Friedbeef’s Tech

When Windows downloads software updates, it initiates a countdown to restart itself after the download is complete.  Tell it to restart later and it will constantly pop up again and again (every 10 minutes) until you finally relent and restart your system. 

To me, this is one of the most potentially harmful of all Windows annoyances.  Consider the possibility that you’re out for lunch… and you have all your work open on your PC… Windows decides to restart itself… and you’re not there to stop it.  You get the picture.

What can you do about it?

Well you can’t really completely stop this nag screen from popping up - but you can however disable the auto-restart (it will still prompt you), and delay the re-prompt by 24 hours.  Not perfect - but good enough in my books.

To implement - simply do the following:

• Click Start –> Run –> type in gpedit.msc
• Go to Local Computer Policy –> Computer Configuration –> Administrative Templates –> Windows Components –> Windows Update –>

Then…

• To disable auto restart: double click ‘No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Update installations’ and enable this function.
• To delay the re-prompt by 24 hours: double click ‘Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations’ and enable this function.  Then set the timing to ‘1440 minutes’ - this is the maximum allowable time

All done!

ps. I think it’s important to note that you do actually need to restart your system soon after you download any updates so that Windows can patch itself up.  You don’t have to be nagged by Windows, but you should do it on your own.

Update: 21st April 2008: This only works for Windows XP Professional Edition, not XP Home Edition - Thanks for spotting this Ellie!

Got any helpful Windows tips?  Tell us about them in the comments!

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Some time ago, I wrote a review about Wize, and how its aggregation of reviews just made it a breeze to use.  Summize just takes that model - and turns it into something even more user friendly by providing quick charts that allow you to see how good or bad a product is without actually having to read a single review!

What it does is crawls the web, blogs, and review sites like Amazon,and aggregates up user opinions.  When you type in a search query, Summize puts together a tabulation of positive and negative reviews on a standard 5 point scale on a chart which looks like this…

…now wasn’t that easy?  In one chart, you’ve gotten the summary of 371 reviews! 

If you need more details, you can of course drill down and read the full reviews and get your concerns addressed.  You can also add in your own review and opinion about the product if you like.  Currently Summize works for books, movies, music, electronics, toys

Use it properly and you’ll find that you’ve…

• Saved a bundle of time
• Spared yourself the ‘review fatigue’ of skimming through one review at a time
• and most importantly - made an informed decision about a product

Next time you need an opinion (or a few hundred of them), try out Summize.

Bonus Links:

• Rotten Tomatoes: My time favorite professional movie review aggregation site
• Metacritic: Another good professional review aggregation site for books, movies, TV and more

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In need of a good sound effect?  FindSounds is a free service that allows you to… well… find sounds :)

What it does is it crawls the web and indexes sound files, then as a user you can filter by file format, quality, and file size. 

The result is a search engine with probably the largest collection of sound effects you could possibly imagine, all of which can be previewed and downloaded easily. 

No speech or music here though,  but it’s perfect for Windows sound themes, or phone message/ring tones (If your phones can use WAV files as ring-tones).

What sound audio tools do you use?  Let us know in the comments!

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