What is UsoClient.exe in Windows 11/10

If you get a UsoClient.exe CMD popup every time you start Windows 11/10, then this post will answer a few of your questions. Is Uso Client a virus or system process? Well, actually since the last few weeks I used to see a command prompt window snap open and shut immediately every time I booted my Windows computer. But it was only yesterday, that the window stayed open long enough for me to note down its name, but not long enough for me to take a screenshot.

Fix UsoClient.exe popup in Windows 11/10

If you too are noticing this on your laptop, here are a few things you may want to know.

USO stands for Update Session Orchestrator. The usoclient.exe file or the Windows Update Orchestrator, is located in the System32 folder. If you open this folder location and right-click on it and select Properties, you will see that it is a Microsoft Windows Operating System process 0f size 19.5 KB. usoclient.exe and its related processes & files like usocoreworker.exe, usoapi.dll, usocoreps.dll and usosvc.dll are used by Windows 10 to check for, download and install Windows Updates; they do the job that wuauclt.exe once did.

VirusTotal & Jotti scans find this file C:\Windows\System32\usoclient.exe to be completely clean.

If you find a file with this name in any other folder, it could well be a virus and you may want to run your anti-virus software scan, to be sure.

If you open Task Scheduler and check the scheduled tasks at Microsoft > Windows > UpdateOrchestrator, you will find mention of this process. The scheduled tasks associated with it, It notifies you of these events using a process called MusNotification.exe.

The Triggers for this task to run could be One Time, At system startup, Custom Trigger or On an event – and it performs a scheduled Windows Update scan.

UsoClient commands

The following are the command you can run in an elevated command prompt:

usoclient.exe StartScan

usoclient.exe StartDownload

usoclient.exe StartInstall

usoclient.exe RefreshSettings

usoclient.exe ResumeUpdate

usoclient.exe ScanInstallWait

usoclient.exe StartInteractiveScan

usoclient.exe RestartDevice

How to disable UsoClient.exe

To disable UsoClient.exe, you may open Task Schedular, in the left pane, go to Microsoft > Windows. Here, in the left pane, locate and click on UpdateOrchestrator. Now, in the middle pane, you will see a task named Schedule Scan. Right-click on it and then click on Disable. You will also see the Disable option in the right pane under Actions.

Restart your computer and check.

In earlier Windows versions, you could disable it using your Group Policy Editor and changing the setting for:

Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Windows Update

You had to Enable the No auto restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations setting.

However, this is now clubbed into the Legacy Policies folder as it is no longer supported on Windows 11/10 and later.

You can, however, try using the Windows Registry and see if it works.

Open REGEDIT and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

Here create a new DWORD 32-Bit value, name it  NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers and give it a value 1 to disable auto reboot.

In any case, seeing a CMD window popup on every boot is not a good user experience, and I really have no idea why it should be happening on one of my Windows laptops and not the other 3-4 computers.

Those who may still be concerned may want to check your firewall and router logs for the connection requests it makes.

Feel free to add any additional information or feedback about this.