How to cancel Windows Update (need to know now)

[DAL59]

"Your update is ready. Your PC needs to restart to complete the update."

The only options are "restart now" or "restart later" (in 90 minutes).  How do I get it to not restart!?!?!?  

[Ultimate Steve]

Welcome to 2018. You can't.

There is a way, but it involves moderate hackiness. There is a temporary fix that involves a small amount of hackiness.

What is the specific reason you're so update averse now? Yes, they have been known to break things but that's a pretty small chunk of users.

[YNM]

36 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

"Your update is ready. Your PC needs to restart to complete the update."

Never connect your PC to the .net .

[steve_v]

 

10 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

You can't.

Well blow me. If this is the kind of crap micro$oft is pulling on it's users these days, I'm even more glad than usual that I dumped their products. 
Never would I use an operating system that decides to modify itself, reboot, or do anything else funny without my say-so, or without my explicitly commanding or scheduling the action in the first place.
A PC is a tool. Tools do what the user tells them. What's next, Windows rental contract? Monthly payments? Remote bricking clause? "I can't do that, Dave"?

Why do you people put up with this anyway?

[Green Baron]

Question out of curiosity: will windows run at all without connection to internet ? If i recall right, it needs at least a temporal connection at setup to call home that it has been installed somewhere. But will it run afterwards or demand to speak with its masters regularly ?

Also, how does one maintain a frozen state, e.g. in a development or server environment ? There are probably costly tools to that, eh ?

Edited August 29, 2018 by Green Baron

[IncongruousGoat]

23 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Question out of curiosity: will windows run at all without connection to internet ? If i recall right, it needs at least a temporal connection at setup to call home that it has been installed somewhere. But will it run afterwards or demand to speak with its masters regularly ?

It'll run afterwards without a connection. If it didn't, there wouldn't be any way to change your WiFi adapter, since your computer would refuse to boot before you could install the appropriate drivers. Also, it would refuse to run on a computer that's only hooked up to an isolated VPN, which would anger a lot of the companies that make up one of Microsoft's major customer bases.

26 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Also, how does one maintain a frozen state, e.g. in a development or server environment ? There are probably costly tools to that, eh ?

No, actually. There's a relatively simple fix. It involves editing Windows internal registers, which Microsoft ships a tool with the OS for. It's just easy to screw up badly if you don't know exactly what you're doing.

[Green Baron]

Well, there'd probably be a mode to install network drivers like 3 times or so. But thanks :-)

[Nuke]

automatic updates are the main reason why i dont use windows 10. when i want to use my computer the last thing i want to do is update for a half an hour and forced reboots at the worst possible times. i will have transitioned to linux by the time support ends on 7 and 8.1.

Edited August 29, 2018 by Nuke

[YNM]

11 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Question out of curiosity: will windows run at all without connection to internet ?

It would.

 

12 hours ago, steve_v said:

Why do you people put up with this anyway?

They told us to put up.

In this day and age, privacy is... just a figment in your imagination.

[Superfluous J]

The problem is, Microsoft gets FAR more support calls (and thus has to pay far more support personnel) from idiots who have security problems because they never updated, then they will EVER get from people who know what they're doing and want control over when and how updates are performed. They won't change because we cost them far less money than all the people who only use their computers for The Facebooks and The Twitters.

However there is a solution: Install a firewall and block outbound connections to all Microsoft servers except at those times you want the updates. It's a pain but it works.

You can also disable the Windows Service but in my experience Windows helpfully re-enables it.

And no, once you're here there's nothing you can do. Though I think if you say "wait 90 minutes" or whatever, in 90 minutes you'll get the chance to wait another 90 minutes. But when you miss one of those because you're sleeping or whatever, your computer will reboot and there is nothing you can do about it. All the fixes for the problem have to do with stopping Windows from updating in the first place.

[DAL59]

23 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

The problem is, Microsoft gets FAR more support calls (and thus has to pay far more support personnel) from idiots who have security problems because they never updated, then they will EVER get from people who know what they're doing and want control over when and how updates are performed. They won't change because we cost them far less money than all the people who only use their computers for The Facebooks and The Twitters.

However there is a solution: Install a firewall and block outbound connections to all Microsoft servers except at those times you want the updates. It's a pain but it works.

You can also disable the Windows Service but in my experience Windows helpfully re-enables it.

And no, once you're here there's nothing you can do. Though I think if you say "wait 90 minutes" or whatever, in 90 minutes you'll get the chance to wait another 90 minutes. But when you miss one of those because you're sleeping or whatever, your computer will reboot and there is nothing you can do about it. All the fixes for the problem have to do with stopping Windows from updating in the first place.

