Windows Update - Enable or Disable Automatic Restart

Help! This fix stopped working a few months ago on all my PCs and all my clients PCs. Has Microsoft done something to override it? Anyone else notice the same thing on their PCs?

I'm hoping for some talented individual to come up with another method of simply nagging the user to "re-start to finish installing updates", rather than forcing the reboot on them overnight causing them to lose data and work.

One could always set Windows updates to "Download but let me choose whether to install", but can we count on our clients actually DOING that ant not letting their PCs get horribly out-of-date?

What do you guys think?

Thanks for the quick reply, Brink

I have re-applied the registry file a couple months ago on all machines, in response to this new behavior, and it continues to do it on all of them. More recently, I checked the keys that the registry file creates, using Registry Editor, to make sure they were still as they should be from the registry file. They were set properly, NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers was 1, and AlwaysAutoRebootAtScheduledTime was 0. It seems the registry entry is being ignored?

When I merge the registry file with a client's PC, I do it after all available important and recommended updates have installed, and the machine is current. Their machines still ignore it. This is on all my client's machines that leave my bench with a fresh install of Win7 Home x64 SP1 OEM installed from OEM discs (or my unaltered* USB ISO of said disc. *Only alteration is deleting ei.cfg*).

Thanks for taking time to work with me, Brink.

To help process of elimination, all my PCs as well as 99% of my client's PCs all run Home Premium, so we don't have access to the Group Policy Editor or any of its functions. On the one or two PCs I've set-up with pro, (have done none with ultimate or enterprise) I have not touched the Group Policy Editor at all.

I don't do any hacks or tweaks to my installations, software/drivers are all different for me and each client. Due to this, I find it hard to believe that it is affecting only me and the PCs I touch. On the other hand, I have not found anyone else posting about this either. Maybe no other users have noticed it yet?

I've been trying to figure this out on my own for months before tuning to this forum for help. I'm so dumbfounded, next time someone tells me 1+1=3, I'm just going to accept it. Hopefully nobody writes instructions on a grenade that read: "Pull Pin, Receive Bacon".