Anyway you can pause the updates until a certain date and time in the advanced settings of the Updates page.
Which is what I’ve resorted to doing on certain weeks when we need to allow people to access them. My employer is very small without much funding, so I’m not a tech person, but I’m the “tech person,” if that makes sense. They never were the best computers in the first place and are used by many people, so obviously that contributes, but they do take excessively long to install updates.
My major beef with my home PC and Windows updates is that I can’t totally disable automatic restarts, which is a pain since sometimes there’s a reason I want to leave it locked and running overnight without disruption. I’ve tried regedit, group policy, and taking ownership of the Update Orchestrator folder, but regardless if I’ve got it locked, Windows decides it’s not in use and should be restarted. At least it stopped recommending Windows 11 when I disabled TPM in bios, but once I get more comfortable using Linux, I’ll be done with Windows forever.
It’s not like I’m neglecting updates, either. I manually check at least once a month. But it still occasionally will hit me with an unexpected/unwanted restart when I least expect it.
In my PC Windows inform me that there is an update in a little Pop up, where i can select if i want to restart or not, no automatic restart, i can restart when i want, or shut down in the night and see on power on in the morning, how Windows install the updates (some minutes), before showing the log screen.
That’s what I’d like to happen, but that’s not consistently what happens. In fact, last time I saw the notification, I decided I could wait until the next day, but Windows went ahead and restarted for me during the night regardless. My computer was locked when this occurred, which leads me to believe Windows assumed I wasn’t “active” and could therefore restart.
I can’t explain it, but I can assure you it did happen.
Edit: Oops, I guess it doesn’t show in my screenshot, but I have “Configure automatic updates” set to:
3 = (Default setting) Download the updates automatically and notify when they are ready to be installed
Windows finds updates that apply to the computer and downloads them in the background (the user is not notified or interrupted during this process). When the downloads are complete, users will be notified that they are ready to install. After going to Windows Update, users can install them.
That is an common error, shut down Windows is not the same as Power off, with the normal shutdown Windows stay in standby mode and permits to restart faster (not much with an SSD), with this it can still work in background and even restart the system by itself. If you want to avoid this, you must change the power settings, only in this way you have an Power off that really is a Power off.
Windows only seems to be easier to handle as Linux, but it isn’t, it’s quite the opposite, only the very basic settings are more at hand.
Is there another setting I should be using in addition to this? Which power settings must I change?
Windows only seems to be easier to handle as Linux, but it isn’t, it’s quite the opposite, only the very basic settings are more at hand
So true. I’ve always assumed Linux would be beyond my comprehension, but it’s actually much less frustrating than Windows so far.
Edit: After looking around the control panel, I do see that I accidentally had “automatically restart” checkmarked under system failure, but in this case I don’t think that would have applied since it was a pending update, not a system failure.
Even with Fast startup diseabled, it remain a certain hibernation function (hiberfil.sys). Desactivating the Hibernation service fix this problem. Hibernation service is anyway not so important, above its a big memory hog, because duplicate every process to use it as backup if you shut down the system, so if you boot again are also booting this processes, apps or what yo had open before. But in change, it slows down the whole system. At least in my Windows it works as it should. Cold boot last a little longer, but with an SSD are only seconds.
PS, instead of the Control panel, use the GodMode function which Windows has
Create a new folder in the Desktop or anywhere
Rename it GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
(instead of GodMode you can use any other name, but you can’t change what’s beyond the point)
Done, the folder has change its icon and when you open it, you have an ordered list with access to all possible Windows settings (more than 200), even those that are hidden. As say, something like a Control panel on steroids.
Whoa, this is my first time doing this, thank you very much! This should honestly be a default app in Windows.
I’ll look for that hiberfil.sys as soon as possible. I’m not really concerned about boot time at all. I boot from an SSD, so it probably won’t take too long, but even if it did it would be worth having more control over my system.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this help. Thank you very, very much!
It’s a default app since Vista. Windows has a lot of functions and apps, but most of these lacks of documentation. You’ll find a lot of apps in the system and system32 folder, but all with a not intuitive name, eg eudcedit is an editor to design own fonts, but there are over 300 more and the only way to know what they do is searching all of them one by one in the web. Adding also a lot of commandline commands. Windows easy and intuitive, LOL., nice joke.
