Can I Turn Off Updates?

Jim9guitars · 16 Feb 2018

In the past week I've been inundated with updates that have nearly rendered my laptop useless for online use. It's running much slower and continuously tries to install a failing update, shutting down several times a day to do it. And can I find a way to uninstall Groove Music? It's quite clear from the most recent posts here in the past week that the updates are not working. Past versions of Windows allowed users to turn off updates, but I can't find a way to do that with 10.

dalchina · 17 Feb 2018

Hi, this is frequently asked.
You can try Windows Update Minitool (free) which offers a convenient interface for settings for Windows Update which you can set to Notify, Automatic, Disabled, Hide... It's a very useful little tool- a convenient way to access settings that are others more awkward to access. It also scans for updates. Recommended here.

You haven't said what your Windows build is. If you are being inundated with updates, that could be because an update (or even upgrade to 1709) is repeatedly failing. That you need to investigate and fix. That is not normal.

If your laptop is trying to upgrade from 1703 to 1709 (build upgrade) and fails it will keep reattempting. Please post a screenshot of your Update History. Also your Windows version (Windows key + R, winver),

Please note that MS has made disabling updates harder- some methods that used to work now don't.

Please don't think disabling updates is a solution- it will help you to use your laptop for now, but you need to find the cause.

Setting updates to Notify is a great option- an Action Centre notification, double click on that to see what the update is in Settings, then choose to apply it or not.

In your case, you might consider Hiding the specific update- others will be applied. If it's the upgrade to 1709 that's failing, that means you can still receive updates for build 1703 as normal.

Jim9guitars · 17 Feb 2018

Thanks for the reply, I'll look into these things when I get time, which is a sticking point here. I need the laptop for the mobility and don't feel that I should have to spend a lot of my time chasing down a problem that I did not cause, on my computer. I'm posting this from my older desktop that thankfully lacks some component required for the Windows 10 upgrade and is working beautifully with Windows 7, which I apparently can't return my laptop to.

dalchina · 17 Feb 2018

Assuming it's a failure to upgrade, that could be caused by as simple a thing as an attached peripheral, or security software.

Then there are more complex issues related to corruption, partitioning, etc. These can take some time to resolve.

You can clean install Win 7 if your laptop is compatible. Under the Win 10 regime, you have 10 days after upgrading to return to the previous build (which might also be the previous build of Win 10 if that had been installed and running previously).

If you were in the habit of using disk imaging routinely and had an image of a previous Win 7 installation, you could use that, but EVERYTHING would be restored to the date of the image including settings and data (on the restored partitions).