ipkha
In group policy, you can both stop driver updates and with two other options block auto restarts.
Configure Automatic Updates can revert to download and prompt or just notify.
No auto-restart with logged on users should fix the restarts.

 
Just Notify seems to still work but not "stop driver updates" (This is what I had before this New Graphics Driver this past week)
So you know " download and prompt" +Metered works but you have to install All or None, you cannot select which to install 
I have been testing this for the last 4 days
ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate = 1 is the only way that I have found to Stop the Graphics Driver from being installed or showing up. 

I would rather have a Service Pack to update my Current OS then have to install a New OS as has MS has gone to under Windows 10.
I do not recall or remember ever having a Windows.Old Folder created from installing a Service Pack. Nor Forcing a Video Driver.

SM-71

bcavnaughFYI, AllowCortana location changed
Old Location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search

Without entering it here:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search  if a different login is used, Cortana will be fully functional under that login.  Also, entering it here will cause your "new registry locations" to be automatically created when the machine is restarted.

Correct, I just enter it all of the locations now, as the next update I bet it changes once more.

ipkha
I hear you on that one. I'd prefer to keep the driver updates out of the core WU system, buts that a list cause since they added them. I think even Windows 7 will show them. But in the end, I see the writing on the wall. They don't even note non Security updates anymore, an even more egregious move in my mind. They just combined them into 1 massive update going forward. Honestly, anyone who still cares should drop back to Windows 7 or even move to Linux. At least Linux can update now without rebooting these days.

Anyone have a version / flavor of Linux to recommend for Folding with 9 & 10 series GPUs ?

For me under Linux not enough control over the GPUs under Folding or under Crunching.

Cool GTX

ipkha
I hear you on that one. I'd prefer to keep the driver updates out of the core WU system, buts that a list cause since they added them. I think even Windows 7 will show them. But in the end, I see the writing on the wall. They don't even note non Security updates anymore, an even more egregious move in my mind. They just combined them into 1 massive update going forward. Honestly, anyone who still cares should drop back to Windows 7 or even move to Linux. At least Linux can update now without rebooting these days.

Anyone have a version / flavor of Linux to recommend for Folding with 9 & 10 series GPUs ?

I just setup two machines with Ubuntu 16.04.  So far I have no issues with them.  Just took a little bit for me to figure out how to get things installed.

 
I'm running a GTX 980 in each machine.  I haven't really explored beyond the command "sensors" and "htop".  And right now, those commands only tell me the temperature for the CPU cores and CPU usage.  I have rough idea what the cards are running at for temperature because these machines came from a Windows 7 load set and I was using GPU z.  So I haven't really explored it to hard being able to change the GPU Fan Speeds or anything.  I'm sure down the road I'll explore it more.
 
I do know what you mean for running two cards in the same machine.  I was running two GTX 560 Ti's in a machine and they where pigs on power and created a lot of heat.  If I remember right, the one card that was blocked the most by the second card ran at a temperature above 90 degrees C.  I currently don't run these cards anymore.  The 560s cards just have tunnel fans on them.  
 
I have run the two GTX 980 cards in one machine and got much better results for temperature but, they where also using the ACX 2.0 fans from EVGA.  Power wise, I have changed to a new 1000 watt power supply from EVGA that is much more efficient and now my battery backup doesn't complain anymore every time I started things up.  So that helped too.
 
The 980s are in separate machines because I'm using Dell Machines right now.  Finding a Dell Machine that is either big enough to just hold these giant cards and if so, then one that has a big enough power supply to run it when folding.
 
That is what I know.

bcavnaugh
 
as the next update I bet it changes once more.

At which point I'll just go back to Windows 7

hhherby
Just to shoot out an idea.  If you are trying to stop updates to your Windows 10 computer, have you tried using a wireless card so that way the Wi-Fi section is enabled for your machine in settings under "Network & Internet" and then you can go to "Manage known Networks" and say it is a metered connection?  This is what I do for my mother's computer because she uses the cell network for internet and I didn't want Windows updating every time there is a new push for updates.

Yep this worked for me on win10 home, shortly after the entire OS became unstable and I reinstalled cleanly. So far no issues using the wireless adapter and updates. I had one lying around.

Setting the Meter works well but it will not stop drivers.
Is what it will not give you is a choice of what to install. 

I do not allow them to sleep but I keep my monitors off if I am not on the computer.

378.66  ^WHQL
Game Ready Drivers provide the best possible gaming experience for all major new releases, including Virtual Reality games. Prior to a new title launching, our driver team is working up until the last minute to ensure every performance tweak and bug fix is included for the best gameplay on day-1.
http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/115492/en-us 
Provides the optimal gaming experience for Sniper Elite 4, For Honor, and Halo Wars 2
At least this driver is from NVIDIA and not from Microsoft.
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx?lang=en-us
 
But I am seeing issues with NVIDIA's website today.
I had to go to "Beta and Older Drivers" to download 378.66 today
 
http://www.geforce.com/drivers seems to work ok ATM for Driver 378.66
 

• Game Ready Driver Release Notes (v378.66)
• Control Panel User's Guide

yatz10
i sadly saw 0 mention of folding @ home in any of their documentation, but hopefully something has improved (and i guess not degraded)... 

That @ can cause a pain in the Forums.
You will never see anything from them good or bad about this subject mater.

I noticed that NVidia mentions OpenCL 2.0 (for evaluation) for the first time in the Release Notes (on page 10) of Driver 378.66:
 

OpenCL 2.0
 
New features in OpenCL 2.0 are available in the driver for evaluation purposes only.
The following are the features as well as a description of known issues in the driver:
 
Device side enqueue:

• The current implementation is limited to 64-bit platforms only.
• OpenCL 2.0 allows kernels to be enqueued with global_work_size larger than the compute capability of the NVIDIA GPU.  The current implementation supports only combinations of global_work_size and local_work_size that are within the compute capability of the NVIDIA GPU.  
• The maximum supported CUDA grid and block size of NVIDIA GPUs is available at  http://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cuda-c-programming-guide/index.html#computecapabilities.  For a given grid dimension, the global_work_size can be determined by CUDA grid size x CUDA block size.
• For executing kernels (whether from the host or the device), OpenCL 2.0 supports non-uniform ND-ranges where global_work_size does not need to be divisible by the local_work_size.  This capability is not yet supported in the NVIDIA driver, and therefore not supported for device side kernel enqueues.

Shared virtual memory:

• The current implementation of shared virtual memory is limited to 64-bit platforms only.

Been waiting for OpenCL 2.0 for a long time. Thanks for Pointing this out.
BOINC GPU Projects May have issues with this change but AMD have been using OpenCL 2.0 or OpenCL 2.1 for a long time now.
Maybe I will test this on my GTX 980 Cards to see what happens.
I wonder if their is a way to test this?