Windows Update is broken. Full stop. The situation regarding unwanted reboots is unacceptable. My work machine is on Windows 11 and I’ve tried all of this shit to no avail: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/ans…

None of these solutions appear to be effective at preventing automatic updates from triggering a system restart without asking me. Short of completely turning off the Windows Update service itself, which makes it impossible to get updates at all even manually.

I’ve been running an experiment lately: I specifically make a point to run Windows Update once a day and STILL I come to my machine this morning and it had restarted itself, fucking up the state of my apps. I’m not crazy: My system was already VERY UP TO DATE and Windows Update is just fucking with all of us.

Now what system update could possibly have come out between yesterday and today that REQUIRED a system restart that the system didn’t bother to notify me about a day ago?

What I want is for Windows to toss up a dialog when it needs an update. It can pop up once a day if need be for persistence sake if I’m not cooperating. Then I can choose when to apply the update. That’s all I want. It should never – EVER – fucking just restart my machine without asking me first. Ever. Don’t do it.

It’s just a batshit situation. This software does not respect the user’s wishes at all. Why do we tolerate this? It’s like the Windows Update software is designed to provide the user with settings that are nothing more than elevator buttons that don’t do anything at all. It’s like an illusion of control.

Well fuck you, Windows Update.