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Tech Tip of the Week: Prevent Windows Update From Automatically Restarting Your PC
In many cases this isn't a major deal. However, it can be frustrating if you step away from a work session and come back to a freshly rebooted system. You might also be downloading a large file or letting a lengthy operation run while away from your PC, expecting it to be finished upon return.
Fortunately there are various workarounds available. Today we will mention a few that have been tested to work in XP, Vista and Windows 7 systems.
Read our Tech Tip of the Week.
User Comments: 22
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Captain828 said:
Great tip! I was actually installing an update when I saw the guide lol
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Very handy. This very 'feature' is the reason I only let Windows Update notify me when updates are available. I hate when my bandwidth is all of a sudden eaten up by Windows Update when I don't tell it to run, and the automatic restart is even more annoying.
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I don't usually mind the bandwidth issue, so I just set mine to download updates but let me choose when to install.
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I set Windows to download but not install updates. This way I have full control over when they'll be installed, which is typically when I can afford to do a reboot.
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ET3D said:
I set Windows to download but not install updates. This way I have full control over when they'll be installed, which is typically when I can afford to do a reboot.
Yeah, that is typically what i do as well. I think this probably should have been included in the article as option as well.
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i have never had a problem with this. i doesn't restart until you click on restart. otherwise it hangs there waiting for you to tell it what to do. that box is just a reminder.
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tengeta said:
This is why I set up a Windows Domain server in my house. It forces all kinds of settings that knock these annoying things right out of the way as soon as I add a new system to the domain. Plus I'm a big fan of universal accounts.
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Cool, someone told me this tip before in passing, thanks for making it into an article. I'd definitely remember it more now.
tengeta said:This is why I set up a Windows Domain server in my house. It forces all kinds of settings that knock these annoying things right out of the way as soon as I add a new system to the domain. Plus I'm a big fan of universal accounts.
I should start setting one up too, sounds like a good workaround.
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Sometimes we see ourselves in the middle of so many tweaks and tips we got lost.
Just restart your system; it won't hurt anybody. And it's good to your system's health.
Greetings!
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Guest said:
Sometimes we see ourselves in the middle of so many tweaks and tips we got lost.
Just restart your system; it won't hurt anybody. And it's good to your system's health.
Greetings!
Obviously you haven't had any users of systems you manage complain about having to restart during the middle of a presentation, church service or other special function. We had this issue at our church where i am one of the IT guys where we had set the updates to run on Friday, but no one was using the computers between Friday and Sunday morning, so by the time they booted them, and windows was done downloading updates and wanted to restart they were in the middle of something important (like checking kids into the nursery or doing worship team practice). Needless to say we learned our lesson and made some changes to make sure that didn't happen again. :-)
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With all due respect, God bless Windows (and the possibility to turn off automatic restarting)!
Cheers!
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Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you! I've had my windows 7 computer for 2 days now and am in the process of a 100 gig file transfer but Win Update has decided it is time to shut down. I'm sorry, I'm in the middle of the second attempt at the download, updater killed it last time about 1/3 the way through. Now I can sleep without worry.
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That's ok if you're going to be near the computer, but say you leave a large download downloading over night, you're not going to be able to keep clicking 'reset later' so these
work arounds are good for that.
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hw do you do it when you're in school and that you are not the admin?
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My own laptop tells me "access denied" when I try to do the net stop thingy on Windows 7. How do I get access? I should be admin of my own laptop right?
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this was so helpful, I was running an intensive program overnight and the automatic update would have messed the whole thing up. didn't want to have to stay up to say postpone every 4 hours haha. thanks a lot
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Talk about keeping a old thread alive. Two postings a year is doing the job.
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Three comments a year now! I've had this happen many times - thanks for the article. Very easy to follow your instructions. So presumably next time a box will pop up on the screen announcing that updates have been installed and asking whether I want to reboot the PC? I hope I don't have to go looking somewhere within the computer for that, as I'll no doubt forget to do so regularly...
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THANK-YOU for being found first in google search, and for the tip on
Prevent Windows Update From Automatically Restarting Your PC.
it has been annoying me for years on my old XP machine many Sunday mornings....wake up to a blank desktop :-( ............I finally took the few minutes to see how to disable it.
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I haven't tried this out yet, but I have a cunning plan.
I am running XP SP3 as a "Home User" so I suspect that the command
net stop "automatic updates"
will be what I need to use. However, I don't want to have to remember to type it in every time I start the computer, so I am going to put it into an AUTOEXEC.BAT
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I haven't tried this out yet, but I have a cunning plan.I can't speak for whether the command will work. However "automatic updates" is a Windows feature. The only way to turn on or off Windows features is to do so while Windows is running. If you added the command to autoexec.bat and autoexec.bat did load during boot, the lines would be executed before Windows starts to load. In essence you would not be changing anything by adding lines to autoexec.bat, that require Windows to be running. If anything you would be best off to do so through startup entries, or turn off automatic updates the correct way through Windows Update Settings.
I am running XP SP3 as a "Home User" so I suspect that the command
net stop "automatic updates"
will be what I need to use. However, I don't want to have to remember to type it in every time I start the computer, so I am going to put it into an AUTOEXEC.BAT
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I haven't tried this out yet, but I have a cunning plan."A little knowledge is a dangerous thing". Hence I am grateful I know little to nothing about batch files.
I am running XP SP3 as a "Home User" so I suspect that the command
net stop "automatic updates"
will be what I need to use. However, I don't want to have to remember to type it in every time I start the computer, so I am going to put it into an AUTOEXEC.BAT
That said, on one hand I suppose it's useful to be able to thwart Windows from restarting after an update. OTOH, I want the machine to restart and be done with it.
Besides, the first thing included in any program's installation instructions is this, "close any other running applications before trying to install this program"! I extrapolate that to mean Windows update is an "install", and work from there.
I've always accepted that as sage advice. Ergo, I boot up to an update session, with no other purpose in mind but to update Windows. Any of my updates are hand picked, after reading the description.
So, set the Windows Update adviser at, "notify me when updates are available".
Pick the updates you want or need.
Download the updates, let Windows do its install thing, and reboot.
That way, there's "no belts, no pads, and no pins", and no "tempest in a teapot" either.
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