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.
PC interface design was never really about consumer needs or productivity. Now it is a distant side show with $5 billion spent so far on failed state health exchange software systems.
If you want to lower your total cost of ownership, especially if you are a business, switch to Mac. I have been in IT for 30 years. The pain I see everyday mostly comes from the Windows side. And I also note that in general Windows end users are lower information, wait for things to “happen to them” and are therefore not as proactive or willing to solve their own simple IT issues, thus further driving up IT support costs. Even if you have software that only runs on Windows, you can easily run Parallels or Fusion to run a “throwaway” copy of Windows 7 within your Mac. The big benefit being that if you don’t use Windows to do email or surf the web, you are far less likely to get any corrupting malware, viruses, etc. and can turn off Microsoft updates or drastically reduce them and instead use that virtual Windows only for the productive purpose you need it for. On a modern Mac, the Windows VM will run almost as fast as it would natively on a PC.
Another thing. You are wasting your money on Windows and PCs. I say this because after three years, a Windows box will be recyclable with little resale value, whereas I routinely get 2/3s or the original retail price when I resell my Macs. This allows me to upgrade every three years for a fraction of the cost of what it would take to do so on Windows. Apple hardware holds it value.
Lastly, it is a fact that Apple owns the whole widget experience and focuses on both hardware and software quality. In the Wintel world, your mileage may vary a lot. And Microsoft often could give a rip if Dell produces bad hardware and vice versa.
The entire Microsoft premise that software can exist in a vacuum without deep hardware integration is an anachronism and a fallacy.
“The entire Microsoft premise that software can exist in a vacuum without deep hardware integration is an anachronism and a fallacy.”
This is funny. I spend much of my development day in a MS VM that runs on a linux box. What is this deep hardware integration requirement you speak of?
Everyone should use what they feel comfortable with. But the reflexive windows 8.1 hate on this thread baffles me. I switched from windows 7 to windows 8.1 (I tried win 8 and it did suck) and I think it is an upgrade. Some things irritate me, sure. But most of the touch complaints can be customized away with little effort and other features are an improvement.
“deep hardware integration” is another bit of complete nonsense. Apple uses exactly the same hardware components as everyone else (though all too often budget versions at premium prices) and OSX has exactly the same relationship to that hardware as Windows and Unixes. Hardware integration? Its completely nuts. It was nuts even in the days of PPC, but its totally off the wall now.
Or, if you think it really means something, just give an instance of how OSX relates to some bit of hardware, in a deeper and more integrated way than Windows. Like maybe when it writes to a samsung hard drive?
Good discussion! My Win XP box is a standalone machine with no networking of any kind. Other than the addition of a graphics card, it runs now the same as it did the day it was unpacked 5 years ago, and that is flawlessly. Like all desktops/towers and such, my PC needs to be shut down and thoroughly dust sucked at odd intervals, your environment may vary, but all will have some level of dust, and gradually its accumulation will make your PC run hot.
Most likely, my XP box will never be online, certainly not running Win XP – Danger! Will Robinson! (There is a good caution about the possible danger of using a Win XP online these days. See masgramondou June 4, 2015 at 8:11 am, and see *, below)
Otherwise, my TBotF** is run-of-the-mill Athlon X2 PC that does pretty much everything I want to do with a computer, and I paid only $400 for it, much less than what I’ve shelled out for some of my software. My first PC set me back $3000 – Gateway 386/20, where we had Compaq 386/20s at the office that were 5 grand, about what Macs were going for at the time.
Did I mention games? RGB did above, but I’m not joining anything online, Steam or otherwise. I’ll just keep my games offline, thank you. Win XP works great for that.
For fantasy and escape, computer games beat the movies imo. With the latter, you just sit there and take whatever they dish out. You’ve got no say in what happens. Whereas with a video game, I mean, a whole lot Aons, Cybrans, and Saraphim are goin’ down hard, baby, before all my base belongs to them.
Even the original DOOM could raise the hair on the back on my neck when one of those fireball slingin’ flame monkeys suddenly jumped out from a dark hiding spot…it could really suck you in. These days, Unreal Tournament 2004 is my goto first-person shooter for some quick action. It’s a little twitchy, and the AI makes many of the various monsters hop around like jumping beans, but it’s great to be able to create personalized enemies and allies (avatars) by pasting faces onto the game’s default creatures, and there are some truly awesome maps, or game models, where gravity has been reduced, Egyptian motifs have been created…a few of these virtual environments remind me of grungy industrial settings where I’ve worked, and it’s fantastic fun to blast away with the flak cannon at Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, if you need to work off a little aggression. No harm, no foul.
