DISABLE: Restart Your Computer To Finish Installing Important Updates
If you are reading this page then you have probably been greeted by this every annoying Windows Update prompt: ‘Restart Your Computer To Finish Installing Important Updates’
Microsoft’s ever annoying prompt to ‘Restart Your Computer To Finish Installing Important Updates’
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get rid of this annoying prompt? Thankfully, we can with just a few simple steps:
#1 make sure the ‘Restart your computer…” prompt is not showing (i.e. ‘Postpone’ it for 4 hours)
#2 start the Windows command prompt with administrative privileges
#3 run the following command: net stop "windows update"
net stop “windows update”
to disable the Windows Update ‘restart your computer dialog’
This stops the Windows Update service which means voila, no more annoying prompt!*
*NOTE: Upon a subsequent reboot, the Windows Update service will automatically start again. After which time if Windows eventually downloads more Updates requiring restarts, you will see the prompt again.
So, to summarize:
This tip will let you work at your computer in peace and wait as long as you want to reboot (without having that annoying prompt pop up every 4 hours!)
Upon reboot you should not have the popup (b/c the updates will have finally been installed when you manually rebooted) and the popup will only occur again when more updates are downloaded in the future. 🙂
I hope this all makes sense, it gets a bit hard to write out in a coherent way… so let me know in the comments if you have any questions!
Best regards,
-JD
What a useless answer. I’ll make sure I ask my 1000 users with no admin privs to stop the service.
Hi PJ,
Thank you for your comment.
I am sorry this method was not useful to you.
Best regards,
-JD
Just wanted to say thank you for the tip. I found it useful and appreciate you kindly sharing.
With best wishes,
-Noe
Hi Noe,
Thank you for your kind comment 🙂
Have a great week!
-JD
Relax! This article isn’t for you and your users. It’s aimed at the vast majority who have their own PC at home. I’m surprised you didn’t realise that?
As a sysadmin supporting 1000 seats, you should already know stuff like this anyway. If you’re going to look for advice on sites aimed at non-technical users, you can’t really complain when you get non-technical advice…
Personally I just pick up the nag window and move it down to the far bottom-right of the screen so only a small, unobtrusive corner is visible. Then it doesn’t get in the way, and all I have is the Windows Update in the taskbar to remind me that I will need to reboot “at some point”…
Hi Jason,
Thank you for your nice comment and the for the tip to get the update window out of the way 🙂
Have a great week!
-JD