How to stop PC downloading stuff in background (when using PAYG internet)

westernman

westernman

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I have turned off Windows update, but my PC still wants to download stuff without asking me. Most programs seem to just go off on their own whenever they want to, to download 100's of Megabytes of stuff I don't want.

Is there a global "don't download" button somewhere????
 
I use CCCleaner (which is free).

In Tools there is an option to list the Start Up sequence. In this you will see lots of "update" command lines.

Not been "techy" I just disabled them. (You can delete them). PC now boots faster and doesn't automatically download updates etc.
 
michaelchapman said:
I have turned off Windows update, but my PC still wants to download stuff without asking me. Most programs seem to just go off on their own whenever they want to, to download 100's of Megabytes of stuff I don't want.

Is there a global "don't download" button somewhere????
Click to expand...

Hmm.....Why don't you want the up-dates?

Just wondering as we like and encourage any up-dates.

Peter
 
2nd_apprentice said:
Judging from the title he's concerned about his data allowance.
What version of Windows are we talking about?
Click to expand...

Yep. I use 1 GB data allowance when on the boat. I am using Windows 7 Home Premium.
This is plenty for emails, grib files and the odd skype call etc.

But not enough to download updates to everything - as I found out to my cost once.
And very inconvenient it was too - no way to add allowance via internet, I had to find a shop which could do it for me at a remote anchorage in the middle of nowhere......
 
For Windows Update itself, set it to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them"

Others off the top of my head would include your anti-virus, Skype, Firefox, Thunderbird & I'm sure there are others. I'm pretty sure that for all these you have a level of control over whether they automatically update or you have to rremember to check every so often when you have a WiFi link.

I've never found a magic button to do all this for me. Other things to do are close things like Skype, Facebook, some weather web sites (IlMeteo for example) when not in use as they have automatic refreshes which again burns your data allowance. Also think about an AdBlocker for your browser, a test I did a couple of months ago showed that the ads on YBW added a 30% payload to data downloads - extrapolate that across all your interactions and its worth doing!
 
Open the Windows Resource Monitor, you'll find it under Administrative Tools in the Control Panel. Click on the bar labelled Network Activity to expand that field and you will see a list of all the processes using the network (upload and download). The Send and Receive bytes at the right will show you who is doing downloads, if you click on Receive it will sort them with those doing the biggest downloads at the top.

This will probably help you figure out what programs are doing all these downloads, you can the use Ccleaner as has been suggested (or something similar) to stop those applications from starting with Windows.

Alternatively you could open Windows Firewall (or whatever firewall you use) and uncheck (ie. disallow) all except those few essential applications (like email and your browser etc.). Then your firewall will block all these download attempts. If you later discover that some applications need to do downloads you can allow them through your firewall.
 
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