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Is it possible to prevent Windows 7 from rebooting without any interaction from the user? Or even better, only if the use is using a full screen application?

More details: My wife uses her home windows 7 laptop, and remote desktop (mstsc) fullscreen to log into a work system. Several times, the host system (laptop) has rebooted in the middle of a session, presumably because the "windows will reboot in 10 minutes" dialogue was hidden behind the remote session?

Is it possible to either prevent the laptop from rebooting when a fullscreen app is in use, or get the dialogue to overlay the mstsc session? (bearing in mind that mstsc has captured the mouse and keyboard.

Only as a last resort would we want to disable automatic windows updates completely.

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2 Answers 2

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I'd suggest you just change the time updates are installed or do as I do which is tell Windows to download the updates but install them manually.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2797-windows-update-settings-change.html

Alternatively you can try these steps to prevent it from rebooting automatically:

1. Click Start
2. Type "gpedit.msc" and press enter
3. Navigate down the tree on the left-hand side to Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Update
4. In the list you should see an option entitled "No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations" - double-click that
5. Change the setting at the top-left to Enabled and click OK
6. Close the window
7. Restart computer for policy changes to take effect

You can also play with some of the other options like "Delay Restart for scheduled installations" for example, the default is 15 minutes which is quite short, but if you enable the setting above this one won't apply.

Hope that helps

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My suggestion is to enable the Configure Automatic Updates GPO with the Auto download and notify for install setting. This will present you with a notification when an update is ready to be installed. Here's the procedure:

  1. Press Windows Key+R to start Run.
  2. Type gpedit.msc into the run console.
  3. You are now presented with the Local Group Policy Editor. Navigate as follows:
    • Under Computer Configuration click Administrative Templates
      • Under Administrative Templates click Windows Components
        • Under Windows Components scroll down and click Windows Update
        • Now that you are in the Windows Update folder right-click the Configure Automatic Updates Group Policy Object and click edit
  4. Click Enabled, and under options click the drop-down box under Configure automatic updating
  5. Click the 3 - Auto download and notify for install and proceed to click OK (You can confirm the GPO has been configured by reading its state in your current working directory of gpedit.msc)

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