In order to stay protected against latest vulnerabilities found in the Microsoft Windows and other software like Java, Adobe Flash etc., you have to keep them up-to-date by installing latest versions of software and available patches. But sometimes these software updaters are very annoying and start downloading the updates when you are in the middle of something important. If you want to toggle on or off the software updates for them, then you can make use of the free UpdateFreezer program.
UpdateFreezer is a Windows application that can enable or disable updates for many of the third party software programs in addition to Microsoft Windows itself. The UpdateFreezer is available both in form of an installer and as a portable application. After the installation, you can run it from its desktop shortcut. If you are using the portable edition, then extract the contents of the ZIP file to a folder and run UpdateFreezer.cmd from there.
The UpdateFreezer window shows a list of supported software updaters along with their status (enabled or disabled). You can click on the Enabled for a software updater to enable it. Similarly, you have to click on the Disabled button to disable it. Some of the updaters have many other options other than these two basic ones. For example, the Skype updater can be set to download and install only major updates.
If you want to disable all the updaters at once, then you can click on the Disable All button at the top of the window. Later when you want to toggle them all back to the enabled (or previous) state, you can click on the Restore All button to switch them back on.
The UpdateFreezer application is a great way to quickly enable or disable software update services for Windows and many other third party programs. It supports the software updaters for Apple Software (like iTunes, Safari etc.), Mozilla Firefox, Adobe Flash, Adobe Acrobat, Adobe PDF Reader, Google programs (like Chrome browser, IME tools etc.), Oracle Java, Skype and Microsoft Windows.
You can download UpdateFreezer from http://www.updatefreezer.org/.