0

Even though I leave my computer on virtually 24/7, it's like Windows 10 picks the worst possible times to put my system on heavy load to install updates, making it a pain while I'm trying to work and straight up ruining my gaming sessions.

I've been going through the Windows Update settings, and options related to when it can restart after an update are all over the place, but I can't find one to tell it when it is allowed to install them in the first place.

This option even exists? I've been Googling the stuff but the results are polluted with unrelated Windows Update troubleshooting and I couldn't get anywhere.

Havenard
  • 810

2 Answers2

2

So, first off, most of your problem is probably not the system installing updates (that actually is not usually all that bad in terms of resource usage), especially since you have the system on 24/7, its most likely the system donwloading updates, which is insanely network intensive, and tends to hog the storage device too.

There are a couple of options to deal with this:

  • The first is to just open the settings app, go to the updates page, select advanced options, and pause updates. This only works for up to seven days, so it's worth just pausing them and then unpausing them when you're done for the day. Not the easiest method, but it's reliable, and doesn't depend on the registry.
  • The other option, which is more permanent but require modifying the registry or GPO, is to create a registry key of type DWORD at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU\AUOptions and set it to a value of 2. This will cause WIndows to \notify you that there are new updates, but require you to manually download and install them. Make sure if you take this route to still run the updates though.
  • As an alternative to both of the above, recent versions of WIndows 10 (1803 and 1709) support bandwidth limiting downloads of updates. You can get to these settings by selecting 'Advanced Options' in the Windows Update settings, then 'Delivery Optimization', and then 'Advanced Options' again. They only let you limit it down to 5%, but in my own experience, that's usually sufficient most of the time. If you've got other systems on your network running Windows 10, you may want to also limit upload bandwidth (Windows updates are torrent-style downloads now by default).
Austin Hemmelgarn
  • 10,724
0

You first have to check manually for updates if even there are any aviliable. When they're already downloaded you get the option to install them.

  1. Open All settings (new settings app)
  2. Update & security -> Check for updates
  3. If any updates are available press Install now: enter image description here
Stackcraft_noob
  • 1,906