[Tip] Disable Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) Upgrade Notification in Windows 7
If you are using Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system and getting frequent notifications to upgrade the older version of Internet Explorer web browser present in your computer to the latest Internet Explorer 11 version, this tutorial will help you in disabling those prompt messages to make your life easier and more comfortable.
Recently Microsoft released a new update KB3123303 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 which detects the installed version of Internet Explorer (IE) web browser in computers and if it finds an older version of IE such as IE8, IE9 or IE10, it starts notifying the users about the discontinued support for the older version of Internet Explorer. It also asks users to upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer which is version 11.
This notification is called “End of Support” or “End of Life” and is shown when the user launches Internet Explorer web browser. It automatically opens a new tab in the browser containing download page of IE11. This notification is not displayed on every launch of Internet Explorer. Once the notification is shown and you close the tab, it waits for 72 hours i.e. 3 days and after 72 hours the notification shows again.
Advertisement
Its actually a good move by Microsoft as it alerts users about the end of support for Internet Explorer older versions and also helps them in upgrading to the latest version of Internet Explorer. But there might be some situations when a user doesn’t want to upgrade to latest IE11 version. In such situation, the regular notification prompt to upgrade to IE11 might be very annoying to the user.
Today in this tutorial, we are going to share a Registry tweak to get rid of the notification of IE11 upgrade. Once you apply this trick, you’ll no longer receive the IE11 upgrade notification in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
So if you are using IE8, IE9 or IE10 versions in Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems and want to turn off notifications to upgrade to latest version of Internet Explorer web browser in your computer, check out following simple steps:
1. Type regedit in RUN or Start Menu search box and press Enter. It’ll open Registry Editor.
2. Now go to following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl
3. Create a new key under FeatureControl key and set its name as FEATURE_DISABLE_IE11_SECURITY_EOL_NOTIFICATION
Advertisement
4. Now select FEATURE_DISABLE_IE11_SECURITY_EOL_NOTIFICATION key and in right-side pane create a new DWORD iexplore.exe and set its value to 1
NOTE: If you are using 64-bit edition of Windows, you’ll also need to follow the same steps 3-4 for following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl
If this key doesn’t exist in your computer, that means you are using 32-bit edition of Windows.
5. You may need to restart your computer to take effects. It’ll permanently disable the EOL notification and will never prompt you to upgrade to Internet Explorer 11 version.
PS: In future, if you want to enable notification to upgrade to IE11, delete the FEATURE_DISABLE_IE11_SECURITY_EOL_NOTIFICATION key.
NOTE: If you are not familiar with Registry editing tasks, we are also providing ready-made Registry script to do the task automatically. Download following ZIP file, extract it and run .REG file. It’ll ask for confirmation, accept it. Restart your computer to take effects:
You can check out the review of Internet Explorer 11 at following link to learn more about its features:
[IE11 Review] List of Features That Have Been Removed or Added in Internet Explorer 11
none even uses ie anyway so this is useless
^^ I use it. btw solution worked. thnx. 🙂
Thank you so much for this. Enterprise companies still use it tkat. You should think broader before making assumptions.
Great article, we use IE. I scoured the internet for ages to find how to remove the pesky tab as it was interfering with a macro.
I am in automated testing and think this has been what has been giving me so much grief. Every once in a while IE opens a new tab during one of my test startups and tries to navigate to go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=691688.
I am going to give this a shot. Thank you for the write-up.
Good article and well written.
Much appreciated and is v. useful for the workplace where IE is on every PC and we may not have them all at 11 yet.
Great article! really appreciate you taking the time to do your research and posting it for the rest of us to benefit from it. Unfortunately I ran all the steps as you specified on this article and I was not able to find that silly update on the registry nor Windows updates installed. I still keep getting the silly tab to update to IE-11.
Does anyone else have another method to fix this, I would really appreciate your help and time.
thank you,
KG
Good article, well-written. However, why go through all that when you could just uninstall the update and block it in the Windows Update window? Or, if in an enterprise, block the update in your WSUS server? Seems cumbersome when you can just automate the process with fewer clicks….
@Mike….
We do NOT have that KB installed on any of our servers offering a legacy application using IE8 out of our RDS2012 environment; yet, we also receive this notification of EOL for IE8.
Using this suggestion eliminated that tab from opening altogether.
I followed the guideline you gave in the instructions, but I could not figure out how to change the value that appears as “0x00000000 (0) to 0x00000001 (1)” in the new line created in step 4 of your instructions.
^^ Double-click on the DWORD and set the value to 1
We also do NOT have that KB installed; yet, we also receive this notification of EOL for IE8.
Just made registry change and about to reboot. hope like Hortz says above that this works.