Deactivating Automatic Reboot after Windows Update

Have you ever returned to your computer only to find it having restarted, and all of your data gone? For a myriad of reasons, I keep my computers running continuously for a long time at a time. This makes this insistence on a reboot not only annoying, but in its extremes, it can actually make me lose work. To prevent this, I have disabled the auto-reboot, and I am no longer annoyed with repeated requests for reboots.

For some reason, there is no GUI-button for this setting, so we have to edit the Group Policy of the computer. This is relatively safe, as long as you don’t start to fiddle with anything you do not know what is. The process is as follows:

1. In the Start-menu, hit run
2. In the window that opens (it is called “Run”), enter gpedit.msc
3. Locate the following subfolder: Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update
   
4. Double-click the setting “No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations”
5. Choose “Enabled”
   
6. Click “Apply”
7. Close the gpedit.msc window

Congratulations! One less annoyance to contend with.