My normal mode of operation is to set windows up to inform me of updates but not DL or install them. THen when the little popup saying there are updates comes up, I open the update center and manually slect the updates.
By default it should only autoselect the critical and important updates which never seem to include third party
driver updates, those are always in the "optional" page all of which are unselected by default.
That way you not only get control of when it updates, you also get control over what it updates

ANd yes, in full auto mode, Windows 7 will update and reset right in the middle of playing a game or watching a movie :P