The saga continues.

The latest Windows Update client now pushes you into installing Windows 10 if it's downloaded. Uninstalling the update client is ill-advised, because it's the Windows Update client and will be responsible for handling future updates. It's also known to resolve some real memory leak issues in previous versions. And removing the nagware itself is too late once you've reached that stage. You will need to resort to politely asking the client not to pester you.

I prefer this approach, because it leaves nothing behind. Start with no recommended updates installed and apply this registry fix, which would completely prevent the download from the inception. Still, it will work at any future time as well, so long as M$ don't start ignoring the policy.

There is another option though, and it's gaining popularity, but I don't know how accessible it is. It also allows you to remove the downloaded data, and it can optionally stay resident to watch for the inevitable changes which are sure to happen as M$ roll out new updates and which have been observed in the wild. It can also reverse the changes that it makes. It's called GWX Control Panel.

Stay safe, stay away ...

This just in: now it seems even setting the registry keys is ineffective. A background process resets them.

I give up. Microsoft simply cannot be trusted. Apple have flaws, but holy tripe, nothing like this!

I'm staying on XP in a VM.

I don't know. If MS manage to kick up any more of a shitstorm, then I'll consider installing GWX Control Panel, although honestly I'd rather not. It may be a cure, but it's not ideal because it has to stay resident just to work, which means a systray icon just like the nagware itself.

And, agree. If MS could just give us what we wanted, it'd all be all right. But they are absolutely determined not to. You can just smell the fear.

Quite fun indeed. Does it help that I am kicking and screaming? So far, my figurative kicking and screaming has kept me on seven. One of the reasons I am staying on seven is that 10 doesn't really offer me anything I want for what all it does. Another is that I want a lot of the bugs worked out, and I am worried about the privacy concerns I have. Of course when I updated to seven, there is the fact I wanted a SSD. As far as I know, XP doesn’t support SSD drives. 16 gigs of ram helps. There has to be some software I really want. Another thing that may drag me into 10 is some peace of must have hardware. I am sure that others on this form would understand. That doesn’t mean I have to like what MS is doing.

Yeah, I get it.

We just need someone to break the cycle of dependence, I guess.

Just out of curiosity, how do you turn off all telemetry just in case I wanted to do it some time without group policy?

It just gets better and better.

This isn't actually about spyware or the Windows 10 nagware, but it's still relevant to this thread because it's another underhanded tactic for getting people onto Win10. So ...

Microsoft is giving Windows 7 and 8.1 users using current sixth-generation Skylake chips eighteen months to upgrade to Windows 10. Beyond that, they will not receive support. The latest Kaby Lake chips, due out before 2017, will not even be supported on the older versions at all.

Welcome, my Windows-using friends, to the Apple way. Don't you think it's time you got that Mac?

Windows 8.1 plus Classic Shell works just fine for me too. No need of an upgrade, and no wish for it either. And yeah, Win7 was somewhat crappy, really; it's only that it was marginally better than Vista that people took to it at all, and to be honest even Vista was all right after the first couple of service packs.

But as to privacy, I do think that is the real reason I dislike Win10. In earlier versions of Windows, and all Apple stuff, you at least have the option to choose. On Win10 it's our way or the highway. Funny; that's exactly what Windows users say is wrong with Apple's ecosystem.

Mostly, the reason they are still expected to support XP is because XP is the last version of Windows that was actually good (at least in the first year and a half before the inevitable security vulnerabilities catch up with you).
I understand the need for updates and improvements and security patches! It'd just be nice if I could get those without having to lose everything good about XP and without having to trade all of my information to Microsoft in exchange for being forced to install every little thing they thought would be a good idea without asking.
I'm not sure why I need a million background services or for my desktop to try very hard to turn itself into something more appropriate for a smartphone or tablet or why Windows Explorer has to be a clunky sprawling mess that clutters up everything and takes forever to open a context menu or why the programs submenu on the start menu has been so absurdly clunky that it left my computer unresponsive as soon as I started with Vista, and so on and so forth. I'm not interested in Cortana or Edge, but for all I know they could be worth having, if I could just have an OS that doesn't appear to hate me again.
Is classic shell fast? 'Cause I've just been using a (very incomplete) program I tossed together to simulate the feel of classic Windows whenever the command prompt felt like too much typing. It's so much faster I don't even (and it's not as though running my program would stop any of those million background processes or whatever... I dunno, NVDA doesn't like admin mode task manager so I don't even know what's running anymore.).

I don't wanna move to Mac or Linux, but Microsoft seems dead set on convincing me to do so anyway. ... Is Skype for OSX less of a bloated nightmare than the Windows Desktop version? (Also should I delete all my photos and videos on my phone and update iOS, or is Skype just going to keep crashing every time I try to use it on there? ... Microsoft ruined instant messaging, is what I'm saying. Remember Windows Live Messenger, and how it was actually fast and screen reader friendly and not a cluttered abomination? I'd like Skype more if it could say just one of those three things. I don't even stay signed in anymore because it's such an unnecessary resource drain to... sit and listen for chat messages, something which was faster and more efficient back on *Windows 98*.)

* I do want backward compatibility to be better, though. Now that we can support decent VMs for 16bit operating systems, it's less of an issue, but virtualizing XP is still resource intensive and I'd rather avoid it until I can get a machine that can actually handle it. I like old stuff. I got a ton of Sega Genesis games for Christmas. The option of running old software is a major selling point. (So is the basic UI. If I'm living out of the command prompt, downloading Classic Shell, and writing my own replacement for lots of things, you clearly aren't marketing to me.)

I would promptly hop over to linux if orca was actually a worthy screen-reader. Oh, folks on the orca list could give me a laundry list of oppinions on why there is nothing wrong with orca, and it will get the job done, but i strongly beg to differ. I don't like it's verbocity for one, and web browsing can be hit or miss. And sometimes the software just flat out freezes. While i can work around it, i'm still on windows and OSX for accessibility reasons. That, and i consider myself OS agnostic.

here's the thing. I will only use windows. I will occasionally use OSX, in a vm now because I'm not buying a mac, because I can't and I won't. I don't like it. But OSX is a business platform. It is designed to be used in the office, there are litterally like 3 games for it. Garage band and logic are great for music, but they're expensive and my current stuff is totally free. Sure I have some torrents, which if microsoft deletes my torrents I will take that to the net, but it's free for me, you have to pay for apple things. I play games, compose music, and talk to people. THat's about it. Mac can do, exactly, one, of those things completely. Now I do agree that the accessibility on macintosh is great, but with NVDA the accessibility is great too. And I once saw this on twitter, it was reguarding IOS but I'm going to modify it for the windows spyware case. MIcrosoft knows you know about this. But you're not switching to mac or linux. You know that, I know that, and MS knows it too. This was originally for the removal of the iphone's headphone jack. I can't buy a mac, I like my windows pc, and I like the OS. I like mac hardware, but I hate the OS. And linux? Well that's just clear out of the picture, linux will never be popular and widely used by us general users. Microsoft has done absolutely nothing so far to disclose our data or make it evident that they were going to. If they are submitting it to the government, get over it! So's your phone, so's your car, so's your house if you have a security system. It's nothing but terrorist finding, they're not sniffing through your stuff.

Personally,   I really don't care.  I am not harming anyone with what I do on my computer, and because of that,  I really don't care.  If I get potted by Microsoft,  that's okay, I have been to their offices and I know some people so I should be fine.

At this point, I have Win 10 for whatever I need.  Anyway,  it's great to post here.

SOmethings wrong with my english,  sorry about that guys, I am American but Japaese plays with your mind especially when you are trying to learn Japanese.