How to Disable Windows 10 Updates Permanently – 4 Methods

This tutorial contains detailed instructions to turn off Windows 10 updates permanently. As you may already know, in Windows 10 you cannot prevent the Updates download and installation, by disabling the Windows Update service, because Windows 10 overrides this setting and forces the service to start and install the updates.

To avoid security risks and Windows problems it is not recommended to disable the Windows 10 update, but in some cases, there is the need to do that, especially if you have problems during installing an update to your system or if you face stability issues or other problems after installing an update.

Pause automatic updates using Windows Settings
If you don’t want to completely turn off automatic updates you can pause them for up to 35 days using the Windows Settings app.

1. Go to Settings >
2. Update & Security >
3. Windows Update >
4. Advanced options.

Select a specific date from the Pause until the drop-down menu is located under the Pause updates section. Your computer will not receive any updates until the date you specified.

Disable Windows Update Service. Open Services.Msc

1. Press the Windows logo key + R at the same time to invoke the Run box.
2. Type services.msc and press Enter.
3. Scroll down the service list to Windows Update and double-click it.
4. In the Startup type window select Disabled.
5. Then click Apply and OK to save the settings.

Change Permissions to Windows Update files.
The first method to disable the Automatic Update in Windows 10, is to remove the default permissions on the following files: wuaueng.dll & wuauclt.exe. To do that:

1. Open Windows Explorer and go to “C:\Windows\System32\”.
2. Locate the wuaueng.dll file, right-click on it and choose Properties.
3. Select the Security tab and then click Advanced.
4. Click Change Owner.
5. Type your account name (e.g. “Admin”), or type “Administrators” and click OK.
6. Then, click Apply and OK at the ‘Windows Security’ information message.
7. Now, click OK two (2) to close the Properties window.
8. Then re-open the Properties of the wuaueng.dll file and go again to the Security tab > Advanced.
9. Now select & Remove one-by-one all the users from the list.
10. When done click OK and click YES (twice) and OK again to close the ‘Properties’ window.
11. Perform the same steps (1-10) and remove all users from the wuauclt.exe file
12. Restart your machine.
13. From now on, whenever you go to the Windows Update window you’ll see a blank screen window (without any options), or you ‘ll receive the following error message: “There were problems installing some updates, but we’ll try again later. If you keep seeing this and want to search the web or contact support for information, this may help: Error 0x80080005” *

Disable automatic updates using Windows Registry
On Windows 10 Pro, you can permanently disable automatic updates by modifying the Windows Registry.

1. Press Win+R to open the Run box.
2. Type in regedit to open the Windows Registry.
3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
4. Create a new key within the Windows folder. To do that, right-click the folder, then select New > Key. Name the new key as Windows Update.
5. Create a new key within the Windows Update folder and name it AU.
6. Within the AU folder, create a DWORD (32-bit value) named NoAutoUpdate. Change the value of this key from 0 to 1.

You will need to restart your device to save the changes. Once you do that, automatic updates will be completely disabled on our computer.