In the wake of numerous reports of Windows 10's forced updates causing problems with drivers,
Here's Microsoft's stance on why it released the tool:
In Windows 10 Insider Preview, your device is always kept up to date with the latest features and fixes. Updates are installed automatically, with no need to select which updates are needed or not needed. In rare cases, a specific driver or update might temporarily cause issues with your device, and in this case you will need a way to prevent the problematic driver or update from reinstalling automatically the next time Windows Updates are installed.
Over the last few days, the Internet has been awash with reports of issues with Windows 10's forced updates interfering with other applications, as my colleague Gordon Kelly reported here. Specifically, it's the way it installs drivers, overriding any other driver-based update applications that are the issue, but the way in which Windows 10's updates are automatically installed has also been rather unpopular with enthusiasts.
In the past, Windows Update has been optional and you can select which updates to install. Not so with Windows 10 as by default it installs updates automatically and doesn't allow you to deselect them and this is the same for both security-based updates as well as those for drivers.
Today, though, ZDNet spotted a tool located on an official Microsoft update webpage that allows you block certain Windows updates and prevent the OS from installing them in future. This is a potential lifeline for users that feared this to be a critical flaw with Windows 10, which is due to be released in two days time.
The ability to avoid all driver updates is potentially very useful as there's no guarantee that the ones provided by Microsoft will always be the latest versions and also that they won't cause issues such as those we've seen over the last few days between Windows Update and Nvidia's GeForce Experience.
You can download the tool from this webpage. I'm still investigating it in a pre-release version of Windows 10 - while it doesn't seem to sync up with Windows Update and allow you to view and block updates before they're downloaded, it does allow you see everything that has been installed and to both uninstall it and block future installs too.
By hiding updates, you essentially prevent Windows 10 from installing them and you can see a list of updates you've already 'hidden' using the tool too. You can uninstall updates already via control panel, but the likelihood is that Windows 10 would just download them again. The tool prevents this, although it's obviously not ideal having to use a separate program that's not integrated into the OS itself somehow.
I'd definitely like to see this written into the OS at some point. While the masses will likely benefit from a more spoon-fed update program, meaning more PCs will be up-to-date, for those of us that are a little more hands-on with our systems and prefer to update graphics card drivers, for example, manually, then having the option to abstain from certain updates makes Windows 10 a lot more attractive than it was yesterday.
