It was driving me crazy so eventually I took the time to figure out how to get rid of it. 1) Uninstall KB 3035583. and then "Hide" the update to prevent it from being installed in the future. 2) Take Ownership of the C:\Windows\system32\GWX folder, and then 3) Delete the C:\Windows\system32\GWX folder. There might be more to do, but that's all I did and it seems to have worked. I've seen a few posts that recommend that you also delete the "Scheduled Tasks" for the GWX executable, but those may have already been deleted when I uninstalled KB 3035583. I'd like to learn how to make a tool that would do this automatically for people, and post it as a convenience to others. Seems simple enough in terms of what needs to be done, but I have no idea how to program, etc... Javascript? Visual Basic? Something else?
I reset my Surface to 8.1, and despite it not having 3035583 installed, I was getting the app in the system tray. In my case, I used a suggestion I saw elsewhere online: Code: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GWX] "DisableGWX"=dword:00000001 I then killed the GWX.exe process, and it hasn't come back yet.
What keeps the update from simply reinstalling the whole thing? Do you have any information that it does not/will not? Posts I've read compare it to malware, which (in my mind) includes the ability to repair itself if the User does some "unauthorized tampering". Plus there's a bunch of scheduled tasks calling to run the .exe, and leaving them there undeleted is sloppy and messy.