 

12 hours ago, steve_v said:

 

Well blow me. If this is the kind of crap micro$oft is pulling on it's users these days, I'm even more glad than usual that I dumped their products. 
Never would I use an operating system that decides to modify itself, reboot, or do anything else funny without my say-so, or without my explicitly commanding or scheduling the action in the first place.
A PC is a tool. Tools do what the user tells them. What's next, Windows rental contract? Monthly payments? Remote bricking clause? "I can't do that, Dave"?

Why do you people put up with this anyway?

Actually, you can fix it, it just requires a lot of work.  I set my network as a metered connection, so it wouldn't download large files like updates without me doing it.

[Superfluous J]

19 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

 

Actually, you can fix it, it just requires a lot of work.  I set my network as a metered connection, so it wouldn't download large files like updates without me doing it.

Did they change that in the past year? Last time I looked at it, you could only set up wifi as metered, which is actually exactly the opposite of what I wanted. My wired connection is "wired" to my cell phone, while when I'm on Wifi I'm on an unlimited cable plan.

Edited August 30, 2018 by 5thHorseman

[YNM]

38 minutes ago, DAL59 said:

metered connection

Haven't tried it (I... tend to download large amount of stuff at once) but that might be an option.

Sometimes there're smaller updates still. Those might not be stopped by this measure.

[0111narwhalz]

You can cancel the update by shutting down hard (e.g. by the power button or yanking power) and installing Linux.

Linux can read the Windows volume if you don't wipe it. It will also never update if you don't tell it to. It might bug you to update, but it won't actually go through with it without your permission.

Why don't you already have Linux? Well, application support is not nearly as full as it is for Windows, and Wine is somewhat lacking. Additionally, it takes rather a bit more effort on your part, because it trusts you (or whoever has the root pass) with everything. That means you can seriously break it if you're reckless. However, pretty much every failure mode is recoverable, unless you do something stupid with your storage. You'll want to brush up on your commandline skills, because while most applications have graphical versions, their commandline versions are usually more fully-featured.

Whether you stick with it or jump ship for Linux, you should probably back your files up before making any changes to your operating system (or letting it make them to itself).

[qzgy]

1 hour ago, 0111narwhalz said:

Whether you stick with it or jump ship for Linux, you should probably back your files up before making any changes to your operating system (or letting it make them to itself).

Used to have Linux. Then I think I regressed back to Windows 10.

Mainly because of this

1 hour ago, 0111narwhalz said:

application support is not nearly as full as it is for Windows

And this

1 hour ago, 0111narwhalz said:

it takes rather a bit more effort on your part

I'm a bit lazy.

But as for canceling Windows updates - yeah nothing you can really do there. I just try to delay as long as possible.

[YNM]

1 hour ago, 0111narwhalz said:

installing Linux.

If only dual-booting was as easy as it was... !

I remember installing Ubuntu on win7 by starting an .exe (in win7). With win10 ? Good luck with that...

[steve_v]

38 minutes ago, qzgy said:

Mainly because of this

2 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

application support is not nearly as full as it is for Windows

For myself, I'll take fewer commercial applications over inbuilt spyware and not fully owning my system any day. It's a small price to pay for your computing freedom, and if software vendors don't support GNU/Linux, I'll not support them.
In 20-ish years of near-exclusive Linux use, I've found no critical windows applications without a cross-platform replacement that satisfies my needs.
Hell, I haven't even needed wine for a game in ages, and games are hardly a deal-breaker.

 

 

29 minutes ago, YNM said:

If only dual-booting was as easy as it was

Dual booting is still easy, the only thing that has changed is the introduction of secure restricted boot, if you want to dual-boot with Win 10, your distro will need a signed (usually by microsoft ) shim.
Considering that it's in exactly the same "users are stupid, only M$ can be trusted" vein as forced updates, it's fairly obvious whose self-serving idea that particular "feature" was.
If you don't intend to boot Windows Spyware 10, just disable it in the CMOS setup, you almost certainly don't need it.

 

29 minutes ago, YNM said:

I remember installing Ubuntu on win7 by starting an .exe

This kind of thing has been around forever, it used to be called "loadlin". As far as I am aware, it's neither a true dual-boot nor a native-filesystem install, so performance will probably suffer.
Installing GNU/Linux properly is not hard, it's never been hard unless you remember booting the kernel from floppy disk... and even then it simply required reading the manual.

Edited August 30, 2018 by steve_v

[Nuke]

my 3d printing rig is multiboot. i installed a grub partition and pretty much use it to boot everything, because it can. grub is powerful if you know how to use it.

[Dafni]

While we are at it, how is KSP on Linux these days? Still any Linux specific bugs or inabilities? How are joysticks for KSP on Linux these days?

Honest question, seriously considering to switch back to Linux again. Got pulled back into the darkside because of the games.

[steve_v]

6 minutes ago, Dafni said:

While we are at it, how is KSP on Linux these days?

Just fine...

