Windows 10

Prevent Forced Restart After Installing Windows Updates In Windows

Windows 10 updates are automatic and a big pain with this is a restart, which sometimes results in loss of data when the user is working on the PC. This system started with Windows 8, but in the older OS there was a provision to disable the updates. With the Anniversary update, things have improved for example with Active hours, but still a large proportion of users believe that older options of Windows updates should be brought back.

But to overcome this, a group policy exists in Windows that prevents a forced restart or an automatic restart which can either be applied through group policy editor or registry editor for home users.

Group policy Edit

  1. Press Windows key+R to open Run dialog box and type in gpedit.msc . This opens Group policy editor.
  2. On the left hand side, Navigate to Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components  -> Windows Update
  3. In the right list of polices, look for “No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installation”. Double click it and modify:
  4. Set the policy to Enabled and that’s it.To reset it in future, set it as Not configured.
Registry Edit
  1. Open Run dialog box using Windows key+R and type in regedit.
  2. On the left hand navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREPoliciesMicrosoftWindows
  3. Now right click Windows and select New>Key. Name this as Windowsupdate. Again Select Windowsupdate and select new key and Name that as AU. The final structure looks like this

  4. Again right click AU and select New>DWORD. Name it AlwaysAutoRebootAtScheduledTime. Press OK and again Right click it and select modify. Put value of it as 0.
  5. Click OK and you are done!!
With these edits, the system would not reboot at scheduled time, even after the time is outside active hours.