local account

[dlr]

Microsoft are keen on you creating/ using an online account (x...@outlook.com ,x...@hotmail.com etc)  as your log in (it permits syncing between devices and programs etc but also allows them to suck data from your activities)  but you can use a local account. You can have many user accounts , and any of them can be local accounts. It's good security to have them as non administrator accounts too

This is an account that only accesses one user account on that particular computer. What is more you can set up your computer to automatically boot into that account, and even have it password protected. Once that is done you can set any program to autostart, I do this for cumulus Mx
Once that is set up every time your computer reboots (for any reason) it will restart with that account and then open any programs in your start folder

So on my pc I have a local account called weather station  that the computer boots into and once booted it automatically starts cumulus Mx and opens two Brave browser windows: one for ecowitt weather and the other the cumulus dashboard which I use as a weather display



I suggest you Google local account set up and how to automatically start programs

I am on holiday at the moment but I will post some links in a day or so that I found useful

I am a numpty too!, so I have sorted it out over a period of time at others' suggestions

This arrangement will cope with Microsoft updates, even the large half yearly ones, and also when other programs demand a restart. Of course in the latter case you have to initiate the restart (nothing changes until then anyway so your PC can carry on regardless until you tell it to restart)

It won't cope with power cuts, you need a UPS for that

When the big updates are due I set window updates to be delayed until I am present, just in case but the last two big updates happened just fine, seems to take forever though!