Today’s post is something I feel like I should have written a lot sooner. I’ve been seeing tons of random social media posts about people’s games, streams, video encoding, and general computer work getting interrupted by Windows Updates ever since Windows 10 came out. Either they are stuck updating and can’t do what they want, when they want, or an update broke something. In this article I’ll show you how disable Windows Update until “you say so“, not when Microsoft thinks it’s a good idea!
If you would rather watch a video with all of these steps I’ve created and linked one down below. Both have the same info, but options are always good!
First off a few disclaimers:
- While this is primarily for Windows 10 users these steps will work on XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1 but are unnecessary due to the control users have with those OS’s.
- This is NOT hacking your computer, using 3rd party tools, or doing anything illegal. The tool we’ll use is built into windows and freely available to use as long as you know where to look.
- This does disable your ability to receive not just updates and new features, but security patches as well, until you turn it back on. This is not a permanent setting, but you do this at your own risk.
- This does not affect graphic card driver updates, webcam, or anything else. These are specific to WINDOWS UPDATES and WINDOWS SECURITY UPDATES. You may upgrade your graphic drivers to your hearts content!
So lets get started!
The first thing you want to do is open the run menu:
- On your keyboard press and hold the Windows key then press R.
- For those of you running Windows on a Mac through Boot Camp press and hold the Command key then press R.
Next we’ll type “services.msc” into the run menu (without the quotes), and click OK or press ENTER.
The Services Console will pop up on screen. We want to use the scroll bar on the right and go all the way to the bottom as far as it will go. Then locate an entry called “Windows Update”
Next right click “Windows Update” and then left click “Properties” OR simply double click the Windows Update entry.
The Windows Update Properties window is where we’ll make our changes.
- Look at the “Service status”, if it says “Stopped” then move to step 2. If it says “Running” then you’ll need to click the “Stop” button right below it. Now proceed to step 2.
2. Looking in the middle you’ll see “Startup type”. Most will be set to “Manual” some might be set to “Automatic” or Automatic(Delayed Start)” Click that menu and in the drop down select “Disabled“. Your window should look as shown below.
Click “Apply” then “OK”, close the Services Console with the X in the top right corner and you’re done! Windows update will no longer bother you EVER AGAIN, until you re-enable it. This can be done by running through these steps again, and selecting “Manual” from the drop down instead of “Disabled”.
Now I highly recommend that you do check for updates on a regular basis. Security updates are important in this day and age, even if you’ve got antivirus (you do right?). The intent of this post is to show you how to keep Windows Updates from interrupting your daily tasks, and is not meant to keep them disabled permanently. Although that is your choice if you do so.
Happy computing without interruptions!!
Void4ever