If you only have time for one fix, make it this one. Go to Settings > Privacy & security > Diagnostics & feedback, then turn off Send optional diagnostic data. In the same screen, turn off Tailored experiences, which is what lets Windows mine your diagnostic signals to personalize tips, ads, and suggestions. MakeUseOf calls turning off optional diagnostic data "step one," noting it already cuts down a large amount of tracking before you touch anything more advanced.

Set diagnostic data to required only:

On Home and Pro, "required" is as low as the toggle goes. That still sends a baseline of reliability data, but it drops the optional usage telemetry that powers profiling. This is also the setting most likely to revert after a big update, so note it - you will come back to it later in this guide. If you are on Windows 10, the same toggle sits under Diagnostics & feedback as well; our older walkthrough on disabling Windows 10 tracking covers the slightly different menu names.

Toggles change what Windows wants to send; the service decides whether it can. To remove Windows tracking at the service level, open the Services console and stop the telemetry service itself.

Stop DiagTrack and dmwappushservice:

Press Win + R, type services.msc, and press Enter. Find Connected User Experiences and Telemetry (service name DiagTrack). Right-click it, choose Properties, click Stop, then set Startup type to Disabled and click OK. PDQ recommends disabling dmwappushservice the same way. If you prefer the command line, an elevated prompt with sc config DiagTrack start= disabled does the same job, a method NinjaOne documents. Stopping only DiagTrack is a classic half-fix, though - leftover scheduled tasks can keep collecting, as the next section explains.

Settings toggles are easy to flip by accident or by an update. A policy is sticky. Pick the path that matches your edition.

Group Policy (Windows 11 Pro and up):

Press Win + R, type gpedit.msc. Go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Data Collection and Preview Builds and open Allow Diagnostic Data. Enable it and choose the lowest level your edition allows, as described by NinjaOne. Run gpupdate /force in a command prompt to apply it immediately. One tell worth knowing: if the diagnostic data toggle in Settings is greyed out and shows "managed by your organization," a policy is already forcing the level - which is exactly what you want here, even on a home PC.

Registry (Windows Home):

Home has no Group Policy editor, so use the registry. Open regedit, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DataCollection, and set (or create) a DWORD named AllowTelemetry to 0. On Home and Pro the system treats 0 as "required" rather than truly off, but it still caps the level. Export the key before you touch it - a backup costs ten seconds and saves an evening.

Why Windows tracking comes back after updates

Here is the part most guides skip. You do all of the above, feel good about it, and then a feature update quietly switches DiagTrack back on and resets a toggle or two. This is well documented. In one Microsoft Q&A thread, a user found Compatibility Telemetry still running after a cumulative update, and the fix turned out to be a scheduled task - the Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser - not the service at all. Updates lay down a fresh system layer, so tasks and services you disabled get treated as unconfigured and reset to their defaults.

If telemetry keeps coming back specifically through that scheduled task, open Task Scheduler, go to Task Scheduler Library\Microsoft\Windows\Application Experience, and disable Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser. That is the piece a stopped service does not cover.
On a managed work PC, Group Policy holds the line. On a personal machine there is no policy enforcement, so you are left with two choices: re-audit every setting after each update, or use a tool that remembers your chosen state and re-applies it. Honestly, the manual route loses over time - it depends on you remembering to re-check after an update you did not even notice installed. If you want the deeper background on what Microsoft collects and why it persists, our piece on stopping Windows from spying on you goes further. The short version: treat privacy on Windows as a setting you maintain, not one you set and forget.

Doing this by hand once is fine. Doing it after every feature update, across Settings, services, and the registry, gets old fast. This is where windows tracking protection in a single app earns its place. Privacy Protector for Windows 11 collects the privacy tweaks Windows scatters across menus - diagnostic data, activity tracking, and the channels that send data to Microsoft - and lets you set them once, then re-apply after an update without hunting through every dialog again.

We are not going to claim it zeroes out a Home PC; nothing can, and the product itself talks about restricting and blocking, not erasing. What it does is turn a 20-minute manual audit into a couple of clicks you can repeat after each upgrade. It runs locally on your PC, alongside housekeeping tools like our system cleaner if you also want to clear the data already collected.

Pitfalls when you turn off Windows tracking

Sources

• PDQ How to disable Windows telemetry
• NinjaOne How to disable telemetry in Windows 11
• Microsoft Support General privacy settings in Windows
• HowToGeek 11 Windows 11 privacy settings to change
• MakeUseOf The one Windows feature to turn off for privacy
• Microsoft Q&A Disabling Compatibility Telemetry
• Microsoft Q&A Optional diagnostic data turning off after reboot