Re: Why does WinXP automatically reboot for updates?

<void.no.spam.com@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1137396473.319658.270920@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Windows XP was telling me that it had finished downloading the latest
updates, and that I had to restart to load those updates.  I was doing
work and in no position to restart, so I kept telling it that I'd
restart later.  Yet it kept asking me every 10 or 15 minutes.  Finally
I went away from my computer, and it must have asked me again, waited 5
minutes, and then restarted itself.  I came back to find that my
computer had rebooted, and my work was lost.

This is a horrible design.  It asks you to restart, and if you don't
answer in 5 minutes, it assumes that it is OK to reboot?  It should
just leave the "Yes/No" dialog box up indefinitely until the user
responds.

This is the stupidest "feature" that I've ever seen.



Don't remember a Windows update, after completing and prompting for a reboot, ever timing out and continuing the reboot on its own. It just sits there waiting for me to answer it. I usually just drag the prompt out of my way so just a wee bit of its window sticks out the side of the screen so I can get to it later when I feel like it.

But then I don't let WU automatically *apply* updates. I don't even allow it to download updates. I configure it to ASK me to download the updates, and after the download then it ASKS me to do the install.

Walking away from your computer without saving your changed data already evidences that the data really wasn't that important. How long does it take to hit Ctrl+S (or whatever is the hotkey in whatever UNNAMED application you were using) to save your data. So how do you know it was WU with its prompting that caused the reboot? Could've been a power outage, someone kicked your cord, someone hit the power button (twice), could've been your unnamed application caused a crash. Could be you're infected with the RPC pest that periodically reboots the host. If you were away, how do you know it waited 5 minutes and then rebooted? You weren't there. You have a fire in your kitchen and you take time out to answer the door when the pizza delivery guy shows up?

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