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Temporarily Disable Windows Update's Automatic Reboot in Vista

So you're in the middle of doing something important on your computer when the "Restart your computer to finish installing important updates" dialog comes up, and asks you to restart your computer.

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Sure, you can postpone it up to 4 hours, but then the dialog will just come up again. If you were downloading some important files you might not want the computer to reboot automatically.

The quick way to disable the reboot for the current session is to stop the Windows Update service from running. You can do this by opening an administrative mode command prompt.

Type cmd into the start menu search box, and use Ctrl+Shift+Enter to open in administrative mode. You could also right-click the item in the menu and choose Run as Administrator.

Once at the prompt, just type in the following:

net stop "windows update"

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Don't worry, the service will start right back up when you reboot your computer, but at least you don't have to deal with the restart dialog.

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. When he's not coming up with great how-to articles, he's probably writing at his personal blog. This article was written on 06/3/07 and tagged with: Uncategorized, Windows Vista, Vista Tips & Tweaks

Disclaimer: Many of our articles require making changes to your system. While we fully test and stand by our advice, there is still the potential for problems when making any configuration changes. Please be careful.

Comments (7)

  1. David Vivek

    Hello; my question is as a result of notification "windows is configuring updates" and all my work of the moment disappears and in fact windows shuts down and re-boots immediately. This happened for the second time; this time upon start, the message "dock view needs to be disabled now; to do so click here"; I didn't make it before that note disappeared. Are these related messages? How can I resolve that windows no-longer randomly updates and shuts down? Thank you!

  2. Sue G

    I tried this–it says system error 5 access is denied
    !! help!

  3. Victoria

    How do I undo this command? It did not end up being the solution to my problem so I want to undo it.

  4. Ian Morris

    Sue G - you need to run the cmd prompt as administrator. right click and choose the run as admin option.

  5. jensn

    i love you ;D been looking for this everywhere

  6. anon

    Victoria, As he says just reboot and it will undo the changes or if you need to start it again without reboot just run (as administrator) net start "windows update"

  7. anon

    Oh and if you want to have it disable it perminantly check out this link
    http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....-computer/


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