Why is my windows 10 pro system automatically forcing windows 11 "feature update" during automatic update restarts?

Question

Sometime between Wednesday night and early Saturday morning my system performed an auto restart to install "updates". (Something I already hate to begin with)

When I came back to my system Saturday morning I discovered Windows 11 had automatically installed during that restart with NO interaction from me. It seems to be disguised as a "feature update" as opposed to the actual "Upgrade" that it is.
I rolled it back to windows 10, because I do not want windows 11.
I come back to my system this morning and find once again, windows update has downloaded and propped this windows 11 "update" to be force installed with zero interaction from me.
What happened to "Microsoft will not force you to upgrade to windows 11"?
I'm not the average schmoe. I did not "accidentally click" anything during the previous ridiculously intentionally confusing "update" screens that were designed to trick people into upgrading to windows 11. This was a normal windows update process that happened automatically in the background and force restarted my machine during off hours and installed an upgrade disguised as "feature update" in windows update.

Why?

Answer 1

Hello,

I consider that it is mainly to push updates to machines that meet the requirements of Win11 upgrade to ensure that you can experience new features and ensure that the system has installed security updates. However, it’s not supposed to automatically upgrade from Windows 10 to 11 without user consent. So try to prevent this by using the steps below:

Pause Updates: Go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > Advanced options. Here, you can pause updates for up to 35 days.

If we want to disable the feature update to install, I suggest that we could try to use registry or group policy to check the settings.

Group Policy: If you are using Windows 10 Pro, you can use Group Policy to delay or block the update. Press Win + R, type gpedit.msc, go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update > Windows Update for Business. Enable “Select when Preview Builds and Feature Updates are received” and set a large number of days.

Registry: If you are comfortable with editing the registry, you can create a “DWORD (32-bit) Value” named “TargetReleaseVersion” with a value of 1, under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate. Then create a “String Value” named “TargetReleaseVersionInfo” with a value of your current Windows 10 version (for example, “21H1”).

How to Block the Windows 11 Update From Installing on Windows 10 (howtogeek.com)

Best Regards,

Hania Lian

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