You could also use an OS that doesn't tend to have dodgy updates that brick your system, such as most Linux distro. Nor force you to update if you don't want to.

Funny how a large company like Microsoft can't figure out QA, but volunteer Linux distros with much less resources can.

(A lot of Windows specific software works in wine these days, Valve's investment into improving it for games have helped for applications too. Not everything, and if you are stuck with such software, yeah that sucks.)