How prevent unexpected upgrade to 22H2

I have Group Policy for Windows Update to notify me when updates are available rather than to automatically install them. That has worked fairly well for years. But today I was unexpectedly notified I needed to restart to finish installing maintenance, and that maintenance was the upgrade to 22H2. I will do that eventually, but definitely not today so I restored my PC from a backup taken Monday. The 22H2 upgrade now shows "Pending download". I've supposedly "hidden" the upgrade with wushowhide but it still showed as pending download. And after putting the PC to sleep for a while and waking it, 22H2 started downloading again. I shut the PC down.


On a laptop I see that regular maintenance (i.e., 2023-02 Cumulative Upgrade for .NET) and the 22H2 upgrade are both "Pending download". It looks like I'll get the 22H2 upgrade if I try to download the other maintenance. (I'm pretty sure that was not the case until this week.) I've supposedly "hidden" the upgrade with wushowhide here, too, but I don't trust it.

What should I try next? I'm pretty much accepting the fact that I've got to upgrade to 22H2 on that PC (which is my daily "workstation"), but I've got another PC (mostly for testing), 2 laptops, and a Surface tablet. How do I prevent this from happening on them?

Use the Group Policy for TargetReleaseVersion to stay on 21H2 (or whatever).
Specify Target Feature Update Version in Windows 11 Tutorial

Thanks. I had not seen that options. (Actually, I haven't looked at most options in the Group Policy Editor.)

Interestingly, after rebooting the PC (but before setting that policy) Windows did not restart the 22H2 download. It still shows "Pending download" though. And changing that Group Policy did not change that. Maybe I'll try rebooting again.

I had the same issue in a VM.

Here is what I did:

1. Use GPO to block update to 22H2 (force it to stay on 21H2)
2. Reboot
3. Check WU, 22H2 still offered. Pause Updates for 1 week.
4. Reboot
5. Unpause and check for updates

It should now not be offered.

Reboot at step 4 may not be needed, but it was a VM, and took seconds to reboot, so I did it.

HTH

pokeefe0001 said:

I'm pretty much accepting the fact that I've got to upgrade to 22H2 on that PC (which is my daily "workstation"), but I've got another PC (mostly for testing), 2 laptops, and a Surface tablet. How do I prevent this from happening on them?

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Just out of curiosity, why do you not want 22H2? I find that it has some significant improvements over 21H2, including some things I was used to having in W10 that got left out of the initial 21H2 release. In particular, click and drag to the taskbar and the ability to group apps on Start.

Bree said:

Just out of curiosity, why do you not want 22H2? I find that it has some significant improvements over 21H2...

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It's not that I don't want 22H2. It's that I want to control when I upgrade. I usually wait around 6 months to go to a new release, and that's what I was planning this time. (Except "planning" is probably too strong a word.) I just don't like the fact that the installation proceeding without my having started it.

Bree said:

Just out of curiosity, why do you not want 22H2? I find that it has some significant improvements over 21H2, including some things I was used to having in W10 that got left out of the initial 21H2 release. In particular, click and drag to the taskbar and the ability to group apps on Start.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry I went ahead with it today. I now cannot drag & drop photos into any image editing program. Not even from my gallery web page. I posted about it earlier but so far no solutions. As someone who works with photos and images a lot, this is a very bad thing.

cbiweb said:

I'm sorry I went ahead with it today. I now cannot drag & drop photos into any image editing program. Not even from my gallery web page. I posted about it earlier but so far no solutions. As someone who works with photos and images a lot, this is a very bad thing.

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That's odd, in 22H2 I can drag and drop into PaintShop Pro, something I couldn't do in 21H2. You have to already have the app running, but that was always the case in Win10 too.

Bree said:

That's odd, in 22H2 I can drag and drop into PaintShop Pro, something I couldn't do in 21H2.

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Strange. I just did a registry tweak from this tutorial by Shawn Brink, and now I can drag & drop into Paint and Photos, but not Affinity Photo. It's as if I can only do it with MS products after that tweak.

cbiweb said:

Strange. I just did a registry tweak from this tutorial by Shawn Brink, and now I can drag & drop into Paint and Photos, but not Affinity Photo. It's as if I can only do it with MS products after that tweak.

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That is strange. I have made no tweaks to my system, not with @Brink's tutorial or anything else. It's just a standard 21H2 that got updated to 22H2 through Windows Update. As you can see above, I'm dropping into PaintShop Pro, a 3rd part app.

pokeefe0001 said:

It's not that I don't want 22H2. It's that I want to control when I upgrade.... I just don't like the fact that the installation proceeding without my having started it.

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It shouldn't start on its own, 22H2 should be offered as an optional update and only install if you click 'Download & install'.

T

Bree said:

It shouldn't start on its own, 22H2 should be offered as an optional update and only install if you click 'Download & install'.

View attachment 53351

How to get the Windows 11 2022 Update (22H2)

Windows 11 version 22H2 build 22621.521+ It is recommended to wait until Windows 11 22H2 is available via Windows Update. Today, Panos Panay announced the release and availability of the Windows 11 2022 Update, the latest version of Windows 11. Windows is a key component of how more than a...

www.elevenforum.com

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Uh, no, they have started selectively pushing it already.


My 21H2 VM got it - thankfully I had a checkpoint. It did not offer it as an optional update that I could click the X to to skip, like in your screenshot. Throughout Last year and into Jan, it was exactly like you show. But early last week, it was full on automatically in the process of updating to 22H2 without me even searching for updates, right after booting into the VM. I had to revert via checkpoint, and then use the GPO to force it to stay off 22H2.

johnlgalt said:

Last year and into Jan, it was exactly like you show. But early last week, it was full on automatically....

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Thank you for correcting me, I hadn't realised things had changed. My machines took the optional upgrade to 22H2 as soon as offered.

Bree said:

Thank you for correcting me, I hadn't realised things had changed. My machines took the optional upgrade to 22H2 as soon as offered.

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No worries. I was actually surprised that my VM was doinked for the automatic upgrade so quickly after reading that. I suspect it is because I only recently rebuilt the VMs, and the systems took advantage of that and pushed it to the new VM. But, yeah, I don't think it is widely pushed yet.

As for hte VM itself, I purposefully want ot keep one on 21H2 to be able to easily see the differences as we progress. That GPO trick works very, very well for sticking you to a major version.

My "main" PC downloaded and installed - up to a request to reboot. I restored from a several day old backup and shut down. A few hours after the next reboot the download started again. This behavior was not happening on 4 other computers (all running 21H2). I did the restore again and this time the download did not start. This lull let me get past my "I don't have time for an upgrade" crunch. I've now upgraded 3 of the 5 computers - on my schedule, not Microsoft's.

Oddly, when I upgraded my "test" PC - the first of the 3 - I did not get the "Hi! Please wait ..." screens (or whatever they say). I thought maybe MS had streamlined the upgrade process. But no. The other two computers had the wait while individual user stuff was upgraded. I don't pretend to understand the upgrade procedure.

pokeefe0001 said:

It still shows "Pending download" though

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Just for future reference, this should have removed that Pending download notice
Reset Windows Update - ElevenForumTutorials

All the best,
Denis

johnlgalt said:

But early last week, it was full on automatically in the process of updating to 22H2 without me even searching for updates

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John,

Had you applied the Target Version limitation?
Specify Target Feature Update Version - ElevenForumTutorials

All the best,
Denis

Here is the thing, you delay updates in the mistaken belief that you will get a more stable release. It dos not work like that.

If you update immediately, you fix bugs from previous build but possible get some new ones.


However, you could wait for months but still no guarantee YOUR installation will not be affected.

A far better strategy is to make an image backup and update immediately safe in knowledge you can revert if necessary.

All you are really doing by imposing a 40+ year old update strategy is delaying benefit of latest updates.

Try3 said:

John,

Had you applied the Target Version limitation?
Specify Target Feature Update Version - ElevenForumTutorials

All the best,
Denis

Click to expand...

That tutorial method 1:

Brink said:

OPTION ONE

Specify Target Feature Update Version in Local Group Policy Editor​

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Is what I meant by the below:

johnlgalt said:

and then use the GPO to force it to stay off 22H2.

Click to expand...

cereberus said:

Here is the thing, you delay updates in the mistaken belief that you will get a more stable release. It dos not work like that.

If you update immediately, you fix bugs from previous build but possible get some new ones.


However, you could wait for months but still no guarantee YOUR installation will not be affected.

A far better strategy is to make an image backup and update immediately safe in knowledge you can revert if necessary.

All you are really doing by imposing a 40+ year old update strategy is delaying benefit of latest updates.

Click to expand...

This does not apply to everyone.

I delay the update permanently to keep that version independent in a VM. Same as having a VM of 10, 8.1, 7, or XP. Both 10 VMs kept wanting to upgrade to Windows 11 to. The delay in upgrading ot Win 11 was specifically because I want to keep using (and remaining familiar with) 10.