How to Remove the Win 10 Upgrade Icon

Simple instructions for people who’d like to remove the Win 10 icon from the computers, and stop it from coming back.

Why remove the Win 10 icon?

Microsoft are pushing the Win 10 upgrade to as many people as they can, and once the button is on your computer it will pop up occasionally asking you to upgrade. We’ve had a few clients who accidentally accepted it (thinking it was a regular update) and ended up stuck halfway through the Win 10 Upgrade.

Depending on your update settings some people have also had the Win 10 upgrade either download, or even install itself onto their computers without their knowledge. If you’d like to check your update settings to prevent that we have some instructions for that here.

If you Remove the Win 10 Upgrade Notification and hide it from future updates it will get rid of the icon on your desktop and stop Microsoft from pushing it out to you again. You can get it back later if you change your mind.

To remove the Win 10 icon:

First you’ll need to open your Windows update panel.

Click the start menu and type Windows Update into the search field at the bottom of the Start menu.
Windows Update should be at the top in the Programs menu – click on that.

If you’d like to see that in more details with step by step photos we have the pictures in our article: How to Check and Install Microsoft Windows Updates.

Click on Installed Updates – it’s on the bottom left of the panel.

You can click on any of the pictures to see them larger.

Remove the win 10 upgrade notification: The update we want to get rid of is KB3035583 – copy or paste that code into the search field at the top right of the panel.

Right click on that update and choose Uninstall. Easy.

You can get that update code directly from the Microsoft website – How To Remove Windows 10 Upgrade Notification On Windows 7 And Windows 8. Dave thinks the instructions on that link are great, but for an average person like me they were waaay mysterious – or in other words way above my tech level! 🙂 – Jen

To Stop Windows 10 from coming back:

Your icon should now be gone, but the Win 10 upgrade installer is considered an Important Windows update – so Microsoft will keep trying to put it back on every time you get Windows Updates. To stop them we are going to HIDE the update.

First you’ll need to check for updates, so we’re going to go back into the Windows Update panel the same way we did before: Click Start menu, type Windows Update into the search field and choose Windows Update.

This time you want to click on the “Check for Updates” tab on the left of the panel. Your computer might take a little while to find all of the updates that it doesn’t have.

The one we’re after will be in the Important updates section, so once that comes up you can click on Important Updates – it’s in the box with the shield.

Now you’ll see a list of any Important Updates that you don’t have installed yet – the Win 10 one should be there, so again we are looking for KB3035583.

If you have a big list you can use the search field again – copy or paste that code into the search field at the top right of the panel.

Now simply right click that update and choose Hide Update.

And you’re done!

That will tell Microsoft that you don’t want to receive the update in future.

What if I change my mind later and want Win 10?

If you change your mind you’ll notice there’s a “Restore Hidden Updates” option on the left side of the updates panel. Use that to restore the KB3035583 update and then install it.

Install your other Windows updates while you’re here!

Now – since you are in the updates panel, it’s probably a good idea to install the other updates while you are at it! Most of them are designed to update your security, or other problems Microsoft has discovered with its software.

You might like to save and close any open documents because with some updates you need to restart your computer. If you have a lot of updates to do then it can take a while, so make sure you can grab a coffee while the computer does it’s thing.

There’s a back button on the top left of the control panel – click that to go back to the Check for Updates Screen and click Install Updates.

Dave and Jen