For anyone who wants to do this, use Kill Windows Update. It's simple. and it works. There's several million reasons why conventional wisdom demands that you NOT do it, but I don't give a fuck and if you don't either, then this program is for you.
At this point I just accept that my windows desktop is going to reboot itself and update itself every fucking night. I used to be able to leave it on for months at a time only rebooting when I felt like it and had prepared all of my open projects to be rebooted.
Now I do those projects on my Linux PC, which has to be a separate PC now because the windows updates completely screw up dual booting. Microsoft is such a shit show, I would probably only turn on that PC on the weekends except I need Windows for work.
I never shut down or restart my computer. Then some mornings I find that Windows decided to automatically restart my computer anyway. I lost a lot of unsaved notes that way.
You're the reason Microsoft has to force it on the rest of us.
Everyone would still be able to shut down without updating, if people actually rebooted once in a while when Windows asked. Instead of leaving it in a perpetual sleep cycle of multiple years, and then blaming Microsoft when things go tits up.
At least the Pro version is still able to do so, since then the user can blame the IT department instead.
I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, philosophically, the user should be in charge of their PC, and updates should happen at a time of their choosing.
On the other hand, people are idiots. Especially the type of people who think they know everything but in reality don't. The type that will search for registry hacks or scripts that disable updates, and proceed to live without any security patches, putting not only their own system/data at risk, but others too.
It's probably a necessary evil that MS forces security patches on users.
What isn't so forgivable is them pushing all the other crap on people, or why the updates take so fucking long on shutdown/startup. That's what they need to improve. Far fewer people would care if a reboot after an update was imperceptibly different to any normal startup, like it is on Linux.
MS is a $3tn company. They can achieve this if they want to, but they see spending money on Windows as a waste of money - why improve something when you've already cornered the market? It doesn't benefit them. It doesn't make them more money. Windows is dominant either way, they get their licensing fees either way. Improving Windows damages Microsoft.
People who shutdown their desktop computer everytime they're done using it are so bizarre to me. Why? What are you trying to protect? I only reboot when updates are needed and otherwise my computer is on 24/7. Been doing this since ~2004 and have never had an issue.
Edit: I'm not saying you're wrong if you shutdown everytime. I'm just saying it's weird to me because it hasn't been necessary since the mid 2000's or probably earlier.