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After running critical Windows updates, you are required to reboot machine within certain period. On my Windows Vista, the longest I can pause is 4 hours.

Is there a way to disable reboot proprompt and be done with it?

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4 Answers

up vote 7 down vote accepted

Yes. The easy way, assuming you're not in a domain, is to edit the local policy through gpedit.msc

It's in Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | Windows Components | Windows Update and you can change "Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations".

There are some other settings you can tweak here, including setting AU to download and notify for install instead of just installing.

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This doesn't work on XP Home either, does it? – person-b May 1 '09 at 16:15
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Good point about the domain. If WSUS is being used, we're going to hardcode these values via GPO. – K. Brian Kelley May 1 '09 at 16:24
Too right, KBK - long-since have done so for my WSUS/GPO environment. – Richard Gadsden May 1 '09 at 16:27
@Richard: No, I am not in domain. Thank you for specifying that point. – Sung May 1 '09 at 16:50
@person-b No, it doesn't work on XP Home because you don't have the group policy editor. You can hack the registry to the same effect - they way I would do it is to examine the wuau.adm file on an XP Pro machine (in notepad) and work out what the registry keys are. – Richard Gadsden Aug 3 '09 at 10:24
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up vote 3 down vote

You can also shut down the Windows update service using the commmand sc stop wuauserv It will restart with your next reboot.

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Will this work for XP too? – Yuval May 4 '09 at 7:51
net stop wuauserv will definitely work on XP – Richard Gadsden May 8 '09 at 15:25
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up vote 2 down vote

The equivalent registry data (for Home editions) for the Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations group policy setting is:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]
"RebootRelaunchTimeoutEnabled"=dword:00000001
"RebootRelaunchTimeout"=dword:000005a0

For the maximum (in group policy) allowed value of 1440 minutes, or 24 hours.
Can make a .reg file out of this.

Disabling the timeout defaults it to 10 minutes as the group policy information suggests.

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up vote 1 down vote

Why not just set the system to download but not install updates. Then the updates will be installed when you shut the system down (if you allow the install)

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