How do I disable Automatic Update for Windows Update

This can't be a universally found issue.  Heck I have a stack of 28 Surface one and twos at the office (we used to give to travelling sales reps) and they are all updated fully direct from wsus. 

Doesn't mean I don't want to get to the bottom of it, though.

Shawn Keene, pardon my interjection here. I am very familiar with this problem and have a post in TechNet to recognize the problem and get it fixed.

Deanna, sorry for the problems you are having. There is a way to get your system back up and running.

Some of this may be repetitive.

Follow the steps in the section 'Reset from USB recovery media'  this is for a reset, not a refresh.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4037673/surface-refresh-or-reset-surface-rt-or-surface-

Notice one of the lines.  If prompted for a recovery key, select Skip this drive at the bottom of the screen. You have to tap the screen to get rid of the keyboard to see this.

There is currently a conflict between two updates. When you search for updates and updates are found, click the line 'important dates are available' to see them.

Do your updating from 'control panel' 'windows updates'.

When '2018-03 Security Monthly Quality Rollup for Windows RT ARM.......' is found uncheck the box to prevent it from installing.  It will be at the top of the list of updates.  Click 'optional' on the left to see optional updates.  Find KB3033055, check the box to install it along with other important updates that are selected. These probably will not appear until you have done two  or three rounds of updates, check to see each time

If  KB3033055i s not installed first and later installed after any  'Security Monthly Quality Rollup for Windows RT ARM'  update is installed the RT will boot to a black screen and you will have to start over and boot from the USB again.

So, until you get KB3033055 installed prevent the RT from installing it's own updates by turning WiFi off unless you are installing updates.

KB3033055 is Update 3 for the RT, bringing the windows 10 start screen to the desktop with no more metro start screen

see What's new in Windows 8.1 RT Update 3?

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4023491/surface-windows-8-1-rt-updat

After it is installed, right click the taskbar, properties, start menu tab, check - use the start menu instead of the start screen

No, I install over 100 updates that it has automatically found and then during one of the restarts it shows the surface logo then just goes to the black screen that blinks with either the little power icon or battery icon in bottom right corner. I don't know what it is showing for sure as it blinks on for less than a  second then off again. I have left my unit like this for a full 24 hours thinking it just needed time but to no avail. It is when the unit is stuck in this frozen blinking stage that I have to hold the power button to get it to enter the screen to either reset, restore or the other options that do not work. That is where I have to enter the bit key.

It's not really possible to install them out of order.  Most are cumulative and if you try to install one before the one that came before, it would cause a crash when the system tried to look for an updated file/DLL that doesn't exist yet.

Really that's one of the 'strengths' of appliance-like devices like an RT tablet or iPad tablets.  Instead of countless variations (there's more ways to combine drivers/hardware/video cards/software/options than there are cataloged stars so far).  With devices like these, every single one that comes off the assembly line is a identical copy of all the others.  So unlike with all the devices around the world, the company that built it can test it and know that if the update works on one, it must work on the others because they're all perfect clones of each other.

So .  what's the current behavior?  You reset, it installs updates, then immediately reboots and asks for your bitlocker key to unlock the drive?