And if you don’t have MS Flight Simulator X on your computer, you don’t know what you’re missing. I’ve added numerous aircraft to the default set-up, so it’s possible for me to dial time back to that day in 1966, for example, when my long, thin Flying Tiger DC-8 super 60 lumbered into the air way down at the end of the runway at Travis AFB, next stop Elmendorf AFB enroute Yokota AFB, and points beyond. I don’t have the Flying Tiger colors in there, but ‘close enough for government work, as they say, and Uncle Sam was definitely my co-pilot that day. Or you could hop aboard an Grumman F9F Panther and ride shotgun over the Bridges at Toko-Ri. Did I mention that Grace Kelly was in that movie?
But the bottom line may be that computers are too powerful, especially in the hands of skilled users, so obviously the next step is for TPTB to limit, throttle, muzzle, dumb down everything so that it is more difficult for independent people to do their own thing, whatever that might be with respect to art, music, writing, editing, design, composition, video, engineering, simulations, and yes, even modelling.
I came here this morning using my newly created Linux Mint 17.1 live USB stick, and it’s running smooth as the proverbial silk. Win 7 on this box has been getting very sluggish, and I use it almost exclusively for web browsing anyway, so Mint it is! At least for as long as persistence persists on this stick. I think it’s a very good idea to have some kind of live Linux media from which to boot in case Windows gets broken anyway.
* It may be a viable solution for those with Win XP machines to create a live USB stick, or even CD/DVD, and boot into Linux before going online, but wireless intitialization headaches were a common issue with Win XP era machines booting into Linux, as I recall. I used Mepis and Mint with some success.
** Tin Box on the Floor. Actually, it rests on a step-stool for improved ventilation and reduced kickability.
Thanks, Anthony. Annoying reminder gone.
The beef I have with Microsoft is they do not grasp how to actually pay attention to users.
They make improvements but also make changes gratuitously.
(But many software outfits are troubled:
– ESET has a bad attitude toward even hearing complaints about certain features.
– Acronis’ support is stumbling, through a revolving door, and butt-headed, so we butted heads. 😉
– Adobe wanted to play a weak version of the “we can supplant Microsoft” fool’s game instead of reducing bloat and improving security (that cost them iPhone business and motivated Microsoft to provide an image print-to-file function).
– Acro software has become unresponsive, and unreachable (they make CutePDF Pro pdf editor, which has promise).
/rant off
Well, I should have said rant paused, not off. 😉
Now I’m searching for a web hosting service in western Canada that is easy to use and reliable.
Too much hype, as with everything including climate science. One Vancouver BC outfit has very nice PR but no substance.
InternetHosting.ca/.com is run by an arrogant jerk who blames customers for her problems.
WhoIs does not respond promptly to my email being blocked because of spam behaviour of a customer hosted on the same server as my account.
IslandNet/IslandHosting are sloppy, don’t update instructions, not easy to use.
There was a reliable outfit in Calgary I’ll look up, IIRC Telus took them over which could be the kiss of disease.
My problem is that I never update my OS to newer major versions. Windows becomes slower and slower over time. When a new upgrade comes along I wipe the drive and install completely new. I’m at 7 now. I want a 10 DVD and I will then wipe my drive and install new. Only real way to speed up your Windows back to normal.
In between reloading Windows, try running sfc.exe.
Should be doable by finding the Run dialogue box, entering cmd, then running sfc /scannow after using C:\ to switch to the root directory of your HDD.
Having backed up your data first, of course.
(In Windows 7, Run is hidden under Start|All Programs| Accessories. You may get failure indications on completion if you are not online at the time, it gives you the name of a log to look in.)
And defragging your conventional HDD is a VGI.
sfc standing for System File Checker, that essential Windows files are there and sound.
Rather than “surface check” which is another recommended check, as conventional HDD platters can develop bad areas. Windows is supposed to then avoid the bad areas, I don’t trust it to do so early in the boot process.
Another great article! Personally, I too hate the intrusive attempt that Windows update caused. However, from reading about Windows 10, it seems quite a viable system that will be quite good. So, I selected the free update offer, then uninstalled that update.
Thanks for the instructions.
My computer blue screened twice and Im having problems connecting to my cable modem since the windows icon appeared.
Probably coincidence\,but I deleted the icon and my computer connected to cable instantly on startup.
I really resent that Microsoft issued this optional update offering a free upgrade to Windows 10. There was no warning that this was going to happen. Seeing that Windows icon in my system tray and the Windows 10 logo on my updates screen felt like an intrusion into my work space, and there was no option to make it go away. Disagree if you want, but I like Windows 8.1. I am happy with the way I have it configured. I don’t *want* Windows 10. I don’t want incompatibilities and forced upgrades.
