s38b35M5Jun 20, 2024

Disable windows updates

https://lemmy.world/post/16724528

Disable windows updates - Lemmy.World

I haven’t run windows since 2019. However I need to boot my old drive to grab some data. I really need to make sure this system doesn’t update ant windows components, but I’ll need it to have internet access for a portion of the time. On a different system, I used to have two reg keys that I would run to disable or enable updates when I found that disabling the services only worked until the watchdog would re enable them. Those resulted in updates saying something was wrong, which is perfect by me. Now that web searches for stuff like this are all AI-gen’d SEO BS, can anyone tell me or point me to a reliable resource for truly disabling updates on Win 10? PS - Bonus points if Anyone can link me to the page I used a few years back that had all sorts of privacy enhancing and telemetry disabling option on the left side and would create a reg file for applying those changes on the right. It might have been a purple theme, I forget.

Show threadKitJun 20, 2024

Everyone here is dramatically overcomplicating the solution. Simply:

  • Turn on the PC without an Internet connection
  • From an elevated cmd, run > net stop wuauserv
  • Connect the network and copy your files

    • This stops the update service and will absolutely prevent windows updates from running. BUT it reverts at the next boot, so be careful.

    Source: More than a decade as a sysad with a focus on endpoint patching

    Show threadReygleJun 20, 2024
    Hate to be “that guy”, and maybe OP’s no updates since 2019 exempt them from this, but modern 10/11 both immediately auto-restart the Windows update service when it’s manually stopped.
    Show threads38b35M5

    No, you’re absolutely right. That’s what happens when you have the WaaSMedic service running, which cannot be easily disabled in services.msc. I would think I had finally gone the “full-nuclear” option and broken al updates by disabling and stopping the update services (that I knew about), but they would re-enable themselves without fail.

    This comment explains where you need to disable it (if you want to go that route).

    Jun 25, 2024 at 8:45pmWeb
    Show threadReygleJun 25, 2024
    Very helpful thank you.