Windows 7 - Windows Update bad behavior

I’ve noticed here lately that two of my Windows 7 installations have had the operating system *reboot* without my consent. For me this can be bad because I might be running important software that requires a proper shutdown in the background. Just because I didn’t pay attention to Windows 7 for a little while it *should not* be rebooting and killing every software that I am running. On boats this could be bad as well because you might be running a navigation software or something else important, say a mail server software that has to be always up.

I noticed this for the 2nd time in a Virtual Box test installation of Windows 7 - used as a Sand Box / Safe environment to test stuff on Windows 7. My virtual box virtual machine somehow got a mis-configuration that made the hard drive not one of the default boot devices … anyway it brought to light the question … Why the heck did Windows 7 go down and reboot anyway.

So I went on to find out, in Control Panel, where they hid the Windows Update settings. I set it to notify me before downloading and installing Windows updates. This still causes it to *check* for updates - but not download them, and not reboot my computer with important stuff up and running. You might want to do this on your boat as well - because depending on your Internet Connection you may not want Windows 7 to download large Windows Updates over an expensive connection. You might wish to wait until you can switch to a less expensive Internet Connection.

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Alan Spicer - KA4UDX (http://www.qrz.com/db/ka4udx)

Alan Spicer Telecom / Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net - http://www.wifiyacht.net

communications (at) marinetelecom.net

+1 954 683 3426

This entry was posted on 1. April 2010 at 20:04 and is filed under General Computer onboard Sail and Motor Yachts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.