I am the maker of a small and free utility that prevents Windows 10 from being installed on Windows 7 and Windows 8 computers and from annoying users that decided they did not want to upgrade for now.
Why did I do that ?
I have a bunch of Windows 7 systems (not taking into account the ones used by the family) and a couple of Windows 8.1 customized with Classic Shell, and I am quite happy with them.At first, I was just annoyed by "Upgrade to Windows 10" nags.
When I discovered that 3-6GB of Win10 installation files were pushed up on all of the systems behind my back I became upset. Quite angry in fact.
I then decided to disable and remove the components responsible for these behaviors of my systems.
It took some time, research, and the processes involved steps that are quite complex if you are not a computer guy.
Fortunately, I am a computer guy, I founded a start-up dealing with Desktop Virtualization in 1999.
So I managed to disable or uninstall the components that made my systems potential Windows 10 devices.
And I decided that I would create a small utility, mainly with just one button to click, that would automate the process.
I did, it's free for anyone to download:
http://win10wiwi.com
Win10wiwi stands for "Windows 10 when I want it"
It also recover the space used by Windows 10 installation files that can have been pushed to computers
During my research to develop this app, I found out that telemetry components, that report statistics and behavioral data to third parties, could be disabled and uninstalled too, so I offered the possibility to do so in the app.
While developing the app, a new component was deployed to Windows 7 and 8 systems that would, very often, upgrade to Windows 10 without any consent from the user.
As they did for the installation files pushed silently to Windows 7/8 systems, MS pretended that this was an error! But Win10wiwi was modified to take this new behavior into account, so, unless the way the next error is totally different, systems that have run Win10wiwi should be safe from this kind of error now...
Last but not the least, the app has the possibility to configure a Windows 7 or Windows 8 system so that the "Upgrade to Windows 10" components will be (re-)enabled. It can also reactive the telemetry components if one desires that.
This app has been used almost 3000 times and recovered more than 3,000GB of storage so far.
The Inquirer wrote lately about it : http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2425381/microsoft-is-downloading-windows-10-to-your-machine-just-in-case
Win10wiwi is just a way of restoring some more control over Windows 7 and Windows 8 systems that we are used to and that we like to use...
