Disable "Automatically check for updates for SQL Server Management Studio"

You may have seen that SQL Server Management Studio 2017 automatically bubbles and asks for updates. But your users do not have permission to install updates and you maintain updates via WSUS. SQL Server Management Studio 17.x is available via WSUS.

Microsoft has for unknown reasons moved this setting into HKEY_CURRENT_USER. How stupid is this... Software is deployed per machine and not per user. Software is only deployed by idiots per user.

Now you have two options:

1. Walk to every users and uncheck the Tools > Check for Updates > Automatically check for updates for SQL Server Management Studio setting. Not really an enterprise solution.
   

   

2. Create a per User Group Policy and set the registry key. The value True (Default) enables and False disables the update notification. Since Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio v18.7.1 (Build 15.0.18358.0) Microsoft seems to have changed the registry key to "18.0_IsoShell" and the previous "14.0" key can be removed. The previous one is shown here for documentation reasons only.

   Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
    
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SQL Server Management Studio\14.0\UpdateChecker]
   "Enabled"="False"

   Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
    
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SQL Server Management Studio\18.0_IsoShell\UpdateChecker]
   "Enabled"="False"