Is it possible to pause the Windows Update download?

Question

I'm on a slow dial-up connection, and my Windows 8 is downloading some critical updates. The connection keeps disconnecting, so I was thinking if it was possible to pause the updates download?

Solution 1

As far as I'm aware there is no way to pause an in-progress Windows Update download. Most sites I checked on Google agree.

I would say while disconnected from the internet, turn off Windows updates until you're on a faster connection. I haven't used Windows 8 yet, but on Windows 7 (should be similar to 8 unless I'm totally mistaken) it is in Control Panel > System and Security > Windows Update (or just type this into your explorer bar: Control Panel\System and Security\Windows Update). On the left choose Change Settings and turn them off for now.

Solution 2

It turns out that you can stop the windows update service manually, if you have Administrator privileges.

Open a cmd prompt as Admin (right click the .exe and choose Run as Administrator), and type

net stop wuauserv

You can start it again with

net start wuauserv

As suggested by @arolpx, I had a look and stopping the Background Intelligent Transfer Services (BITS) manually will ensure that Windows Update cannot transfer anything.

From the linked source:

If the service is disabled, then any applications that depend on BITS, such as Windows Update or MSN Explorer, will be unable to automatically download programs and other information.

Sources:

• How to start/stop windows update service
• Background intelligent transfer service

Solution 3

Since Windows 10 (at least, possibly earlier) the answer by Alex doesn't stop all Windows update downloads anymore, because much of the downloading responsibility has moved to other services.

Stopping these three services, however, seems to work in Windows 10:

net stop wuauserv
net stop bits
net stop dosvc

That stops the windows update service, the background intelligent transfer service, and the delivery optimization service, respectively. All of these are involved in Windows update downloads.

Note: usually one or of the above will services fail to stop, with a message like The Windows Update service could not be stopped.. Running the commands a second time will usually result in a successful stop.

You can, of course, also stop these from the GUI in services.msc.

Solution 4

This is a GUI based version of the answer by Alex:

1. Start the Task Manager (you can right click on the task bar)
2. Go to the tab Services
3. Locate the service, Name: wuauserv, Description: Windows Update, Group: netsvcs.
4. Right click on it, Stop.

View more solutions

Comments

[Admin]

hello and welcome to SuperUser. since your connection is that unstable, have you considered asking a friend to manually download those same updates for you? - windows updates are not pausable, the closest choice you have is to select the updates you want to do at once. (if applicable, you can also stop them for the time being, and re-enable them when at a faster connection.)

[Admin]

@Znau After googling a lot I've found a software called "wsus offline updater" , I will tell my friend to download updates using that software so I can install them offline.

[user206414]

Thanks for your reply. Well I've just finished updating my window. It took around 1 hour .

[Peter Mortensen]

If it is a Windows service, wouldn't it be possible to do it from the Services window as well (for instance opened by Services.msc from the command line)? (service "Automatic Updates" in Windows XP and "Windows Update" in Windows 7.)

[Alex]

Possibly - I'll try to remember to see if it's in the list next time it starts.

[suspectus]

That doesn't pause the updates it kills them stone dead.

[Mostafiz Rahman]

It stops the process at once, but when windows update is started again, it resumes. Technically it works as pause-resume.

[Admin]

@Alex, Stopping the service alone is part of the solution (step 1), you are right, though the last step (step 2)is to stop the Background Intelligent Transfer Service as well, and then all transfers stop.

[fixer1234]

That doesn't temporarily pause the download, as asked in the question.

[jsalonen]

I discourage doing this; it will kill the process, but Windows will automatically restart it very quickly.

[Icode4food]

This is the correct answer on Windows 10.

[Alex]

+1 for new W10 info. Though, knowing how W10 sometimes behaves, do you know whether it will restart these by itself at some point?

[BeeOnRope]

They will restart on a restart of your box, but I haven't notice it happening by itself though.

[BeeOnRope]

@Alex - FWIW, I am noticing that the service is continually restarting now (after a delay of a few minutes usually). I haven't found a workaround yet.

[ADTC]

@BeeOnRope I didn't stop at net stop. I went ahead and opened services.msc and found these three services, setting them to the Disabled state. I also kept running these net stop commands every 10 minutes or so (just for an hour) to make sure the services didn't start up again.

[BeeOnRope]

For what it's worth, this has stopped working reliably for me although it did in the earlier Windows 10 versions. The processes usually stop but then quickly start back up again. At the moment I don't have a great solution other than setting the network to "metered network".