How to Cancel Windows 11 update?

Hi, Martin. I am so glad the ongoing conversation on this thread has helped you. I am indebted to Rodrigo.Queirez and JoJun, whose patient reiteration of the steps and reassurances about emptying that download folder, etc. gave me the detailed info I needed to get out of the mess I was in. I only stopped the wuauserv and emptied the software download folder one final time when I did the successful registry edit and nothing more has been necessary since. This is on my main computer, which is a Surface Pro that is capable of running Windows 11 but is not forcing it on me.

When I was trying to get my old, painfully slow desktop computer to update to 21H2, a manual download of the update kept stalling (bc the computer was SO slow) and ultimately failing, so I remembered about the software download folder, emptied it of all the files from the failed attempts, and voila! Next thing I knew, 21H2 appeared in available updates and downloaded/installed without a hitch. I have since used the Windows registry scan tool to find and repair broken registry items (nothing I caused, just an old, slow computer that was limping along for unknown reasons) and to my delight it found and fixed things a ton of things in the registry so that the computer is running at an acceptable pace again! I had tried all kinds of disk cleanup and defragging utilities to no avail. My husband is calling me the Geek Goddess. :-) That computer tells me on the update page that it is not capable of running Windows 11, so no danger there.

Dear Geek Goddess, :-)

My initial thought about the manual download on your "painfully slow desktp computer" was: couldn't you have used one of your other household computers to download 21H2 (to CD/DVD/USB Stick), and thus bypass the space issue? However, reading on, you have obviously freed up valuable space by removing the 'junk' from the softwaredownload folder.

Portland MT,

I haven't dived into the Registry yet, but the About information shows 21H2 as the version.

My fingers are crossed that my PC will no longer prompt to update to Windoze 11. If it does, my next and final course of action will be to do a full factory reset. As my live files are on a network drive, I would only need to reinstall the layered products, to get the machine fully up and running.

Has MS finally buckled under the weight of comments about version 11, by releasing 21H2 for 10? Just curious.

Just know that Windows 11 has the same version number: 21H2. The only difference is one is Windows 10 version 21H2 and the other is Windows 11 21H2.

Thus, the importance of setting a target version in your registry.

I would not do a full factory reset. The only way to ensure you don't get Windows 11 is to set the target version in your registry.

I'm part of the Facebook group with Windows 11 and almost every post is about the disaster updates and what works, what doesn't, etc. It is horrible and I'm not doing it.

Hi, Martin-Smith. I agree with what Portland has told you about setting a target in your registry for Windows 10 21H2 so that you just don't have to worry about 11 being foisted on you.

As to how I went about getting 12H2 on my old, slow desktop, what you suggest would not have worked any better, as it was not a shortage of disk space or slow internet holding me back. It was just slow internal processing on the computer (which I subsequently learned was due to a ton of registry errors that had accumulated over the 10 yrs or more that I have had that computer). I kept trying to download and install the update, and it kept stalling out. That made the software download folder full of aborted attempts that seemed to be acting like stoppers. They would have done that no matter whether I was downloading from the internet, a CD, memory stick or whatever. Once I cleared that folder out, the update showed up in the easiest, most "organic" way -- from the updates page in my settings. And now that I have used the scan and fix registry errors tool in Windows, it is running as well as it ever did. Life is so much nicer when one's computers are all working right!

Very well explained.

I'm interested in the scanning for registry errors on another older laptop I have and still use. Where exactly do I find this in the windows program? Some tool that is there already installed by windows on the laptop?