Windows 10: How to completely disable Windows Update until I myself look for updates?

Dear community,


Deep breaths, calm down me... Windows 10, love it or hate it - I hate it by the way - does some things some people may not be very happy with. I'm willing to forgive a lot, but the way Windows update works with Windows 10 is not only intrusive, it is also destructive.

In Windows 8, funny enough an OS I felt way more at home in, I know, unpopular opinion, allowed me to disable Windows Updates so that I could look for updates and install them when I wanted to. Here, I can only do so for 7 days at most. And I can tell the OS when I'm most likely to use the system, even though my system runs all-nighters rendering videos and whatnot.


When I know an update is coming, I can either disable it for 7 days or save everything, close what I'm doing - if even possible - and then manually run it. However, time and time again Windows Update has ignored the window I have set for me being the least likely to operate the machine, which is at night.


And just now, around 13:20 in the afternoon, I got a sudden pop-up saying the machine would shutdown for updating 1 minute from then. 1 minute.

I had some important things open and was encoding a video for already 3 hours, with only 30 more minutes to go.

I hurriedly went into Windows Update and clicked 'Schedule', set it to 'on', selected the time to be tonight at 21:00... and then it shut down on me anyway.


Everything gone AGAIN.


I cannot begin to describe how frustrating this is. How many hours of work have gone wasted. Videos that got corrupted. All because Windows does everything it can to push updates when I don't want to, or simply can't receive them. I need a way to kill this process. Absolutely do. It ignores scheduling, it ignores me actually operating the machine. And if you miss a certain prompt because you're making dinner or whatever else, you're screwed and apparently only get 1 minute to save your stuff, if you even can, if you even see that message because you need to be present at the time.


How on earth do I stop this? Dozens of hours have already gone down the drain. Any idea how much money that costs? Not to mention the energy.


Please help. And if any Microsoft employee reads this, make this nonesense stop. Give us back control for crying out loud. This is insanity.


Thank you in advance.

:)

 

Windows Updated(16299.309).KB4088776 Restart is required to complete.


Hi dalchina. Good news, I followed your suggestion and reinstalled the update and now it appears as "installed correctly" *Biggrin Maybe it was not necessary to run the Windows Update Troubleshooter or maybe if necessary. But using it I do not think it could have worsened something. The installation was very fast, unlike the first time it showed step 1 and step 2 completed.

Thanks for the suggestions and for the time to respond Best regards.


And thanks for the tip of that program, I'll have it on my list.

 

Windows 8 failure configuring updates and reverting

I agree 8 is awful! It's not for me though... I replaced a broken screen in a Win 8 laptop that was given to me and I am going to give it for free to someone that can't afford one so they can do homework at home. Yes I took it from 8 to 8.1 back on 10/09/2014. This is what I posted there...

"Great post! I found a similar one. I would like to point out that you may want to edit your OP...

1. Step 1 should read to disable AUTOMATIC updates, not disable manual updates.

2. KB2871398 should really read KB2871389

I would like to say that KB2917499 may also be needed as it was in my case. I also had to run the Windows Update Troubleshooter after installing those 2 updates. After these steps I was able to begin my 8.1 download from the Microsoft store. I don't know if it made a difference or not, but I also went into the Bios and disabled "Secure Boot."

It was a helpful post. Thanks!

 

Windows updates...

Oh. Your "Registry" must have gotten screwed up FLY3R. If for some reason you couldn't download your updates I suppose you could go to the update site, and run throught the steps 'till it fails activation. Then you could go up to "Tools > Manage Add ons > then disable "Windows Genuine Advatage Validation Tool." Of course you should only use this method if you are having problems updating your legitamate copy of Windows XP. Perhaps do to a corrupted piece of software? *Smile