How to cancel Windows Update?

So once I pressed update in Windows Update, and the progress bar appears and it starts updating. However, it got stuck in "Preparing Update Installation". I cannot press cancel because it says I need to be logged in as administrator which I am, but for some reason it thinks I am not. I tried rebooting the computer but it still stuck at the "preparing update" step.

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Translation: "You must provide system administrator permission", "In order to cancel, you must be logged in as an administrator account, or request a system administrator to cancel."

How can I cancel it and restart it? I am using Windows 8. (Not Windows 8.1)

Answer

Open Command prompt with Elevated privileges

taskkill /im wuauclt.exe /f

This will use taskkill to "Ends one or more tasks or processes" searching for the image name wuauclt.exe which is the windows update process

To check if it's running and for more info about the process you can run

tasklist /v | findstr wuauclt.exe

This will output the authority that called the process so you can understand why you can't touch it with you current privilege level

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