For the last several years, Quickbooks regularly has problems turning off automatic upgrades. With single user systems installed on a workstation, this is not a problem. However, in a network environment (where each client must be upgraded at the same time), or on a Windows Terminal Server where the user may not have permission to restart the server, it is better for IT to perform this manually, on a schedule (monthly seems to be appropriate). A discussion from several years ago is located on the Intuit discussion site

If your QB install is in automatic update mode, and you can not turn it off (Help | Update Quickbooks Desktop), you can do this manually.

1. Close all copies of Intuit Quickbooks
2. go to C:\ProgramData\Intuit\NameOfQBInstall\Components\QBUpdate
   1. NOTE: ProgramData (no space) does not show up in normal listings, so you must manually enter the path
   2. NameOfQBInstall depends on the version of Quickbooks installed. An example would be QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 24.0. Recommend you go into c:\ProgramData\Intuit and see what is there.
3. Find the file qbchan.dat
   1. Open with Notepad (right click, Open With)
   2. About line 4, there is the entry

      BackgroundEnabled=1

   3. Change the 1 to 0
   4. Save the file
4. Open Quickbooks
5. Help | Update Quickbooks Desktop
6. Verify Automatic Updates is off

When performing this task on QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 24.0, the Qbchan.dat file had multiple entries for background enabled. I changed them all to 0's (definitely after making a copy of the file) and will see what happens.

There are also reports that the service QBUpdateMonitorService needs to be disabled, which I did. Again, this is still being tested.

1. Open Services (services.msc)
2. Find QBUpdateMonitorService
3. Right click and select Properties
4. Stop the service
5. Set Startup to Disabled
6. Save your work

For another solution, visit https://bigredconsulting.com/forced-quickbooks-patches/. In there, he disables the Quickbooks Download Folder. I'd assume you would disable it for anyone but a Systems Administrator. This solution has not been verified

• https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/other-questions/quickbooks-desktop-automatic-update-no-option-greyed-out/00/462657
• https://bigredconsulting.com/forced-quickbooks-patches/