I want to turn off the automatic restart for Windows Update on Windows 7 Home Premium. How do I do this?

This doesn't work. I found my Windows 7 having been shut down overnight after a lot of nagging to do it last night. I already had this setting chosen. It is completely unacceptable that Windows decides to shut down by itself because of updates. Every time, I have to spend time recovering a lot of documents with the risk of data loss each time. It's fine to remind me but not to shut down on its own. Microsoft seems to have forgotten that the meaning with computers is to get work done, not for every Windows user to be systems programmer. The prioirity is the work the user needs done, not the operating system.

It would be much less of a nuisance if there was an option to do a restart and open everything as it was when shut down WHEN I TELL IT TO. Windows Update attempts to do that, but even if all the files are saved, it opens recovery files for each file open, so the time waste is the same is if I had to open them manually.

You could follow this video. It was very helpful and does the same thing except in a batch file and it works for every version of Windows.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS4W7f4VGTQ

I've been in this thread for a long time now, and still I shake my head at the stupidity of Microsoft and their decision to do this, and the terrible way that they have implemented it.  Then yesterday I decided that a restart was in order (MSN Messenger decided that everyone in the world was offline.  Luckily I could check on my iPhone and see that was not the case so ...) so I hit 'Restart' and went off to make some tea.  Five minutes later I returned to discover that Windows was (very sensibly) waiting for me to confirm that I wanted to save or discard changes from a Powerpoint (the poor cousin in MS Office) presentation.  

The realisation here is that Microsoft have built in to the command Iget to use (I am the OWNER of this computer!!!) a process to prevent a restart and lossage of data, but the one that they  get to use - the auto restart - they HAVEN'T!!!!

I laughed out loud.

P.S.  The tea played no further part in this story.

I understand that Microsoft wants to patch security holes as quickly as possible with minimum of user interaction. What I don't understand is why these security patches are more important than a user's data (which is lost during the auto reboot).

Yes, users should always save their work before leaving their computer unattended, but I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that occasionally I forget, only to find that the data has been permanently lost because Microsoft decided to reboot my machine without permission.

I'm sure Microsoft just thinks that it's a few power users whining about something which, on the whole, is good for Windows users, but this is fundamentally wrong.

If someone from our IT dept came and fiddled with my PC, rebooted it without my permission and without saving the documents I was working on I would be absolutely livid. This feature is no different.