Here's the little-known bottom line, direct from Microsoft via https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12373/windows-update-faq. If you use any of the built in Windows tools to "stop" auto-updates they will eventually fail.
In addition, even if you have used gpedit, forcibly stopped the process, tricked it into thinking you're on a metered connection, etc...MS will still silently push what they deem to be critical updates onto your computer using some vehicle other than the standard update process. I haven't been able to figure out exactly how yet. These mini-updates have never caused me problems with my mining, however they occasionally cause the usual windows boot partition to become non-bootable (presumably because of some of the other steps I've taken to neuter windows updates) until I manually select the windows partition from bios and it finishes the ninja update. I'm assuming these are patching major vulnerabilities they've discovered (which would explain why they're never mentioned) so I doubt I would stop them even if I figured out how...but it would be nice to have the choice.
In addition, even if you have used gpedit, forcibly stopped the process, tricked it into thinking you're on a metered connection, etc...MS will still silently push what they deem to be critical updates onto your computer using some vehicle other than the standard update process. I haven't been able to figure out exactly how yet. These mini-updates have never caused me problems with my mining, however they occasionally cause the usual windows boot partition to become non-bootable (presumably because of some of the other steps I've taken to neuter windows updates) until I manually select the windows partition from bios and it finishes the ninja update. I'm assuming these are patching major vulnerabilities they've discovered (which would explain why they're never mentioned) so I doubt I would stop them even if I figured out how...but it would be nice to have the choice.