How to Disable Restart After Installing Windows Update

Automatic Updates is an integral part of Microsoft Windows that allows important security updates from Microsoft server to be downloaded and installed automatically. When the download and installation process is done, it will ask whether we want to restart now or later. The problem arises when we choose to restart later. A Windows Update popup will come out anytime afterwards and it reads “Updating your computer is almost complete. Your computer needs to be restarted for updates to take effect. Windows will restart your computer automatically in 5:00 minutes. Do you want to restart your computer now?”

There are 2 ways to remove the annoying popup from bugging you.

1st method: Stop the Automatic Updates Service

1. Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools and double click on Services

2. Find "Automatic Updates" from the list of services, right-click on it and click stop

Alternatively, you can stop Automatic Updates Service by using command prompt.

sc stop wuauserv

This command will automatically stop the Automatic Updates Service like the above steps.

2nd method: Modifying Group Policies

There is problem, however, related to the first method. The problem with the aforementioned method for disabling Automatic Updates restart message is that it is a 1 time fix. A better solution is to modify some group policy settings so that your computer will always be updated but at the same time you will not asked to restart anymore.

Run gpedit.msc which should open the Group Policies window. Proceed to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update

You’ll now see a bunch of options on the right hand side related to Windows Automatic Update. Here is where we can configure your message to disappear! There are basically two settings that we can manipulate to get what we want.

No auto-restart for schedule Automatic Updates installations - It will disable automatic restart and disable the dialog box asking you to restart now or later

Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations - It lets you edit the interval of the appearance of the dialog box in minutes.

So no more annoying popup from Windows :)