Not only all of this, but here is the real clincher: The optional update that installed this Windows 10 offer causes integrity violations in my system files!
If you run from the admin command prompt sfc/verifyonly you might see integrity violations are there.
If this helps anyone, to fix this problem you have to uninstall the optional update (which is explained above) then you have to run sfc/scannow from the admin command prompt. Then if that doesn’t work run dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth from the admin command prompt and run sfc/scannow again. This fixed the problem for me on my Windows 8.1 PC.
Thanks.
Interesting. I am not sure if my issue is a result of “reserving” Window$ 10 or not, but now the SFC utiliy finds corrupt files that it is unable to repair. Hummm…. I have not tried uninstalling the KB update yet because I am running Window$ 7. I will give it a go though tomorrow.
The sooner you ditch Microsoft the happier you will be. Nothing Microsoft makes will ever be secure or user friendly. The whole PC business model depends on making your hardware and software obsolete. You can wonder how a company can release software requiring constant patches for security holes for 20 years or you can just reformat your drive and install linux.
Scott Hanselman …
Windows 10 is coming soon, and this little icon (the Windows icon) is stating to show up in folks’ taskbars. For the techies, it’s called GWX (Get Windows 10) and it’s there to prep your machine and possible download Windows 10 if you want to reserve a spot.
[ … ]
It’s amazing that Windows 7 users and Windows 8 users will all be able to upgrade and come forward to a single version of Windows. As a developer (both web and apps) it’ll be nice to have people on an “evergreen” Windows where I can do things like Feature Detection and not think as much about versioning.
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WhatsTheDealWithWindows10ForTheNonTechnicalFriend.aspx
So when will it be safe for naive users like me to install the upgrade, if we don’t want to lose everything ?
I hate this. Why can’t Microsoft keep their hands off my computer? A*#holes. This is exactly why nearly everyone hates Microsoft.
I don’t. I think their application software is very good, and improving all the time. I have the icon and it just sits there. What’s the problem ? A much bigger problem is popups on websites, especially those that obscure large parts of the screen, and those that you cannot close.
What happened to Windows 9?
Thank You!!!
Thanks!
Anthony, I would add a paragraph to your instructions. After you uninstall update KB3035583 and restart the computer, go into Windows Update and tell it to check for updates. KB3035583 will reappear in the list of “important updates.” View the list, right-click on it, and select “Hide this update.” If you don’t do this, the update will reinstall itself first chance it gets.
jdgalt: yep, that nearly got me. I only noticed it because Windows 7 wanted me to shut down rather than sleep on exit, which is always a sign that it is about to install something, and that’s what it was (having uninstalled it earlier in the day). B***ards…
Rich.
Another point I’d make from experience is that automatic updates are themselves a bigger security threat than the vulns they purport to fix. That is because with modern browsers and css it is trivially easy to mimic an operating system dialog box, such that the user is unaware that the bogus ‘update popup’ is coming from a malicious website they accidentally visited (typo in URL for example) and not from software on their own computer.
For most hackers, update spoofing is now the preferred method of attack, since it requires less coding skill than a buffer-overflow exploit or the like, and also beautifully defeats UAE, since the user is bound to elevate the downloaded malware on request if they have swallowed the bait.
I have found over longstanding experience that if business users are told to always cancel any prompts to manually update software, regardless of where the popup CLAIMS to be from, this results in a substantial reduction in malware incidents. Better still, install a software policy that makes it impossible for an ordinary user to launch downloads.
I am so glad that there are people who keep up with these little pieces of BS!! Thank you, the removal worked well.
I’m so glad you found this and passed it on to me!
Some ‘Rants’ are necessary!
Thanks to the Ranter!
Update June 12: There are now three of these unwanted updates to avoid (or remove).
KB2952664
KB3035583
KB3068708
As before, you need to not just remove them (if already installed), but go back into Windows Update, “check for updates”, and expressly “Hide” all three. Otherwise they will auto-reinstall themselves.
Just like weeds in the garden – you remove one, and three more pop up.
Dang, none of these 3 show up. There must be a forth. Bastards.
A nerd after our own hearts, and uncannily so. Thanks for saving us the time to track down this inane update ourselves and having to post a similar rant about Windows H8 and its equally retarded progeny that THIS productive computer user neither needs nor wants.
And I thought I was one of the elect…..
Thanks dude – worked like a charm. Hated that icon. I couldn’t agree more with everything you said!!! What a bunch of bozo’s who work there at Microsoft…I love windows 7. I hated 8 and 8.1 was not that much better. You were being nice calling them boneheads. I have a few other words for them 🙂
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