Wednesday 30 October 2013

How to disable the annoying Skype update notifications completely and forever

I just can't help sharing this: the extremely annoying update-your-version-of-Skype reminders CAN be disabled after all. Like many users, I've tried all "legitimate" ways to get rid of the pesky alerts, but whatever alert settings you change, they still pop up. Apparently, MS desperately wants us to download every update of Skype, which increasingly turns into bloatware.

However, the way to turn the reminders off does exist. Some users have noted that whenever a new version of Skype comes out, the program downloads it into a temp folder under the name SkypeSetup.exe. Upon finishing the download it pops up the aggravating alert, and does it again after every other action you perform in Skype. So the way to get rid of it is, basically, to create a file with the same name and make it read-only.


So, the steps to do it, method 1 (manual):

1. Go to the %TEMP% folder:

* Open any Windows folder
* Type %temp% in its path (address) bar
* Press Enter

2. Locate SkypeSetup.exe in the folder (if the file is not present, check out the %TMP% folder the same way) and delete the file

3. Create a dummy empty SkypeSetup.exe in the %temp% folder:

* Right click in the folder
* Select Create, Text document
* Type SkypeSetup.exe in the filename field
* Press Enter, and Ok the warning

4. Right click the file you have just created, select Properties, Security, Advanced, Change Permissions, Add

5. Type the word Everyone in the "Enter the object names" field, then press Ok

6. Now select Everyone, and check the "Full Control - Deny" checkbox. Press Apply, then Ok the warning question and the dialog.



There you go: from now on your Skype would be able neither to download its updates nor to display the maddening pop-up windows!


You can also do everything above with the method 2 (automatic):

1. Create a fixskype.bat file consisting of the following two lines:


NUL>%temp%\SkypeSetup.exe

Icacls.exe %temp%\SkypeSetup.exe /deny All:F

2. Run the batch file under an admin account. This one can also be helpful if you plan to re-create the updates-blocking file regularly (e.g., if you prefer to clear %TEMP% contents on every system startup).

3 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  2. tried it - still get the popups!

    ReplyDelete
  3. https://superuser.com/questions/909367/prevent-skype-popup-asking-to-upgrade-in-2018

    Do these things read all posts and you can do it.

    ReplyDelete