44 thoughts on “Disable Windows Update Automatic Reboot”

1. I have Windows Update set only to download and install updates after I review them. I find this is good policy considering that sometimes I don’t want the update. A simple case- the meaningless update to the default fonts to remove swastikas. But there could easily be other more severe cases where I would want to skip or delay an update.

   Do you have it set to install updates without your review? That may explain why your system reboots without your consent.

2. Also, in a corporate (Read Active Directory) environment, you can control this behaviour with SUS (soon to be WUS) and some GPO templates.

3. Which I now see you know about, since you read the SUS Deployment Whitepaper. Don’t you just love those?

4. Thanks for this Ryan, automatic reboot is quite possibly the most annoying thing I’ve encountered with Windows. I tell the thing to “REBOOT LATER” and Microsoft interprets this to “ASK USER IF HE WANTS TO REBOOT AGAIN EVERY FIVE MINUTES”. Especially aggravating when trying to get my game on or working on a project with a bunch of windows and programs open.

5. Sweet! Just what I was looking for. and on my first page of Googling

6. This appears to have not worked under Windows XP, for the first time my Windows XP machine rebooted itself earlier today, and when I logged back in I got a message telling me that Windows automatically rebooted because a critical update told it to — this is completely unacceptable!

   The details above seem to work perfectly on Windows 2003 though.

7. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionWindowsUpdateAuto UpdateResetAU

   seems to be the path for XP. haven’t tested it yet.

8. In XP you there is a group policy you can enable.

   Local Computer – Administrative Templates – Windows Components – Windows Update – No Auto Restart for Automatic Updates

   Default setting is Not Configured. Change to Enable

9. In Win2k it’s the same. This way you don’t risk screwing up a registry hack

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11. I have been annoyed for months by this stupid feature which windows newly invented. But this time, I googled for a solution. This site is the first one on google’s result. Thank you guys…
    Ryan C(yes, im Ryan too)

12. I hate how microsoft believes that it has the right to automatically re-start my computer once i update. it probably has some huge legal document saying microsoft has the authority to re-start my computer if i agree to automatic updates. another load of shit, at least the updates are good for the comp.

13. Aaarrraaaa, this stupid auto-reboot have no regard for servers running on the machine, oh yeah just go ahead and reboot it all, disrupt whatever downloads, shell sessions, net services that’s active RIGHT NOW, yeah! reboot me again baby.. and again, because it feels so right, it’s magic!!

14. Another googler who found this solution on the first page after searching. Isn’t the internet wonderful? Thanks for the info!

15. THANK YOU OMG! I don’t mind auto reboot when i’m not there but i also found in the same policy the way to disable the request to reboot every 5 min once I selected reboot later. That’s what been bugging me.

16. I’ve had this on a XP Home. I needed to create the last part of the key (WindowsUpdateAU) and the DWORD value. However windows update kept asking me to reboot. Couldn’t reboot however because i needed my encoder to run for another 13 hours.

    I first tried to finish all running wuauclt.exe with the task manager. That went fine but after 10 seconds the yellow shield reappeared on the taskbar.

    I then went to the configuration panel and disabled the windows update. Then I shut down the running wuaclt.exe ‘s again. This time they stayed away. A red shield appeared with the warning that my pc is unsafe.

    But the warning and counter didn’t come back !!!!!

    So I plugged out the internet for security reasons and went to bed. Next morning my encoder finished!

    Hope that helps some folks out there,

17. Remember to first disable the automatic updates before shutting down the process, as windows will otherwise just respawn the wuauclt.exe ‘s!

18. Thank you God.

19. omg, the disableing updates and killing process works miracles!! thank you so much, I hate that thing, I’ll reboot my computer when *I* want to.

20. Another Googler who stumbled across this extremely helpful tip. Thanks a lot for doing the leg work for the rest of us.

21. The hubris of Microsoft, believing that it can trash away my constructive work at its will just so that it can relieve itself of the responsibility of doing its own work right the first time ! I wonder if the resulting loss of productivity and innovation isn’t more expensive to society than the cost of not dealing with a slightly out of date video driver or character set.

22. Passed out? What a loser.

23. Jeremy: WTF? I said I passed out, not that “I passed out at 6PM.” If I remember correctly I was still up working some time after midnight. Some of us are up before 6AM every day to go to work and we don’t sleep in until noon or sit at home on our lazy asses gaming all day. How about you get a life before making dumb comments next time.

24. I need to figure this out cuz it is aggravating as f*ck. I dont want any updates if Microsoft is going to be THIS way about it.

    Do I edit my own registry? Cuz I will do it. I’ll throw this goddam machine out the window if need be.

25. tks !

26. Hi, I googled this problem and got here through a few sites… Anyway, I have SP2 on a Home Ed. laptop, and I usede the registry edit fix… To queote Vanderhoven Nick, “I needed to create the last part of the key (WindowsUpdateAU) and the DWORD value.”

    It workes fine for me though…

    *Walkes away while muttring “Damn M$! First you screw-up on WinMe, now XP too? I hope Vista comes out right or atleast in an European version free of the M$ Monopol and coders ID=10-T errors…” and as a last gesture he glares at the setting sun and raises his middlefinger at the picture of 8i11 G@73S he carries in his wally*

27. I dont get the whole point of editing registry values for disabling it. Why dont you turn off the service itself (My computer > Management > Services). And then IF you want a update you can re-activate it. Almost every windows update is NOT needed.

