Reason to hate Microsoft, #63388432

[kengr]

I got home from a late nite bike ride (hey, it's cooler and there's less traffic) about an hour ago. To find that Windows 2000 was just finishing an "update" I'd note asked it to do.

So now every 5-10 minutes I get a window popping up telling me that if I don't click it, it'll restart the system for me in 5 minutes.

This is highly annoying because it means the last update I *did* approve changed my settings for automatic update. Without asking or notifying me ogf the change.

Since I usually have close to 20 windows open with various things a restart without my knowledge would mess up a lot of things. But MS persists in claiming that it has the right to do this sort of thing "for our own good".

I'm just waiting for them to get hit with major damages when some Windows based control system does a restart and hurts someone.

Neither invisibly changing the setting nor forcing updates is anything *remotely* close to proper behavior in an OS.

Comments

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Wait. You can change the settings for automatic update?

Is this a Windows 2000 thing only, or does it exist in later Windows versions? I'd love to be able to tell the restart window to get stuffed.

[kengr]

Check Control Panel On 2k, and XP (and probably Vista) there should be an item for "automatic updates"

I set it to "Notify me". Which means that when there's an update available, I get an icon on the task bar over near the clock.

If I click on it, it tells me what updates are available and asks if I want to download them. Even lets me pick & choose.

Once I tell it ok, it goes off and starts downloading. When it's done, the icon comes back and asks if I want to install. I can do automatic or custom. I always use custom.

And there it'll start installing. I make point of clicking again on the icon so I'll have a window with the install process in it.

And if a restart is required, when I get the "restart now/restart later" box, if I click "restart later" it actually goes away and waits for me to get around to restarting.

But MS in their infinite arrogancewisdom (cough, choke) has a means to override this and force an install anyway.

Frankly, if I had the cash and a willing lawyer, I'd love to go after them on that for violating the federal laws about unauthorized computer access.

I maintain that my checking the "notify me" is explicit evidence that I did *not* authorize them to force any updates on me.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Aha. I misunderstood what you said. I was hoping that there was some way to tell the "restart now / restart later" to go away and don't come back, I'll restart the computer when I want to.

[kengr]

Well, if you've got it set to "notify" and choose "custom" when the patchres are downloaded, that's *usually* what happen when it gets done, and there's a restart now/restart later, once you click later, that's pretty much it.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

I hate it when XP tries to restart the computer like that. "The computer will restart." Me: "No you're not, dammit!"

[kengr]

See my reply to dornbeast above. You can fix that in Control Panel. At least most of the time.