive them for offering this free upgrade, but what I CAN’T forgive Microsoft for is the inability to ever opt-out of being notified about this. Why?
- You can’t remove the icon from the system tray easily,
- You can’t make it go away after “reserving” a copy of Windows 10,
- Average users can’t get rid of the notification process that’s running in the background called “gwx.exe” easily. It saps CPU and memory resources just so it can keep reminding you about Windows 10 and calling home to find out if Windows 10 is available yet,
- This advertisement was a “stealth” upgrade. It is almost like a Trojan in my opinion.
Sorry Microsoft, this isn’t cool, and if I don’t want to bastardize my desktop experience with an operating system designed with a tablet/phone user touch interface, I shouldn’t have to put up with continual reminders. Since this has done nothing but piss me off, it’s marketing FAIL as far as I’m concerned.
This sticky nature of this upgrade notice is by design, the average user of Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 that doesn’t have savvy skills won’t be able to make this go away, so I’m here to help with a simple solution:
Get rid of the Windows Update that creates the problem!
Here’s what it is, from Windows Update:
Update enables additional capabilities for Windows Update notifications in Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 SP1
This update enables additional capabilities for Windows Update notifications when new updates are available to the user. It applies to a computer that is running Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1). Before you install this update, check out the Prerequisites section.
Source: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3035583
Note that they don’t really tell you what you’ll actually be getting, hence my opinion that it’s like a Trojan horse.
So, here’s how to get rid of the damned thing:
1. Go to Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features > Installed Updates
2. Put KB3035583 into the search box in the upper right of the dialog as shown below, press ENTER to search for it
3. Click on the “update for Microsoft Windows (KB3035583)” to highlight it, then click “Uninstall” as show below.
4. Unfortunately, you’ll have to Restart your computer.
5. Enjoy a hassle free desktop experience from now on.
By the way if you already have Windows 8 or 8.1 and you hate the fact that you are running a tablet/phone touch based operating system on your desktop, and you wish it would run like Windows 7, I have a solution for that too:
Classic Shell™ is free software that improves your productivity, enhances the usability of Windows and empowers you to use the computer the way you like it. The main features are:
- Highly customizable start menu with multiple styles and skins
- Quick access to recent, frequently-used, or pinned programs
- Find programs, settings, files and documents
- Start button for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10
- Toolbar and status bar for Windows Explorer
- Caption and status bar for Internet Explorer
Classic Shell has been in active development for 5 years and has over 25 million downloads.
Get it free here: http://classicshell.net/
In my opinion, Microsoft has erred greatly in trying to foist a tablet/phone touch based OS on desktop users. They should have allowed for some sort of retro experience in the GUI for people that want to use a desktop like they always have. Windows 8, 8.1, and 10 have speed and security enhancements, but they come at the cost of running a touch based OS on your desktop when you really don’t want a touch based OS on your existing machine.
Boneheads.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
From
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-faq?ocid=win10_auxapp_LearnMore_win10
Can I turn off the notifications?
Yes. Click “Customize” in the System Tray and turn off the Get Windows 10 app notifications in the menu that comes up.
But if you click on the little icon for “Show Hidden Icons”, there it is again.
I ave used Windows software from Win 95 up to Win 7, the only ones I missed out were 3.1 and 8. I don’t know what it with Microsoft: 3.1 bad, 95 ok, 98 excellent, Millennium ok, XP excellent, 7 better still, 8 poor.
According to the computer magazines 10 is the best yet, so I will be upgrading on all my machines.
From what I can understand 10 will run with my current hardware unlike previous versions where a new machine was needed with higher specs. I will of course back up my current OS first.
Disagree Andrew. I have an old Dell tower (circa 2008) with about 2G RAM and it runs Win 8.1 fine. I use it as a backup server, print/scanner server no worries. Tried Ubuntu – couldn’t get the file serving or printer stuff happening (sudo &%&^$ &&* gobldygook ^& ^ ^* &^*^*&^(8678& cxg*&*&*&^ nnnh** *uywehgjg**( *( ) so went back to Windows – don’t have that many grey hairs left.
I have been a mac user from the first year they came out. HOWEVER, having a new intel mac is very bad. Specifically, the apple spreadsheets are nothing but trash, apparently designed for graphics & music users. My mac power pc was great, but the intel mac is very, very poor. Something that was really terrible, is that none of my powerpc files (several hundred) could be transformed for use with the intel mac. How about that! None of your documents could be used!
I do use OpenOffice, but that isn’t as good as the old powerpc files. When my next computer is purchased. I may decide to not use a mac.
