Windows Control

This is my Angry-Blog - every time I run into an undesired Windows feature, I want to use this space to unload my emotional ballast. My wording might therefore be slightly more colorful than usual. Readers discretion is advised.

• Prevent Auto-Reboot

Prevent Auto-Reboot

Windows Updates are important and sometimes require you to reboot. Some Operating systems are able to gracefully shutdown and reboot restoring all programs that were running - WINDOWS CANNOT. But still, Windows keeps rebooting... And everytime I keep my PC running over night there is a perfectly good reason for me to do that!

How to stop your PC from automatically restarting after installing updates. First I tried the task scheduler:

1. Open Start.
2. Search for Task Scheduler and click the result to open the tool.
3. Right-click the Reboot task and select Properties (note that it was already set to disabled).

4. Go to the Triggers tab, uncheck enabled and confirm (this should prevent the task from being executed).

5. But it seems that my administrator account does not have the rights to do that (?????????????????)

6. Also deleting (right-click on Reboot and choose delete) the complete task fails.

7. Use Run (Windows key + R keyboard shortcut to open the Run command) and type in %windir%\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\UpdateOrchestrator and confirm.

8. Rename the Reboot file to Reboot.bak and create a folder called Reboot.

Making Room for an Update

Temporarily deactivate hibernation (delete hibfile from your C drive) so an update has a chance to run through:

powercfg -h off
powercfg -h on