So what I have done after this stupid thing driving me crazy for weeks, is to disable the Windows Update remediation service - in other words the service designesd to stop you stopping updates.
services.png You have insufficient rights to see the content.
To do this I had to change the permissions in the registry.
i am not advocating this, just explaining what I have done.
Firstly I went into the registry and changed the permission on WAASMedicSvc under HKEY Local Machine > system > CurrentControlSet\Services\WaaSMedicSvc
So I opened regedit.exe:
regedit.png You have insufficient rights to see the content.
Then I right clicked the key (the folder) and choose permissions, and then clicked advanced to get into the next screen.
permission.png You have insufficient rights to see the content.
Here I remove inheritance and forced admin to have permission over the key and subkeys
this allowed me to change the valuse of the Start string to 4 for disabled
Now I am hoping that this stupid computer will not try any more updates and interrupt my downloads.