How to stop windows updates, they have wiped my laptop twice and I don't want it to happen again.

[Alan72]

There is not enough space to install the updates, space cannot be created, there is very little stuff on the machine itself - all on usb sticks or sd card. Temp files will not delete, tried an external drive to update befors but it still froze up and had to be reset.

[IT_WinSec · Accepted solution]

Hi there @Alan72

Welcome back to the HP Support Community. Happy Holidays !

I feel for you. Fortunately, there are couple of free utilities which may help you stop/disable Windows 10 constrant updates. You can give them a try:

1) https://www.trishtech.com/2018/04/stopupdates10-tool-to-stop-windows-10-updates/

or

2) https://www.novirusthanks.org/products/win-update-stop/

[IT_WinSec]

Here are other options to clean up some space without reinstalling Windows.

Make sure you also run Disk Clean up as administrator  to clean up leftovers of old updates.

• Click on Start, type cleanmgr.exe
• Right click the Disk Clean up icon which appears and choose to run it as Administrator
• Select all available options
• Delete these temporary files and leftovers

Disk Clean up tutorial >> https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/3012-open-use-disk-cleanup-windows-10-a.html

Make sure you go to File Explorer (Computer) and navigate to C:\Windows\Software Distribution\Download\

Select all inside this folder and delete it.

Remove unneeded and temporary files. Download and run CCLeaner (from Piriform) with the extra options checked. Here are instructions

>> http://www.howtogeek.com/113382/how-to-use-ccleaner-like-a-pro-9-tips-tricks/

>> http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download/portable

Empty/purge your Recycle bin