Stop Windows 11 from downloading and installing non Microsoft updates?

[Pepi93]

Is there a way to stop windows update from automatically downloading and installing non microsoft software/updates? Even with the registry edit to stop driver updates, windows update still installs AMD stuff on my notebook and it's breaking my AMD Drivers that I have installed from the manufacturers website. I know I can pause or completely turn off windows update, but I still want the microsoft windows updates.

Ideally, I'd like to have control over what non microsoft stuff is installed??

I'm running home edition so no group policy features to tinker with.

 

[don256us]

I don't know but I would look at settings for "Optional Updates". Seems like this is where drivers get installed. I think that you can turn those off. I was looking for that option on my work machine but it's too locked down. I recommend heading down that road to see if you find the answer you want.

 

[EarthDog]

I thought there was a simple toggle to do that too...

 

[JLK03F150]

I have Optional/Driver Updates turned off with all my PCs, but Win10 Pro still installed some sort of AMD update & borked the GPU driver. Happened to me on several of my PCs. Fixed it by installing the latest AMD Drivers from their update site. No other drivers are being updated, just the AMD GPU driver.

My RX 480 is running the Pro GPU driver instead of the Game driver & didn't get the update from MS.

I wonder if there might have been a security issue with an older AMD Game driver & MS sent this out as a Security update rather than a Driver update.

 

[Pepi93]

Yeah, I have everything turned off, toggled off but I think I found a way to avoid the drivers breaking. Too soon to tell but I will post if it happens again. Basically, I was using the ACER provided chipset/gpu driver for my notebook. This didn't work bc windows update found a newer version. So I believe and installed over it breaking the driver.

I used revo to uninstall everything and then amd clean up utility in safe mode to remove the left overs.

After I installed the AMD provided drivers (from September) and WU still "found" and tried to install a driver but failed and I got the error which I looked up and microsoft said, this error happens when windows is trying to install something that's already there or when it tries to replace a newer version.

Following this, I did a windows update troubleshooter repair, did a cold restart and voila the driver that failed to install no longer comes up.

Hope this approach helps others