Stopping GWX (Get Windows 10) Process in Windows 7 or 8.x

Microsoft is advertising Windows 10 for free on all the computer running Windows 7 and 8.1 using a program called GWX.exe. GWX is an acronym for Get Windows X (X being the Roman numeral for 10). This GWX program is installed on the user’s computer in disguise of security updates through the Automatic Updates feature of Windows 7 and 8.1. This GWX program keeps asking you to upgrade your operating system to Windows 10 by displaying popups and notification area messages. Usually this file is created on the Windows 7 and 8.x computers after installing the Microsoft update KB3035583.

If you do not wish to upgrade your system to Windows 10, then you should remove and disable this GWX program from your PC. The free software Greatis GWX Stopper can help you disable GWX on your Windows 7 and 8.x computers.

GWX Stopper

After installing the GWX Stopper application in your Windows PC, you can launch it and click on the Stop GWX! button to rename the GWX folder located in the Windows system folder and disable the processes related to the GWX program.

Once you have stopped GWX from being run on your PC, you should reboot and re-run the GWX Stopper application once again. This time it should show a message telling you that “GWX is not installed”.

GWX Stopper

If you have renamed and disable the GWX program in your Windows 7 or 8.x PC and you want to upgrade to Windows 10, then you can re-enable GWX using these instructions:

  1. Rename %WinDir%\System32\GWX- to %WinDir%\System32\GWX.
  2. Enabling the scheduled tasks named GWX and GWXTriggers. You can use Windows Tasks Scheduler to find and enable these tasks.
  3. Reboot Windows for the changes to take effect.

Alternatively, you can also download Windows 10 ISO image from Microsoft servers directly. The GWX program also downloads the full setup of Windows 10, so there is no difference. You can then burn the ISO image to a blank DVD disk using a software like ImgBurn and install Window 10 using that disk.

You can download Greatis GWX Stopper from http://www.greatis.com/blog/what-is-gwx-gwx-exe.