The Joel on Software Discussion Group

What is Microsoft thinking?  What gives the Windows automatic update program the right to automatically reboot my computer?

Yes, I have automatic updates turned on. Yes, I want the updates installed, so I don't have to wait for the installs to happen. But I want to reboot my computer when I am ready. I don't mind it rebooting if there are no programs running. I do not appreciate it closing all my telnet sessions, Word documents, browsers, etc.

Please Microsoft, download the updates, install what you can, tell me I need a reboot, but let me reboot the computer myself!

I hated that about windows too.

Don't be an idiot - you told it to download and install automatically so that's what it's going to do - the reboot is part of the install process. If you don't like that then turn off automatic updates and do it manually. That's what I do and I have no problems. Just have a monthly reminder to yourself to do the updates and do it at your convenience - but be prepared to reboot...

Funny - I had the exact same complaint a couple days ago.  I walked away from my machine for a max of an hour with tons of work open...

I come back and everything is gone!  What a major pain in the ass.

My computer doesn't even reboot, it gets to the point where it almost shuts down & somehow the power coursing through my USB hub keeps it in a state of suspended animation, so I have to unplug the hub & wait for my computer to boot up before I can check the weather.

Agreed!!!!  It's got to be the single worst idea ever.  And every new install of Windows catches me once because I forget to go in and change it to let me decide when to install the patches (since installs and reboots are tied together).

Even my father has complained about it.
And lost work due to it.

What annoys me most is how it keeps nagging you when an update has been downloaded that you should reboot your computer.

How dare you let windows automatically download and install things on your computer.

None of this is news to anybody. This is why almost every tech professional I know either has automatic updates turned off or has it set up to let you know there are updates but it won't actually try and install them until you tell it to. I actually have a little yellow shield in my system try right now telling me updates are ready and I'm planning to install them when I leave for the evening.

If you are forced to run automatic updates on your work machine because that's IT policy, then there isn't anything you can do about it. I feel for you. And I can see getting bitten once on a new machine. But for any tech professional to have this be a recurring problem just strikes me as silly.

Personally I think the single worst idea ever was making a sequel to Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure. The badness of automatic updates pales in comparison.

Well, now, this is one of the reaasons I turn AUTOMATIC updates OFF.

I decide when I want to update my PC. I don't even have my anti-virus or anti-spiral running automatically.

I manually run these applications because when you give too much control to other entities, you never truly know what the impact of that control is going to be.

...something to think about...

Sorry but I have no pity for anybody who walks away from a machine /wo their work saved.  Heck I'd say the same thing for anybody working on something and doesn't save their work as they are working, and yes I have seen people work an entire day on a Word/Excel document and never save once the whole time.

I call this bad user habits, being a dev doesn't exclude you from being guilty of it I guess.

I may find those random reboots when you're away (it happens when you don't answer the "Windows needs to reboot now" question) somewhat annoying, but I'd rather deal with that than a Sasser worm infection.  So you guys just don't realize how good you have it.

I'm the ass that's going to say "haven't had this problem since I switched to Ubuntu".

Guys, there are alternatives, and damn near everything you need form windows runs thru Wine.

>>> Guys, there are alternatives, and damn near everything you need form windows runs thru Wine.

Uhh, no.

Run gpedit.msc, go to Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update, and set the "No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations" to "Enabled".

Guess what... this disables the automatic restarting if there is an interactive user logged on.

What's with all of the Ubuntu coming out of the woodwork lately? They're just as bad as the "...you wouldn't have this problem if you owned a Mac..." folks.

Keeping Linux machines patched is far worse. At least with windows you don't have to go in and recompile the webcam driver manually.

To the complainers: Windows update has four different options for updating. Try picking one which suits your lifestyle.

"Keeping Linux machines patched is far worse. At least with windows you don't have to go in and recompile the webcam driver manually."

Um, you don't have to do that in Linux either.

But there's no reason to bring Linux specifically into this.  Windows is the only major OS that has this problem, therefore it's clearly a problem that can be solved, and Microsoft is to blame for not solving it.

"Windows is the only major OS that has this problem, therefore it's clearly a problem that can be solved, and Microsoft is to blame for not solving it."

This is not a "problem" that needs to be "solved."  It's a subjective judgment call that MS has made, that some people disagree with.  Neither side is "right" or "wrong", they are just valuing different things.

What Microsoft has done is make a judgment call that there will be less damage to MS if they automatically install updates by default than there will be if they let the users decide when to do it.  The vast majority of PC users are clueless and irresponsible, and would never do it, and not even understand what it was or why they should care.

More experienced users know how to go in and change defaults.  People who are mostly computer illiterate have the updates done for them.

As a result, more patches get used, fewer break-ins and botnets happen, and MS gets less of a reputation as the company who makes cybercrime possible.

PS That being said, the fact that there is no "dismiss" option on the pop-up about when to reboot is totally inexcusable.

The problem is that I need to reboot sometime any insignificant DLL is updated.

You *don't* have that problem on Linux. Not sure about OSX.

I'm pretty sure that as part of a reboot, Windows sends a message to all the open apps telling them that they should quit what they're doing. Shouldn't you be upset that your applications aren't gracefully handing a shutdown message?

If yo don't like this behaviour, there is a better option than turning off auto updates.  There is a registry key to shut off the auto-reboots.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328010/

Keep in mind that if you install a "reboot required" critical update, and you don't reboot, your computer is still vulnerable to the security hole.

