Disabling Windows 10 automatic upgrade

While Windows 10 brings many great new features to the Microsoft operating system, many of our industrial and commercial clients have expressed frustration with the persistent way that Microsoft has chosen to repeatedly prompt users to upgrade, and now automatically scheduling upgrades.  In some settings, an unexpected upgrade could cause massive problems, with much higher risk for issues occurring in highly specialized and complex industrial tools and systems.  Issues with automatic updates breaking things is already a well documented problem!

Upon request, KTM Research will disable the automatic upgrade features for Microsoft Windows on computers we are currently supporting.  If you wish to disable this yourself, here is the process that we’re currently using and recommending to clients.

Step 1 – Use the Group Policy Editor to enable “Turn off the upgrade to the latest version of Windows through Windows Update” setting.
Step 2 – Uninstall the Windows Update KB3035583.
Step 3 – Hide the Windows Update KB3035583 in the Windows Update utility.

This should stop prevent windows from doing an automatic upgrade, and also stop the annoying prompts for upgrade.

Edited for new information:
It turns out that uninstalling and then “hiding” the update is not enough!  Microsoft is releasing “updates” to this KB which cause it to unhide and reinstall!  While this will cause the Windows 10 upgrade popups to return, if you have set the Group Policy Editor to not upgrade to the latest version Windows should not automatically upgrade (unless one of your users triggers it).  If you see popups starting again, it’s recommended to repeat steps 2 and 3 above.