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Disable restart after Windows Automatic Updates
By Michael Pietroforte | 36 Comments | Permalink | Trackback | Previous | NextThe Windows Automatic Updates feature is great, however those nagging reboot reminders can drive you crazy. I can only recommend to turn this off.
Usually, this restart now/restart later pop up appears when I am doing something important or when I have some remote connections open. I also like it if Windows rebooted automatically during my lunch break while several virtual machines are running.
In my view this feature doesn’t bring in extra security. All these pop up windows warning about security issues are more or less useless. People get used to them, and click on them automatically. In this way these pop-ups might even decrease security. If there ever is an important security message, the user will just click away without really reading it because he is trained to do so.
So here is how you can turn off the restart reminder of Windows Update:
- Click Start -> Run
- Enter “gpedit.msc”
- Go to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update
- Double-click on “Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations” “No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Update installation”
- Disable it! Enable it!
- Reboot the computer
You can also change the default setting of “Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations” to remind you once a day, or so if you can still stand these pop-ups. If you want to change this for your whole network, you can use Group Policy. For security reasons, I recommend that all computers should be turned off after work or office hours.
Hey Michael,
I agree the nagging popup is annoying–I hate it myself–but eventually the user will get tired of clicking “restart later” and restart the computer… or do a search online and read your post, which I did.
Now, if they do disable the feature totally as your post mentions, that’s definitely the least secure option: they won’t even know that they have a pending reboot and could end-up waiting for weeks without restarting.
There is an option in the group policy settings to keep the setting enabled, but to decide the interval at which the popup will show up. IMHO, it’s better to leave it enabled and let the popup show up less often than not at all (the maximum setting for this is 1440 minutes or 24 hours)
This popup shows up because files couldn’t be replaced as they are in use. If they are in use, it means this code is loaded and running on the system, which means that the vulnerability is there and loaded in memory. If the vulnerability is critical ans has to do with network operations, that could leaves the machine very vulnerable to attack because even though the update package was run, the update is not installed… That gives a false sense of security.
It’s always better to install and reboot immediately, but if the user is going to choose not to, it’s better to install now and reboot as soon as possible.
Windows Vista will include a restart manager, which will prevent many of those disruptive popups. According to the website (www.windowsvista.com), “When an update applies to a file in use, Windows Vista can save the application’s data, close the application, update the file, and then restart the application.” There is additional information on MSDN.
That said, thank you for the post; this popup was indeed driving me crazy, and I’ve been looking for a way to change this setting for a while. And I’m actually glad there is a way to just change the wait time rather than disabling the feature altogether. I am setting mine to popup every 4 hours because I can’t always reboot when I am in the middle of something with 30 windows opened.
Thanks!
- Sébastien
Sébastien, thanks for the comment. Microsoft introduced this auto-reboot feature because in the US many people don’t turn off their computers at night. This doesn’t only costs energy, but is also a high security risk. You don’t need this auto reboot feature, if you shut down the computer after work. There are very rare cases where one should really reboot immediately, for example, when a new computer worm is spreading over the internet. Most of the time, a reboot is not necessary for security reasons. This way the pop up window reduces security since people become used to clicking it away. When the time comes that a reboot is necessary after an update, they won’t be doing it, anymore.
Great tip to get rid of this annoying pop up. Just wondering why gpupdate /target:computer did not work to avoid reboot!!
Thank you for this tip. The restart your computer popup is a usually a complete waste of time, I know there’s an update pending, but if it’s not urgent, I’ll reboot when I feel like it, especially if I’ve got some important jobs running on my computer!
There is slight technical errors on the message you posted here. And there are two ways you can do this, either enable
1) “Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Windows Update/No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Update installation” in Group Policy
or
2) or create a DWORD value of 1 in regedit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU\NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers.
Please refer to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328010, “How to configure automatic updates by using Group Policy or registry settings”
Chris, thanks for the hint. I changed my post.
YOU MUST KNOW…….
This only applies to XP Pro, and not XP Home edition.
XP Home – even after changing registry key, still pops up the damn message.
The only thing I could think of right after was to Start->Control Panel->Security Center->Automatic Update and then find Automatic Updates at the bottom and switch it to a “less secure” option.
I haven’t tried the other “less secure” option yet, so I guess I will have to wait some time to tell if my current one is ok.
It’s popped up on me while I was doing extremely important stuff that could not be stopped, and man, I wanted to murder whomever decided to put this code in.
[...] Gonna try this solution here, hope it works: http://4sysops.com/archives/disable-restart-after-windows-automatic-updates/ [...]
You gotta reboot to bring it into effect anyways, wtf
XP Home users don’t have gpedit.msc. Fortunately, there is a regedit hack. http://computer-vet.com/weblog/2005/05/20/windows_automatic_reboots.html
It should also have a DWord value called RebootRelaunchTimeout. If it doesn’t, try making one. (Have not tried this with XP Home, but it just might work.) Set this as high as you can.
This doesn’t work.
