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

Not particularly helpful.

What if I dont mind installing the updates immediately?  What if I just dont want the auto-restart?

I told my windows 7 system to "postpone restart", and it restarted itself 4 hours later anyway.

I should be able to choose for myself when the best time is to bog down my system with an install. And I should be able to choose for myself when the best time is to restart my system.  They should not be conjoined since they are independent processes.

I dont mind the constant reminders from the system to restart. But if I should ignore the reminder or not be around to postpone it, it should not take it upon itself to do as it will.

Why cant the system detect the fact that it is in use?  Can it not determine for itself if there are processes ongoing, if the internet bandwidth is in use, if significant resource memory is taken up?

Thanks infostud!   I got caught out 3 times by this stupid feature of Windows 7.  Each time I lost my work.  Very frustrating.   My employer requires me to have updates set to install automatically so the first solution offered isn't suitable to me.

If Microsoft is worried about peoples PCs being vulnerable until they reboot their machine, why not just disable networking.  Much less severe than forcing a reboot!

I went to sleep last night and when I woke up my computer had been restarted.  I did not tell it to restart, I did not want it restarted, and I had documents opened that I cannot recover because it restarted.  It restarted because Windows Update had a single update to install.  I am running Windows 7 Home Premium, so I do not have the group policy editor, and the registry key that some websites mentioned to use to disable the restart is not there.

Keep in mind, I just want to prevent an involuntary restart.  I do not want to turn off Windows Update, and I don't mind being prompted to restart.  I just don't want my computer restarting on its own ever again.

This feature should be removed from Windows altogether. It's completely intolerable to shutdown the computer without the user's consent. As already explained:

• You might lose important unsaved documents, EVEN IF YOU ARE IN FRONT OF THE COMPUTER! (I have a dual screen setup and I didn't notice the popup in the left screen with the countdown, so my computer reboot took me by surprise!)
• You might lose a render job. If you have to render a long video which takes hours to render, and this stupid countdown popup appears, then you've had your computer all night on doing NOTHING at all! Plus nothing to show up for the next morning!
• You might lose a TV recording if the computer was programmed
• I've also read about someone who overslept because had an alarm in his laptop and since Windows restarted, the alarm never sounded
• There are zillions of reasons NOT to have this.

...and the only thing the MS guy had to say is an excuse about how is it important to restart because or security (at the expense of lost work??!!), and later a sarcastic comment "don't let the door hit you on the way out". Wow.... I though this "Microsoft Answers" site was meant to be about helpful answers :-(

This is very arrogant of Microsoft to take control of the computer like that, instead of letting the user choose, and this auto-restart issue has been a problem with Windows since XP times.