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William asked: I use Windows 7, which I am content with. But I keep getting the message to upgrade to Windows 10, which I don’t want to do. How can I stop this download?
Short answer? You can’t, at least not easily. And in some cases, Windows 10 upgrades have begun auto-installing even without being given permission!
If you have one of the Professional editions of Windows, you can create a group policy to disable the automatic upgrade and the notification, but the chances are good that you have the Home edition of Windows 7.
Short answer? You can’t, at least not easily.
In your case, you would have to create a registry key to block the Windows 10 auto upgrade and the notification prompt. Here is a link to the Microsoft support article that gives you the details on how to do this, but do you remember our short answer?
Yeah, we’ve read accounts from plenty of users who’ve added the registry key only to have Windows 10 install anyway. Microsoft is completely obsessed with driving Windows 10 down as many throats as possible.
Now we happen to like Windows 10. Rather well, actually. We’d recommend the update, in most cases. But we are absolutely dead set against someone making your decisions for you. It should always be your choice whether software is installed on your machine.
Microsoft disagrees, apparently. They know what’s best for you.