    (For noob:
    > Right click the My Computer icon.
    > Click on Management
    > Goto ‘Services’
    > Locate and select the Automatic Updates service
    > Stop the service
    > Right click on the AU service and click on Properties
    > Then Disable the AU Service and press ok

    Thats it.)

28. Robin: You’re missing the point. Its important to have the service turned on. It should notify you when there’s new updates. It shouldn’t take over your computer and forcefully reboot it. It also shouldn’t nag you every 5 minutes to reboot. However, there should be an option to either turn the nag on or off or change the time interval.

29. I hate the Windows Update thing but I cant necesarily change alot of the settings b/c I am using my college laptop so I don’t have full administrative rights. Somehow I got into Administrative Tools and clicked on Serivces and found Automatic Updates and hit “Stop the service” and the shield went away. But I really don’t know what I did and I’m afraid to leave my computer b/c I don’t know if it will still try to restart. When I did the stop the serivce, my laptop was already in a restart pending state from an update from this morning (which I wish I hadnt installed ) so can anyone tell me exactly what I did and if I can stop worrying about being booted for the time being???

30. If I disabled auto-updates (I was already in a reboot-pending state), does this prevent windows from restarting my computer anymore? It got rid of the yellow shield and reminders but I dont want it to try someting in the middle of the night (I keep seeing all this 3AM stuff)??

31. Kim: Why don’t you just restart your computer? That would make the most sense… once its rebooted, it won’t try until it installs more updates. I’m not sure why this is a crisis and why you needed to email me three times last night about it. I don’t work for Microsoft, I just posted a quick tip to try and help a few people out.

32. Due to weird circumstances I can only reboot my computer when I have a wired keyboard in, the only one in the house is my roommate’s and this always pops up at night so i can’t go to sleep to get up and study in a few hours, thankfully i just disabled the service, good work around, I will be sure to turn it back on though.

    Also, random googler here. Nice work everyone, very impressive.

    Roll Tide.

33. random googler here too. Thanks for the heads up. I lost a bunch of crap last time I had this happen to me :I

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35. so what’s the fix for stopping the nag?

36. I’m going to see if I can do it with the given path in one of the comments (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionWindowsUpdateAuto UpdateResetAU). We’ll see if that works.

    ~Jason

37. ty Robin

38. In “Group Policy”, next to “No Auto Restart for Automatic Updates” (see above) there is also a value “Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations”, which you can enable and set to (the maximum value of) 1440 minutes. I haven’t seen the ‘please-restart’-reminder since then.

39. Another random googler, downloading a 1gb file for quite a few hours now, then got the WUBOD (windows update box of doom) thanks to the disabling then closing tip, i stopped it. Now I can finish my download. Thanks a lot!

40. The registry value wasn’t available in XP Pro, so I tried the group policy setting mentioned in the comments and that worked. Had to google how to get to group policy editor – click [Start] [Run] and type [gpedit.msc] in the data input line.

41. Tnx fer the tip, and tnx google. Worked on XP home. Regkey+Turn off updates in config+kill process (as above)

    I hate getting that box during games.

    And I hate all the people complaining to Microsoft about security for years. See what you get? The only other thing they can do is make the OS annoying to use. (Cause when a worm spreads MS gets blamed as well)

42. Thank you all. Here is a quick-fix for all others that may come across this page in the future:

    Create a file called for instance NoReboot.reg. It has to have the .reg ending in order to work. Paste the following five lines into it:

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindowsWindowsUpdateAU]
    “RebootRelaunchTimeoutEnabled”=dword:00000001
    “RebootRelaunchTimeout”=dword:000005a0
    “NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers”=dword:00000001

    Now double-click on the file to execute it. Windows asks if you wish to add the entries to the registry, and you answer Yes, and then you’re done!

    These registry entries does exactly the same as a change in the group policy editor described above. I have used XP Pro SP2 Swedish version, but should work for all XP versions. The entries does the following:

    -Enables reminders for reboot (this is the default even if this key doesn’t exist but you need it for the next line to work)
    -Sets the time between reminders to 1440 minutes (5a0 is hex for 1440)
    -Disables automatic reboots if a user is logged in – a dialog will appear to inform the user that the computer needs a reboot anyway, but the timer isn’t there

    I haven’t had the time to test this, but sinct the group policy manager created the entries, I’m pretty confident it will, though.

    /Fredrik

43. Thanks guys. I have been up for the last 8 months, 15 days, 7 hrs, 35 min, and 52 sec staring at my computer to make sure XP didn’t reboot on me. Now I can get some sleep…zzzzzzzzzzzz

44. Microsoft got me and I lost all my work… I was up pulling an all nighter working on a network assessment for a customer and my fing work laptop rebooted when I went to go grab a beer to help me power through the 15 things I had opened…

    I usually turn off the auto-update/auto-reboot default feature and update manually but I had just ghosted my laptop back to my company’s default image and this setting went back to default.

    Microsoft SUCKS…but I make good money supporting it so I guess that I shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds me…