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Turning off updates for good!


OldSchool38

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Not long ago I got my hands on a computer my grandmother gave me that had it's hard drive turned into a brick by an automatic windows 10 update.  I replaced the hard drive and installed win 7 professional (for gameplay) and turned updates off.  This morning I found that updates have somehow been turned back on!  How can I permanently disable this?  I don't want W10 or any telemetry garbage on my system!

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Under Services right click on Windows update, properties , disable it. Under recovery tab in drop down menu's select Take no action.

or paste this in notepad and save as whatever.bat

sc config wuauserv start= disabled
sc stop wuauserv

REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\wuauserv" /v Start /t REG_DWORD /d "00000004" /f
REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\wuauserv" /v FailureActions /t REG_BINARY /d "80510000000000000000000003000000140000000000000060ea000000000000000000000000000000000000" /f
 

pause
Edited by 351837
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I  was facing the same difficulty. In the end I did fresh install of Win7 but making sure that the machine was totally disconnected from the internet before I started the install. Once the install was done I made the following settings as far as the Control Panel (CP) was concerned (this is from my own notes on what I did):

Set Windows Update Settings at the CP
Via CP > Action Center set Windows Update to following settings (must do this in Group Policy later to get nailed down).
(1) Important Updates: "Never check for updates (not recommended).
(2) Recommended Updates: Untick "Give me recommended updates the same way I receive important updates."
(3) Who Can Install Updates: Untick "Allow all users to install updates on this computer."

Once that was done I ran gpedit.msc and made the following adjustments to Group Policy settings regarding Windows Updates:

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update:

Configure Automatic Updates - Disabled (default - Not configured)
Turn on recommended updates via Automatic Updates - Disabled (default - Not configured)

User Configuration\Administrative Templates\System:

Windows Automatic Updates - Enabled (default - Not configured). Watch this one the wording is different from that in "Computer Configuration" and could be said to mean the exact opposite of what is there. It also says the setting is supported on Windows XP Pro. only (go figure).

User Configuration\Administrative Templates\ Windows Components\Windows Update:

Remove access to use all Windows Update features - Enabled (default - Not configured) Also chose "1 - Show restart required notifications". My reasoning was that if update does anything at all at least I will notified that a restart is required - hence, I am altered to the update having been done, even though I definitely don't want updates. Not sure if that was a correct choice. Time will tell.

Once I made those Group Policy settings I rebooted the machine, connected it to the internet, and tried to manually launch a Windows Update session by using the "Windows Update" link the Start Menu. What I got was a Window saying, "Some settings are managed by your system administrator. More information. So I clicked on the More information link and got the following:
 

Quote

Why won't Windows allow me to change a system setting?

If your computer is part of a network at an organization such as a school, government agency, or business, your organization's system administrator might have disabled or even removed certain settings by using Group Policy. Group Policy is a feature of Windows that lets system administrators manage users' access to Windows features. If you suspect that Group Policy is preventing you from changing a setting that you need to access, contact your system administrator.

If your computer isn't part of a network, a user with administrator privileges might have modified Group Policy on your computer to remove access to the settings. In this case, contact the administrator to modify the settings you'd like to change.

For more in-depth technical information about Group Policy, go to the Microsoft website for IT professionals.

In short, it wouldn't let the system update - and to change that you need go to into Group Policy and revert it all back to default settings. This I think is a more secure way of dealing with this than just turning off a service which can easily, in quite a casual manner, be turned back on again. To reverse the settings above requires multiple actions and some expertise that a casual user of the system likely wouldn't have.

Also, as an additional layer of protection, you could install TinyWall (firewall). It has a setting that allows the blocking of Windows Update, how effective it is I don't know as I've bolted the system down as far as Windows Update is concerned. (Note: I tried TinyWall v2.1.8 but with that installed my adapter couldn't connect to the internet at all, so that version might be bugged as far a Windows 7 goes. TinyWall v2.1.7 works fine though.)

P.S. Sorry about the formatting of this post. The way this forum seems to be (now) setup so that a blank line is automatically inserted every time the user press the Enter key is appalling. Give the users back control over blank lines between paragraphs!

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On martedì 14 giugno 2016 at 6:21 PM, Radish said:

P.S. Sorry about the formatting of this post. The way this forum seems to be (now) setup so that a blank line is automatically inserted every time the user press the Enter key is appalling. Give the users back control over blank lines between paragraphs!

JFYI, this is "by design", and - according to the good IPB guys - all the world has been wrong for all these years using just "Enter", when they should have used "Shift+Enter", so they made the stupid software configured to enforce this (totally invented out of the blue) "rule" (please note how xper - just like all of us - is a "victim" of the stupidity of the board software):
 

jaclaz

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Oh... Well I'll just try that out.
Fiddly!
But it works!
Thanks very much, Jaclaz! :)

Personally, I would have thought this rule, if it needs to exist at all, should have been the other way around. Enter = new line. Shift+Enter = new paragraph. But if it was setup that way (properly) why wouldn't the user just use Enter x2 to get a new paragraph. Seems the most logical and frustration free way of doing things - ah, the good old days. Step by step users lose a bit at a time when guys get round to  "upgrading/updating" things.

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On 14/06/2016 at 3:43 PM, 351837 said:

Under Services right click on Windows update, properties , disable it. Under recovery tab in drop down menu's select Take no action.

or paste this in notepad and save as whatever.bat

I had a look at the "Properties" for this service and notice that the "Description" for this says:

Quote

Enables the detection, download, and installation of updates for Windows and other programs. If this service is disabled, users of this computer will not be able to use Windows Update or its automatic updating feature, and programs will not be able to use the Windows Update Agent (WUA) API.

Does that mean that if a user uses this way of disabling Windows Update that updating for other programs might also get broken? Or is it just updates for Microsoft programs that gets 'broken'? What "other programs" are being referred to?

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On 16.06.2016. at 0:46 PM, Radish said:

Does that mean that if a user uses this way of disabling Windows Update that updating for other programs might also get broken? Or is it just updates for Microsoft programs that gets 'broken'? What "other programs" are being referred to?

Just MS programs, e.g. IE. Office, Malicious Removal Tool, .NET. Not sure about Defender definitions.

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