How To Disable Update On Windows 10

Some users who want to disable Windows Update 10 may find that disabling the Update Center service does not produce the desired result: after a short time, the service automatically turns on again (even disabling tasks in the scheduler in the Update Orchestrator section does not help). Ways to block update center servers in the hosts file, firewall, or using third-party software are also not the best option.

However, there is a way to disable Windows 10 Update, or rather access to it by system tools, and the method works not only in the Pro or Enterprise versions, but also in the home version of the system (including the 1803 April Update and 1809 October Update versions). See also additional methods (including disabling the installation of a specific update), information on updates and their configuration in the How to disable Windows 10 updates.

Note: if you don’t know why you disable Windows 10 updates, it’s best not to. If the only reason is that you don’t like the fact that they are being installed every now and then, it’s better to leave it on, in most cases it’s better than not installing updates.

Disabling Windows 10 Update Forever in Services

Despite the fact that Windows 10 itself launches the update center after disabling it in services, this can be circumvented. The way will be

  1. Press the WinR keys on the keyboard, type services.Msc and press Enter.
  2. Find the Windows Update service, disable it, double-click on it, in the startup type set to “Disabled” and click the “Apply” button.
  3. In the same window, go to the “Login” tab, select “With an account”, click “Browse”, and in the next window. “Advanced”.
    How To Disable Update On Windows 10
  4. In the next window, click “Search” and in the list below select an account without rights, for example. Guest.
  5. Click OK, OK again, and then specify any password and password confirmation, you do not need to remember it (despite the fact that the Guest account does not have a password, enter it anyway) and confirm all changes.
  6. After that, Windows 10 Update will no longer start.

If something remains unclear, below is a in which all the steps to turn off the update center are shown clearly (but there is an error regarding the password. It should be indicated).

Disabling access to Windows 10 Update in Registry Editor

Before starting, disable the Windows 10 Update Center service in the usual way (in the future it may turn on when performing automatic system maintenance, but it will no longer have access to updates).

To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Press the WinR keys on the keyboard (where Win is the key with the Windows logo), type services.Msc and press Enter.
  2. In the list of services, find “Windows Update” and double-click on the name of the service.
  3. Click “Stop”, and after stopping, set “Disabled” in the “Startup Type” field.

Done, the update center is temporarily disabled, the next step is to completely disable it, or rather, block access to the update center server.

To do this, use the following path:

  1. Press WinR, enter regedit and press Enter.
  2. In the registry editor, go to the section HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ right-click on the name of the section and select “Create”. “Section”. Name this section Internet Communication Management, and inside it create another one with the name Internet communication.
  3. Selecting a section Internet communication, right-click in the right part of the registry editor window and select “Create”. “Dword Parameter”.
  4. Specify a parameter name DisableWindowsUpdateAccess, then double click on it and set the value to 1.
  5. Similarly, create a DWORD parameter named NoWindowsUpdate with a value of 1 in section HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Explorer
  6. Also create a DWORD parameter named DisableWindowsUpdateAccess and a value of 1 in the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Policies \ Microsoft \ Windows \ WindowsUpdate (if there is no section, create the necessary subsections, as described in step 2).
  7. Close the registry editor and restart the computer.

Done, from now on, the update center will not have access to Microsoft servers to download and install updates on your computer.

If you turn on the service (or it will turn on itself) and try to check for updates, you will see the error “There were some problems installing the updates, but the attempt will be repeated later” with code 0x8024002e.

Note: judging by my experiments, for the professional and corporate version of Windows 10, a parameter in the Internet Communication section is enough, but on the home version, this parameter, on the contrary, does not affect.