A way to prevent Windows Update from restarting the computer?

Question

I'm looking for a way to prevent windows from restarting/installing updates while my program is running. Currently, I've been setting a registry key which is located in:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

called "AUOptions". I'm setting this to "2", however this doesn't seem to work in Vista, as my computer restarted last night. UAC is currently completely off. Any other ideas?

Answer 1

You need to use a different registry setting for this:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

Then set this to 1:

NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers

I've also put together a downloadable registry patch for this one if you want that instead.

Answer 2

Well, the way I have Windows Update configured on my computer, it will download the updates but won't actually install/restart them until I choose to do so (as I like to keep my computer on most of the time and don't like having to re-open everything I had opened before the computer restarted).

While potentially extreme, this would be a simple solution to your problem, albeit not a programmatic one.

Answer 3

IMO a better approach would be to study how your application can automatically re-start after windows has restarted.

I often left several Visual Studio instances, some explorer windows and some browsers running when I go home and when I'm back the following morning, all the applications are still running. So I think there might be a way to detects and automatically register the application to restart.

I think this might be more documented and easily implemented than trying to prevent windows from ever shutting down.

Answer 4

I don't know if this is a windows forms app or not, but you can cancel a shutdown in the FormClosing event handler of a windows forms app thusly:

    private void Form1_FormClosing(object sender, FormClosingEventArgs e)
    {
        if (e.CloseReason == CloseReason.WindowsShutDown)
        {
            e.Cancel = true;
        }
    }

It's possible a windows update will override this, but a normal user shutdown will be prevented by this code (at least in XP).

Answer 5

There's a group policy setting in XP, Vista, and Win7. Note that gpedit.msc isn't installed on Vista home edition.

Answer 6

It's not a good solution, but a possible one: just kill/stop the service.

you might also (at least this works on windows xp) change the policy settings using the gpedit.msc panel. don't know if editing the group policies can be done programatically as well...

regards

Answer 7

Run this process to stop windows update completely (at your own peril) "sc.exe stop wuauserv"