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Comment by mdek | Hacker News Reader

Will this address the absurd automatic updates/reboot "feature"? I've had the experience multiple times where a step away for a few minutes and come back to a blank desktop, even during the "active hours" period. This is especially infuriating when I do most of my work in a vbox slackware VM and win10 is just a host that I want to stay out of the way; instead I lose my entire current state. This seems like a major defect for either a "Pro" or "Pro for Workstations" version

Has anyone found a reliable way to disable automatic reboots for Windows 10 Pro? My registry mods have all eventually stopped working.

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Rebooting your computer daily will do the trick. Either shut it down at the end of the day, or give it a reboot. It will do its thing and leave you alone for the next 24 hours.

Before you downvote me, which many of you have done already for some reason, please keep in mind that this advice actually works. It's not my decision to have things work like this. That's on Microsoft. But it does work, and is legitimate advice.

Sounds like a Windows 98 advice...

It works this way in Windows 10. I do not approve of it, but it does work and is the simplest way. Just turn your computer off at night and Microsoft will be happy.

I didn't

Problem: I do not like that the computer reboots automatically.

Solution: Reboot computer manually.

It's simple fact that Windows needs to reboot to install updates. Does it suck? Yes! Is it a necessary part of life if you choose to use Windows? Also yes.

People seem to complain about Windows rebooting outside of their control. This fixes that problem, and it's not like most people need their computer to be on when they're asleep anyway.

I get around this by having my machine back up to our NAS each night and shutting down when finished. Cuts down on the power bill too.

It's also a part of life on my Macs, just not as often since it seems like they don't get updates as often as my Windows machines.

Macs don't reboot without you taking an action if you have automatic update installation disabled. You have to click a button to apply the updates after which it will reboot. But it tells you this in the dialog where you agree to apply the updates. Windows just applies them and reboots when you're not actively using the machine.

I wasn't responding to that, I was responding to the part about "OS needs to reboot to install updates" being a part of life - it definitely ain't just a Windows thing.

Anyway, I'm glad that Windows restarts for me when I'm sleeping and I wish my Macs would do the same. It's pretty easy to avoid having it restart at the wrong time - you just go into the Settings and tell Windows what your active hours are. They let you enter a time range of up to 18 hours.

The problem is that windows will at some point start ignoring your active hours. This seems to happen if you put it to sleep after you're done working, so it's always sleeping/hibernating while outside of the active hours. This understandably pisses people off.

My PCs wake up and perform the updates. Maybe that's the problem with laptops when they're not plugged in or something but I have not experienced it.

Except for us crazy individuals that need the computer on for uninterrupted data processing. I have Windows only software that can take two weeks to complete a dataset. There is no intermediate data backup, so if the job is killed, I have to start over. My only reliable option has been to keep it off the network.

You're not a regular end user. The Microsoft way is for you to get the more expensive license so you can use group policies to adjust this behavior.

...which is kind of why people are upset. Things that were possible, i.e. total control over when PC's install updates and how they do them, are now not unless you pony up for a more expensive license. We're not talking Bitlocker or anything here, we're talking control over the system.

I agree it's not a typical use case, but it was an understood use case for a very long time. My only real beef with Windows 10 is the overly aggressive update system.

I understand and agree that it's bullshit. But for normal end users it works fine.

And part of me does think that I prefer the majority of the clueless end users to be forced to update. Having to support outdated operating systems and browsers is pretty horrible. And making it harder for botnets to spread is also a pretty good thing.

But yes, there should just be a simple setting. Sadly there isn't so we're left to resorting to shitty workarounds.

But realistically the clueless "normal" end users who should update automatically don't know about group policies and aren't going to use them, not even by mistake.

You'd be surprised. A user who is annoyed at their computer shutting off while they're gaming because they kept it on for a few days will Google. Find some instructions and blindly follows them. Then they forget about that because they went back to their game. Fast forward a few months and their computer is part of a botnet and we're all worse off.

^ Exactly. If you don't make it user friendly, especially Windows users will track down a user-unfriendly way to do whatever they feel they need to do. Now you've got end users playing in your registry and group policy, to accomplish a thing that should've been doable with a dropdown select.

I used to regularly see advice shared around that if you got an SSL warning in Chrome when trying to visit Facebook, to just type "DANGER" in the keyboard, and everything would work again. I believe Google changed the workaround after a while because it was never intended to be used as a way for people to dismiss critical warnings without any real understanding of the risks.

I believe they changed the keyword to "badidea".

> And part of me does think that I prefer the majority of the clueless end users to be forced to update. Having to support outdated operating systems and browsers is pretty horrible. And making it harder for botnets to spread is also a pretty good thing.

