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How to stop Windows Update nagging you to restart after an update
After Windows Automatic Updates has downloaded updates to your computer, it may display a dialog that says: "Updating your computer is almost complete. You must restart your computer for the updates to take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?" If you click "Restart Later", the dialog will appear again after 10 minutes, which is very annoying if you are busy and consider that your computer should not put its needs above your own.
Solution
Windows may need to be restarted after an update has occurred, in order to allow files that are in use to be replaced. If you would prefer to restart the computer at your convenience, and not be nagged to do so, try one of the following solutions:
Method 1
- Click Start, Run and enter the command net stop wuauserv
This will stop the Windows Update service until the next restart of the computer, which will stop the reminders to restart your computer for this update.
Method 2
If you are running Windows XP Professional, the following steps will increase the period between restart reminders to the maximum possible.
- Click Start, Run and enter the command gpedit.msc
- Select Local Computer Policy, Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Update
- Double-click Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations
- Change the value to 1440
- Close the Group Policy Editor
- Click Start, Run and enter the command gpupdate /force
This will stop the repeated reminders for this and all future Windows updates.
Applies to
- Microsoft Windows XP
32 comments:
that is really helpful... I hate the pop up window, and now they will reboot my computer if i don;t respond in 5 minutes... what a nasty choice M$ has made...
noname - 09 03 2007 - 05:59
Hear me loud and clear - This is MY computer. I tell it what to do, not the other way around!
For all the money MS claims to spend on user interfaces, it is a travesty that this abomination has been with us for so long.
If this works as promised, I will happily make a contribution.
Greg - 11 04 2007 - 07:57
This was really what I was looking for.
It happened to my that Windows decided to restart my computer while I was doing a telephone call (which can take longer than the default 10min of the pop-up) without even bothering to save my open documents. This lost me 2 hours of work.
Karl - 23 05 2007 - 05:02
Yes method 1 works. Not so lucky with the second one or the regedit solutions other websites have offered. As far as the ethics of this are involved, what the hell does microsoft think they are doing getting into my computer and telling me when I have to restart it? When I bought the computer, it became my property and for Microsoft to keep invisible ties behind the programming and hidden in the fine print is an invasion of my rights as well as every other innocent consumer victim.
Inuyasha - 15 08 2007 - 13:05
No, your wrong... You have a limited license from Microsoft to use their product, otherwise, you could copy the cd and resell it. It'is actually a sort of long term lease
Sonic - 15 08 2007 - 13:14
Thanks the first method worked thanks
microsoft can be SO anoining sometime with there stupid faulty OS
Alex - 04 07 2008 - 18:06
Microsoft aint that bad. Dunno about you guys, but now it will NOT automatically make your computer restart after X minutes. You won't lose any work unless you click YES RESTART, but yeah it's annoying that it bugs you every 10 mins. No bugging: "net stop wuauserv" ftw.
David - 15 10 2008 - 19:34
Actually I'm so damn tired and BANG, as usual in the middle of nowhere window update want to restart my computer and it will keep trying to shut it down non-stop. But I really can't restart my computer, I just let it open because when it restarts or when I try to open it, it stay stocked on the bios page by the end of the loading, and I can't even press f2 or f12, it doesn't works, nothing works on my p.c at this point so I have to shut it down and restart several time (last time was about 40 tries before it worked it opened on luck. And even when it start, my mouse usually stop working after a few hours, the mouse doesn't seem to have any problems, I'm sure that there is something wrong with the driver or something, but these last three days my mouse has worked so when window Update wanted to restart my computer... again, I kinda freaked out, so I ended up here and I tryed your trick, the "net stop wuauserv", actuallly it did not asked me to restart again and hopefully it will continue, thanks a millions times, sorry for the bad writing, i'm sooooooooooooo damn tired, cya oh yes, thanks again, thnk you ty ty ty!!!!!
P. Savage - 24 10 2008 - 09:23
This is very helpfull indeed, i can't believe that after all this experience in developing SW, MS is still struggling with interface issues such as this, they could have added a simple setting or a tray icon with that option, a scheduler, something...it's so annpying when you leave your computer doing a time consuming process such as download or rendering and then you come back the next morning to find out that you didn't do shit. thanks for the tip. really made my day.
Izzat Kittaneh () - 06 02 2009 - 01:11
Thank you very much indeed! When I first experienced this, I thought it was a virus. The delay-the-inevitable-by-five-minute-"feature" is not unlike Chinese water torture. It drives you to the brink of madness. Once again, thank you!
Jonas Persson - 25 03 2009 - 17:08
I work at a law office and we are thinking of filing a class action suit against Microsoft for this.
We have suffered incredible loss of data when temporarily leaving the computer only to return to a restarted computer with all the desktop applications closed and gone.
The reason a class action is appropriate is because there is no easy way to prevent this from occurring. It is not enough that there is a way to prevent it buried in some submenu.
In order to justify such a takeover of the computer from the user, there has to be in place a remedial measure.
We have suffered legally as a result.
