Windows Update and Automatic Reboots
Windows Update plays an essential role in keeping your computer safe, and in order to do that, it sometimes has to reboot your computer. In this blog post, we want to help clarify how WU reboots your machine (including key differences between XP and Vista behavior), why it does it, and how you can change your WU settings to better fit your needs.
Automatic Rebooting
The goal of Windows Update is to always keep your computer as safe and secure as possible. Therefore, if you decided that Windows Update should Install updates automatically, an automatic system reboot may be a part of the process. Choosing any other option will disable automatic reboots, but we do recommend that you keep automatic updates enabled!
Why does Windows Update sometime require a reboot? Well, some updates require access to files currently in use by your system. Windows Update does not know if or when those files will be available to use, so your system requires a reboot to avoid any conflicts. For security-related updates, your computer is unsafe before that reboot occurs: it is vulnerable to attacks which exploit the issue(s) fixed by the update requiring a reboot.
For that reason, when Windows Update automatically installs an update that needs a reboot, it proceeds with an automatic reboot. In order to make the updating process more convenient for you by preventing disruptions to your work, WU defaults to installing updates (and subsequently rebooting your computer) at 3:00AM. Additionally, if updates are installed while you happen to be using the computer, and a reboot is required, Windows Update notifies you with this dialog:
The center countdown timer starts at 5 minutes. You can Restart now, or Postpone the reminder by 10 minutes, 1 hour, or 4 hours (In Windows XP, you can postpone for 10 minutes).
There is one exception – a system administrator can deny your rebooting privileges. For user accounts without rebooting privileges, Windows Update disables the Restart now button. You can still Postpone, or your system will automatically reboot after 5 minutes.
Update Deadlines
A system administrator can configure some computers behind a Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) server with update deadlines. When reaching a deadline, Windows Update begins an automatic install of those updates based on settings determined by the system administrator.
This deadline-based automatic install behaves identically to a Windows Update automatic install. Therefore, if one or more of the deadline updates requires a reboot, Windows Update presents the same dialog box to you with the same options and conditions. However, if a deadline update requires a reboot, then the reboot cannot be postponed – the Postpone button in the dialog will be disabled.
Policies to Change Automatic Rebooting Behavior
Two group policies allow you to configure how Windows Update handles automatic reboots. In order to edit these policies, you must own Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Business, or Windows Vista Ultimate. The Group Policy Editor is not available in Home Windows versions.
To use the Group Policy Editor, follow these directions for both Windows XP and Windows Vista: https://support.microsoft.com/kb/307882
In Windows Vista, there is another way to access the Group Policy Editor:
· Click Start
· Select Control Panel
· Type Group Policy into the search box
· Click Edit Group Policy, the only result that appears
Once inside the Group Policy Editor:
· Expand Local Computer Policy
· Expand Computer Configuration
· Expand Administrative Templates
· Expand Windows Components
· Finally, select Windows Update.
The Group Policy Editor with related Windows Update policies looks like this:
With Automatic Updates enabled, the two following policies help you configure automatic reboot behavior.
No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations
If you set this policy to Enabled, then your system will never automatically reboot when a user is logged on to it. After Windows Update automatically installs updates that require a reboot, it presents all logged-on users with the following dialog box:
With this policy Enabled, Windows Update never automatically reboots your system, so there is no 5 minute timer. You can Restart now, or Postpone the reminder by 10 minutes, 1 hour, or 4 hours (In Windows XP, you can postpone for 10 minutes).
Not Configured is the default policy setting and uses the 5 minute timer. Disabled works identically to the Not Configured setting.
Delay Restart for scheduled installations
This policy allows you to change the initial timer for automatic reboots. If you set this policy to Disabled or Not Configured, the default setting, then Windows Update uses the default wait time of 5 minutes. However, if you set the policy to Enabled, it asks you to enter a number which sets the initial wait time.
For example, if you set the number to 15, Windows Update presents the following dialog after it finishes automatically installing an update that requires a reboot:
Notice how the text following “Restarting in: ”began with a 15 minute timer instead of a 5 minute timer. Other behavior remains the same.
There are a lot of tools available to help you set up Windows Update to act how you want it to. We hope that this blog post will help you to do so! If you want some more in-depth detail about how Windows Update works, the Microsoft Update team just posted a white paper on TechNet.
We’ll be paying attention to your comments, so please give us your feedback!
