Disable Windows Updates for Good

[StackUnderflow]

I'm in a molecular biology lab. We have a Windows 10 machine (was Win7, woke up one day and it's 10) as the driver for a spectrometer. We do overnight incubated kinetic measurements with the reader but recently, Windows updates keeps happening and keeps rebooting the computer in the middle of the night. Each of these experiments takes ~1 week to setup and it's really ridiculous that we're getting unreliable data because of Windows updates.

 

What's the most painless way to stop this for good? It would probably be really expensive to reinstall Windows since we'd have to have a tech come in from the company to setup the software and connection again. We would cut internet access for good, but sometimes we RDP into the machine to see runs in progress, so we'd prefer not to.

[vanished]

You can turn them off for up to a month in the settings.  Then just remember to actually let it run every now and then when you are not using the PC and you shouldn't have any issues

[unknownmiscreant]

Theres a reboot blocker utility i used to stop that particular annoying behavior.

 

Basically every hour it changes the 'active hours' of the computer so it never restarts. Ive been using it for a month or two. After windows decided to reboot my pc WHILE I WAS USING IT.

[WkdPaul]

You have a few choices, you can disable the Windows Update service directly, but that means you would have to enable it everytime there's a security update.

 

What I personally use is to block the auto download and reboot in the Group Policies, it's more hand's on but work for me, Windows Update still works and it will wait for you to click "Download" before doing anything.

[unknownmiscreant]

1 minute ago, wkdpaul said:

What I personally use is to block the auto download and reboot in the Group Policies, it's more hand's on but work for me, Windows Update still works and it will wait for you to click "Download" before doing anything.

I didn't have a huge amount of luck with that. It sort of worked but not entirely.

[StackUnderflow]

4 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

You have a few choices, you can disable the Windows Update service directly, but that means you would have to enable it everytime there's a security update.

 

What I personally use is to block the auto download and reboot in the Group Policies, it's more hand's on but work for me, Windows Update still works and it will wait for you to click "Download" before doing anything.

I tried doing a registry hack (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/328010/how-to-configure-automatic-updates-by-using-group-policy-or-registry-s) and it did work for a couple months, maybe an update undid this?

[StackUnderflow]

12 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

You can turn them off for up to a month in the settings.  Then just remember to actually let it run every now and then when you are not using the PC and you shouldn't have any issues

I couldn't find this in the Windows 10 settings app.

[WkdPaul]

6 minutes ago, StackUnderflow said:

I tried doing a registry hack (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/328010/how-to-configure-automatic-updates-by-using-group-policy-or-registry-s) and it did work for a couple months, maybe an update undid this?

Completely possible, some updates do reset settings for some unknown reasons.

 

I personally use the Group Policy Editor and it didn't revert back. I also neutered the notification exe so I wouldn't get the "forced full screen" notifications.

[vanished]

41 minutes ago, StackUnderflow said:

I couldn't find this in the Windows 10 settings app.

Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update (At the top, it's picked by default) > Advanced Options > Pause Updates