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Furious About Forced Windows Update Reboot – Critical Work Lost

영준 안 15 Reputation points
2025-07-09T03:38:15.5433333+00:00

To Whom It May Concern,

I’m writing this message out of sheer frustration and disbelief.

Today, Windows Update forcibly restarted my system without any consent or prompt, while I was running a long-term process in the terminal — a critical computation that had been running for over 16 hours. As a result, all progress was lost, and the output — which was not yet saved — is now completely gone.

This is not just an inconvenience. It’s an unacceptable breach of control over my own machine. I had explicitly disabled all automatic reboots and updates through every available setting, yet Windows decided to override that and force a reboot anyway. How is this behavior in any way justifiable?

Let me be clear:

I lost 16 hours of work due to a forced Windows Update reboot.

I received no warning or meaningful option to delay it.

I had system configurations set to prevent this, and yet it happened.

This kind of behavior is disgusting, especially for professionals who rely on long-running processes, whether in development, research, or data science. It is not acceptable for an operating system to silently assume it knows better than the user — especially when it results in real data and time loss.

I demand a real explanation and a working solution to completely disable automatic reboots from Windows Update, permanently and reliably. A system that destroys user work in the name of "security" is a system that's broken by design.

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Install and upgrade

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  1. RN 5 Reputation points
    2025-08-15T00:17:21.01+00:00

    Don't listen to the Moderators. There is no permanent way to stop the forced reboots. Do a search for the person that created a Batch file and assigned it to a scheduled task to run every hour. It keeps incrementing the Active Hours Window by 1 hour so your active hour windows can be more that 12 hours.

    I work for an MSP and that is what we needed to do for our clients that have multiple shifts. I have other clients that are refusing to upgrade to Windows 11 because the Windows Update Nightmare will be over in October. My clients with HYPER-V servers now want us to upgrade them to VMware. Others are asking if Linux will work for them. Whoever at Microsoft thought this was a good idea should be fired.

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  2. Michael Muryn 5 Reputation points
    2025-11-22T01:57:55.9033333+00:00

    I use StopUpdates10.

    I usually do a soft block, meaning I pause update until a very far date. I think I have read before that sometime it can bypass that, so the hard block is the most safe to prevent Windows Update from working.

    Personal rant:

    I don't know if last time I disabled that, did my updates, etc. or if something in Windows decided to magically for an update (by looking at Event Viewer and I see there was an update about some GamingServices, like yeah, that sound critical...). But I thought I did not have to disable it if I paused (soft-block).

    I will weight my words, but the person or people who took the decision to remove the option to let the user choose when to update took one of the worst decision in software development. Doing something that can make your user lose data is just bad design / development decision. And now, we are also talking of Windows, one of the most used software, an operating system on top of it. Totally unacceptable. The damage that decision has done collectively (even with our personal frustration) is so big, it is beyond words. More damage than most of the worst criminals in term of data damage.

    Before, we had the option in setting to download and choose when to install. That is it. They consciously took the decision to remove that option. Even if someone maybe thought it was good for security. That is a very very very very very very very very very ... very... bad/dumb decision.

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  3. Airbus A350 7,355 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2025-07-10T11:57:34.0966667+00:00

    Hello,

    What method did you use to disable Windows Updates? Did you pause updates? Did you use Group Policy Editor (only for Windows Pro versions and above)?

    This will help me tell you methods to prevent Windows from restarting on its own.

    Hope to hear back from you.

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  4. Airbus A350 7,355 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2025-08-02T19:00:25.28+00:00

    Hello,

    If your terminal job doesn't need internet, you can just disconnect from the internet and then you won't get any updates :)

    However there is a tool on GitHub called Pause Windows Updates that allows you to pause Windows updates until 2051. It uses the registry to change the pause updates amount.

    If you prefer to edit the registry yourself, you can open Registry Editor and copy HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows into the top navigation bar, and then push Edit > New > Key and then name the new key WindowsUpdate and push enter, and then go to the new key Windows Update and create a new key with the name AU and push enter. Finally, go to the newly created key and go to Edit > New > DWORD (32-bit) Value and then name it NoAutoUpdate and push enter and double-click the newly created value and type in 1 and push enter, then restart your PC.

    Let me know how this goes.

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