I enabled this policy last time windows started to nag me, about two weeks ago.
Today, it started to reboot on it’s own once more. I re-checked this policy setting and it is still enabled.
I hate Microsoft.
Courtesy of lifehacker.com:
Works with XP Home!
To stop this service, open [Command Prompt] (Start>Run>cmd>Enter) and type the following command sc stop wuauserv. This will not prevent Automatic Updates from starting at the next boot. So don’t worry, you’ll keep getting Windows updates. Just don’t forget to restart eventually.
Thank you! I’ve been annoyed a lot with automatic 5 min countdowns, which end up being a scattered attempt at wraping up work before my PC kicks me off – how rude! In fact, I just got auto-booted last night about 3AM when I was running a 14 hour report…Can’t Microsoft be intuitive enough to see if the CPU and HDD is kicking to not restart?
1. The Group policy thing will only take effect next time you log in. Same goes for the registry key. Changing either of these things will NOT stop popups that are bugging you right now — it will only stop it happening in future.
2. “net stop wuauserv” will stop the window bugging you NOW. It will NOT affect it happening again.
One last correction: Setting the “Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations” To any value other than “Enabled” with your time between prompts entered causes it to default back to 10 minutes between prompts. Again, setting this to “Disabled” sets it to 10 minutes between prompts instead of getting rid of the prompts altogether.
Latest Link for KB on MS.
“How to configure automatic updates by using Group Policy or registry settings”
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328010/
Thank you very much, this stupid auto reboot already ruined one of my motherboards.. first bios flash failed in windows, and before I could attempt a second the computer rebooted while I was out of the room for a few min.
Thanks this help a lot. I have the PC running Video editing programs over night and wake up to fine it rebooted… sucks.
Excellent post.Thnx
gpedit will change the setting this time round but once you reboot your PC the group policy for your domain will be pushed to the PC by active directory and this setting will revert to what it was before.
Jon, you should talk to the admin managing Group Policy to make this change system wide.
Thanks a lot for the tips.
Yesterday when I am downloading a huge file from ftp site and expect to work on it today. At morning I found my machine got rebooted. Now I need another 10 hours to download it and how could I explain the delay to my customer.
The reboot will drive people crazy and make them hate microsoft.
gpedit.msc only works on XP Pro. to disable in xp home go to control panel, admin tools, services and stop the “automatic updates” service. (dont worry, it will turn back on when you restart)
but you have to do this every time the popup comes up i belvie
Thanks for this!
As a gamer, it gets very annoying, very quickly, to have a full-screen game minimised every 10 minutes when you’re in the middle of something.
THANK YOU Phillip for the sc stop wuauserv thing! Thank you for freeing me from the antics of Mr. Naggy McNaggerson forever!!!
many thanks!!!
thank you, soooooooooo much!!!!
FAIL. First I press the start button, there is no “run” so I type it in the search bar, it pops up so I click it… then I type gpedit.msc but Windows cannot find gpedit.msc
why do people make these fake blogs!? just to waste my time? well you wasted it congrats!
it’s already been said that gpedit.msc is only in xp pro, not xp home. so that’s why you couldn’t find it. so yeah.. it wouldn’t have been a waste of your time if you would have read comments.. so, fail on your part?
I came to this site via a google search too! The restart later has long annoyed; however, my workaround solution (and I don’t know this is applicable for group policy settings – I am an individual user) is to simply download the updates but not install them. Instead, installing automatically through the shut down option with the PC. On the occasions when I install them before shutting down, I used the suggestion by Phillip and it works fine – the beauty of it being that I don’t have to reboot my pc to get it to work.
It does bring in extra security. You have to reboot for the security updates to take effect. If you do not reboot or consider it a “nag” and dismiss it or even set local policy to not even ask you, then you’re in the same place you were before the windows update downloaded and installed the updates: insecure to the new threat(s) it was to have taken care of.
Just reboot and be done with it. Its not a big deal.
No, it is a big deal. One of the above posts mentions a fantastic example. Long running jobs can take any amount of time. Rendering a length animation. Running a computationally important report. Make up your own example. Most of these peg the CPU and thrash the disk plenty so anyone can tell the computer is in use.
When you have the choice of running the report overnight and running it during the day everyone takes the overnight option so they’ll have the report ready first thing in the morning.
Now if you’ll excuse me I need to restart a report and start waiting.
Thank you so much for this! My machine restarted (again) in the middle of the night when I had some important jobs running and I was incensed when I woke up to find a fresh desktop. I’m wondering who at Microsoft thought it’s a good idea to reboot a machine that has programs and files open?
just do this
control panel
windows secrity
auto updates
select turn off auto updates or set how u want.
Disabling automatic updates is a very bad idea because it makes your PC insecure. Turning off auto-restart as described in the article is much better.
This is useful for me, since we’re using WSUS and we dont want every employee to get annoying pop-ups all the time, and that would probably clog up our IT-support channels since they would “whine” to get them to stop from disturbing their work! This resolves many problems!
THANKS!