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Dealing with Windows XP’s dumb automatic restarts

By Benjy | Posted, August 22nd, 2009 and modified on November 30th, 2009.

After my old laptop broke down, I was forced to downgrade twice (Ubuntu 9.04 > Windows Vista Business > Windows XP Professional) as I inherited an older laptop with a Celeron processor and a miserly 512Mb of RAM. It is a Lenovo Y500 which came pre-installed with Windows XP. I was obviously not too excited but at the same time not too downcast either as I use Portable apps on a USB hard drive and keep hopping operating systems, -besides I’m biding my time to save enough for a Thinkpad X200 tablet on the higher end or for a sturdy Netbook running Moblin which has really caught my fancy and makes me go weak at the knees.

While on Windows XP, the sickest, foulest feature that I have come across is its automatic restart after update feature. It should be classified as a bug as even though it seems to ask for your permission to restart your computer and allows you to postpone it (by 10 minutes), if you are not at your desk, it restarts your computer without your permission. Many a time when I am back at my desk, I find my computer back at the login screen with all my work lost. To add insult to injury, there is a green something in the taskbar proudly proclaiming that it was Windows update which restarted my computer not unlike a terrorist outfit taking credit for a strike. Luckily Mozilla Firefox saves my 26 odd open tabs and Openoffice and GNUcash both have an incredibly good memory of what I was doing before Windows automatic updates struck.

Windows built in weapon targetting licensed Windows users

I could disable the Automatic Updates service, but that would put my system at risk by not allowing security updates to install. It would be much easier if Windows fixed this problem like they partly did in Vista which gives you a chance to postpone the strike for 4 hours -only if you are at the computer when first prompted! One of the ways out is a gamble, hoping I’d be at my desk when I was prompted for a restart and making a batch file on my desktop.

Here is the code,

Open Notepad
Type in net stop wuauserv
Save the file on your desktop and when prompted for a file name type in stopwu.bat
Double click the file to test it, or inspect it for typo’s. If all went well it should tell you that the automatic updates service is stopping.

Now whenever you are prompted for a restart, click Restart Later and double click the batch file you saved on your Desktop. The Windows automatic update service will start again when you next restart your computer. Of course if you aren’t at your computer when Windows update prompts you for a restart and you get timed out and loose unsaved data on account of the restart or if you do not have administrative privileges on your computer, it will do you well to buy one of those games where you can throw pies or darts at a caricature of Bill Gates. However if you have Windows XP Professional with service Pack 2 or greater installed and also administrative rights on the machine, then you can disable this “feature” by following the following procedure and this is what I would recommend:

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In the Start Menu go to Run type “gpedit.msc” and press Enter
Now a Group Policy editor will open. In this window navigate to: Computer Configuration -> Administrative Template -> Windows Components -> Windows Update
Double click on No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations
In the settings window Choose Enabled and click OK
Close Group Policy Editor
Go back to your game of darts!

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\ Policies\ Microsoft\ Windows\ WindowsUpdate\AUIf it doesn’t already exist, create the DWord value “NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers”. Set it to 0 if you want Windows to automatically restart, or 1 to prevent automatic restart. Then exit and reboot your computer. The result: As long as users are logged on the system, it won’t take matters into its own hands.