Hellbovine
Well-Known Member
This guide explains how to pause Windows Update for any amount of time, and prevent the operating system from performing other related automatic updating without consent. The benefit of this guide is that it does not disable tasks/services or uninstall components, both of which break various parts of the operating system, instead it safely and cleanly modifies settings the same way Microsoft would do it. This guide was tested on Windows 10 Home (21H2), but should work on other similar setups too.
WINDOWS UPDATE
OTHER UPDATERS
All of these keys can be added to a live install of Windows, or integrated into an image using NTLite so that they are in effect immediately after installing the operating system, for all users on the computer. With these tweaks you can still manually perform Windows Update, and can also change the pause time in the advanced options page to any date, up to 4 years into the future. This guide essentially gives control of Windows Update back to the users again.
For more guides like this one, visit the following link:
https://www.ntlite.com/community/index.php?threads/gaming-lounge.2999/
WINDOWS UPDATE
; Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > Advanced options > Pause updates > Up to 4 years
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings]
"FlightSettingsMaxPauseDays"=dword:000005b4
; Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > Advanced options > Pause updates > Until January 1st, 2026
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings]
"PauseFeatureUpdatesStartTime"="2022-07-01T20:00:00Z"
"PauseQualityUpdatesStartTime"="2022-07-01T20:00:00Z"
"PauseFeatureUpdatesEndTime"="2026-01-01T20:00:00Z"
"PauseQualityUpdatesEndTime"="2026-01-01T20:00:00Z"
"PauseUpdatesExpiryTime"="2026-01-01T20:00:00Z"
The "FlightSettingsMaxPauseDays" is the most important key of all, since it ties all of this together and makes it actually work without any bugs or quirks. This is an undocumented key that controls the default 35 days maximum limit for pausing updates, and without it everything else gets ignored.
The timestamps here are in what is called "Zulu" time, which is what the "Z" stands for at the end of each key's value. Really this just means GMT (Greenwich mean time), which also is the same as UTC (Universal Time Coordinated), but all you need to know is:
- The StartTime for the keys is July 1st, 2022, 8pm UTC
- The EndTime for the keys is January 1st, 2026, 8pm UTC
Note: I used this end date because the end of support for Windows 10 is October, 2025, so once you get close to this date you should obtain the latest ISO from Microsoft and work on making a final NTLite image to use until Windows 10 is killed off permanently. I also made sure that the start dates were not more than 1,460 days away from the end dates, so that it played nice with the FlightSettingsMaxPauseDay key limit of 1,460 days that I set.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings]
"FlightSettingsMaxPauseDays"=dword:000005b4
; Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > Advanced options > Pause updates > Until January 1st, 2026
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings]
"PauseFeatureUpdatesStartTime"="2022-07-01T20:00:00Z"
"PauseQualityUpdatesStartTime"="2022-07-01T20:00:00Z"
"PauseFeatureUpdatesEndTime"="2026-01-01T20:00:00Z"
"PauseQualityUpdatesEndTime"="2026-01-01T20:00:00Z"
"PauseUpdatesExpiryTime"="2026-01-01T20:00:00Z"
The "FlightSettingsMaxPauseDays" is the most important key of all, since it ties all of this together and makes it actually work without any bugs or quirks. This is an undocumented key that controls the default 35 days maximum limit for pausing updates, and without it everything else gets ignored.
The timestamps here are in what is called "Zulu" time, which is what the "Z" stands for at the end of each key's value. Really this just means GMT (Greenwich mean time), which also is the same as UTC (Universal Time Coordinated), but all you need to know is:
- The StartTime for the keys is July 1st, 2022, 8pm UTC
- The EndTime for the keys is January 1st, 2026, 8pm UTC
Note: I used this end date because the end of support for Windows 10 is October, 2025, so once you get close to this date you should obtain the latest ISO from Microsoft and work on making a final NTLite image to use until Windows 10 is killed off permanently. I also made sure that the start dates were not more than 1,460 days away from the end dates, so that it played nice with the FlightSettingsMaxPauseDay key limit of 1,460 days that I set.
OTHER UPDATERS
For good measure I would group the Windows Update keys with the following companions, since the Microsoft Store is another automatic downloader, as well as the Devices and Printers updater. Also, even when Windows Update is paused it will still forcibly download a display driver and potentially other drivers, so a registry key is included to address that:
; Start > Microsoft Store > Settings > App updates > Off
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsStore\WindowsUpdate]
"AutoDownload"=dword:00000002
; Start > Settings > System > About > Advanced system settings > Hardware > Device Installation Settings > Do you want to automatically... > No
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Device Metadata]
"PreventDeviceMetadataFromNetwork"=dword:00000001
; Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > Automatically download drivers > Off
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DriverSearching]
"SearchOrderConfig"=dword:00000000
; Start > Microsoft Store > Settings > App updates > Off
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsStore\WindowsUpdate]
"AutoDownload"=dword:00000002
; Start > Settings > System > About > Advanced system settings > Hardware > Device Installation Settings > Do you want to automatically... > No
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Device Metadata]
"PreventDeviceMetadataFromNetwork"=dword:00000001
; Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > Automatically download drivers > Off
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DriverSearching]
"SearchOrderConfig"=dword:00000000
All of these keys can be added to a live install of Windows, or integrated into an image using NTLite so that they are in effect immediately after installing the operating system, for all users on the computer. With these tweaks you can still manually perform Windows Update, and can also change the pause time in the advanced options page to any date, up to 4 years into the future. This guide essentially gives control of Windows Update back to the users again.
For more guides like this one, visit the following link:
https://www.ntlite.com/community/index.php?threads/gaming-lounge.2999/
Last edited: