I am sure that you are all to familiar with the image above. Your computer has finished updating and you start to get pestered about restarting your computer. You tell it that you want to “Restart Later” but it just keeps popping up every 10 minutes!
There is a simple way that you can either get rid of the prompt or choose the interval that it will remind you. I always try and restart my computer after Windows Updates but sometimes I am in the middle of things. That is why I set the reminder to 2 hours instead of eliminating it all together. Here is how you can disable or delay the reminder:
- Click Start -> Run.
- Type gpedit.msc and press OK.
- Browse to Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update.
- Right-click on “Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations” and select Properties.
- You can select “Disabled” to completely disable the reminder or select “Enabled” and adjust the length of time between reminders.
I thought that this was a pretty nice tweak and will definitely make updating my computer a little easier. Thanks for pointing this out gHacks!
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Tags: Software
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I get stuck after the second step because it says “The file gpedit.msc cannot be found…”. Do you know what I can do?
That’s weird, I type it in the run command and it pops up with the box. What version of Windows are you running?
-Ryan
Windows XP Home Edition.
Sorry about that, Windows XP Home doesn’t have the gpedit.msc so you will have to modify the registry. You need to set the registry key “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Policies\ Microsoft\ Windows\ WindowsUpdate\ AU\ NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers” to a value of 1 which will prevent Windows from asking for a restart. Hope that helps.
-Ryan
Alright, got it to work now, thanks Ryan.
No problem Max, glad it worked.
-Ryan
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Policies\ Microsoft\ Windows\ WindowsUpdate\ AU\ NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsersâ€
I do not have the folder in bold?
What version of Windows are you running?
Windows XP Home Edition, which is why I followed the instructions in the comments.
Emm, version 2002, SP 2.
More information, the Windows folder which should contain that WindowsUpdate folder only has these 4 folders:
-Installer
-IPSec
-RTC
-Safer
I looked all over and I cannot find an alternate way of doing this. I assume that you do have Automatic Updates turned on and if you do you could try creating the folders in the registry.
I have it turned on. Never mind, thanks anyway.
Thank you for pointing to this website - gHacks.net
But there is something wrong in this article:
When I disable “Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations” option via Group Policy Editor, I get ANOTHER registry key created under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\
WindowsUpdate\AU\
I got:
“RebootRelaunchTimeoutEnabled”=dword:00000000
instead of this one (as in article):
“NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers”=dword:00000001
My OS is Windows XP Professional SP2.
P.S.
2 Joel:
If this folder doesn’t exist, then don’t worry, just create it. In Windows Registry there are a lots of places, where entire folders or keys do not exist if it was never used. Windows creates those folders and keys automatically when it need it for the first time.
That’s very interesting, I wonder when they went and changed that.
Go to Start - > Run
Type in CMD
Then type this:
sc stop wuauserv
press enter and it’s over,
does it keep coming?
Make a notepad file with the text
@echo off
sc stop wuauserv
Save it as Updatestop.bat and select all files instead of TXT file.
Every time the screen gets back, click the file