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Greatis.com GWXstopper is it safe?

  • August 15, 2015
  • 6 replies
  • 53 views

Greatis.com GWXstopper is it safe? Appeared to want to connect to the internet whilst operating. Why?

6 replies

Baldrick
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  • August 15, 2015
Hi peteallerhand
 
Welcome to the Community Forums.
 
GWX Stopper would appear to be a utility produced by some enterprising person to automate the way to disable the Windows 10 (GWX) system tray icon & its assocaited scheduled tasks from running on your system, should you not want them.
 
As far as I can tell it is not malicious or have any malware tendencies, and as to why it might need to communicate via the internet is not known. From reading about it I cann ot see why it would need to unless it is either checking to see if there a new version or it is communicating usgae stats back to the author.
 
I personally would not use it, and would manually stop GWX.exe from performing it's duties.
 
Regards, Baldrick

  • Author
  • Fresh Face
  • August 15, 2015
Thanks Baldrick! Pete

Baldrick
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  • August 15, 2015
No worries, Pete.
 
This utility seems a strange little item for someone to have produced given that the instructions on how to stop GWX.exe manually are avaialble online and to me do not seem too difficult to implement.  I presume that you have checked out the author's site for details etc.?
 
Regrds, Baldrick

  • August 15, 2015
ok

Baldrick
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  • Gold VIP
  • August 15, 2015
Hi rbtony
 
Welcome to the Community Forums.
 
May I ask as to what is 'ok'? Did you have a question or issue to raise? :D
 
Regards, Baldrick

  • Author
  • Fresh Face
  • August 15, 2015
Hello again Baldrick, you'll doubtless know that GWX has a whole host of components most of which are Access Denied though it's not too difficult to get by that. The thing is, it appears to be self-perpetuating in a way and as the general mood of folks is that Win10 promises to say more about the user for Microsoft's benefit rather than the other way around, it would seem prudent to remove the installer and its components from the system before it takes over automatically. Trouble is, there's so much of it including squillions of Manifest Files, it's hard to do it all manually hence my interest in someone's ready made fix? Thanks again, Pete

Baldrick
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  • Gold VIP
  • August 15, 2015
Hi Pete
 
But of course, I was not questioning your interest in this utility but rather it's necessity, although I do understand what you mean if one happens to be a 'dead set against an upgrade to Win10' person...not that I am suggesting that you are, by the way.
 
What I have found is that (i) the Get Windows 'baggage' does not actually affect the running of a system, unless one is runnng on a system that is so low in resources as to make it unsuitable for upgrade, (ii) the upgrade to Windows 10 does seem to clean up the 'baggage' quit nicely, as one would expect.
 
Regards, Baldrick