So make it updatable without a system reboot? Why does Windows need to reboot for standard security updates? Hell, most times when Windows says I need to reboot, simply restarting the service(s) that have been updated accomplishes the same thing.

It's not like Microsoft doesn't have control over the entire codebase. Unix applies security patches all the time without restarting, and has for a decade. Why can't MS make this work? TBH, to me it feels like good old laziness. A system reboot has been the go-to to address Windows' lack of stability and quality since freaking 3.1. Reboot reboot reboot, that's all MS ever has for a solution.

> So make it updatable without a system reboot?

Even better, solve the problem Apple solved 5 years ago and make reboots seamlessly return to the pre-reboot state (or at least try).

I've been impressed with that actually, works very well.

I have deactivated the auto update restart logic by gpo policy (locally) and just hit escape on the update summary when it's done downloading.

Now they just blue screen it every month and it does the update when you're forced to restart it.

Really pathetic considering I had windows 8.1 pro on it before with 3+ months uptime and no need to restart beyond 3rd party software requiring it or drivers/hardware.

They bluescreen it? Or maybe the drivers are different (or your hardware is broken)? I see no regular bluescreens on Windows 10 devices.

On both my windows 10 systems (one is a Dell T7910 which is fully supported, the other a vaio ultrabook) they exhibit this behavior so I find it difficult to correlate that to hardware or drivers.

> I have Windows only software that can take two weeks to complete a dataset

What kind of sadistic monster wrote this?

Bet you $5 it's an R script.

R isn't Windows-only.

Some modules are windows only, I've seen many R pipelines that can only run on windows. Azure has capitalized on this.

Where advice would you offer to someone with long-running R-Scripts? Spark?

Spark and EMR spot instances for sure.

This is a prime use case for a workstation and it's hard for me to believe that Microsoft didn't expose better control over updates.

More than a few times, I've come to work, wiggled my mouse and been greeted with a blank desktop. It's soooo frustrating that I need to spend the first 15 minutes of my day launching applications, loading projects, digging up notes, etc... when it was all arranged perfectly just a few hours ago. Windows can figure out my likely work hours. How hard would it be for them to pop up a reminder that the machine will be rebooted overnight and give me some options?

On top of that, after the reboot, Microsoft reinstalls all the bloat that I removed -- money, bing, xbox, groove, contacts, email, weather, maps, news, and others. All of them have bugs, all consumer resources, and all probably make my machine less secure.

Oh yeah. On top of the fresh bloat it also reset lots of registry entries and other hidden features. Not a fan of that.

Very true. When I see things like the contacts app reappear, I know it's time to go through the privacy settings because Microsoft invariably resets many of them.

It's absolutely not the best tool in the world, but this one helps me a lot: https://www.winprivacy.de/english-home/

You have summarized the exact reason(s) why I will not use Windows for the foreseeable future even though I do like Windows 10

Those exact issues finally got me to drop Win10 to run Linux on the desktop for the first time in most of a decade, and to not have Windows running on any of my machines for the first time since... god, 1992 or 1993? Something like that. Even the Win8 crapfest didn't make me abandon Windows. 10's bad.

And that's just my personal entertainment PC. I don't know how people who have to actually do work in that environment don't throw their machine off a balcony, or quit and go somewhere that lets them use a different OS. It's infuriating. I'd go nuts dealing with trying to be productive in Win10 5 days a week.

its in group policy to not initiate a reboot if a user is logged in.

my guess is microsoft doesnt care about people who dont read the documentation.

AFAIK, the machine reboots no matter what if the update has a deadline that's reached.

I get what you are saying though.

not true, must be talking about different policies.

>Always automatically restart at the scheduled times = disabled

>No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations = enabled

>Delay Restart for scheduled installations = enabled

>Reschedule Automatic Updates scheduled installations = disabled

never had a reboot since.

How about a server version of Windows?

That would work, but it's a complete joke that he'd need to go that route to get a 2 week job to finish.

Does this happen if you buy windows machines on something like azure? Granted, I'd start looking into *nix alternatives to that software after the first reboot.. but I understand I live in a different world than a lot of buisiness which are all windows all the time.

I suspend or lock my machines when I "finish" with them so that I can resume where I left off when I come back. Many people, especially developers (which makes up a large part of the audience here on HN), do this. Your "strategy" doesn't work for us.

Are we back in 1998?

I'm always surprised when I meet a developer (or anyone really) that still shutdowns his/her computer each day. What about hibernate or sleep?

Funny thing about Windows, they promise since XP that "this time updates will no longer require a reboot". And they never deliver.

