Get rid of that “Restart Now” dialog box
This post was published 3 years 8 months 21 days ago which may make its actuality or expire date not be valid anymore. This site is not responsible for any misunderstanding.Windows is quite the nagger. Do this, Restart Now, Save Later… BLAH BLAH BLAH. However if you IGNORE it’s restart dialog warnings Windows will do you the favor and restart on its own, closing all your important documents. Time to take control back! With this hack you can tell Windows how often to nag you (default is 10 minutes), or to turn off the nag entirely. SCORE!
Now, to get rid of it:
Start / Run / gpedit.msc / Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update / Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installationsYou can configure how often it will nag you (I re-configured it for 720 minutes, which means I’ll be asked twice on a work day), or completely disable it.
Oh, I almost forgot: this setting is only loaded when Windows starts, so a reboot is needed. If that stupid dialog is on your screen now, just stop the “Automatic Updates” service (but keep it as Automatic, so it gets reloaded on the next start) and you won’t see it again.[via]
This is only for XP Pro…
Or just do a ‘net stop wuauserv’ and a ‘net start wuauserv’ and no reboot is needed.
David is right – gpedit.msc does not exist on XP Home.
However, Windows XP Home users can switch off the nag by saving the following as a .reg file then choose to merge it:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]
“RebootRelaunchTimeoutEnabled”=dword:00000000
“NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers”=dword:00000001
(Thanks to a comment at http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000294.html by Squeegee)
What a fantastic tip! Thanks very much.
To avoid the restart, hit Win+R (or Start>Run) and type “gpupdate.exe /force” (w/o the quotes obv.) This should force the settings to take place.
The max is 1440 minutes (which is one day).