Windows 11 reboots itself - Annoying!

I frequently experience this 'mandatory reboot' event at work - mid-task, middle of a programming session, in a meeting or presentation, it doesn't matter; Windows simply decides: "It's reboot time!" - without notification, warning or my permission - screen goes dark, VPN disconnected, meeting disconnected, open documents to recovery mode, presence lost. Active in a work presentation? "Nope! Don't care, it's reboot time!!"

What an arrogant attitude to your users.

Windows has not been this bad since Vista - remember that POS? The primary aim of Vista was to actively prevent you from operating your system, with 'security' confirmation pop-ups at every stage, state, action or thought. Anyone remember Internet popups and how annoying those were? Take that multiplied by a hundred and then some.

As an IT professional with decades of experience, I can manage my computers all by my self, like a grown up who doesn't need IT baby-sitting.

Microsoft, wake up!! Your products are a tool to be used, optional tools at that. Your approach, while well intended I'm sure, is not required in this case.

I am shocked to see that this is apparently a serious problem with Windows 11. What kind of idiot programmed this thing? I don't mind updates, in fact, I keep my Windows 11 up to date, but I DO mind automatic reboots that I have not confirmed. My computer is often doing tasks overnight for the very reason that they are expected to by DONE by the next morning; instead, I came to a rebooted computer that has done NOTHING and I have to do everything ALL OVER again.

How do you disable automatic updates? I don't ever want that the PC reboots because of an update without ASKING my first. How do I disable the reboot? There has to be a solution. I tried gpedit.msc doesn't seem to be available in Windows 11 Home, so I'm looking for another option.

So I try to make this a very easy question: how can I prevent automatic reboots on Windows 11? It seems to be tied to Windows Update. I don't want to come to my PC the next morning to find out it has wiped out all the work it was supposed be finishing overnight.

Solved It!

With an additional modification I've been able to make it so that Windows will download updates, but it doesn't install them or restart the computer until I tell it to do so. Finally I can leave my work running overnight!

Combining the original instructions from Henning Idsøe as well as the instructions found here, I did these steps:

1. Win+r
2. gpedit.msc
3. Edit Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Windows Update->Manage end user experience->Configure Automatic Updates
4. Set it to Enabled and 3 - Auto download and notify for install
5. Edit Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Windows Update->Legacy Policies->No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations
6. Set it to Enabled
7. Restart the computer (I don't know if this is required, but I did it)

What an absolute joke! Here we are 2 years later and MS still hasn't stopped automatically restarting our computers in the middle of the night!

YOU SUCK MICROSOFT! YOU OBVIOUSLY COULDN'T CARE LESS ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMERS BECAUSE WE HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO USE YOUR PRODUCT! I HATE YOU!

On my PC I did pause updates, I even disabled the automatic update service. But when I woke up this morning, pc had restarted.

I want to run it 24/7 without automatic restarts, because it's kind of a server and some data can be corrupted if it restarts without closing programs that are writing data on disc drive. (I understand that win11 pro not the best OS for the server, but I have some apps that only work on windows).

So just pausing updates (and disabling them in services.msc) doesn't help to stop it to restart automaticaly.