Thanks,
-WU Client Team
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
This question may relate to Mrith's question above... Is there a difference between the computer configuration setting for windows update if it is stated as... A>>>>>"No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations..." There are 15 selections here compared to 11 in the below gpedit.msc why? Compared to... B>>>>>'No auto-restart for scheduled automatic updates installations"????????????? Regardless if the later system with the gpedit.msc setting is enabled the system still seems to reboot. Questions 1.) is there a difference between the two statements A and B? 2.) why are they different? both systems are XP V. 2002 sp3 3.) I have read that this "no auto restart" is over-ridden if there is a "deadline" set. Is this the case? 4.) If so where is this deadline set? I have users that regardless of our request shut machines down and therefore don't get updates. But, they are running scientific research devices that when are automatically shut down have the potential to loose Irrecoverable data. This is an unacceptable situation. How can I stop this from occuring? Aside from getting my users to keep there systems up at 3am on sunday?Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Great post! I have founded answers to my problems with Group policy editor. Thy for this post once again!Anonymous
January 01, 2003
way to tell windows update picture was beautiful thank you to everyoneAnonymous
January 01, 2003
windows updates and related information about this continuous follow-up would do very wellAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Please respond to mcateefw@upmc.edu and frankmcatee@hotmail.com for the above questions. Thanks!Anonymous
January 01, 2003
I last updated my windows xp operating system no problem at this time also thank you for the information providedAnonymous
January 01, 2003
oops, just set up a new Vista Home Premium system and enabled automatic updates. And this morning I see my system was rebooted and several pieces of in-progress work were lost. IMO this is totally unacceptable behaviour. Losing customer data is a critical defect! I see from this post that I can purchase an OS upgrade in order to override this behaviour. Thanks, Microsoft. I will work around this defect by disabling automatic installation. But that won't bring back my lost work. :-(Anonymous
January 01, 2003
this issue in this way has truly guided me to tell thank youAnonymous
January 01, 2003
windows xp auto update itself to be very useful to make.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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January 01, 2003
expression and picture your expression was very beautiful about how little I thank you thank youAnonymous
January 01, 2003
thank you been very good way to describe picturesAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Try here, fixed for me; http://www.computer-juice.com/forums/f48/windows-update-agent-5-8-02469-download-11887/Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Great post, exactly what I was looking for. I couldn't find the delay restart for scheduled installations.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Thank you sincerely respect your narration was perfect with a photoAnonymous
January 01, 2003
242 Microsoft Team blogs searched, 118 blogs have new articles in the past 7 days. 314 new articles foundAnonymous
January 01, 2003
thnaks adminAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Your pictures and descriptive narrative convenience to many many thanks to my job.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Great Post! If anyone had any gaps in the AU process and behavior, this closed them! Keep these kind of articles coming!Anonymous
January 01, 2003
expression have been very good picture ThanksAnonymous
January 01, 2003
admn :)Anonymous
January 01, 2003
was a very good explanation, thank you and have a useful informationAnonymous
January 01, 2003
So the Delay Restart for scheduled installations is totally pointless. It only works if a user is logged on? What about for servers? How do you control the reboot sequence? WSUS seems to totally drop the ball here. A web-farm can't reboot all at the same time. If you have a web farm, app farm and DB clusters, you will end up with a ton of GPO's and a patch window that spans for hours and hours. 15 minute increments on the patch reboot sequence are needed, not 1 hour increments.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Your pictures and descriptive narrative convenience to many many thanks to my jobAnonymous
January 01, 2003
many many thanks to my job.Anonymous
January 01, 2003
What is the interaction between Update Deadlines and the "No auto-restart with logged on users..." group policy setting? Is the deadline ignored? Can the user put off the reboot indefinitely?Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Thank you for sharing such a beautiful presentation and explanation will follow your blog every day I thank you againAnonymous
January 01, 2003
Introducing such a topic you'd like to congratulate you've let us know. Have good work..Anonymous
January 01, 2003
Sometimes windows update reboots and all my programs and files reopen? Is that the same as a shutdown /g? How can I get it to do this all the time as its great?Anonymous
July 01, 2010
what it is making the site tick all without limiting content and effectiveness.I have spent some time to eventually stumble on your blog post about this topic. Great work.Anonymous
