Background Windows Update: how to stop it from ruining your game sessions

Windows Update downloads and installs updates in the background. During a competitive match, this can spike your disk I/O, saturate your network connection, and trigger sudden reboots.

Prevent update downloads during gaming

The most reliable method is Active Hours — tell Windows when you're typically using the PC, and it won't restart during that window:

Settings → Windows Update → Advanced options → Active Hours → set to cover your gaming hours.

Bandwidth throttling

Windows Update can be limited to a percentage of your bandwidth:

Settings → Windows Update → Advanced options → Delivery Optimization → Advanced options → set absolute limits for download/upload.

Disable background delivery optimization

Delivery Optimization lets your PC upload Windows updates to other PCs on the internet. Disable this completely:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DeliveryOptimization
DODownloadMode = 0

Pause updates temporarily

Before an important session:
Settings → Windows Update → Pause updates → 1-5 weeks

Update-related services to stop manually if needed

net stop wuauserv      # Windows Update
net stop bits          # Background Intelligent Transfer (downloads updates)
net stop dosvc         # Delivery Optimization

These restart on reboot, so this is a session-level fix only.

IzanagiOP disables Delivery Optimization and sets bandwidth limits permanently. It doesn't disable Windows Update itself — security patches matter. https://terweb.lt/