p2pnet - rss feed: Un-Automating MS updates
p2p feature / p2pnet: Have you ever left your computer on all night to maybe finish burning that DVD? Or during the day while you’re out so you can remotely access it from a friend’s house? Have you then come back only to find it’s at the user logon screen because it’s somehow automatically restarted itself?
I have. And not just once either. And it was all because of Windows Update installing it’s latest set of security updates. For some reason, it has to restart your computer and stop whatever it was doing because they’re just that much more important than anything else.
Well, I did some investigating into why it does this.
The first thing I noticed was simply my Update options. I’ve always had it set to “Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them”. This way I can make sure I’m not bombarded with pointless updates, or ones I really don’t want to install.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So why if I’ve told my computer * I* will choose does it do it anyway? Because it has the option to.
Buried deep down in the policy settings for every computer there’s a whole group that lets Windows Update do almost whatever it wants. As long as Microsoft say it’s critical enough, it’ll install it, regardless of what you say or want.
However, you can stop this, or at least delay it until you’re ready to start things in your own good time instead of Microsoft’s.
Click on Start / Run / and enter gpedit.msc . This brings up the Group Policy settings for the computer. Then it’s simple… Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows components / Windows Update.
The ones you’re mainly looking for are:
Re-Promt for restart for scheduled installations - This stops that annoying box coming up which has the two options ‘Restart Now’ and ‘Restart Later’ from appearing every 10 minutes. By accessing the properties of this, you can set the time to say 720 minutes.
Allow automatic updates immediate installation - This specifies whether Automatic Updates (which are supposed to be your choice) should automatically install updates that neither interrupt Windows services nor restart Windows. This one should be disabled.
And the most important:
No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations - By enabling this, it means the computer now has to wait for any logged on user to perform the restart, rather than restarting the computer automatically.
Just a few small tips, but at the end of the day, it could save you a lot more time and effort re-doing something because Windows was poorly again.
Daniel Hudson - p2pnet
[Hudson (huds601 - danhudson89 [at] gmail.com) is a 16-year-old UK Student who’s just finished ‘compulsory education’, and who says he’s, “highly passionate about Bittorrent, PSP’s, and freedom of speech.”]
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June 29th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
thanks.
these are good tips for people who want auto updates without a hassle.
but for those of us who don’t, just turn off auto update from the update website.
June 29th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
While I agree, people who aren’t noob’s and know how to keep their systems protected - however, most of the world’s pc users are not in that category imho.
For the noob, please - just leave auto-updates on…
A noob isn’t going to be running active firewalls that only allow apps they’ve chosen to use ports they’ve chosen and anything else needs to be auth’d before it can connect anyway - so if you’re going to have auto update on, and you’re setup right on your local firewall it’s going to sit there and not be able to access ms’s server’s until the next day when you choose to auth or deny it access.
Anyway - with the number of zombie pc’s out there and users oblivious to the damage they cause because of their lacking pc knowledge - I, again, say please don’t disable auto-update unless you are ‘not’ a noob.
(Don’t read too much into that as I’m anti-Micro$oft and anti-Big-Brother but there comes a point when we have to say that ’some’ pc users are just too new or just simply don’t care to know about their pc’s and their lack of knowledge can harm everyone - including them.)
Just my 10 cents.
_-Jile-_
June 29th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Shouldn’t this ALSO be done in the “User Configuration”, too?
July 1st, 2006 at 1:18 am
I go to Settings->Control Panel->Automatic Updates and disable all automatic updates.