[sbx320]

>Also, I'd be remiss to not bemoan the ridiculous fact that as a Windows 10 user I am not able to avoid updates if I so choose. These updates that are forced upon me routinely break my games until drivers/games are updated and I'd very much like the ability to only apply them when and if I choose.

You actually can (partially) do that by simply disabling the Windows Update service. The only downside I've experienced thus far is that it also breaks the Windows Store. Apart from that you obviously need to reenable the service when you want to apply the updates. It's not quite ideal since you cannot apply individual (e.g. security) updates, but it works very well to avoid the random updates & included reboots.

[panarky]

I set network connections as "metered" since updates are disabled over metered connections.

When I'm ready to update, I switch to a non-metered connection.

[bluehazed]

This is really the only sane workaround. Unfortunately you have to set wired connections as metered through regedit (afaik).

[jakebasile]

I swear I've tried to do this but it just wouldn't let me. Are you on Home or Pro? I'm perfectly fine disabling/enabling it as that's basically the same action as I used to do: manually update when I want to.