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

Anonymous
2009-11-05T12:57:50+00:00

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.

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

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Anonymous
2009-11-05T13:05:29+00:00

In Windows Update, click on change settings. Under Important Updates, select 'Download updates but let me choose whether to install them'. This will give you the control on when to install and restart if required.

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  1. Anonymous
    2011-08-13T00:23:09+00:00

    I wonder which part of "so I do not have the group policy editor" was so confusing???

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  2. Anonymous
    2011-10-12T21:46:44+00:00

    NB: If & when Automatic Updates installs one or more updates, your computer remains subject to the vulnerabilities addressed by the update(s) & continues to be at-risk until you've rebooted.Way to cut & paste the whitepaper there again Rob. Because clearly all these annoyed people came here looking for you to give them the kind of rationalisation one might give a five year old for going to bed early. After destroying hours of someone's work or interrupting a whole organisation's work schedules once again, I'm sorry but I just don't care that you needed to patch a vulnerability in a part of Windows that may or may not even be in use. And as someone already pointed out, we're talking about sometimes staying on a matter of hours that could make weeks of difference somewhere else, when the updates are only checked for every 24 hours, and generally released on a ONE WEEK cycle. Speaking of cut& paste, sorry for the formatting of my post. Now that I've pasted italicised text into this thing I can't switch back. Five years and a million MS code monkeys, still waiting for a working textbox!It's just another example of the total disconnect between MS designers and coders and their customers.

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  3. Anonymous
    2011-10-12T23:08:51+00:00

    Way to cut & paste the whitepaper there again Rob...

    Are you talking to me?

    With all due respect, the content in my post was my own, thank you very much.

    Note: MS MVPs neither represent nor work for Microsoft: We're all volunteers here.

    PS: CTRL+B will enable/disable bold and CTRL+I will enable/disable italics.

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  4. Anonymous
    2011-10-14T02:56:04+00:00

    THANK YOU! Sooooo much. Saved me. :D

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