Disable data collection and Telemetry in Windows 10

Last Updated on February 18, 2017

It’s public knowledge that Windows 10 collects user’s personal data for telemetry and mining for MS. It is certainly a matter of concern because we know that it’s not possible to trust American companies these days. cough*NSA anyone?*cough. Unfortunately, there is no way to disable this annoyance on our PC because MS didn’t bother to provide any option to even opt-out.resistance is futile windows 10

Disable Telemetry data collection in Windows 10

There are a few options in the privacy section in the settings app that can restrict the amount of data that Windows collects from us. You can disable them one by one.

Disable Feedback Frequency.

Go to Settings app > Privacy > Feeback and diagnostics. Set the Feeback Frequency to Never in the drop-down menu.

Disable Feedback & Diagnostics data

Go to the Settings app > Privacy > Feedback & Diagnostics to change how much detailed data Windows 10 will send to Microsoft’s servers. You can read the official notes on their official web page. Select Basic from the drop-down menu.

Disable Diagnostics Services

Search Powershell in the Start menu and open the Windows PowerShell app. Type the following command and press Enter.

Get-Service DiagTrack | Set-Service -StartupType Disabled

You can also use the Command prompt and SC Config to disable this service. Just type the following and press Enter.

sc config DiagTrack start= disabled

Disable Window Manager Push Services

In the same PowerShell window, type the following command and press Enter.

Get-Service dmwappushservice | Set-Service -StartupType Disabled

As with disabling diagnostics services, you can also disable DWM Push services with command prompt with the following command.

sc config dmwappushservice start= disabled

Disable Data Collection

Search regedit in the Start menu and open the Registry editor. Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection

Right-click on the DataCollection folder and go to New > DWORD (32-bit) Value. Give it the name AllowTelemetry and value of 0.

After all of this is done, you can restart your PC for the changes to take effect. Doing the above will remove Windows 10’s ability to send feedback, telemetry data, and other personal data to Microsoft’s servers.

Use ShutUp10

shutup 10 settings

One more thing that you can do is install an app called Shutup10. It is a 200KB app that can disable extra diagnostic services in Windows 10 that can compromise your privacy. You can download ShutUp10 from their official website. Once downloaded, open the OOSU10.exe with admin privileges. You will see a bucket load of options that you can disable.

In the main screen, click on the Actions button on top to reveal the main settings. Click on Apply all recommended and limited recommended settings. If it asks for creating a restore point, select OK. All your settings will be applied.

And this is it. After making all these changes to Windows 10, it should send the minimum amount of data to Microsoft’s servers effectively protecting your privacy.

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Written by Utkarsh

Utkarsh Bhatt is a certified tech expert and software engineer for a Fortune 500 Company. He was born in 1995, making him one of the oldest members of the team at EFX. Utkarsh loves solving technical issues and is always the first to jump on any problem that needs solving. When he’s not coding or debugging, he enjoys playing video games (especially Super Smash Bros.) and watching cartoons.

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8 thoughts on “Disable data collection and Telemetry in Windows 10”

  1. Thank you for this information. However, PS commands

    sc config DiagTrack start=disabled
    sc config dmwappushservice start=disabled

    generated errors like this:

    Set-Content : A positional parameter cannot be found that accepts argument ‘start=disabled’.
    At line:1 char:1
    + sc config DiagTrack start=disabled
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : InvalidArgument: (:) [Set-Content], ParameterBindingException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : PositionalParameterNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.SetContentCommand

    Please update this commands, I want to disable all telemetry if possible because at Windows start 15-30 min. Windows Compatibility Telemetry service cause HDD usage near 100% and the computer is unusable. If I cannot fix this problem, I’ll downgrade to Windows 7.

    Once again, thank you for your article.

    Reply
  2. I get
    Set-Service : Service ‘Connected User Experiences and Telemetry (DiagTrack)’ cannot be configured due to the following
    error: Access is denied
    At line:1 char:25
    + Get-Service DiagTrack | Set-Service -StartupType Disabled
    + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    + CategoryInfo : PermissionDenied: (System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController:ServiceController) [Set-Servi
    ce], ServiceCommandException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CouldNotSetService,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.SetServiceCommand
    when I use the first command despite being an admin on my pc and literally the only account on it

    Reply
    • Actually, being the only account doesn’t matter in Windows. The error you got was error: Access is denied. That implies that you forgot to run PowerShell as Admin. Without that, you can’t implement systemwide changes on your PC.

      Reply
  3. It was helpful for a long time, but now it kills the deployment process of Windows 10 1809. Any attemp to deploy an 1809 OS Image fails with a “Why did my PC reboot” loop at the end of the oobe phase if the two mentioned services are not running.
    We had them disabled via Group Policy and learned it the hard way: Don’t try to defend Microsoft from examining your computer … they will strike back one day 😉

    Reply

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