HOWTO block Windows 11 automatic upgrade

Introduction

Recently I tried to upgrade my previous flagship notebook to Windows 11 but it didn’t work.
The update constantly failed because of several problems that I wasn’t able to fix.

When I decided to sign off from W11 upgrade, I discovered that I cannot change my previous decision anymore.
This problem is that Windows Update constantly tries the upgrade process failing every single time ignoring any new published W10 updates.

So I decided to investigate how to exit from this deadlock process.

The solution

The solution I have found is working (for now) only on Windows Professional editions (or higher).

  • open gpedit.msc
  • go to Computer Configuration -> Windows Components -> Windows Update
  • go to Windows Update for Business
  • open Select the target Feature Update version
  • set your OS and the version (in my case Windows 10 and 21H2).
  • confirm
  • reboot

From this point, W11 upgrade process never popped up again.

 

On Windows home editions (or lower), or if you don’t want to use gpedit.msc, in the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate

add/edit these values:

Value name type value
TargetReleaseVersion DWORD 1
ProductVersion String Windows 10‘ in my case
ProductVersionInfo String 21H2‘ in my case