How to remove the Windows 10 upgrade icon from the system tray

With the impending release of Windows 10 on 29 July 2015, users are beginning to see the free Windows 10 upgrade icon (for qualified versions), in their system tray. This could become an issue, should users upgrade to Windows 10 before some of their critical line of business applications are supported properly.

The good news is that this notification can be disabled so as not to tempt “itching” fingers from upgrading without proper consideration of the factors.

The steps are as follows (Thanks to Spiceworks, and the SBS Diva).

  1. From an elevated command prompt, run taskkill /f /im GWX.exe /T (wait about 30 seconds)
  2. Create a reg file (eg. create a file in Notepad, and save it as nowin10.reg) with the following contents.

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\GWX\shell\open\command]

    [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ms-gwx\shell\open\command]

    [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\GWX\shell\open\command]

    [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ms-gwx\shell\open\command]

    [-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WINEVT\Publishers\{18abebc9-83ec-435f-8f15-6d1e9187c999}]

  3. Run the Reg file and restart the computer

To reverse this process, you can create another reg file (eg. call it yeswin10.reg) with the following contents.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\GWX\shell\open\command]

@=”C:\\Windows\\System32\\GWX\\GWX.exe %1″

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ms-gwx\shell\open\command]

@=”C:\\Windows\\System32\\GWX\\GWX.exe %1″

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\GWX\shell\open\command]

@=”C:\\Windows\\System32\\GWX\\GWX.exe %1″

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ms-gwx\shell\open\command]

@=”C:\\Windows\\System32\\GWX\\GWX.exe %1″

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WINEVT\Publishers\{18abebc9-83ec-435f-8f15-6d1e9187c999}]

@=”Microsoft-Windows-GWX-Ins”

“ResourceFileName”=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,\

00,6f,00,74,00,25,00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,\

5c,00,47,00,57,00,58,00,5c,00,47,00,57,00,58,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,00,\

00

“MessageFileName”=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,\

6f,00,74,00,25,00,5c,00,73,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,\

00,47,00,57,00,58,00,5c,00,47,00,57,00,58,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,00,00

“Enabled”=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WINEVT\Publishers\{18abebc9-83ec-435f-8f15-6d1e9187c999}\ChannelReferences]

“Count”=dword:00000002

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WINEVT\Publishers\{18abebc9-83ec-435f-8f15-6d1e9187c999}\ChannelReferences]

@=”Microsoft-Windows-GWX-Ins/Operational”

“Id”=dword:00000010

“Flags”=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WINEVT\Publishers\{18abebc9-83ec-435f-8f15-6d1e9187c999}\ChannelReferences\1]

@=”Microsoft-Windows-GWX-Ins/Debug”

“Id”=dword:00000011

“Flags”=dword:00000000

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