Which is what I’ve resorted to doing on certain weeks when we need to allow people to access them. My employer is very small without much funding, so I’m not a tech person, but I’m the “tech person,” if that makes sense. They never were the best computers in the first place and are used by many people, so obviously that contributes, but they do take excessively long to install updates.
My major beef with my home PC and Windows updates is that I can’t totally disable automatic restarts, which is a pain since sometimes there’s a reason I want to leave it locked and running overnight without disruption. I’ve tried regedit, group policy, and taking ownership of the Update Orchestrator folder, but regardless if I’ve got it locked, Windows decides it’s not in use and should be restarted. At least it stopped recommending Windows 11 when I disabled TPM in bios, but once I get more comfortable using Linux, I’ll be done with Windows forever.
It’s not like I’m neglecting updates, either. I manually check at least once a month. But it still occasionally will hit me with an unexpected/unwanted restart when I least expect it.
In my PC Windows inform me that there is an update in a little Pop up, where i can select if i want to restart or not, no automatic restart, i can restart when i want, or shut down in the night and see on power on in the morning, how Windows install the updates (some minutes), before showing the log screen.
That’s what I’d like to happen, but that’s not consistently what happens. In fact, last time I saw the notification, I decided I could wait until the next day, but Windows went ahead and restarted for me during the night regardless. My computer was locked when this occurred, which leads me to believe Windows assumed I wasn’t “active” and could therefore restart.
This was after already having set group policy not to allow it.
I can’t explain it, but I can assure you it did happen.
Edit: Oops, I guess it doesn’t show in my screenshot, but I have “Configure automatic updates” set to:
That is an common error, shut down Windows is not the same as Power off, with the normal shutdown Windows stay in standby mode and permits to restart faster (not much with an SSD), with this it can still work in background and even restart the system by itself. If you want to avoid this, you must change the power settings, only in this way you have an Power off that really is a Power off. Windows only seems to be easier to handle as Linux, but it isn’t, it’s quite the opposite, only the very basic settings are more at hand.
These are the settings I’ve had for a long time, if that’s what you’re referring to. I thought disabling fast startup would make it completely power off when it shuts down.
Is there another setting I should be using in addition to this? Which power settings must I change?
So true. I’ve always assumed Linux would be beyond my comprehension, but it’s actually much less frustrating than Windows so far.
Edit: After looking around the control panel, I do see that I accidentally had “automatically restart” checkmarked under system failure, but in this case I don’t think that would have applied since it was a pending update, not a system failure.
Even with Fast startup diseabled, it remain a certain hibernation function (hiberfil.sys). Desactivating the Hibernation service fix this problem. Hibernation service is anyway not so important, above its a big memory hog, because duplicate every process to use it as backup if you shut down the system, so if you boot again are also booting this processes, apps or what yo had open before. But in change, it slows down the whole system. At least in my Windows it works as it should. Cold boot last a little longer, but with an SSD are only seconds. PS, instead of the Control panel, use the GodMode function which Windows has
Create a new folder in the Desktop or anywhere
Rename it GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
(instead of GodMode you can use any other name, but you can’t change what’s beyond the point)
Done, the folder has change its icon and when you open it, you have an ordered list with access to all possible Windows settings (more than 200), even those that are hidden. As say, something like a Control panel on steroids.
Whoa, this is my first time doing this, thank you very much! This should honestly be a default app in Windows.
I’ll look for that hiberfil.sys as soon as possible. I’m not really concerned about boot time at all. I boot from an SSD, so it probably won’t take too long, but even if it did it would be worth having more control over my system.
I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this help. Thank you very, very much!
It’s a default app since Vista. Windows has a lot of functions and apps, but most of these lacks of documentation. You’ll find a lot of apps in the system and system32 folder, but all with a not intuitive name, eg eudcedit is an editor to design own fonts, but there are over 300 more and the only way to know what they do is searching all of them one by one in the web. Adding also a lot of commandline commands. Windows easy and intuitive, LOL., nice joke.