@old fella:
Your example shows why it’s so important to save files in well documented standard formats that have multiple independent programs to read and write the format.
People should avoid saving files in proprietary formats, because in some time frame that format will become unreadable by anyone including the creator of the file.
Formats for long term retrieval purposes:
ODF, PDF 1/A, and Plain Text [this includes csv for spreadsheets or database information]
old fella: Don’t know what “PowerPC files” you are talking about, but assume you mean documents created in now-orphaned PPC applications. Generally Intel versions of the same applications (e.g. M$ Office) will read the older files (though Office in particular has always had compatibility problems with older versions); I’ve got M$ Word documents created on twenty-year-old Macs that I can read with Office for Mac 11, or with free word processors like Open Office or Bean. I can generally read my old Adobe PageMaker files with Adobe InDesign, with a little tweaking.
That said, it hasn’t been very long since the OS X stopped supporting PPC applications; so pick up an inexpensive used Mac running, say Tiger (10.4), and use that to access your old files. Then save them in formats that are readable by newer software, e.g. text RTF (or Word RTF) or PDF, etc.
Try the Apple Support Discussions for more advice, or the MacResources Forums, http://forums.macresource.com/list/1
/Mr Lynn
I have a problem with Word starter in Windows 7. The ad for Microsoft office keeps running and does the same thing. Nothing I do will get rid of it. I’m sure it, too, slows down the computer. It’s always freezing up on me.
Anthony, this the first instance that I have ever disagreed with you. Windows 8.1 works fine as a desktop, Windows 10 will be better as a desktop. The last thing I want is a rotten Apple.
IMHO
Well, to each his own, I think Windows 8 is a crappy desktop. Obviously, at least 25 million other people who have downloaded classic shell think so too.
I consider classic shell a “survival kit” also on Win7. Even with it installed, there are things I hate in Win7, such as “libraries” etc. in Windows Explorer. I never asked for it, I never use it, I cannot get rid of it and it uses up a lot of screen space.
Hear Hear!
Oh Pulleeze! all of you MS bashers grow up.
It took less that three minutes to complete (my coffee didn’t lose one degree of mug-warmth). and it leaves behind an itty bitty icon in the task bar. This CTA niggle must have the marketeers green with envy at the ‘fruity computer company’ and the “feed ’em or take away anything we like mob” at ‘the chocolate factory’ I for one find it ironic..
how accurately did you measure your coffee temp – need 3 digits at minimum .???
Thanks for this, much appreciated.
Running Win 8.1 with Classic Shell already and it’s not actually all that bad.
‘From the don’t force shit on me I don’t want and prevent me from saying NO department. Forgive my off-topic rant, but …’
Off topic? Sounds just like climate policy to me.
If you follow Anthony’s directions but add the step of hiding the update you won’t have to worry about it reinstalling.
The upgrade nag does come with a benefit. If you sign up they will begin to trickle the update to your computer over time prior to the issue date so that it is nearly ready to install. See this article:
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/3909/ask-paul-why-do-you-need-to-reserve-the-windows-10-upgrade
I hate being told what to do. I am not 12.
Remember the ads that said, “this is going to put Bill Gates and desktops out of business forever.” That stuff was put out by Microsoft. They want to get away from desktop software. Everybody in the industry wants everything to go to handhelds, and new handhelds that are limited in the user’s ability to control content. This is old news. I’m an old tech. We talked around the water cooler about this for years now. It’s coming. Your ability to control your “computer” (gadgets) are coming to an end. Everything will be “smart.” Even my excellent internet HDMI TV is loaded with content I cannot get rid of, and it wants to update constantly, offering me a whole new slew of apps I will never ever use. I have no control over it. This is not a trend. This is a decadal business paradigm that has been in works for a long time.
It’s not just Microsoft. I was appalled when the operating system I use at home, Ubuntu, tried to force everyone to use their new Unity interface. The icons could only be large because that is the size of resolution a finger would have. When I’m on a desktop with a mouse that has 100 times better resolution why can’t I use it?
I switched to the KDE version (Kubuntu) and haven’t looked back. Lots of others went with Mint or some other Linux distribution. At least in the open source world there are lots of choices.
The stupid thing is that on a tablet it makes sense. But why mess with a perfectly functional desktop? I like the Windows 7 / KDE layout on a desktop.
100% agreed. Kubuntu is a very good alternative for ex Windows users, it is my choice also.
Linux Mint is the Distro that is the most similar to Windows.
UN-ity = UN-wanted, UN-workable, UN-needed
Yes I now call it the “UN-ity” interface 🙂
Those of you who follow along know that I am perfectly happy writing long posts. Some of my posts are novelette length and maybe 20K words. I type like the wind, and like to be precise.
