I've noticed that Microsoft 365 Copilot has installed itself on a lot of user machines. Instead of removing it completely, we're trying to disable it from launching at startup. I'm hoping to deploy a script to handle this. Has anyone found a way to do this? It's a Windows app, but it's not packaged as an appx, which is causing us some confusion. Any tips would be appreciated!
5 Answers
Why not just switch to a different OS? 😅
You could use AppLocker to block it. That worked for us every time.
If Copilot is a service on your machine, you can block it by changing some settings in the registry. Look for the service in services.msc, then head to the registry at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServices. Change the permissions there—make Administrators the owner with read/write access and deny the SYSTEM account. Also, set the Start value to 4 (disabled). That should stop it from running. Just make sure to restart after changing the settings. AppLocker is another option, but it can be a bit tricky to set up from scratch. Good luck!
Thanks for the detailed steps. I'm on Windows 10 too, so this should help!
We had a similar issue when we migrated to GCCH. Copilot kept popping up and throwing errors since it wasn't available there. We ended up turning it off in the startup apps, which fixed the problem for us. You might want to try that!
Good luck with that!
Just a heads-up, Windows Update is a core service and auto-repairs itself, so be careful with that. Also, it's probably time to consider upgrading from Windows 10 for better security!