Wu10Man

software

wu10man

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Goodbye Windows: End of Support for Wu10Man

Hello all. I want to thank those who've support Wu10Man and found it useful, but I will be archiving this project and officially won't be working on it anymore. Really, I haven't been maintaining this for over a year now anyway, but as I sometimes get a ping about it, I figured I would make an announcement here. Overall, the reason is a couple things. The easy answer is I've been using Linux more and more over the last year and more or less use that exclusively now. It just became easier to learn Linux than it was to figure out all the whatsits with Windows 11. Between that and life deciding that I needed to have other priorities besides programming side projects, it just makes sense to officially call it quits on Wu10Man.

Wu10Man

This started out as a project to shut down the Windows Update mechanic. It grew from there as Microsoft tweaked how they ran and protected the update service. It probably would have died there, but it seems people are liking this application. Version 3.1.0 has over 10k downloads and 4.0.0 over 17k! So I've felt a little obiligated to keep this updated.

With 4.0, I realized another major annoyance of Windows 10 is a lot of bloatware. Random apps that either aren't needed or that are added bloatware.

If you've found this a useful app, perhaps you'd like to buy me a coffee?

Top Caffeinators

Thank you so much for your contributions and helping fun the battle against Windows Update!

  • Govardhan - who bought me a coffee!
  • Someone1 - who bought me a keg of coffee!
  • Wes - who coffeed me through hump day!
  • Someone2 - coffeed me through a long week at work!
  • John - coffeed me through a long week!
  • pc305.com - got me a wake-up cup o' joe!
  • Someone3 - provided a couple good jolts of caffeine!
  • piratour20 - for the late evening coffee!
  • Redfella - kept me caffeinated for a whole month!!
  • Someone4 - for the super buzzed week, or normally buzzed two weeks!
  • Someone5 - for all the caffeine goodness!
  • Someone6 - for the fancy mocah!
  • Ihor - for keeping me awake all week!
  • LTM - for a whole vat!
  • Someone7 - for a week of sunny mornings!
  • Someone8 - for a late night pick-me-up!
  • Someone9 - for an honest cup!
  • typtre - for the scone to go with the coffee!
  • Someone10 - keeping me going over the weekend!
  • Someone11 - enough oomph for another release!
Special Thanks
Disabling Services:

When in doubt, you can disable the Windows 10 services that run the updates. There are two that seem to control everything: Windows Update Service and Windows Module Installer. On your own, you can disable them and things will be ok, but Windows has a couple tasks that will turn those back on. Some are set at an interval, some are set at startup. There is also a third: Windows Update Medic Service. This is a new service that Microsoft uses to turn on all the Windows Update stuff. It looks like this came out with an Oct 2018 update, and as over version 2.0.0, support for disabling the Medic service is also supported.

You could try to disable those tasks, but I went another route. When disabling a service through this app, it also renames the underlying service file so that it's not possible to run the service. Previous versions of this changed the running credentials, but I could get whatever security access to the new Medic servie to change that, so I went the file route instead.

If you were running an older version of Wu10Man, don't worry, the new versions will still restore user settings as needed.

Services:
  • Windows Update Service (wuauserv): The service that performs the updates. This is where most blogs/articles start when advising how to disable Windows Updates.
  • Trusted Installer (TrustedInstaller): This service controls how Windows modules get installed at a system levl instead of at the user level. Disabling this can interfere with installations other than Windows Updates, for instance I believe disabling this can interfere with installing NVidia graphics drivers.
  • Windows Update Medic Service (WaaSMedicSvc): If you've ever manually disabled the Windows Update Service and then come back later to see that it's enabled again, it's likely this service that did it. The job of this service to identify and fix issues with the Windows Update Service.
  • Windows Remediation Service (sedsvc): This is a predecessor to the Windows Update Medic Service. I haven't seen this on Windows 10 in the last couple years.
Pausing Updates

A while ago, Windows added a pause feature to some of the business license of Windows 10. Not long after, added the ability to pause updates as well, but the UI only allows you to go out a few weeks. I added a screen that allows for a longer pause scenario. Wu10Man is NOT adding new functionality to Windows, only using the functionality that is built in. This feature will only work correctly on those versions of Windows that already support Pause/Defer.

As a note, this doesn't necessarily stop updates. Microsoft can, and has, pushed updates anyway if they deem the update important enough. I don't recommend using the Pause feature and I'll likely push it into Legacy in the near future.

BETA - Declutter

Windows 10 comes with a lot of clutter. There's the random stuff that they install that aren't particularly necessary, and then there's the 3rd party apps that Windows tries to include. There's plenty of apps and scripts to remove a bunch of these, but I wanted to add it here as well so that I had a single solution.

There has been some limited success with this, but not all the clutter is created equal. This is still sort of in BETA, so definitely use with added caution.

BETA - Windows Scheduled Tasks

I've had a couple requests to find some of the Scheduled Tasks that are also involved with Windows Updates and see if I can shut them down as well. That ends up being trickier than services because there is extra security around them for some reason. The implementation for this is a bit hacky, but seems to work.

This is definitely BETA functionality, so use with added caution and make sure you have a system backup.

Scheduled Tasks
  • Scheduled Start: \Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\Scheduled Start
  • Schedule Scan: Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator\Schedule Scan
  • Schedule Scan Static Task: \Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator\Schedule Scan Static Task
  • Schedule Work: \Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator\Schedule Work
  • Report Policies: \Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator\Report policies
  • Update Model Task: \Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator\UpdateModelTask
  • UX Broker: \Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator\USO_UxBroker
  • Remediation: \Microsoft\Windows\WaaSMedic\PerformRemediation

"Scheduled Start" is the task that Windows uses to schedule when checks for any updates should be done. The tasks in the Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator\ path are part of the various steps during Windows Update. The "Remediation" task triggers the Medic Service which looks for issues with Windows Update and tries to fix them.

Legacy

With any application, somethings things just are no longer necessary. With that, there comes some depricated parts of this application as well. These parts aren't really supported any more, as much as this application has support.

Blocking URLs

There are also a number of URLs that have been identified as being use by Windows Update. That list is included in the app config file so you can alter it if need be. You can set which URLs to block individually or as a group. This updates the hosts file at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc.

Windows Defender likes to block this which is rather annoying. Also, it's not the best way to actually block Windows updates so I've decided that this goes into the Legacy box unless it turns out to be something that people really really like.

Group Policy

If you have Windows 10 Home, you don't have access to the Group Policy Editor, but you can still set it via the registry. This application will make those updates for you, because who can remember where those settings are. This setting should be sufficient to block most automatic updates, but with some security updates, Microsoft will push those down regardless of these settings.

Group Policy Options:

  • Enable Automatic Updates: Allows updates to function as normal.
  • Disable Automatic Updates: Disables automatic updates.
  • Notify of Download and Installation: Provides notifications for download and install. Should function similar to older version of Windows that had this option.
  • Automatic Download, Notify of Installation: Will automatically download updates, but provide notification before installation.
Additional Info
System Updates

Warning! This program makes changes to your Registry, Scheduled Tasks, and other system files. Make sure you have set a System Restore Point before using this software.

Admin Access

This application does need administrative access as it is trying to write to the registry, alter services, and change the hosts file. As a result, some anti-virus software may also pick this up as potentially hostile.

References

There was a fair amount of research that went into this, but a couple sites stood out as references as I was writing this.

Downloads

Wu10Man Download