Stop Windows 10 Update Notifications from Interrupting Your Games

I had taken quite the hiatus from Windows gaming while I worked on certification, but got a chance to have some quick Overwatch sessions last night, only to have one of the competitive matches interrupted by a popup that took me out of the game (I was able to alt-tab back in) that stated the following: “Updates Are Available. Required Updates need to be downloaded”.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is normally fine, but when you’re in the middle of something, say a movie, intense game, conference call or presentation, this behaviour is pretty awful.

No fear, however, there’s a fix, though definitely not obvious. Let’s disable the Windows 10 update notification. We’ll be using the cmd.exe tool in order to run the following script found on StackExchange:

cd /d "%Windir%\System32"
takeown /F MusNotification.exe
icacls MusNotification.exe /deny Everyone:(X)
takeown /F MusNotificationUx.exe
icacls MusNotificationUx.exe /deny Everyone:(X)
rem

This essentially denies the system from running the app itself, which will stop the popup.

In order to undo it:

cd /d "%Windir%\System32"
 icacls MusNotification.exe /remove:d Everyone
 icacls MusNotification.exe /grant Everyone:F
 icacls MusNotification.exe /setowner "NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller"
 icacls MusNotification.exe /remove:g Everyone
 icacls MusNotificationUx.exe /remove:d Everyone
 icacls MusNotificationUx.exe /grant Everyone:F
 icacls MusNotificationUx.exe /setowner "NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller"
 icacls MusNotificationUx.exe /remove:g Everyone
 rem

And there you have it! No more intrusive popups when updates are needed.

Now that we’ve modified this, a quick reminder that if you want regular updates, it may be worth checking for them once in a while.