I'm surprised that developers use Windows as their daily driver to be honest. My gaming machine which runs Windows shuts off daily. My work laptop with Linux just sleeps.

If you choose to use Windows, you will have to reboot frequently.

I set the group policy to ask the user before installation and never had a problem. It still wants to reboot after you install the update, but since it only installs the update when you tell it to it's effectively manual control.

I just disable the windows update service under "Services" and re-enable once every two weeks (and run the Windows Update GUI to click "search for updates" or what's it called) to keep everything up-to-date. Has worked without problems for the last year.

Same here. I've found that all the other registry and policy methods eventually stopped working for me whereas disabling the update service has worked reliably for 9+ months.

They should just copy a linux distro. Mint would be a good one. Have a little icon that tells me when I'm out of date, then I can click it and update at my convenience. I think iphone does this, right? To operate their OS? So it is possible to make this work for "normal" users, whomever they are.

Mint can't auto-upgrade, so I don't think they're a good example...

No- it tells you when you need to upgrade so you can do it manually. That's the point. (Sorry for the late reply.)

> > Has anyone found a reliable way to disable automatic reboots for Windows 10 Pro? My registry mods have all eventually stopped working.

Yes. https://www.udse.de/en/windows-10-reboot-blocker.

A little program that runs in the background and continually changes the time window when updates would be allowed to exclude the next period.

Like you I run VMs and they don't always cleanly shut down when Windows decides to do its thing... no problems since installing the above. I've set it up on my parents computer, my wife's, and it works on them all.

Thanks. I will try this.

This happened to me last night. I was so pissed this morning. I got used to making sure I never left things on over a Tuesday night because they do updates, but this caught me on a Thursday.

Hopefully this will be the year of the Linux desktop......

There are currently two great options for running Linux and still having a productive desktop experience. One is ChromeOS the other is Win 10 with Linux subsystem and an Ubuntu image. Been using both for a little while now and they are really nice.

Running Linux on Windows 10 won't help you with this problem.

Agree. I like the Win linux/Ubuntu, but I also really like VirtualBox. Kinda tough on the battery but it gives me a lot to play with.

Turn on metered Internet. This is supposed to disable automatic Windows Update downloads. I have not tested this personally.

Tested and it works, as long as you haven't finished downloading and applying the updates.

Go into Services, stop the Windows update service, then disable it. I did this a year ago and have never had a random reboot.

I've had mixed success with this method. It works for a while but every couple of months I'll find my computer restarted and the service has been mysteriously re-enabled.

I seem to recall there's a way to do this with group policy editor. I'd expect this to be more supported/proper than via the registry. But I can't remember where in group policy the setting is found, and am purely speculating at its reliability.

For reference, this SO post has the steps: https://superuser.com/questions/957267/how-to-disable-automa...

Thanks. Would happily pay $5 for someone to write a current-Windows UI for enabling and disabling this.

Downgrade to the better Win7, or use Linux as host and Win in a VM.

Sounds like you haven't used Win10 for more than a week. Win10 is quite good, but there are a few annoyances.

Honest question... In what ways is 10 markedly better than 8.1? I was auto upgraded when 10 came out but got fed up in short time and rolled back.

Smaller footprint. Better stability. Nicer drivers (although i'd like to use my own unsigned drivers from time to time).

Granted, Windows 10 needs a HUGE LOT of tweaking to get optimised results (horrible horrible bloatware and privacy shit). You also may need a bunch of tools to get it to your liking. But when it is tweaked to your liking, it runs smooth. An i3 on SSD boots to desktop within 15 seconds.

Get this is OS X too these days during the early hours. Computer wont even be idle I'll literally be typing and suddenly my apps will start closing left and right as OS X has decided its time to update/reboot.

Classic example of Metrics Driven Design, if you start scoring a team's performance on how many people update to the latest version then the methods of forcing an update become more and more intrusive. No wonder Apple always boasts such great update percentages for iOS, the thing practically bullies you into updating, I had a 4S for a long time and had to dismiss multiple nags a day to update and threats to delete apps to make space for the precious update.

That only happens if you tick all the boxes in the app store preferences window. And that's not the default. So you had to tick it.

It is by default I'm actually sitting on a fresh install as of a week ago on my work machine.

It probably retains a legacy setting if you updated but this is straight from Apple. I never even knew that preference box existed.

It will actually both make a notification popup on "turning on automatic updates" which then directs you to a settings panel where you manually have to check the box.

Mine is a fresh install of the same vintage.

What the hell setting do you have enabled where OS X does that? It doesn't even tell me about updates, I have to go check them manually in the App Store (which segfaults about half the time)

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