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August 8, 2011

Disable Background Windows Update by Disabling BITS

Posted by Sumit In Category:
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. SIMONJanuary 27, 2012 at 2:33 PM

    cant disable BITS telling me access denied

    ReplyDelete
  2. SumitJanuary 28, 2012 at 2:31 PM

    to disable BITS you have administrative privileges.

    ReplyDelete
  3. OmoobaMarch 6, 2013 at 3:29 AM

    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. SumitMarch 7, 2013 at 11:04 AM

    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. AnonymousMay 9, 2013 at 4:34 AM

    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. UnknownMay 9, 2013 at 6:29 PM

    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. prateekOctober 7, 2013 at 10:04 PM

    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

    ReplyDelete
  8. SumitOctober 16, 2013 at 2:15 PM

    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. AnonymousJune 24, 2015 at 9:29 PM

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

      Delete
    2. SumitJuly 1, 2015 at 9:55 PM

      Cheers :)

      Delete
    3. UnknownAugust 4, 2016 at 12:07 PM

      wonderfull solution

      Delete
    4. Kanae KalkulusianaOctober 29, 2017 at 6:59 AM

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

      Delete
    5. UnknownNovember 25, 2018 at 8:14 PM

      Thanks man...

      Delete
  9. AnonymousMay 22, 2014 at 3:04 AM

    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. Semua Ada DisiniAugust 8, 2014 at 7:11 PM

    The BITS run again. Whyyyy?

    ReplyDelete
  11. SumitAugust 9, 2014 at 1:04 AM

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

    ReplyDelete
  12. RyanJanuary 5, 2015 at 1:14 AM

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

    ReplyDelete
  13. AnonymousMarch 18, 2015 at 3:43 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
  14. arjun panipatJune 30, 2015 at 6:04 PM

    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. AnonymousAugust 15, 2015 at 5:36 PM

      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. UnknownMay 23, 2020 at 4:54 PM

      what is first failure???where it is???

      Delete
    3. SumitJuly 19, 2020 at 12:10 AM

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

      There it is.

      Delete
  15. arjun panipatSeptember 4, 2015 at 1:33 PM

    WELCOME ALL OF YOU

    ReplyDelete
  16. Myo Zay OoOctober 13, 2015 at 4:20 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
  17. chathuranga ariyachandraJune 27, 2016 at 5:08 PM

    thanks broo. worked it perfectly

    ReplyDelete
  18. WaHaAugust 21, 2016 at 1:19 AM

    Works in Win10 too, thanx a million.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Kwisatz HaderachAugust 31, 2016 at 12:27 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
  20. UnknownMarch 30, 2017 at 7:40 AM

    closed bits but my wifi is still getting loss

    ReplyDelete
  21. AdvanceMay 22, 2017 at 1:23 AM

    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.

    ReplyDelete
  22. AnonymousJuly 21, 2017 at 2:41 AM

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

    ReplyDelete
  23. AnonymousNovember 16, 2017 at 4:11 PM

    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. AnonymousMarch 11, 2019 at 12:11 PM

      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
  24. AnonymousJanuary 7, 2019 at 3:34 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
  25. ChandlerkJune 23, 2019 at 3:36 AM

    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.

    ReplyDelete

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