We are looking for those who have lost medical information, legal information, or otherwise critical information as a result of this automatic rebooting, and who have tried to disable it but who have found it difficult to do so and whose efforts were unsuccessful.
I am assuming thousands and thousands of people fall into this category.
Maybe comment on this thread if such a class action sounds interesting, and if you feel you deserve to be compensated by Microsoft for such malware being built right into the operating system you almost have no choice but to rely on.
Otherwise,
Cheers!
Paul
Paul - 16 04 2009 - 11:09
Thank you for this, greatly appreciate it...
this thing has been nagging me forever but you sir have fixed my problem.
i love you :)
lol
Paul - 11 06 2009 - 05:53
yup, lost a whole days worth of downloads so many times! xp decides to shut down at night and bam, it is off till morning.
jerry - 11 06 2009 - 15:17
Method 1 works with vista too
SDads - 19 06 2009 - 04:57
Thank you very very very much! :)
Yoni - 22 06 2009 - 01:20
Thanks man! This was irritating me badly.
John - 29 07 2009 - 22:45
I am also very grateful for this! I have a lot of work to do on my computer and I cannot restart it at the moment!
Ashley () - 30 07 2009 - 14:19
This is probably completely intentional from Microsoft's point of view. They regard it as a security risk for you (and potentionally others) who doesn't restart their computer as soon as possible after a patch has been installed so that the installation can finish and let the protection go active. In the end, they are protecting themselves from their own security flaws. If hackers break in, people would soon loose their beleif in the system after a while. The problem is bigger than that, it goes way back, into the architecture of the operating system itself. They have to rethink it, and begin from scratch.
People, please go linux!
Lars () - 14 08 2009 - 23:08
You CAN take control of your Windows system!
If you have selected Automatic updates, and you selected the option to download and install them for you; then the next step is to restart your personal computer. YOU have made the choice!
If you do not want your personal computer to restart automatically, change your Automatic Update options in the Control Panel to manual. Then, at least once a month, after the second Tuesday of the month, go to the Microsoft update site and manually update your personal computer.
You do have a choice!
Switch to Ubuntu! LOL! It Rocks!
Chuck - 01 09 2009 - 17:58
man dam this
us - 12 11 2009 - 03:34
@Karl - Microsoft own your Windows license too - they can revoke it at any moment.
anonymous () (URL) - 25 11 2009 - 17:23
In Windows 7 this problem is solved. It just asks you 1 time
Walter - 25 01 2010 - 05:52
A big thank you from holland
this does work:)
anouar - 27 01 2010 - 22:34
Thanks, this was helpful
Stevee () (URL) - 11 02 2010 - 15:04
Thank you for this - jeez, I lost so much data because of this feature that I could not figure out how to turn off - thank you!
Lina - 11 02 2010 - 16:04
I downloaded a cumulative update for IE 8 which I didn't have open (I normally use Firefox) yet wuauclt kept nagging me to restart. What a PITA! I used Method 1 which worked as advertised. Thanks for the solution!
john - 31 03 2010 - 07:02
Thanks a lot for this buddy! :)
Nick - 31 03 2010 - 10:07
So refreshing to get simply non-nerdy advice. Why doesn't Windows tell you this?
Robert () - 14 04 2010 - 12:26
Here's an idea. Instead of trying to work around this 'problem', why not just take the 5 minutes required to restart your computer? That will complete the application of the updates that are going to help protect your computer (and the data on it), free up all that accumulated RAM you've lost to memory leaks and give you the chance to grab a coffee. There is, after all, a damn good reason why the reminder comes up in the first place!
pixeldonkey - 06 05 2010 - 04:04
Peronally, I like the solution here:
codinghorror[dot]com/blog/2005/05/xp-automatic-update-nagging.html
On XP: Run command gpedit.msc
Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update -> "No Auto-Restart With Logged in Users For Scheduled Automatic Updates Installations" -> Enable. Done.
Or with "Re-Prompt for Restart With Scheduled Installations" you can enable it and set the value really high like 1440 minutes (24h).
Michael Gmirkin - 04 08 2010 - 19:53
@ PixelDonkey...
You obviously have not run into some of the ISSUES this nagging causes.
Specifically, when the nag turns into an ultimatum and the system decides of its own volition to reboot WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION while you're out of the room and had open, unsaved documents.
Or, alternately, when you LOCK the terminal [Windows]+[L] and it decides to auto-reboot, but fails to shut down properly and leaves you with a hung machine having a blank screen, operable mouse but nothing to click and unresponsive to [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Del], thus the only option is a hard power down by holding down the power button for 5 seconds. Which is unacceptable.
Some people require large amounts of up-time and most people expect an uninterrupted user experience, likewise a zero-loss-of-data (when it could be easily avoided by good coding practices on M$' part) environment.
So, yes, there are perfectly valid reasons to want to disable reboot nagging, reboot ultimatums and automatic reboots WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION.
Michael Gmirkin - 04 08 2010 - 19:58
Thanks PC Guru.
It very useful.
Kennerds Wayne - 03 09 2010 - 07:14