But not even I will tackle the subject “What I hate about Windows/Microsoft”, because there isn’t enough room, or time, to do the subject justice. Also, there are probably still some epic rants I wrote out there in internetspace on the old beowul list archives, written when I had more time (although now somewhat out of date and too short).
The simple solution is: Use Linux Instead. Exclusively if possible (and it is almost always possible). Use it as the toplevel OS otherwise and run e.g. WinXP or Win7 as a VM otherwise. Windows XP was the best of the many sucky Windows incarnations, although by the end getting a naked install through all of the updates and service packs was excruciating. Still, a VM doesn’t really wear out, and I still have fully functional XP VMs. Windows 7 was and remains the second best incarnation — Vista was a nightmare, Win 8 was and remains a symbol of Microsoft’s innate desire to commit public seppuku, and pre-XP was DOS with ugly Window dressing (and who has even heard of Windows 9)? 7 at least wasn’t overtly broken and Microsoft hadn’t yet copied Gnome by breaking a perfectly functional interface in stupid ways out of sheer boredom.
But still — how often does one really need >>Windows<< nowadays? Almost never. Software is almost not a sold commodity any more. I remember when Best Buy had aisle after aisle of software for sale. Now, it has what, maybe half of an aisle (and nearly all of that games). Linux comes with an unclimbable mountain of free software. The game software problem is largely history with Steam. Office, which used to be Microsoft's only reason for existence, is now trumped by Open Office and more. The only reason Microsoft lingers is that they still have their (IMO anti-trust illegal) armtwist of all vendors that requires them to sell “all” their systems with Windows pre-installed in order to get the discounts that allow them to sell with Windows pre-installed at all and make any money. But as Microsoft is now screwing up device drivers (where this, along with games, was its real advantage over Linux) we might well be in the long awaited twilight of Microsoft as a company. Apple already eats half of their lunch, and Linux has taken another big bite out of the side. Laptops and desktops are increasingly rare (and increasingly Apple), and they are actively losing the tablet and phone races and are unlikely to come back from behind.
So, the best way to get rid of the upgrade button is to install Linux right over the entire OS. That way I promise, the upgrade button will disappear.
rgb
I go all the way back when Excel first shipped and it had a runtime version of windows built in so that you could get the GUI experience of Excel. How time flies when you’re having fun 🙂
I load up Windows 7 at home once a year. Tax time. Everything else I need runs fine under my Kubuntu distro. LibreOffice is the one I use.
They skipped Windows 9 because they discovered a slew of old apps that checked the version string for “95” and “98”, and in order to make that work simply checked for “9”.
I suspect not many of those apps are still in use… but apparently enough are to justify a jump to 10
If we went with your suggestion the unemployment rate for IT support staff would skyrocket faster than Obama’s proposed electric rates. All those jobs keeping patches and virus checkers up to date would become obsolete — can’t have that.
My main home server to this day is an IBM Netfinity-5100 (dual 667 MHz PIII) which I bought in 2006 for $80, plus if I recall correctly $45 to ship it. It’s been running CentOS from the day I unpacked it and runs my home email server, caching web proxy server, file server, backup server, and a bunch of other stuff. The only reasons it ever comes down is loss of power and booting a new kernel. I finally got motivated to start working on a replacement earlier this year after I determined that spare parts availability has become quite uncertain.
At work we have a DNS server which has been up for 2474 days (6 years 9 months, 7+ days), basically since we moved it from the former data center. It’s running Solaris 10, still my pick for the most stable of the *NIX family.
OTOH, try getting an out-of-the-box Linux distro to play DVDs and you can spend days chasing down all the rabbit holes of which player requires which plugins and which libraries … I don’t bother trying anymore and just take the DVD to the Mac.
Linux is great for backend server-type stuff, and liveable for most desktop stuff, but I would shoot myself before I tried to get my wife to use a Linux system instead of her iMac.
True story:
I had just been hired by a small software company as the IT guy in charge. Walking the computer room, where they had White Box PCs running BSD, I trailed the back of my hand behind them as I habitually do. One was not blowing hot air over the hairs ….
Turns out it was their main build server and product code archive…
I issued an emergency shutdown notice and downed the box in under 5 minutes. The power suppy fan was so filled with / covered by dirt and grime it was only sporadically turning from time to time. Clean out and a new fan later it was back up runnung fine. The BSD UNIX on it was so stable it had not been shut down for years… the computer room was clean, but not HEPPA, and dirt gradually defeated the fan. It was still running two years later…
E.M. Smith:
FreeBSD/NetBSD are also extremely reliable, but more of a pain to develop on. I have a FreeNAS system at home (hosted on a recycled Dell server) that has been absolutely solid.
