Comment by tom_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tom_ | Hacker News Reader

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My own humble tip - switch this shit off. Here's what I've found to work for me:

0. install whichever Windows 10 has the group policy editor - I've got Windows 10 Pro, I think. (I'm at home right now and my work laptop is at the office)

1. run gpedit.msc

2. Go to Local Computer Policy\Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update

3. Double-click Configure Automatic Updates

4. Set up as follows:

   - Overall group policy setting = Enabled
   - Configure automatic updating = 3 - Auto download and notify for install
   - Install during automatic maintenance = unticked
   - Scheduled install day = 0 - every day
   - Scheduled install time = 03:00
   - "If you have blah blah" = Every week
   - Install updates for other Microsoft products = unticked

Result seems to be that updates are downloaded, and there are notifications, but there are no forced reboots.

Three things to note:

- this works for me. Ask yourself: are you me? But even if you aren't, don't let that put you off, because you might still get lucky

- there's a popup that pops up to say something like "updates are ready, click to install" - and this actually means literally precisely what it says, nothing more and nothing less, so for god's sake don't do what I did at first and click it thinking that it means you'll get the option of saying no afterwards and then wonder why all the updates are installing. Go to the updates section of the control panel by hand to see what updates are ready before approving them

- the above settings are just what I have set on my work laptop, copied out from the dialog box, based on a screen grab. Some of the settings may be the defaults. I don't remember which

The absolutely infuriating thing is, as soon as a ”disable updates” hack gains posterity, Microsoft shuts it down. If you just follow the first Google result for disabling updates, you still end up getting reboots.

It’s one of the most anti-user policies Microsoft has pulled, and they have a long list..

My understanding is that the group policy business is 100% intentional, and it's how you're supposed to do it. If you're an IT guy responsible for a whole pile of PCs, you need a way to stop them rebooting all the time, and this is how you do that.

MS know how their bread is buttered. Who there would dare shut this down? The program managers know that if they break this stuff, there'll be a legion of angry IT guys clubbing together to pay to have them killed.

Thanks for this, it's however a little sad that it takes that much work for such a simple concept: don't fck with my stuff.

Five years ago I would have bookmarked this post.

I must be getting old and / or wealthier because now I just use a (2015) Mac.

In a few more years, I have a feeling I'll be using neither Apple nor Microsoft.

I do think the market will provide something, just depends on who figures out there's a lot of us out there who have money to spend.

Not to distract from this useful tip, but remember when huge blocks of instructions like this were reserved for Linux desktops, and windows (mostly) just worked? What a wild world we live in.

Windows 10 Education also lets you do this, and is a lot less expensive than Pro. Sometimes it's free to members of certain organizations.

The group policy editor is not available in the home versions.

It does work if you grab one from Pro copies.

If you're on Home edition, you can try O&O's ShutUp10 tool [https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10]. I used to make manual registry entry changes on one of my machines with Win10 Home, but I use this now, and am happy with it.

On my Win10 Pro machine, I've switched to the semi-annual channel and disabled automatic installations via GPE.

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