AskWoody has published AKB6000021, a new guide aimed squarely at the Windows 11 Update Settings you can reach through Windows’ own built-in controls. Instead of pointing you at a third-party tweak, the article walks through the native options Microsoft ships in the Settings app, plus the small diagnostic tools that sit alongside them.
The guide is built for anyone who wants to understand exactly what each toggle does, and how to use those controls to pause, schedule, or selectively hide updates. Screenshots are included at the bottom of the post so you can see the real menus as they appear in a fresh Windows 11 install.
What the guide covers
At its core, AKB6000021 is a reference document. It breaks the Windows Update controls into clear sections, starting with the terminology you’ll encounter the moment you open the Advanced Options page. Words like “Active Hours,” “pause updates,” and “delivery optimization” each carry a specific meaning, and the guide takes time to define them before you touch any sliders.
From there it moves on to the tools that aren’t quite as obvious. Two of the most useful get dedicated links and full explanation in the post: the Enablement Packages and the wushowhide.diagcab utility. Both are the kind of thing most users have seen but never fully understood.
Section 1: Windows Update terminology
The first section is all about language, and that matters more than you might expect. Windows Update has its own vocabulary, and a misread label can lead you to change a setting you didn’t intend to. The article lays out what each term means before you start adjusting anything.
Take “Active Hours,” for instance. That’s the window Windows assumes you’re actually using the PC, so it avoids scheduling a restart during that time. “Pause updates” gives you a fixed number of days to hold back both feature and quality updates. The guide also covers the newer controls that arrived in later builds, such as the downtime schedule and the restart-notification options, so you know what’s available on your version.
It also explains Delivery Optimization, the setting that lets your PC share update files with other machines on your LAN or out on the network to save bandwidth, and the Windows Insider Program enrollment options. Understanding these distinctions is the whole point: the section turns a menu that looks like a wall of switches into a set of deliberate choices.
Enablement Packages and wushowhide.diagcab
These two tools are where the guide becomes genuinely practical. The wushowhide.diagcab file is a legacy Microsoft diagnostic utility dating back to Windows 8, and it still works in Windows 11. Its job is to let you hide or show specific quality updates — something the modern Settings app doesn’t always make easy to do. It’s the tool power users reach for when a given build breaks something they rely on.
Enablement Packages are a different category entirely. These are small optional-feature installers, sometimes called “MUM” files, that turn on capabilities Windows ships but doesn’t fully activate until you need them. Think of features like Hyper-V or Windows Sandbox that appear in your edition but stay dormant until enabled. The guide links to them so readers can find the right package for their specific edition and version.
What this means for you
For the everyday Windows 11 user, this guide answers a question many people have quietly wondered about: how much control do you actually have over when and what gets installed? The short answer is yes — the built-in controls are real, and the extra tools fill in the gaps the Settings app leaves open.
If you’ve ever been caught out by a surprise restart, or watched a feature update land at an awkward time, the terminology section alone is worth reading. It turns confusion into intention.
That said, it’s worth being clear about limits. The native controls let you pause and schedule, but they don’t quite let you “lock out” a rollout the way some third-party utilities claim to. The wushowhide.diagcab tool gets you closer to that level of control, but it’s a manual, per-update action rather than a blanket setting.
For those running a managed fleet, the picture is a little different. Enterprise environments typically take update control away from the individual via Group Policy, WSUS, or Intune, so the personal toggles here matter most for Home, Pro, and standard editions where you hold the controls.
How to get the guide
The article lives at AskWoody under the identifier AKB6000021. It’s structured as a text guide with screenshots at the bottom, so you can read it on any device and then open the matching menus on your own machine.
Once you’ve read through it, the practical step is simple. Open Settings → Windows Update and explore the Advanced Options page with the context the guide gives you. The wushowhide.diagcab tool, in particular, is worth a look if you want finer control over individual quality updates.
Source: AskWoody
Over to you: Do you plan to rely on the built-in pause-and-schedule controls, or will you reach for wushowhide.diagcab when a build misbehaves?
