Discord: Disable Forced Updates on Windows

[Brickstin]

Salutations everyone,
 I am sorta new here, I am doing some research for windows computers running Discord and I was trying to learn how to stop Discord from updating and skipping the check to just run the program.
I came across this topic post and found it very interesting:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/disabling-discord-update-checkforced-updates-on-linux/

I am curious how would one would go about doing this same kind of method on a windows OC running windows 7/8/8.1 64bit
I couldn't find a Settings JSON file in the appdata/Local/Discord app folder perhaps it is named differently, or maybe I need to edit an entirely different file/type.

If anyone has any experience or knowledge to share on how to edit a file to make Discord skip update checks let me know.

~Brickstin

[Stray Electron]

  I don't know anything about Discord but the only way that I've been able to stop Abode and several other Windows programs from updating was to find the name of the update server and add it to the Hosts file.

[Brickstin]

That was my first idea to try, I did this and it still causes the discord to not allow me to go beyond the update window and log into Discord.

I had tried blocking this URL that the updater calls for:
https://updates.discord.com/
All this does is cause a indefinite update retry cycle.

[coromonadalix]

you have to block outbound connections on many  executables to be sure   

for some web browsers  you can block their updates,  some work by adding a crafted file   

for windows  you have to block the windows update services   like : https://greatis.com/stopupdates10/   or  others tools


for Discord ...  meh      like the posted infos earlier thread

[abeyer]

Given that it's a bespoke client to a server they control there's a very real chance they'll be blocking old clients if you let it get too far behind.

[radiolistener]

if you want to stop windows update and telemetry spying, you're needs to wipe your windows and install Linux

[soldar]

This takes me back to the days of Win XP when using ZoneAlarm I would block most programs from connecting out and only let the few that needed internet, like mail.

Those days started when Win XP came out and continue to this day as I have several computers running XP. One right here.

I wish there was a similar program for Linux where I could define what programs can go out and which ones cannot.

[golden_labels]

You mean… like Linux itself? The firewall is an inseparable, always running component of the kernel. Unlike with Windows,⁽¹⁾ you never had to install anything.

A more convenient solution, better fitting the purpose, are namespaces and cgroups. Nowadays trivial to use with systemd: Network Accounting and Control.

If you don’t require proper security,⁽²⁾ there are also various weak sandboxing tools: Bubblewrap or Firejail.

⁽¹⁾ Before Windows 10. While the component itself was present in Windows 6 (also 5.2, but only in its final years), it suffered major issues — including no proper ability to deal with outbound traffic.
⁽²⁾ Which was also not provided by WindowsXP “firewalls”.