Monday, February 18, 2008

Change the nagging Restart Now or Later message

Have you ever been sitting at your PC and Windows XP prompts you with an annoying message indicating you need to reboot in order for an update to work? It asks if you want to restart Restart Now or Restart Later. You say later. It thinks later should be 10 minutes, you were probably thinking more like the next day.
A temporary fix (and stop all other automatic updates) until you reboot is to stop the Automatic Updates service.
A more permanent solution is to tell it to only remind you say once a day. Here is how to do that...
* In the Start Menu go to Run type gpedit.msc and press Enter * Now a Group Policy editor will open. In this window navigate to: Computer Configuration -> Administrative Template -> Windows Components -> Windows Update * Double click on No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations * In the settings window Choose Enabled and click OK * Double click on Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations * In the settings window Choose Enable and enter 1440 (1 day) and click OK * Close Group Policy Editor or if you prefer editing the registry directly...
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU] "RebootRelaunchTimeoutEnabled"=dword:00000001 "RebootRelaunchTimeout"=dword:00001440
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU] "NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers"=dword:00000001

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I finally had enough with the 10-minute nag and found your blog post. Thanks!

I did note that the registry script was different for me, as I didn't already have a key for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate. I also set mine to 6 hours, on the fact that you really should reboot when you can. Here's what my .reg looks like:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]
"NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers"=dword:00000001
"RebootRelaunchTimeoutEnabled"=dword:00000001
"RebootRelaunchTimeout"=dword:00000168

Thanks again!

Brent V said...

Eric,

Thank you for the comments. This is good to know and I'm sure helpful to others. I'm so glad you found my blog helpful.

Brent

ntroyd said...

wow, after searching nearly half n hour for this i finally found it :-)
Thank u very much!

Unknown said...

This "feature" is more than an annoyance. If I go take a leak, Windows decides FOR ME that it should shut down, undoing all unsaved work.

Thanks VERY MUCH for the fix (I wish there was a 14400 (TEN days) option for a "re-warning". No MSFT update is SO important that it can't wait a day or TEN!

Man, I HATE softie.

Thanks again!

Dave

Brent V said...

Mdeva,

I agree, this is a very bad feature from the users perspective. It makes me want to turn off automatic updates. I have yet to though. :)

Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks,

Brent

Anonymous said...

Perfect. Thank you so much.