6 minutes ago, Dafni said:

How are joysticks for KSP on Linux these days?

Unless you want to use a joystick with 1.4.x, as Squad completely borked it with the last unity "upgrade" and don't appear interested in fixing their mess. AFBW still works fine though, and it's way better than stock input handling anyway.
I'd hesitate to call it a Linux  "Linux specific bug", it's never Linux's fault and it appears to be completely random which idiotic regressions Squad introduces with a new release.

Edited August 30, 2018 by steve_v

[YNM]

1 hour ago, steve_v said:

This kind of thing has been around forever, it used to be called "loadlin". As far as I am aware, it's neither a true dual-boot nor a native-filesystem install, so performance will probably suffer.

... from which Ubuntu I can :

1. Install GRUB

2. Install yet another Linux OS of choice (now I have some clearer view of what to take compared to when I first time did them)

3. Undo Ubuntu.

Probably straighter to the point, how can a layperson install GRUB under a 'native' win10 laptop ?

 

I don't have so much of a hate over Windows - it's the easy setup as always - but I just like to have a Linux OS under the belt as well so when windows finally throw up, I can fix the mess myself. That's exactly how my PC was - I can handpick the virus or other threats out of you know how many folders Windows is having and not letting me see and modify it while I'm inside it.

Edited August 30, 2018 by YNM

[steve_v]

44 minutes ago, YNM said:

how can a layperson install GRUB under a 'native' win10 laptop ?

Boot a GNU/Linux install disc / USB drive and follow the instructions? Most of the major "easy" distros have a very user-friendly graphical installer these days, and there will be an "install bootloader" step.
If you just want GRUB and nothing else, boot a livecd and 'man grub-install'.
 

46 minutes ago, YNM said:

it's the easy setup as always

I have no idea what an emoji keyboard has to do with installing an OS, or why anyone would want one.
Whatever that guy is up to, I guarantee one can do the same on GNU/Linux with sufficient motivation.
 

51 minutes ago, YNM said:

I can handpick the virus or other threats out of you know how many folders Windows is having and not letting me see and modify it while I'm inside it.

Not sure what you're on about here, TBH. If you mean Windows permission management is screwey, I heartily agree.

[YNM]

4 hours ago, steve_v said:

Boot a GNU/Linux install disc / USB drive and follow the instructions?

I only have one USB and it's full of stuff I don't want to overwrite.

Good luck with an optical disc on most newer laptops !

4 hours ago, steve_v said:

I guarantee one can do the same on GNU/Linux with sufficient motivation.

I bet you can't do that without learning low-level stuff in a few weeks.

4 hours ago, steve_v said:

Not sure what you're on about here...

I don't need a working antivirus, nor I need the latest updates unless it's really nasty.

[Green Baron]

Nobody has to use Linux. Imo it makes life much easier and computer use much more productive. If i decide to update, it runs in a terminal without any more annoyances (mostly, sometimes it asks if i want to keep an updated config file or use the new one) but it never flashes over my screen in demand of immediate action or else end of the world in 5..4..3... It waits courteously for approval in the terminal which can easily be put out of sight.

Since i never open links or mails when i don't know where they are from and never browse shady internet pages, i never had any malware related problems (i know of until now).

If there isn't any special software one needs or the employer or other type of master demands the use of a specific OS, i see no reason why one should stick with Windows. The license costs between 50 an 150 euro for being watched over + eventually more for bloatware, access to somewhere, antivirus virus, etc. No, thanks.

I get a plain notebook without OS for the price of at least one performance-class lower machine with windows-and-what-not licenses. I find this very satisfying :-)

 

Edited August 30, 2018 by Green Baron

[steve_v]

15 hours ago, YNM said:

I only have one USB and it's full of stuff I don't want to overwrite.

Seriously? An 8GB USB drive is going to cost you $5. If that's your excuse, I don't know what to say.

 

15 hours ago, YNM said:

I bet you can't do that without learning low-level stuff in a few weeks.

The drivers for many popular keyboard controllers are readily available, making X11 keymaps is easy,  and the electronics  to build such an idiotic thing as an emoji keyboard is mostly drudgery wiring up all the buttons.
Frankly,  I'm beginning to suspect that your idea of "low-level" is anything without a click-and-drool GUI.

 

15 hours ago, YNM said:

I don't need a working antivirus, nor I need the latest updates unless it's really nasty.

I've never had any kind of virus, or a need for antivirus software. Mainly because, for practical purposes, there are no viruses that run on GNU/Linux.
I get to update what I want, when I want, how I want.

 

12 hours ago, Green Baron said:

i never open links or mails when i don't know where they are from and never browse shady internet pages

I actually find it somewhat entertaining to examine windows malware and shady email scams, secure in the knowledge that the executables won't run on my system.
Of course one should never click the obvious tracking links in spam mails, unless one wants more spam.