Is there any way to control updates?

I'm getting more and more p**d off with W10 because of the apparent inability to have any control over when it performs updates. The latest and most frustrating annoyance occurred whilst I was on holiday and using a mobile broadband (mi-fi) device. Windows decided to update and ate a significant amount of my data allowance.

So my question is: Is there any way to turn off updates so I can force W10 to only update when I'm connected to my home router?

Several. For your mobile use make sure it is set as a Metered Connection.

Set Wireless Network as Metered or Non-Metered in Windows 10

What version of W10 do you have? If you are not on 1903 then update to 1903 now. Then, even in Home, you can pause updates for up to 35 days.

Starting with Windows 10 version 1903, the Windows 10 Home edition will now be able to pause updates.

Pause Updates or Resume Updates for Windows Update in Windows 10

Thanks everyone for your responses. My Windows 10 is Home Edition version 1803 running on a laptop. If I want to upgrade to version 1903 of Home Edition will this have to be purchased? If so I'd rather look for an alternative solution.

I'm a little confused after reading some of the items linked to. The one titled "Set Wireless Network as Metered or Non-Metered in Windows 10" suggests that Windows sets mobile broadband connections to metered by default and this should inhibit updates but as I mentioned in my initial post Windows performed an update while connected to my mobile wi-fi device.

The Sledgehammer page on the Major Geeks site gives me the impression that Microsoft are continually finding ways to prevent users from gaining control over updates so would this mean having to constantly download new versions of the 3rd-party utilities? I like the look of WuMgr as it appears to offer some of the same update functionality available in earlier versions of Windows, specifically "Notification Only" which is the setting I used to use with Windows 7 on my desktop machines (until the updates became so flaky that I turned updates off completely).

In the thread "updates out of control" member NormCameron describes how to disable the Windows update service. I've tried this and the only option offered is to stop the service. I haven't yet established whether it automatically gets restarted after a reboot but I'm expecting it does. If it were possible to disable it that would solve my immediate problem as I could just do so whilst using my mobile broadband but it woud be a bit of a hassle if I had to go into Windows services and stop it every time I started up the machine.

Regards,
Gwaihir

Gwaihir said:

Thanks everyone for your responses. My Windows 10 is Home Edition version 1803 running on a laptop. If I want to upgrade to version 1903 of Home Edition will this have to be purchased?

No, the upgrade from Home 1803 to Home 1903 is free. In fact I'm surprised Windows Update has not yet updated your 1803 to 1903. You should by now have seen the 'Feature Update to Windows 10, version 1903' offered in windows update.

Gwaihir said:

I'm a little confused after reading some of the items linked to. The one titled "Set Wireless Network as Metered or Non-Metered in Windows 10" suggests that Windows sets mobile broadband connections to metered by default and this should inhibit updates but as I mentioned in my initial post Windows performed an update while connected to my mobile wi-fi device.

There's also a setting under Windows Update Advanced Options for "Download updates over metered connections":

Turn On or Off Download Updates over Metered Connections in Windows 10

You may want to check that is set to Off.

NMI said:

There's also a setting under Windows Update Advanced Options for "Download updates over metered connections":

Turn On or Off Download Updates over Metered Connections in Windows 10

You may want to check that is set to Off.

It's already off.

@dalchina, in Settings > Windows Update it does confirm that my laptop is not compatible with 1903.

- - - Updated - - -

It's a bit of a bummer as I only recently bought it to replace a much older one running Vista. It looked very well specced so I thought it was a fairly recent model but this compatibility issue suggests it's older than I was expecting.