This week I find myself rather bemused by writing a blog post on updating Windows. As much as the majority of my clients are Mac users, there’s no way of getting around needing some knowledge of Windows to support those people that need to use both types of computer.

Today I wanted to tackle the subject of Microsoft automatically updating current users of Windows 7 and 8.1 to Windows 10 without their express agreement, a process which I find terribly presumptious on their part. I’m sure I’m not alone when I say that I have a number of Windows machines running different versions of Operating System (in my case so I can support users of each variant, but in a typical users case it may be that software they need for their job will only run on a certain version of Windows). In this instance, I don’t want Microsoft to assume that I am ok with them updating Windows on MY computer to Windows 10!

Recently there’s been a spate of users reporting that their version of Windows has been updated without their approval. Microsoft did release a patch that allowed users to prevent their machines from being forcibly changed, but the interface to do this was unnecessarily cumbersome, preventing most people from using it. But I wanted to let you know of a way of doing it yourself using a piece of software.

Steve Gibson of GRC Research, one of the most trusted security specialists in the industry, has written a very small piece of software which is completely free to use, and does ONLY the job we need – preventing your system from updating Windows to Version 10 (you can run it again to turn this protection off if you change your mind).

Download a fix

Here’s the link to get the software: https://www.grc.com/files/never10.exe and there’s more information about how the software works here.

All you need to do is download and run the application, and it’ll turn the upgrade off. It may, if the upgrade package has already been downloaded in the background, also offer you the chance to remove around 6.5Gb of unrequired files.

Have a great weekend, and if you have any questions on this or any other post, please get in touch via the comments, social media or email.