Is it possible to pause the Windows Update download?
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
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.
This is a GUI based version of the answer by Alex:
- Start the Task Manager (you can right click on the task bar)
- Go to the tab Services
- Locate the service, Name: wuauserv, Description: Windows Update, Group: netsvcs.
- Right click on it, Stop.