Think about the situation of a "wormable" vulnerability, and you decide you don't want to reboot yet.  In the mean time, your computer gets infected.

By forcing a reboot, Microsoft chose security over convenience.

No thanks to all you folks who assume I have low intelligence. I have never lost work by leaving unsaved documents open at night. I've never lost work by having my computer rebooted by the update program.  I just said I want the updates "installed" at night to save me time when I am at my machine, but I want control of when the reboot happens.

Thanks to the folks who understand what I wrote, and made meaningful posts.

Thanks a bunch to Myron for a link to hack the registry to get what I want.

"anti-spiral"

What's that?

I like having automatic updates; and quite like Windows, Firefox and Thunderbird not bugging me about this but just quietly patching themselves. I find iTunes ("oh, you want Safari and Quicktime with that") and Adobe Acrobat ("another 11mb download because we changed a typo somewhere") updates not quite so smooth. Don't get me started on the range of HP update processes which mostly appear to not work. 

But... I did get caught by the MS update & reboot this week; I went to bed with a large download running (slow internet at home), got up early & found it not only had not completed, but the machine had rebooted & the transfer software was not running. I had to restart the download (luckily not from the beginning), but it meant another day went by as I had to get to work.

Normally doesn't worry me, but this time I did think the updater could have been smarter; maybe be polite and popped up the reboot dialog and waited say 12 hours; after all a walk through open processes would have shown at least one busy doing IP traffic. MS hold onto updates for days/weeks to batch release them, so another 12 hours or whatever would not have killed them.

"""Shouldn't you be upset that your applications aren't gracefully handing a shutdown message? """

Damn betcha. I wish I could string up the idiots who made Office and Visual Studio, which don't respond properly to the shutdown message.

Raymond Chen wrote an article explaining the reason for the reboots. Basically the machine is in a Frankenstein state until the reboot with patches half-applied.

You can replace the automatic reboot with lots of annoying nag windows.

"""
You can replace the automatic reboot with lots of annoying nag windows.
"""

I like these the best. What I really like is when I'm typing an email, and one of these dialogs pops up and steals my focus, and one of the letters I type is the accelerator for the "restart now" button, and after the reboot I get the dreaded "Outlook did not shut down properly last time and you're royally screwed" message.

Yep, much better.

"Basically the machine is in a Frankenstein state until the reboot with patches half-applied."

In that case, the Windows Update program should notify me before beginning the update installation that "a forced reboot will happen if these installations are begun" dialog.

OK so I'm working, I get a prompt that an update has been applied and I need to restart, do I want to restart now or later? if I don't press anything the computer will ASSUME now and automatically restart anyway in 4.5 minutes. So I click restart later.... 10 minutes later the SAME box appears, that's annoying, once again I say later. 10 minutes later same thing again, that's REALLY annoying, LATER!! The phone rings, I need to take down a name and address I open  notepad and type it in. I finish my conversation and hang up, I turn to my computer to see CHECKING NVRAM.. .as my computer Reboots. THATS REALLYING F***ING ANNOYING. I own this computer, I own the software on it, since I paid for it I am its MASTER not MICROSHIfT. It has NO RIGHT to leave me with NO OPTION but to restart. I'm migrating to MAC.

...and I guess I'll have to be the one who points out that if you do turn off automatic updates, Windows will further annoy you with a pop-up window every time you re-start the machine.
...of course, the last time I had a machine set to auto-update, (XP SP3) when it rebooted, it never stopped rebooting thanks to the very high quality of whatever dimwit update it installed.  I had to rebuild the machine manually (not my favorite thing), so there seems to be no real happy solution with Microsoft - which is maybe why more posts here and elsewhere are discussing Linux et al...

Strange... Last Christmas (a year ago) I got an XP system (Professional Edition) for my gaming and Dev. - did not see any update notifications or any reboots ever. And I am sure I am up to date with Windows patches and stuff. Can it be that some WinXP Editions are better than others? I boot my home PC each morning - maybe if I leave it running - it will be happening to me too?..

I turn off automatic updates on any machine I own/admin for just this reason. 

Update manually a day or two following every Patch Tuesday.  Schedule this monthly downtime when you plan your work.

"I turn off automatic updates on any machine I own/admin for just this reason.  "

Weirdo. You should be enjoying them with the rest of us.



"So I click restart later.... 10 minutes later the SAME box appears, that's annoying, once again I say later. 10 minutes later same thing again, that's REALLY annoying,"

The trick is to minimize it instead of saying "do it later".


"I got an XP system (Professional Edition) for my gaming and Dev. - did not see any update notifications or any reboots ever. "

It's only in SP2, if you have the original XP you won't see it.

It happened when I was in the middle of a game once so I didn't even see the restart dialog.

But then again, if you wan't usability you shouldn't be using windows.

I'm not one of "those" Mac guys, but the way Apple handles this process is simple and beautiful, just like the rest of the OS.

Dan: "o I click restart later.... 10 minutes later the SAME box appears,"

You do know that you can change that, right?

Use the Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc from Start->Run). You can change the time interval there - I'll leave it to you to find the right place (tip: it's not that hard to find).

There's a spin edit for entering the number of minutes; ignore the arrows, and type in as many nines as the edit control will accept. Mine nags me once a day after updates require a reboot; I can choose "Restart Later" right now and not see the dialog again until tomorrow afternoon.

Of course, you could spend the time instead making long rambling rant posts here at JOS. ;-)