Windows - Auto Updates/Downloads - Probably Common Knowledge...........

rhodos

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Old news I am sure, but this caught me out this morning...........

I was just checking my PCs network consumption earlier today, using task manager ===> performance monitor ===> networks.
  • To my surprise my PC was consuming 20Mb/s bandwidth.
  • I wasn't downloading anything manually, no browsers open, no torrent clients open
  • I had none of my game launchers open, not xbox, not steam, not Ubi, not EA, not Meta, nothing
  • Nothing at all in the taskbar and nothing I could see in task manager
  • I went to windows update and nothing there either, no downloads, no updates and even on refreshing a check still nothing to be updated

- So whilst there I went to the advanced options where I noted that I had set a 20Mb/s limit on downloads for Windows..... but I wasn't doing any windows downloads, I had just checked..... and even the Microsoft/Xbox games app was completely closed, it wan't minised to my task bar/icon. Nothing......

- So confused and thinking it a waste of time, but keen to get to to the bottom of it, I opened the Xbox app anyway and gues what,,,, it had kicked off a major Halo update download completely silently - no warning, nothing in the task bar, nothing!!! So I killed it and the network usage returned to zero. And then I uninstalled Halo in disgust.

So just a warning. You may think you've killed off all auto downloads (which I hate), but Windows finds a way.

Wouldn't it be good if you could say "no automatic, background downloads, no matter what, except during these times......" And for that to apply to every application on your PC.
 
Set your network to 'metered' and it won't download anything without permission. I had to do that when I had 1Mb ADSL.

Thank the lord fiber came along!
 
Was it the dreaded Delivery Optimisation service running the game update?

Had a weird bug with that, or least I thought it was a bug, until I set my Ethernet connection to metered and added restrictions.

Rural 16Mb broadband unfortunately. Fiber is currently being installed in the lane but won’t be live for a few more months.

Only noticed when my ping massively spiked playing MW2 and I couldn’t understand why.
 
Yes, it appears that the Xbox app can download in the background at the bandwidth specified for Windows update, even if Xbox app is fully closed and not in your taskbar/notification area. Quite intrusive tbh - at least the other launchers give you the option to close them fully, appear the you can never fully close the xbox app.
 

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