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Windows 10 updates itself pretty often, and usually it takes all of my bandwidth, I can hardly browse the internet or watch youtube.

Usually common programs are able to share bandwidth, but here windows update eats it all and seems to take priority. My downloads can usually peak at 600kB/s, that's not a lot and I'd like to be able to tell windows to not take it all at the same time.

Is that for a computer security reason? I can't remember having this problem with other windows versions.

(using windows home so I don't have gpedit.msc)

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  • Configure Windows 10 to use the other PCs on your network. This will help reduce the number of clients going outside of your network to do that. Outside of that you would have to use a third-party program to control the bandwidth Wiindows Update uses. Like all programs it will download a file as quickly as possible.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Sep 23, 2016 at 14:01
  • @Ramhound: That only works if you have other Windows 10 PCs, not to mention I keep finding articles that one needs to do the opposite... (It's a bit weird to remember that BITS in earlier versions was explicitly written to yield bandwidth as much as possible, and now DoSvc in Windows 10 does the exact opposite.)
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Sep 23, 2016 at 15:44
  • @grawity - Question is specifically about Windows 10 though. So I am not sure how previous versions of Windows are relevant, to a question about Windows 10, and how to limit the bandwidth Windows Update on Windows 10 will use.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Sep 23, 2016 at 15:46

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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There is a way to throttle Windows Update in Windows 10 v1703 or higher (without third party software).

Go to Settings (Win+I) > Update & Security > Advanced options > Delivery Optimization > Advanced Options. You should see this.

Download Settings

Limit how much bandwidth is used for downloading updates in the background.

Turn it on, and set it to something low (I have it set to 25%).

If you want to see how these settings affect your download speeds, go to Settings (Win+I) > Update & Security > Advanced options > Delivery Optimization > Activity monitor.

This fixed my problem with Windows Update, and will hopefully fix yours too.

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  • not sure why this was down-voted.. answers the question perfectly and doesn't rely on third-party software.
    – drudge
    Commented May 3, 2018 at 22:06
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you can use a third party app to manage priority of bandwidth like NetBalance

from the company site it says

NetBalancer is an internet traffic control and monitoring tool designed for Microsoft Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 7, 8 with native x64 support.

With NetBalancer you can:

Set for any process a download and/or upload network priority or limit
Manage priorities and limits for each network adapter separately
Define detailed network traffic rules
Group local network computers and balance their traffic synchronised
Set global traffic limits
Show network traffic in system tray
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1
  • This is only a problem in Windows 10...the one version not supported by this utility!
    – I say Reinstate Monica
    Commented Dec 28, 2017 at 1:51

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