Windows Update suddenly doing it's own thing.

Hi everyone.

I've been running Windows 7 Professional (RTM) for about a month now, and typically I have the Windows update settings configured to ask me before downloading or installing any updates for my computer. It sometimes tries to install nVidia drivers automatically, and they're typically outdated or bad drivers, so I want to prevent this.

This morning, though, Windows Update suddenly had reconfigured itself to download and install updates automatically - WITHOUT my approval. On top of this, when I set the configuration back to the setting where I would manually install updates, Windows Action Center now registers an "issue", and will only resolve this issue if I have the Windows Update settings configured to automatically download and install. It wasn't doing this before!

Is something weird going on with my system that it would change like this all of a sudden? I was able to leave things on manual install before, without the Action Center piping up - And on top of that, the settings wouldn't change themselves spontaneously! I'm wondering if the settings got flipped during yesterday's update. I can turn off the Action Center notifications, but then I feel slightly unsafe. Any help would be appreciated.

From what I recall XP SP3 did the same exact thing so this isn't new. I would set it to inform me of any new updates and not to install them automatically. However, every once in a while it would tell me that it's updating. Although it didn't happen often I did find myself having to reset this feature back to the way I had it. I never figured out why it would do that. I think (as mentioned earlier) it may have something to do with a previous update.

I hadn't thought it might be a virus, though I had considered it possible that it was a software conflict of some sort. I ran a full system scan with NOD32 and Malwarebytes antimalware, and both came up clean. Should I take any other measures? Is this frequently a sign of infection? I try to keep my system very, very clean: Weekly scans, constantly looking at Process Explorer for rogue programs, javascript off while surfing. I don't even download any software that doesn't reach my computer through Windows update or Steam. What else should I do to make sure this isn't a trojan or virus, if you think that's what caused it?

Thanks for the link. I feel a little weird setting the action center to ignore the message (particularly since prior to this problem, the action center did NOT display a message even if I had selected 'Notify me but let me download and install the updates'), but I guess something's wrong.

Thanks for the help, though!! I appreciate it, and your considerate attention, as well.

Huh, strange. Well, I will chalk it up to the reset caused by an update, and assume my sieve-like mind had disabled the notification in the action center. Either way, I'll stay vigilant, but for now it's probably not worth worrying over.

Thanks again for the help and advice! You guys are all awesome here.