This workaround seems to have hit a roadblock. Bought a new computer, set everything up and then used the same STABLE TWS Installation file that I'd used on my 2 older computers (Stable 10.12.2x), but before launching TWS for the first time made the identical vmoptions file edit that had worked on my 2 older computers to prevent the auto-update. TWS didn't update itself (good), but after I submitted my login credentials, I got the following error popup: Tried it on another new-ish computer and the identical thing happened. Can't figure this out for the life of me. The exact same workaround that worked on 3 previous computers did not work on 2 newer ones. I'm not even sure what the error message means -- IB KnowledgeBase has an article about it, but none of the suggested causes seem to apply to me. I've compared every setting I can think of between the computers on which this workaround works, and the new one on which it doesn't. Same version of W10, Excel, TWS, TWS API, Java, everything...any ideas?
Why not use a standalone version now that you understand the issues? IB sort of supports older versions but at some point cuts them off and forces an upgrade.
If you trust me you can download standalone 1012.2v here. I download the current standalone version once in a while just in case.