Windows 7 (in my case, Ultimate Edition), restarts automatically when it’s finished installing scheduled updates. I had around 10 tabs open in Chrome I wanted to read in the morning and as the computer had restarted, they had gone. It also ungracefully forced the Windows SharePoint 2007 server VM I was playing with to shut down. I don’t like this behaviour at all and would much rather it restarted at my convenience, not its own.
So how do you stop Windows 7 from automatically starting after it’s updated?
I’ve seen some people rooting around in the registry but it’s best to avoid that if that kind of thing makes you nervous. A much better way is to use the Group Policy editor, so here’s how to stop those inconvenient restarts:
- Go to ‘Start’ type ‘gpedit.msc’ to open the group policy editor
- Once opened navigate to ‘Local Computer Policy’ – ‘Administrative Templates’ – ‘Windows Components’ – ‘Windows Update’
- Change the ‘No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations’ to ‘Enabled’
Navigate to ‘Local Computer Policy’ – ‘Administrative Templates’ – ‘Windows Components’ – ‘Windows Update’ in Group Policy Editor
This should stop those pesky reboots.
