Month: May 2011

At my current work, MS Windows is a corporate standard, so I have to spend my days in a VMware virtual machine.  With two large monitors, that’s not a big issue at all.  However there is one really annoying bit about my Windows machine.  If I leave it on overnight, it sometimes reboots by itself.  Yes, it tries to save the state of most applications and even my virtual machine state is restored more often than not, but it is still annoying and unnecessary.   Gladly, there is a solution:

Alright, first off let’s click the Start button. Once the menu pulls up we can click on “Run”. Now you should have a field to type in, let’s type “gpedit.msc” and hit enter. Once the screen comes up click the + next to “Local Group Policy” than “Computer Configuration” than “Administrative Template” than click on the “Windows Updates” folder. In here you will find a bunch of different variables. If you click on them in the right pane there should be some definitions of what each one does. I will not go in-depth on all of them because you can obviously read. The key we are looking for is “No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates Installations”. Right click on that value and hit properties. Now click on Enabled, than hit “Apply” and “Ok”. Now close the Console1 window. It will prompt you to save, choose “Yes” and than “Save”. Now that you have saved the settings a reboot is necessary for the policy to take effect.