How to Stop Windows Nagging You to Restart After a Windows Update

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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!