Do the people at Microsoft know how much the internet costs for some of us in developing countries because the size of some of these updates are not friendly at all? Do you ever wake up to find your PC has downloaded updates while you were sleeping, and finished a significant chunk of your data?

Maybe you hadn’t even noticed all you know is that your data package gets depleted real quick and you might even suspect either the internet service provider is cheating you or someone is hacking your internet.

Yet the culprit is right on your lap or desk….

If you use capped internet you might want to keep an eye on how your laptop or Desktop computer updates, to preserve your precious data

If you are running Windows 10 go to your Update and Security settings click on the defer updates function (if you have it, some versions dont)

Some Windows 10 editions let you defer upgrades to your PC. When you defer upgrades, new Windows features won’t be downloaded or installed for several months. Deferring upgrades doesn’t affect security updates. Note that deferring upgrades will prevent you from getting the latest Windows features as soon as they’re available.

Microsoft Help

Next go to Network Settings > Advanced Options

Toggle ON Metered connection

This means the machine will recognise that you are not on an  unlimited internet plan  and will refrain from downloading unnecessary updates, of course Windows will still download “priority” updates……

You should be basically good to go, but if you want to take it a step further, you can totally disable the update service (although Microsoft does not recommend you do this, since you might miss out on critical updates……)

Press windows key + R button to start the run command

Type service.msc and click ok

service.msc

Scroll down the list that appears and find Windows update

Double Click and change to disabled.

You will never get new updates from windows again, you are welcome.

N.B. To reactive updates simply follow the above steps and set back to automatic.

Hope you find this useful, it’s easy enough and not very technical and your data will thank you for it. I tried it out using a windows 10 machine but I understand this also works on some versions of windows 8 and windows 8.1

If you ever try this hack let me know………

~B

Day 21 of my blog everyday challenge