Humble tip - You can pause updates for up to 45 days. During this period, you can enable them at your leisure. This is what I do when I'm leaving my computer for an overnight rendering.
My own humble tip - switch this shit off. Here's what I've found to work for me:
0. install whichever Windows 10 has the group policy editor - I've got Windows 10 Pro, I think. (I'm at home right now and my work laptop is at the office)
1. run gpedit.msc
2. Go to Local Computer Policy\Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update
3. Double-click Configure Automatic Updates
4. Set up as follows:
- Overall group policy setting = Enabled
- Configure automatic updating = 3 - Auto download and notify for install
- Install during automatic maintenance = unticked
- Scheduled install day = 0 - every day
- Scheduled install time = 03:00
- "If you have blah blah" = Every week
- Install updates for other Microsoft products = unticked
Result seems to be that updates are downloaded, and there are notifications, but there are no forced reboots.
Three things to note:
- this works for me. Ask yourself: are you me? But even if you aren't, don't let that put you off, because you might still get lucky
- there's a popup that pops up to say something like "updates are ready, click to install" - and this actually means literally precisely what it says, nothing more and nothing less, so for god's sake don't do what I did at first and click it thinking that it means you'll get the option of saying no afterwards and then wonder why all the updates are installing. Go to the updates section of the control panel by hand to see what updates are ready before approving them
- the above settings are just what I have set on my work laptop, copied out from the dialog box, based on a screen grab. Some of the settings may be the defaults. I don't remember which
The absolutely infuriating thing is, as soon as a ”disable updates” hack gains posterity, Microsoft shuts it down. If you just follow the first Google result for disabling updates, you still end up getting reboots.
It’s one of the most anti-user policies Microsoft has pulled, and they have a long list..
My understanding is that the group policy business is 100% intentional, and it's how you're supposed to do it. If you're an IT guy responsible for a whole pile of PCs, you need a way to stop them rebooting all the time, and this is how you do that.
MS know how their bread is buttered. Who there would dare shut this down? The program managers know that if they break this stuff, there'll be a legion of angry IT guys clubbing together to pay to have them killed.
Not to distract from this useful tip, but remember when huge blocks of instructions like this were reserved for Linux desktops, and windows (mostly) just worked? What a wild world we live in.
If you're on Home edition, you can try O&O's ShutUp10 tool [https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10]. I used to make manual registry entry changes on one of my machines with Win10 Home, but I use this now, and am happy with it.
On my Win10 Pro machine, I've switched to the semi-annual channel and disabled automatic installations via GPE.
Doesn't change the fact that you end up having to actively manage the OS not screwing up your workflow, that's not how I would define "good". Plus I would always forget.
The alternative is horrifying though. No regular user ever updates their stuff unless they're forced to, and in a world of increasingly horrifying botnets that can cripple the world economy on command, I can see why having the average user update automatically is necessary. Note that the average user (even myself, who is fairly good at keeping the latest version of everything installed) wouldn't have this problematic update with the (potential) data loss installed yet. You would have to have manually done it.
Does windows not give you the 250 warnings that it used to to postpone the restart? I turn off my computer every night, so I haven't even noticed that updates occur for ~1.5 years.
Decades of force-feeding users unwanted features has trained them to not install updates. I know most people in my family flat out refuse to update software because they're afraid the developers will have decided to re-do the UI again, or move menu options around, or just break major functionality. So because we, as software engineers/companies, can't resist the urge to keep changing things and doing endless re-designs, end users are trained to not get the vital security updates they need.
As an industry we need to get better. A software update should mean things like "improved performance" and "better security", not "totally different UI" and "20 features nobody wants". If users really want the new shiny, it should be optional.
> re-do the UI again, or move menu options around, or just break major functionality.
...or reduce performance on otherwise perfectly good hardware, possibly due to the those changes or the "20 features nobody wants".
I'm a computer professional, and even I have this anti-update attitude for exactly that reason. At least I have the competence to mitigate the security risks through other means, but I can't well recommend anyone else do the same. To quote Tom Lehrer, this makes me feel "like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis".
Major Windows 10 releases continue to receive security updates for quite some time after a new release drops, so force-feeding major releases to home users is not even necessary to keep users secure. As for warnings, as soon as the update is auto-applied you lose the ability to reboot without having your OS replaced and possibly rendered inoperable. Security updates are quick and mostly painless, on the other hand, but home users don't get to choose what to install.
It's 35 days for me. There's also a nasty gotcha where I paused updates and then enabled them, and then it wouldn't let me pause again for some fairly long period.
All that is needed to make the system usable is the ability to turn off all automatic restarts; tell me to do it, even nag after a while, just don't ever do it automatically.
It's the worst when the automatic restarts kick in again, but you're stuck behind an update that consistently fails at the same point. Super frustrating.