July 01, 2010
I'm sure you must get better a lttle bit the look and usability of your blog.Anonymous
August 25, 2010
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November 20, 2010
So how to diable automatic reboots with windows home please ? Full and complete instruction on how to cancel ALL autimatic reboots neededAnonymous
November 20, 2010
So how to disable automatic reboots with windows home please ? Full and complete instruction on how to cancel ALL automatic reboots neededAnonymous
February 10, 2011
My Windows 7 host just rebooted for automatic updates while I was working in a VMware virtual machine. I lost my work because the automatic reboot warning window did not appear. I suspect this is because the VM was running in full screen mode. To prevent this problem, it is important that the automatic reboot warning window rise to the foreground even if an application is running full screen. What good is the warning if it is not visible? I hate to think how many man-hours have been lost world wide due to this problem. Please fix it!Anonymous
April 28, 2011
Could somebody explain why the 4 hour limit? How about 12 hours? Or Tomorrow? That way one can continue the work day without further interruptions. I'm inches away from disabling windows automatic update all-together just because it is so intrusive and pesters me every day and has caused undesired machine reboots with loss of work.Anonymous
April 29, 2011
How do you get these posts to stop going to your email!Anonymous
July 02, 2011
I sometimes wonder if Microsoft is entirely staffed by idiots. In any normal company, anyone implementing such a brain dead auto reboot idea would be taken round the back and shot. But at Microsoft, losing customer's data becomes part of the official policy. So now I have had to turn off automatic updates, in case Windows automatically dumps my work down the can, because I had to leave my computer to do a more important task (there is more to life than PCs you know...). Great choice Microsoft, lose your work or be risk being exposed to malware!.Anonymous
September 16, 2011
Note that reboots can happen even if you specifically set the update settings to manually install. Lost a bunch of work because of this. The only fix offered is not available with Win 7 Home editions. Please someone finds a fix!!! Perhaps manually adding keys to the policy sections of the registry that correspond to the keys changed by the group policy editor could work.Anonymous
September 16, 2011
This is stupid. I lost more than once my work because i was away from my computer. Last time happened today. I had numerous files opened with notepad to keep note of various things I needed to look at any moment. I've just gone away from pc for like half an hour and BOOM! I lost all my important temporary notes and work too because of a stupid update. Seriously, remove this irritating feature, or set it not to automatic. I don't want to turn it off myself. And moreover, you get viruses anyway, no matter how much updates you do. So why bothering people with forced betraying reboots?Anonymous
September 19, 2011
Yes, I've lost work due to automatic reboots, but I blame myself mostly. (Except fot the issue with full-screen applications blocking the warning) Be smart and save your work regularly. Automatic reboots are just one cause for work-loss. Do you also blame Microsoft if the reboot is caused by a power-failure? No, it's your own fault. BE PREPARED...Anonymous
October 06, 2011
Be smart and save your work regularly. Automatic reboots are just one cause for work-loss. Do you also blame Microsoft if the reboot is caused by a power-failure? No, it's your own fault. BE PREPARED...Anonymous
February 17, 2012
>Do you also blame Microsoft if the reboot is caused by a power-failure? No, but that's an accident, rather than some moron deliberately programming data loss into an operating system.Anonymous
March 03, 2012
I want to know about why windows server2008 restart automatically .Anonymous
May 10, 2012
Windows updated and computer restarted itself but now Windows won't load and a message saying Do not turn off computer, updated being installed appears, but for some reason it just keeps rebooting and the same msg appears everytime. Does anyone know what is the problem and how to solve it?Anonymous
May 30, 2012
This is a very annoying "feature". It means that I cannot leave my computer to complete a task because it might decide to restart while I am away. Linux can be left on forever. There should be a "never, ever, restart my computer unless I explicitly do start->shut down etc..."Anonymous
June 18, 2012
Only a moron would implement a "feature" like this. There must be a whole chain of morons in Microsoft, who allowed this auto-reboot "feature" to get into production. For a collection of complaints adding up to perhaps $40,000 in damages, please check here: answers.microsoft.com/.../43b2abf8-6820-49df-a149-657190fdeb93Anonymous
June 18, 2012
I estimate that this feature has caused at least billions of dollars worth of damages to Microsoft customers. There should be a class action lawsuit.Anonymous
November 14, 2012
這個爛功能導致我失去了幾個小時的工作成果，在重新啟動之前難道就不能檢查一下資料是否存檔了嗎?Anonymous
December 11, 2012
Where is the option "Dont restart now since the user will turn off the computer at the end of the work day", that is the option I want to use 99 times out of 100. Reminding me in 10 minutes, 1 hour or 4 hour is both annoying and a waste of my time. Completely.Anonymous
