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

Good god. This is stupid.  Another example of highly educated, highly intelligent programmers lacking common sense.  It's ridiculous that I have to edit the registry to fix this.

This is true.

IF YOU CAN'T USE gpedit.msc THEN YOU CAN USE THE FOLLOWING REMEDY!

1. Open the Registry Edit

(WindowsKey + R, "regedit.exe")

(Remember to be careful! DON'T change anything unless you know exactly what you're doing!) 2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

* Chances are, if you can't access gpedit.msc you'll be missing these keys! *

If keys WindowsUpdate\AU exist, go ahead to step 3!

OTHERWISE, continue through these indented steps...

1. Navigate to **HKEY\_LOCAL\_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows**
2. (Make sure the above key is highlighted and) go to the edit menu and choose New > Key
3. Name the key **WindowsUpdate**
4. Now, repeat the above steps, except highlight **WindowsUpdate** and name the next key**AU**

3. With WindowsUpdate\AU highlighted, create a new 32-bit DWORD calledNoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers
4. Right click on your newly created value and give it a value data of 1 (hexadecimal)
5. Double check all the steps to make sure you did everything EXACTLY how I explained it
6. Close Registry Editor... You're FREE! :D

Now, even with the gpedit.msc remedy, this will disable automatic restart on important updates, but it will still nag you a bit about restarting it. I don't mind this, personally, because I usually tell it to remind me in about 2-4 hours depending on what I'm doing. The feature is useful if it's just a notification (which is what this remedy will basically do), but when it starts making decisions on whether or not to restart or shutdown my computer is when I get very frustrated. Microsoft REALLY needs to fix this!

*** So why not just use "Download updates but let me choose whether to install them"? Because I still want it to automatically INSTALL them. I just want to choose when to RESTART my computer. There's a massive difference between automatically installing AND restarting to configure, and just automatically installing. I take care of my PC. I'm not stupid enough to never restart my computer, especially when it needs it. Please, Microsoft, don't insult my intelligence, and be a little more flexible! If I wanted to work with all this behind-the-scenes magic I'd spend more time in my Linux terminal...

"Well played sir, well played" Very easy to follow even for a windows relative rookie like me. If it works I will be stoked! Agree windows treat us all like idiots too often!

You know, it might help if you think before you reply to a post. Just a suggestion.

 Yeah, or at all ;)

No, the trouble is it has no user settings to tell it not to restart by its own decision, so the user who doesn't know which registry setting to change, and how, really has the feeling that Windows controls the computer more than the user. It's not a default setting, it's a mandatory setting the users can't change without messing around in the registry. Nothing to do with car radios. Quite naturally, a number of users will complain about such idiotic, destructive and hostile behaviour by Microsoft.

They've fixed it in Windows 8, so they've understood it wasn't very clever.

f*****g windows, restarted my machine without giving me an option to cancel reboot. it destroyed all my work. i tried to go to control panel and changed the setting to let me choose when to update, but it still shut down. it used to have an option where you could select and say not now, but postphone, but the super clever nuts at microsoft seemed to have stopped that option.!!!!