Prevent Forced Restart After Installing Windows Updates In Windows
Windows 10 updates are automatic and a big pain with this is a restart, which sometimes results in loss of data when the user is working on the PC. This system started with Windows 8, but in the older OS there was a provision to disable the updates. With the Anniversary update, things have improved for example with Active hours, but still a large proportion of users believe that older options of Windows updates should be brought back.
But to overcome this, a group policy exists in Windows that prevents a forced restart or an automatic restart which can either be applied through group policy editor or registry editor for home users.
Group policy Edit
- Press Windows key+R to open Run dialog box and type in gpedit.msc . This opens Group policy editor.
- On the left hand side, Navigate to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update
- In the right list of polices, look for “No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installation”. Double click it and modify:
- Set the policy to Enabled and that’s it.To reset it in future, set it as Not configured.
Registry Edit
- Open Run dialog box using Windows key+R and type in regedit.
- On the left hand navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindows
- Now right click Windows and select New>Key. Name this as Windowsupdate. Again Select Windowsupdate and select new key and Name that as AU. The final structure looks like this
- Again right click AU and select New>DWORD. Name it AlwaysAutoRebootAtScheduledTime. Press OK and again Right click it and select modify. Put value of it as 0.
- Click OK and you are done!!
With these edits, the system would not reboot at scheduled time, even after the time is outside active hours.