Get rid of the “Updates are available” pop-up

The Updates are available popup is the source of much irritation for anyone remotely administering windows 10, Server 2012 and server 2016

To get around this popup – which lets face it, is just downright inconvenient; we need to stop the exe file that produces this window from running. Code below, with comments preceded by a #

Run command prompt as administrator (elevated) and enter these commands:

#change directory to system32
cd /d "%Windir%\System32"

#Take over permissions owner to current admin
takeown /f musnotification.exe

#Change permissions to deny anyone/system running from it
icacls musnotification.exe /deny Everyone:(X)

#Take over permissions owner to current admin
takeown /f musnotificationux.exe

#Change permissions to deny anyone/system running from it
icacls musnotificationux.exe /deny Everyone:(X)

You will see form the above, that there are two processes ‘musnotificationux.exe’ and ‘musnotification.exe’ that are responsible for querying updates and notifying the end user. The great part of this fix, is that it will not interfere with any update processes themselves, just the notifications. So have no fear – updates will still continue to function as normal, just now without this troublesome pop-up.