Discussion

bsder: IIRC, the issue was never how often the DVD-R/W could be rewritten.The issue was the fact that everybody assumed that the DVD-R/W discs had roughly the same lifetime as actual DVDs and that turned out to be woefully incorrect.

grepfru_it: >Windows UpdatesIf you want to stop windows updates, make your internet connection a metered connection. Updates will only be allowed on-demand.The more you know!

tombert: DVD-RWs always seemed like complete magic to me. I had no idea how they worked, or why they worked. I made and wiped DVD-RWs as a teenager dozens of times, because my dad got annoyed that I kept using up all his DVD-R's, so I bought like three DVD-RWs and used them for all my experiments.I don't think I got anywhere near the limits for any of them, as I don't remember getting any faults from them, but they were always cool to me.I was also one of the happy few who had a DVD-RAM drive for my desktop as a teenager; I never really understood why DVD-RAM never caught on, because it seemed to work fine for me, and it was kind of nice not having to wipe the disk to erase stuff.

ocdtrekkie: If you have a Pro edition license most things Windows does are a registry key away. The entire policy branch of the registry is designed to have configuration pushed down from the network like when and how to update, but you can also set all of those keys manually.(Also, no hacking is necessary to set up a Windows Pro install with a local account, just tell it you're going to domain join it.)

avidiax: One hint for the wary: Don't delay feature updates for the maximum allowed in the group policy editor. I couldn't figure out why I was getting forced reboots for updates despite other policies requiring it to ask permission. Turns out that if the update hits the group policy maximum, it forces an update immediately, other policies be damned.So set it to the max - 14 days if you want some time to apply updates at your leisure, and you are wary of non-critical updates.