April 10, 2013
Another days work ruined thanks to an unwanted reboot. Why don't you guys just come round to my house and delete my work directly? What a stupid feature.Anonymous
April 11, 2013
Matt shut your automatic updates off.... Or...Postpone the update. Or if all else fails go.... into Start>Administrative Tools>Services> Windows Update Right Click and Click Stop. This will stop the update/reboot process.Anonymous
April 24, 2013
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May 15, 2013
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October 08, 2013
See new fixes documented in MSKB 2885684 and distributed in cumulative rollup KB 2883201. More Details can be found in blogs.technet.com/.../enabling-a-more-predictable-windows-update-experience-for-windows-8-and-windows-server-2012-kb-2885694.aspx Windows 8.1 + WS 2012 R2 RTM also contain this update.Anonymous
October 17, 2013
Windows 8, after installing updates is forcing restarts after 15 minutes. These forced reboots are obviously not really necessary because if they were then Windows would immediately start misbehaving or crash right after the update completed its' installation--long before the 15 minute (arbitrary) 'grace period' that some Microsoftian came up with. How does an end user go about stopping this behavior from occurring? Is there a better way to avoid these (work hampering) reboots than to set Windows Update to Automatically Download Updates and then Manually Install Windows Updates, when I am prepared for a work-stoppage reboot? Thanks to anyone that has suggestions on working around this well intentioned but misguided "feature." All the best. DanielAnonymous
February 12, 2014
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February 17, 2014
THIS WEB LINK ON THIS PAGE WAS BLOCKED WITH WARNING THAT IT TRIED TO DOWNLOAD "Mal/HTMLGen-A" ON TO MY COMPUTER. windows update agent 12 Nov 2008 9:56 PM Try here, fixed for me; http:--//www.computer-juice.com/forums/f48/windows-update-agent-5-8-02469-downloadAnonymous
May 06, 2014
Another piece of work lost because of this braindead auto reboot that happened without a proper warning. How on earth did someone at MS come up with this stupid idea? Are you designing your systems for dumb sheep or what? I really hate you, Microsoft.Anonymous
June 19, 2014
Thank you for the good and informative post about updates. Too bad I'm only reading this after i had postponed my automatic restart by 4 hours thinking it would ask me again. It didn't, and I lost some important work with the automatic restart. I'm disappointed that default settings are set so that it is possible to lose files like this. I hope this isn't the case in any later OS:s.Anonymous
July 14, 2014
thank youAnonymous
December 14, 2014
Windows DOES NOT notify me before rebooting. I want the updates installed but I ABSOLUTELY must be WARNED before it reboots! This is unacceptable!Anonymous
February 26, 2015
I wonder how many people have lost work due to force restart vs a security vulnerability that was not installed immediately? How can you call something that destroys data a fix? And no windows update did not show any update dialog, it just restarted my computer without warning. Seem to me that the development team are simply too proud to admit that they made a mistake and change A better solution, and what i think most users want, is to have what can be installed automatically without a reboot to be done immediately and the rest to be done when the user reboots.Anonymous
May 18, 2015
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March 10, 2016
RebootAnonymous
March 10, 2016
Reboot my windows phoneAnonymous
March 10, 2016
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September 01, 2016
Ok, I can't get the “No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations” to work after the anniversary update, my computer still reboots on it's own, M$ tech support tried controlling my pc remotely, but couldn't figure it out.. "must be corrupt files, try a cold install of win10" so I did, no difference, pc still reboots at 3 am. It's like it's ignoring the group policy settings all together, I have it to only install updates on Saturday and “No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations” enabled, pc still reboots automatically. I have tried having “No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations” as the only thing configured, I currently have it set to notify for install and to download automatically. >Win10 pro 64 bit,Anonymous
March 13, 2017
i want to shut off windows updates completely on windows 10 because every time they auto check they max my internet bandwidth and cost me money to pay for overuse ... I only when at a free service and my paid bandwidth is not going to be maxed out ... HOW does one tell windows to stop updating ... alos how do i shut off its firewall and defender i run a better service and dontr need to lose bandwidth to those services that i dont use anywayAnonymous
April 12, 2017
Now I know why I prefer z/OSAnonymous
April 14, 2017
i want to turn off Microsoft updates because it updates, and then comes back and "states updates cannot be downloaded at this time" then it starts to undo the updates that was done and I am without computer access for 90 mins. So what is he sense of having updates when they cannot complete the update and then I need to wait for it to be undone every single day this happens. How can I disable this feature since I am not getting the updates anyway.