That said, nothing will survive lack of cooling — sometimes you gotta shut it down …
I don’t have much to say considering I’ve been ticked off at Microsoft lunacy in everything they’ve released since Windows 98SE.
Microsoft has changed the world, but they’ve too often branded themselves as thieves and liars in the process.
Agree but still hate being told what to do. With great power comes…..
Oh yeah, Anth*ny, if auto-updating, the update might get reinstalled. You have to right-click the update when it again appears in windows-update window and mark as “hide” so it won’t keep appearing there or get reinstalled.
I don’t get it. Does it mean you can upgrade totally free, from Windows 7 to windows 10?
Yes, for a limited time. But if you don’t want it, the offer (prod) won’t go away.
When my XP PC died and I had to buy one fast, I bought one running Win7Pro because I DIDN’T want one running Win 8.1. Too much was different and some features were lost.
I suspect going to Win10 will be much the same.
(Someone told me that to play a DVD in Win10, you’ll need to buy 3’rd party software. I didn’t have to do that with Win7Pro. I don’t know if it will make some hardware artificially obsolete like Vista on did but I suspect it will.)
Not sure what you are running but I run windows 8.1 from the desktop with no problems with a mouse even though I do have a touch screen no there is no real start menu but there are simple ways around that as per win 10 I know a few people that have been using it for several month and they are nothing but impressed they use it on both a non touch screen laptop as well as their phone and they seem quite impressed my wife’s cousin in particular is not easily impressed and he seems quite pleased with it.
Great, it took me almost a month to recover from a botched Windows 8 to 8.1 “upgrade”…
Maybe its a good thing algore is a Mac user:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/31/dueling-desktops-anthony-watts-versus-al-gore/
Thank You. The Windows 10 icon is now gone.
Mine, too! Many thanks for the heads up.
Here is an option that doesn’t require uninstalling the update.
Click the ‘Start’ icon
Click ‘Administrative Tools’
Click ‘Task Scheduler’
Click the little triangle next to ‘Task Scheduler Library’
Click the little triangle next to ‘Microsoft’
Click the little triangle next to ‘Windows’
Click the little triangle next to ‘Setup’
Click ‘gwx’
Select ‘refreshgwxconfig’
Under ‘Actions’ -‘Selected Item’ click ‘Disable’
Close Task Scheduler
Right-click the Task Bar and click ‘Start Task Manager’
Under ‘Processes’, find gwx.exe, select it, and click ‘End Process’
No need to reboot.
Latest on Windows 10:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2928286/how-to-upgrade-to-windows-10-what-you-need-to-know.html
Great post! I sympathize. The blame lies not with programmers but with Microsoft marketing and project managers; pencil pushers who need to justify their jobs by coming up with the latest crazy ideas. I knew someone who worked at Microsoft and told me about a meeting with programmers a while back about removing the Start Menu in Windows 8. There was unanimous objection. It was the most contentious meeting this person remembered. Ultimately the programmers were overridden and the Start Menu went away. It angered users so much–as programmers knew it would–that they’re bringing it back in Windows 10.
Average intelligence of programmers: practically brilliant
Average intelligence of marketing: dumber than a sack of hammers
The Windows 10 interfaces for phone and tablet will not be running on your desktop computer. Get a grip Anthony.
Just so you know.. Bill Gates, is one sharp cookie. Back about 17 years ago, Microsoft Stock was heading towards $200 a share. (I think it topped out about $177.) Good old Billy “walked away” from Microswarf, cashing in his “founders shares” to the tune of what, a mere $9 or $10 BILLION. He promptly set up the “Gates Foundation”. With himself as the head, his father, brother, wife, etc as board of directors.
Now he get’s “paid” what he determines is a “good salary” (and the Board agrees). He managed to escape either income (no income involved, only capital gains) and capital gains taxes.
Now, in juxtaposition to the CLINTON (MONEY LAUNDERING) FOUNDATION, the Gates foundation actually puts out 200, 300, 400 MILLION per year in monies for world wide health projects for the “third world” countries.
I DON’T HAVE THOSE RESOURCES! Bill does, and a LAUD him for what he does!
But, alas, what, 10, 12, 14 years ago…when someone saw my Bill gates doll on the top of my monitor, and filled me in on the “rest of the story”, I had to dispose of the Voodoo doll, and become a “Gates Fan” and realize that, despite his flaws, BILL was NOT responsible for the various screaming flaws in WINDOWS which we’ve been cursing for about 15 years.