PolicyPlus VS Shutdown-Guard

Let's begin by setting things up: use the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) or Policy Plus (if the Group Policy Editor isn't available). Go to "Computer configuration > Administrative Templates > System" and double-click the "Specify settings for optional component installation and component repair" entry. Then, set it to "Enabled" and specify a valid source.

Cough. Though, I see no reason to run Windows 11 Home over Windows 10 Pro if you unless you really like the Windows 11 UI.

It is actually possible to enable group policy editing on non-Pro versions of Windows. There's a FOSS program called Policy Plus that will let you change it, though with less functionality if you don't want to resort to command line shenanigans.

If you don't have access to group policy editor, give Policy Plus a try. It's an open source alternative for the editor that works on Home edition as well.

With this being said, under the hood, the guts of the group policy framework are still fully intact on the other Windows editions. You can't use Microsoft's fancypants editor to control it, but they can't stop you from using a third-party editor like PolicyPlus.

In Windows Pro, use Group Policy (Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update) or for Windows Home read over and consider Policy Plus ( https://github.com/Fleex255/PolicyPlus -- read the whole README ). Or registries keys as in https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/waas-restart#registry-keys-used-to-manage-restart but it's tricky to get Configure Automatic Updates/AUOptions set with all its options.

Update 1: I downloaded PolicyPlus from github because I wanted to have a look around, and I found out that i can access Administrative Templates and specifically the policies that i need to disable to unblock driver installations. However, all the policies say they are not configured, which is contradicting what Windows is saying. Anyone ever used Policyplus before?

They won't stop everything, but also consider a collection of shutdown stoppers and aborters: https://github.com/stefansundin/shutdownguard ... https://github.com/EEDDRV/Shutdown-Guard ... and others that are not open source like https://udse.de/reboot-blocker/ ...use at your won risk. (also helps for mis-clicks in installers, or badly written installers)