If you’re using Windows 7 or 8.1, click Start > Control Panel > System and Security. The methods for blocking Windows Update are pretty straightforward. If you’re just a tad skittish - those who learn from the past aren’t doomed to repeat it, eh? - I recommend you turn off Automatic Updating, just for a while. That way you can tell us what went wrong. If you remain resolute in your belief that Microsoft’s way is the best way, then by all means, I urge you to install all of the updates as soon as they’re available. Their more cautious brethren sit and watch, listen to the screams of pain, and wait for the all-clear. In either case, a significant group of first-round patchers get hit. Sometimes they come in Monthly Rollup Previews - a heinous practice.

Sometimes the fixes come in second or third cumulative updates. We’ve seen the same pattern repeat itself almost every month since the beginning of the year: The first round of Microsoft security patches (notably including Win10 patches) introduce bugs, while subsequent rounds of patches each month squash most of them. August 2018 was a relatively innocuous patching month, although the final resolution to the August problems didn’t appear until late Friday night just as the month was coming to a close - on a three-day weekend in the US.

Windows updates keep turning off