Prevent a windows update from ever installing

Question

I have downgraded my Skype from version 6.14 to 5.8 but windows keeps trying to run the upgrade back to 6.11 (a version that doest even work...). So I usually can keep 5.8 for a few days and suddenly when I shut down my computer it installs an update and the next morning I'm back to Skype 6.11.

I have tried setting 'Hide update' in the update manager, removed the updater.exe from the skype folder and turned off automatic updates in Skype, but it doesn't prevent the upgrade.

Is there a way to permanently ignore an update and make sure it never gets installed?

Answer 1

Sign in to Skype.
In the menu bar, select Tools > Options....
In the Advanced tab, select Automatic updates.
Click Turn off automatic updates.
Click Save.

Source (currently has links to Windows 8 and Mac instructions too)

Or, block the updates in your firewall by blocking 204.9.163.247 and 204.9.163.158.

Or try this registry hack:

Open Registry Editor (Start → Run, type regedit.exe)
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Policies
Create a new key named «Skype» and a new subkey of it named «Phone»
You can check that you’re in the right place by looking at the status bar – it must say
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Skype\Phone
Finally, create a new DWord Value named «DisableVersionCheck» and with the value 1 (Base radiogroup can be set to any choice)

Or update the hosts file

Open Windows Notepad or any equivalently simple editor (not MS Word or similar)
Click File → Open and type the following path: \windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (don’t miss the leading backslash)
– then click Open
You should now have a file opened; add the following line to its end and save it (changes should be in effect immediately but you might want to restart to make sure):

204.9.163.158 127.0.0.1
204.9.163.247 127.0.0.1

The above blocks access to Skype’s update server by mapping its IP to your local machine (which of course won’t respond to its update requests).

Skype gets updates from 204.9.163.XXX subnetwork which they own entirely according to MaxMind. Sometimes they change the exact server IP (XXX) like it was in 2012.

Source for hosts and registry hack