How do I disable Automatic Update for Windows Update

Anonymous
2013-10-18T00:55:44+00:00

I just bought a Surface RT, and updated to 8.1. My PC says it's set to automatically update, and it's not providing me with any obvious way to disable automatic updates.

Automatic updates for a computer's operating system have proven irritating and problematic for me in the past, and I would like to avoid that headache if at all possible.

Please for the love of God tell me I can disable automatic updates.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

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Anonymous
2013-12-31T02:24:55+00:00

I have been reading a lot of posts on here...

Basically, Microsoft support will only post what there told to post.

This is how you turn Auto Updates on or off on Windows RT.

  1. Hit the Windows button.
  2. Type view local services and click it.
  3. Find Windows update and right click Startup Type.
  4. Go to Properties, you'll see Startup type again.

5. Click disable and apply.

Turn it on in the same way.

" I will bust my RT back to 8 "

The truth is out there....

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-04-22T13:10:29+00:00

    This sometimes works for me, but even after turning it off,  it will turn itself back on! And this doesn't help if the device is already giving you a 15-minute restart warning. It will go ahead and restart anyway. As a student,  this is the absolute WORST feature of Windows. Without fail, this will happen at the worst possible moment when trying to download or turn in something important!

    Any idea how to turn it off at that point???

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  2. @CmdrKeene 90,631 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2015-04-22T13:49:28+00:00

    If it's giving you the 15 minute restart warning, it means that it's already been showing the "need to restart" notice on your unlock screen for 72 hours already.  If you've been ignoring that for 3 solid days and still haven't rebooted to activate the updates, you're very vulnerable to viruses and exploits.  Virus makers look at updates that are released and see what's just been patched, so they know what to target on unpatched systems.  You're putting yourself at high risk by ignoring the restart messages.  If you had done it during the past 3 days of seeing the message, you wouldn't get interrupted when you least want it. Surely at some point during the whole 72 hours, you could have spared 2 minutes to reboot (or to reboot and go to bed, I'm sure you slept at some point during the last 3 days).

    Anyway, if you absolutely like living at the last minute and still want to ignore the notices until the last minute, or you want to absolutely make sure you don't get protected from day-0 exploits, then you can cancel a scheduled restart by running shutdown /a from an elevated command prompt.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-05-03T22:40:21+00:00

    If I have not used the device for a few days and then wake it up and begin using it, it will have been wanting to restart during the time I was not using it, so no, it's not always from having ignored the prompt. Also, my activities on the interwebs are almost never the type that would make me vulnerable to viruses or other attacks, nor is my profile such that I would be singled out for them, so it's not something that I'm super worried about.

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  4. @CmdrKeene 90,631 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2015-05-05T00:03:24+00:00

    Considering how often "safe" websites like HuffPost, Yahoo, Fox, Google, and others have unwillingly infected users just by viewing their pages (sources here), just because you practice good habits doesn't necessarily mean you don't need to plug a zero day attack vector.

    But if you really need to:

    Businesses get a UI tool (or server-side administration) to modify this behavior on machines they control with Group Policy, available in Professional Edition.

    Consumer versions don't have those workgroup focused administration tools, but can do the same thing with PowerShell or modifying the registry config directly with this value:

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]

    "NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers"=dword:00000001

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