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Fixing GWXUX crash (aka Windows 10 Ads)

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gwxux

I would like to go on record and say the reason I’m not upgrading to Windows 10 at this point is because there is a HINT that Windows 10+ will be subscription based operating system. I mean come on, I know Windows 8 is an abomination, but a FREE upgrade to Windows 10?? Surely that can leave no doubt that Microsoft is going the way many other (foolish) IT companies are heading – to a subscription based model. I can see them crippling core OS features, like ‘Computer Management’ and ‘Network Drives’ unless you ‘subscribe’ to a higher pricing tier, just like they are doing in Azure. I develop on Azure for my full-time job and today we started receiving deployment errors stating:

The ‘AlwaysOn’ feature is not available in your current plan.

Granted, Azure was actually having some ‘down-time’ during this, and we are yet to confirm if this was a programming fuck-up, or they actually changed the pricing tier for features as they see the need for more money.

I’ve also stopped recommending Team Viewer now that they have to switched from a ‘pay-once, updates are optional’ to ‘pay every month, BILLED UP-FRONT ANNUALLY, all updates required‘. Which means you have to instruct your partners on the other end to continually upgrade to keep up with your version to be able to connect!! What once was a small one-off purchase changes to a AU$538 up-front charge, billed every year thereafter, unless you can figure out how to cancel it. And we all know how companies make it next to impossible to cancel any subscription service. Normally you have to call up a number, wait in line, and then listen to an hour long spiel about how great they are, testing your patience and willingness to give up over sitting it out to get cancelled. BTW I’m not just being theoretical here, we wanted to buy a team viewer license just the other week, but no one was willing to swipe a credit card to the tune of $AU538 per year, i.e. people are not crazy. So we did not purchase it! Team viewer lost!

Rant over, my Windows 7 box I use as my media center has been having this GWXUX.EXE crash every time i boot it for the last few months (i.e. since Windows 10 advertising started). I lived with it for a while, expect Microsoft to actually care about their advertising programming crashing in full-view of customers every time they turn on their PC, but now I’ve given up. So I’ve written the simplest possible program to look for and kill GWXUX.exe before it gets a chance to crash.

If you are seeing this crash, and haven’t found a way to fix it you can do this:

1. Download KillWindows10Ads.exe to anywhere on your PC.
2. Add a shortcut to your startup folder to this executable.

There is no UI, it just runs in the background, waiting for GWX.exe to rear it’s ugly face (yeah it’s named GWX.exe but the crash dialog shows GWXUX.exe, but the user experience it’s programmed to give is a crash dialog) and kills it quick. The source code is as follows for those who care:

using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading;

namespace KillWindows10Ads
{
    /// <summary>
    /// This program exists to kill the poorly programmed 
    /// Windows 10 update advertisements, which is 
    /// installed automatically by windows update and 
    /// launching automatically on login of any user.  
    /// And then it crashes, more than once.  Great effort 
    /// Microsoft.  And yes i see the irony in using 
    /// Microsoft technology to kill Microsoft advertising
    /// for Microsoft technology.
    /// </summary>
    public partial class App
    {
        public App()
        {
            while (true)
            {
                var windows10Crap = Process.GetProcessesByName("GWX")
                    .FirstOrDefault();
                if (windows10Crap != null)
                {
                    try
                    {
                        windows10Crap.Kill();
                    }
                    catch {}
                }
                Thread.Sleep(1000);
            }
        }
    }
}

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