Windows Update reverting to automatic after being manually disabled?

2 problems.

1) I disabled Windows Update in Services to avoid having to deal with the bullsh* updates. Later I put it on "manual" instead of "disabled". Today I find that my computer is "installing updates" WITHOUT a) my permission and b) without notifying me that there were updates to install. This thrashed my hard drive with near constant 100% usage from something called Windows Modules Installer Worker. I killed the process, rebooted after some Adobe Reader issue (unrelated....I think). Upon selecting "restart" Windows informs me that it is updating my system WITHOUT my permission. It continues, updates, says finished, restarts to 0%, finishes, reboots.

Upon restart--which takes FOREVER by the way without the "updating" message, when it used to only take a few seconds to boot up--I go to Services where I find Windows Update is set on "running". Even though I manually stopped it, and set it to "manual trigger" start....

2) After restart when I am in Services to kill Windows Update and set to manual--again--I see something called Update Agent, set to run automatically. I do not remember this service from before, and I have no idea what it does different from Windows Update. I set it on manual as well.

What does Update Agent do differently from Windows Update? They are listed as separate services

What happened to make my computer update without my consent??

Sumit Dhiman said:

Manual means-Computer will start them whenever required and that is the reason updates started to Install.In order to disable Windows update service you need to diable the services named Windows update+Background Intelligence transfer service+Cryptographic services.They all are related to each other.

Wait, so "manual" actually means "automatic" instead of manual operation?? Am I missing something? How does that even make sense?

Also, is it really necessary to disable both Background Intelligence Service and Cryptographic services? The blog posts I have seen on disabling automatic Windows Updates only mention disabling the windows update service, with no mention of the others, and people have responded that it seems to work just fine. Is that specific to certain builds and they have changed it recently?

If you or someone else wouldn't mind explaining the interplay between those 3 services that would be appreciated, because this doesn't make sense to me based on what I have read so far and I would like to understand.