Spent the last two hours dealing with what I honestly believe is the worst implementation of OS updates I've ever seen. I don't to know whether to cry or laugh at how comically bad it is. Why couldn't they have just left it like it was in Windows 7. You still had the same automatic update behaviour, but it was straightforward to disable or simply choose what updates you wanted. Whoever in Microsoft thought it was a good idea to deliver automatic driver updates the same way as windows updates needs to be shot.
Anyway, I reinstalled W10 three times now and I think I got it working the way I want. Firstly I disabled device driver updates in advanced system settings and then disabled automatic updates in group policies. When installing Windows I simply left my network cable unplugged. I then installed all the drivers myself and then ran Windows update, at which point it only installed the windows updates.
However, I still think this is broken because the "group policy" fix only disables automatic updates; it says nothing about what updates are to be installed or differentiate between device driver updates and windows updates. As for the "advanced system settings" setting, it doesn't seem to actually do anything. During my second windows install I had that setting disabled, with automatic updates still enabled, yet windows went ahead and updated my graphics drivers.
As far as I can tell, even though I currently have automatic updates disabled now (in group policy) and the option to update device drivers disabled (in advanced system settings), the next time I manually check for updates it will just update everything it can, including my device drivers so long as it deems they are out of date.
It's like Microsoft spent a lot effort to make an awesome underlying OS, but then employed a bunch of monkeys to **** around with the user interface and make everything incredibly awkward for everyone except your ******** grandma.
