How to stop Windows installing updates behind your back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18157968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18157968 If you don

How to stop Windows installing updates behind your back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18157968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18157968 If you don't/won't/can't use the group policy editor, I got a lot of mileage out of hibernating the PC and powering it off at the mains. You can't leave it running something overnight, but you can at least quickly get back to exactly where you left things the previous day. (Powering it off at the mains ensures that even if you have a device connected that could wake the PC up - thus putting your computer in a state where WIndows Update can reboot it - it can't. You can turn this feature off on a per-device basis with powercfg, but then one day you'll plug something new in and leave it plugged in and it'll wake the PC up while you're away and Windows Update will do its thing.)