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August 8, 2011

Disable Background Windows Update by Disabling BITS

Sometimes you see that you are not downloading anything and not browsing internet but your connection utilization up to maximum.
So the advance users look for the process that is using the connection bandwidth and disable using personal firewall usually as i do.

But sometimes you will see the “Host” process is using maximum bandwidth and when you disable this process all the other applications are not able to communicate over the network as it is the host process.

In Windows 7 and Windows Vista Microsoft introduced the new feature “Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)” this service allow windows to download all files and update that is used by Automatic Windows Update and other Windows components.

BITS uses the idle bandwidth of network connection, when your connection is idle BITS silently download files in background.
Disabling Background Intelligent Transfer Service:

NOTE THAT disabling BITS your system will not able to download essential updates for system and that may cause vulnerability.
  • Open Task Manager  (windows key+R, then type “taskmgr”)
  • Click on service TAB
  • Then click service button at the bottom
  • Look for the “Background Intelligent Transfer Service”
  • Now right click on that choose properties
  • See startup type, choose ‘disabled’, Apply then OK.
If your connection bandwidth still using by unknown processes, please comment here.

38 comments:

  1. cant disable BITS telling me access denied

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  2. to disable BITS you have administrative privileges.

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  3. Ok. What of windows 8? I plug in a modem and without browsing or downloading, it keeps eating my data. WU is set to check & Let me choose whether to downland. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Omooba,
    This may be because of Windows 8 Metro apps. they keep using bandwidth even you are not using them.
    you can disable them or download some firewalls (like Norton 360 which include firewall) to block apps that using data.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I did this a couple of months ago and it worked like a charm. However, today BITS turned itself back on. I disabled and stopped it, but a short time later it started back again. I've done this several times and it doesn't seem to "stick." Any suggestions?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi there,
    Auto enabling of BITS is usually caused by windows update. Try disabling or setting windows update to manual using same process as above.

    ReplyDelete
  7. this problem is sucking my blood, in my country 3g data is hilariously expensive (its only for rich guys) and I dont know why after disabling automatic updates something is downloading , and it has consume my half 1 gb out of 2 gb :( :( :( please help me... i am a poor guy dont have money to buy 3g data. I have disabled BITS but each time it again start

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  8. Hi John
    Do not stop it choose start up type and select disabled.
    also please check the recovery option tab and select "take no action".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ...this is a TRUE solution: set "take no action" everywhere in "Recovery" bookmark. Thanks "Nick" !

      Delete
    2. Very Thanksful to you Nick!!!, great solution....

      Delete
  9. Thanks for this. I almost cried. My expensive mb (internet time is sold in mb quotas in Kenya) was dissappearing in seconds upon connecting.very strange as I have never seen this before. Disabling anything automaticall updating in my win 7 machine didnt help, downloading addons that stop scripts also didnt help. I prayed and God brought me here. Amen

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hi Malik,
    The stepls I've mentioned, please check last one that is "See startup type, choose ‘disabled’, Apply then OK."

    ReplyDelete
  11. I did it and tried but when i restart my PC bits turns back on

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  12. Nice! went from 100% disk usage to 1% :)

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  13. after disabling bits you have to do two more things . that are first disable BITS then go to recovery option click on first faliure and select take no action then second and third select take no action . now come back to the general tab and click on the stop button then apply and ok . BY USING THIS IT WILL STOP 100% BLOCK THE APPS THAT USE UR DATA CONTINUOUS . SOLUTION BY :---- ARJUN PNP PLS THUMBS ON IF IT WORKS

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i did put "take no action" and it worked well in few hours. hope its working forever, BITS is really annoying. thank u for a help

      Delete
    2. what is first failure???where it is???

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    3. Open Services > Find "Background Intelligent Transfer Service" > Right on it and click Properties > Go to Recovery Tab.

      There it is.

      Delete
  14. I did stop BITS. Now I am experiencing lags while playing DOTA over RGC client. Is it right that stopping BITS is the cause?

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  15. Works in Win10 too, thanx a million.

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  16. Works for a few minutes, then comes back up...

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  17. closed bits but my wifi is still getting loss

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  18. it is data hungry soft. take 1.5 GB continuously then stop. don't know what it download and what is the benefit for me. Stop it by run services.msc and then go properties of BITS. and disable . recovery section (first failure ,second failure, subsucuint failure take no action. other wise all data will be vanish in a moment.

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  19. I still have background transfer host running taking a lot of my internet time. HELP! Please!

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  20. Tried everything, nothing worked, this F**** thing keeps turning itself back on and eating up my data. Finally found a trick that worked on a forum after days of searching :

    1)create a new user in your windows with some password
    2)go to services.msc and then to BITS
    3)right click properties and go to the logon tab,select local account and provide the new user name with a wrong password
    4)Go to general tab and in Start up type select disable
    BITS is stoped for ever

    Finally ! what a nightmare. I'm switching to Linux asap

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Genius of 2011 Sumit
      Genius of 2015 Arjun
      Genius of 2017 You

      Hope microsoft doesn't disable this solution. Thanks a lot, Remove months of headache. Need windows because of Unity3D. Hope the hell is over today

      Delete
  21. Dear sir after i have been disable service BITS but my bandwidth still have used

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  22. Disabled, but I have discovered that windows BITS has a second pathway to download updates. It is called "Windows Content". When you open the tree in the task manager, you will find BITs. Not sure how to disable this second path.

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