Solved How to Enable or Disable Automatic Updates for Windows Update

This tutorial does not appear to be working in Windows 11.

'Check for Updates' appears to be running randomly, not at my specific request.

I use Option 7. And still windows does run when it wants to sometimes, or at least there`s always I pile of files in Windows/Logs/Windows Update I`m always deleting.
But it never installs anything without my ok.

I've been using Option 3; however, I used Option 2 to verify this -

I loaded the Group Policy Editor and navigated to

Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Windows Update

I found a slightly different view due to th UI differences between Windows 10 & 11 -



I selected Manage end user experience and then Configure Automatic updates, which gave me the following -



which shows the option was 'not configured'

I then selected 'Enabled' and selected 'option 2' and hit 'OK'.



I then re-booted and checked in Group Policy again - the changes were confirmed as what I had selected earlier.

If you only want to block specific updates, such as drivers, you can use the Windows Update Show/Hide Tool which works in all Windows 10 and 11 versions. See this Tenforums thread: Hide or Show Windows Updates in Windows 10

Another tool is WAU Manager. Also O&O Windows Shutup can be used for various settings including blocking automatic updates.

I'm only trying to block updates for Security Intelligence Updates for Microsoft Defender Antivirus & Real-time Protection for Microsoft Defender Antivirus. I also had to turn off Tamper Protection for Microsoft Defender Antivirus before running these tutorials.

Whatever updates you want to block use one of the utilities I mentioned, I prefer the Show/Hide Tool which is the official Microsoft utility.