Windows update causes application failure

On July 12th 2019 Microsoft sneaked an update on my PC even though I had paused updates for 7 days. The update, KB4509096, a so-called "security update", broke video rendering on my photo/video viewer and editor, Irfanview. Another later update KB4507453 on the 13th may have played a part in it too.

I did a system restore to get rid of the problem and it worked.

I have paused updates to the end of August but MS then forces all updates whether I like it or not.

Is there any way I can stop these ruinous updates altogether that do more damage than good?

I know exactly what you mean mate. Ive just had problems with the Anti Malware platform update we got a few days ago. It caused corruption to Windows Defender. The best advice I can give is to run sfc /scannow after each batch of Windows Updates as a safeguard. That's what I did...otherwise I wouldn't have seen the corruption straight away. SFC threw up errors it couldn't fix. I ran DISM to fix it and SFC was then able to repair the corruption. All sorted. The trouble with pausing updates is you might leave your PC at risk and you eventually have to get the updates anyway