We were one of the few offices that decided to give Windows 8 a try in an office environment. We have also upgraded all of our servers to 2012. Ever since 8.1 was released all of the users keep getting an advertisement popup that tells them to upgrade to Windows 8.1 for free, however this upgrade is not available in the store for volume license users. The popup continues to come up regularly. If Microsoft can remove the download from the store for volume license users, surely they can remove the pop up telling them to update to 8.1 as well. Does anybody know how this can be done manually? 

I would also like to officially complain to Microsoft that the "Free" advertisements feel like "False" advertisements to me. I'm sure others have already complained about this so I won't go into detail. I'm just tried of explaining to people that they should just ignore that message because it's not really free. Microsoft makes us pay for the upgrade as punishment for becoming an early adopter of Windows 8. We will be sure to stick with the rest of the office world next time!!!

Hi,

Where did you got the popup? From Action Center or Browser? If it come from Action Center, please check is there any way to close it. Also please check Task Scheduler if there any Action Plan of it.

The prompt to upgrade to Windows 8.1 that is presented through the Action Center can be disabled through Group Policy or a registry setting. This is documented in the Deployment section of the Windows 8.1 FAQ for IT Professionals. The Group Policy setting is located under: Computer\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Store and is titled Turn off the offer to upgrade to the latest version of Windows.

Brandon
Windows Outreach Team- IT Pro
The Springboard Series on TechNet

• Marked as answer by v-yozhuMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator 9 hours 15 minutes ago