Microsoft Rant

[3fingersalute]

OK, I'm not one to usually bash on Microsoft - i think for the most part they offer great products, but I have a major complaint to air out concerning Automatic Updates.

So if you have Automatic Updates setup to download and install automatically, or even if they download automatically and you have to choose when to install them, I've found a major problem:

If the update requires your computer to be rebooted, it will prompt you to reboot, and if you choose to reboot later, it will keep asking you every few minutes to reboot - not a big deal you would think, but when its asks you to reboot now or later, it starts a 5:00 minute countdown, and if you don't make a choice, it reboots on its own. This happened to me the other day, and I was in the middle of a pretty hefty file download, and was AFK when it prompted to reboot, so I had to start all over when it rebooted. I have also had a person or two tell me that they have lost work when their computer rebooted on its own, so I decided to put this to the test since my one test machine was calling for updates this morning. Here's what I did:

My one spare machine here was ready to install updates, so I opened up MS-Word, WordPad, Notepad, Paint and Adobe Photoshop, and created new documents from scratch without saving and then watched the computer update. It updated, and then prompted to reboot. I sat and watched it as if I wasn't actually in front of the computer, and when it counted down the 5 minutes, Word prompted me to save changes to my document, but the prompt was there for about 3 seconds, then it closed, and Word did as well. It then went through each program, doing the same thin - prompting to save changes, and then closing the prompt, and when all programs were closed, the computer rebooted. Upon reboot, all files were gone, they were never saved, and Word didn't even have anything in AutoRecover, and my AutoRecover time was set to 2 minutes.

Anyhow, this just sucks, and I wanted to rant about it for a bit. - I know that you could not use auto updates, but that's not a good choice for home users, because they would never update.

[BOB IROC]

I thought you could set the updates to install automatically at a certain time. I think the default is 3am. Also if you if you choose the option "Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them" It will not install and reboot automatically and will give you the option to install the updates when the computer is shut down.

Either way I can see how it can be annoying, but like you said if they didn't have the auto update options some people would never install updates. That is why most Antivirus Software auto updates too. Before you had to manually run live update and the vast majority never did that and when they got infected blamed the A/V software.

[3fingersalute]

I thought you could set the updates to install automatically at a certain time. I think the default is 3am. Also if you if you choose the option "Download updates for me, but let me choose when to install them" It will not install and reboot automatically and will give you the option to install the updates when the computer is shut down.

Either way I can see how it can be annoying, but like you said if they didn't have the auto update options some people would never install updates. That is why most Antivirus Software auto updates too. Before you had to manually run live update and the vast majority never did that and when they got infected blamed the A/V software.

You can set it to prompt or not install automatically - but even so, it will reboot when its done, whether you are there or not.

Although, since posting this thread, i have found 2 ways around this - one using group policies and one is a simple registry tweak.

[BOB IROC]

I can see how that can be frustrating to geeks like us that may leave their computers on all night processing something or downloading something.

Thats why I am glad we implemented Windows Update Services at work. Majority of our users freak out when they see the little yellow shield downloading updates and have no idea what to do with it.

What does the registry tweak do?

[3fingersalute]

We're working on WUS here as well.

Here's the tweak if you want to have a look (link courtesy of edball) - everything still works the same except it doesn't automatically reboot.

[PuterGeekGirl]

WSUS has been working ok here. Used SUS for quite awhile before WSUS came out.... Altho I liked the name they were originally changing it to.....WUS....thought it appropriate..

[Richard1]

You know I've had the same thing happen to me. I use NoteTab Pro and have lost an hour or two of work more than once because Windows has updated and I wasn't at that machine. I try to always save when I'm done but sometimes I'm just a slacker. Anyway after re-training myself to remember didn't work, I started tooling around with the NoteTab Pro program when lo and behold there are settings to prevent this. Actually a couple. Now my program is set to automatically save whatever I'm working on every 5 minutes and I have "Undo after Save" checked. Perhaps there are similar settings in the programs you frequent?