Windows updates want to destroy your work

Windows Update does this annoying “you absolutely must restart now, or later, by which I mean that I’ll keep nagging you every 5 minutes” thing. It’s a pain in the ass since the popup usually occurs only after you have just settled in to work – once all your programs are open and the windows arranged, WU pops up in the middle of your screen with a default button of “Restart now”, which is also mapped to “N” (like “No”). I can see what Microsoft are hoping to do, but honestly? I think this behaviour is completely unacceptable.

Luckily, there are several ways to fix it. The simplest solution to stop the nagging for the remainder of your login session is to just stop the Windows Update Automatic Updates Service, either per GUI or just by running

net stop wuauserv

You can also use a registry setting to disable automatic rebooting when there is a user logged on, plus set a high ‘respawn timer’ for the nag screen:

Run regedit
Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
Create a DWORD value named ‘NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers’ and set it to 1
Create a DWORD value named ‘RebootRelaunchTimeoutEnabled’ and set it to 1
Create a DWORD value named ‘RebootRelaunchTimeout’ and set it to 600

If you’re on Windows XP Professional or any Server OS, you can also use the Group Policy Editor to do the same thing:

Run gpedit.msc
Navigate to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update
Activate No auto-restart for schedule Automatic Updates installations, AND
Set Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations to a high number.