Set Ethernet connection as Metered in Windows 10-To avoid unwanted download of windows updates
Internet service providers can charge by the amount of data used in your computer. That’s called a metered Internet connection. These plans often have a data limit and if that exceeds it mighr incur you to pay some cost of the exceeded data.For some cases,your speed might get slower for the rest of the billing cycle like mine.
If you have a metered Internet connection, setting your network connection to metered in Windows can help you reduce the amount of data you send and receive, and prevent Windows Update from automatically downloading and installing updates.
What happens when you set your connection as metered:
- Windows Update will ask you before downloading the updates.
- You can update Windows Defender definitions directly in Windows Defender/
- Modern apps would require a manual check.
- optional features like Speech pack etc etc cannot be downloaded
In simple ways,you can set your wireless networks as metered-Cellular networks are metered by default and cannot be changed.
Windows provides you changing WiFi as metered from the settings app.
However,in case of Ethernet Windows doesn’t allow to set it as metered simply.We have to modify the registry in order to do so.
How to:
- Open Registry Editor by opening Run dialog box and typing in regedit
- Navigate to the following key :
—->HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindows NTCurrentVersionNetworkListDefaultMediaCost
- You will see the following screen:
Take the ownership of the key:
We first need to take the ownership of the key,we have to change as it is protected by Windows.
Follow these steps:
- Right click DefaultMediaCost and click permissions:
- Click on Advanced in the bottom right:
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Now click on Change against Owner:
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Then Enter your username of the account you are running and windows will automatically convert it into correct format:
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Click OK and check “replace owner on subcontainers and objects”:
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Click OK and OK on screens.
You can get more details from here.
Modify the values
Either do it manually or use the scripts in the last.
- Then as you have taken the permissions,you need to change the value of Ethernet.
- You will see written 0X00000001 against Ethernet.Here,2 means metered, 1 means not metered.
- Right click Ethernet and select modify.Then change the value to 2 to set as metered.
Alternatively you can use these ready made scripts also:
Just open and click yes,you are good to go.