Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Troubleshooting
ShutDownGuard tells Windows where to stick automatic restarts
by Lee Mathews Nov 14th 2008
My office workstations - which runs Windows Vista - has an annoying tendency to restart following updates, even though I've told it not to. Via the radio button, of course, though I have tried actually yelling, and that's not working either.It's a pain, but I'm not about to disable Windows Updates. All I want is for it to be my choice when my system gets restarted.
ShutdownGuard waits in your system tray like a thug in the shadows, waiting to leap out and beat unwanted shutdown requests into submission. It uses about 2mb of memory and blocks shutdown, restart, and logoff attempts.
When it springs into action, you'll receive a balloon tip notification. Click the message to continue shutting down, click the x to close the alert, or just ignore it. If tips aren't being displayed, grab this .VBS from Kelly's Corner ( # 11 ) to re-enable them.
It's a free, tiny (7kb) download for Windows only. ShutdownGuard is packaged as a .7z file, so you'll need 7zip or a compatible app to extract it.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Josh Chandler said 11:24AM on 11-14-2008
Wow, I am so glad something like this finally came out. Although a technique I sometimes use is to have Outlook open and the option selected that it has to check email before it shuts down. It seems to stop it happening (most of the time)
Reply
linearmode said 12:02PM on 11-14-2008
you have much to learn, theres a way to prevent automatic updates, but you gotta go into the registry to do that.
go to registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
Create a new 32-bit DWORD value named NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers with a value of 1.
And thats it, no software needed
Reply
Lee Mathews said 12:05PM on 11-14-2008
And if another program tries to initiate the shutdown?
There are also a lot of people that would rather not edit their registry.
Fred Thompson said 2:19PM on 11-14-2008
YOU have much to learn, not the least of which are attention to detail and decorum.
The article is about reboot, not updating.
It IS possible to modify nag screens through the registry as explained at http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Registry-Keys-Tweaking-Windows-Update-Part1.html
linearmode said 3:34PM on 11-14-2008
yawn* apparently I made a mistake... where I put update, I meant restart. this key I posed prevents restarts after updates. I apologize to all the humans who cant forgive a typo or a simple mistake, and must actually comment to what I said... funny I have so much to say to these average computer users but I'd rather keep my dignity.
Matias Korhonen said 12:22PM on 11-14-2008
You can just kill the service with:
net stop wuauserv
Reply
James said 12:55PM on 11-14-2008
Wouldn't that disable updates completely? You'd have to be retarded to do that. He just wants to stop getting bugged about restarting when that's required to finish an update.
Matias Korhonen said 12:58PM on 11-14-2008
I mean when it's bugging you to restart.
Matias Korhonen said 1:00PM on 11-14-2008
The service will be back the next time you restart.
Taylor said 3:09PM on 11-14-2008
Wow, this is awesome. My computer's boot process is currently all screwed up, and requires a linux live CD to let me get to my boot menu, but if it reboots unattended, it just goes to the live CD. I set it to NOT install updates automatically, and it still seems to reboot for updates damn near every night lately! I am SO installing this!
-Taylor
Reply
Ken m. said 3:11PM on 11-14-2008
See this article:
http://portal.itauth.com/2007/11/13/disable-annoying-auto-reboot-after-windows-update
No need to edit the registry; setting or disabling the policy described in the article will crate / remove the registry key.
Reply
Zed said 3:45PM on 11-14-2008
Hmm I killed the wuauserv process a while ago, and updates haven't worked full-stop since then. Option to turn them on is grayed out, and security center just says "sorry". Sometimes I cry at night.
Reply
Stefan Sundin said 10:56PM on 11-14-2008
I just released 0.2 which adds Vista support.
I've actually had 0.2 baking on my computer for the last week, ensuring there are no bugs left.
Lee, I'm surprised ShutdownGuard 0.1 actually worked on your Vista workstation.
Reply
Ariel said 9:01AM on 11-16-2008
Absolutely obsolete...
As mentioned above, there is a registry key which controls automatic restart behavior, and for those of us that run our own domains [or just don't want to mess with RegEdit (or even waste precious CPU cycles with a silly program)], there is even group policy for this...
A link has been posted above, but since you are already reading this, I might as well tell you that information.
The policy item is found under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update and is named "No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates" (pretty self-explanatory, don't you think?).
While You are there, you might want to check out the rest of the available group policy items for favorite gripes such as how often the restart nag appears and whether or not to install updates at shutdown.
There... no need to look at yet another web site...
By the way, if you don't know how to access the Group Policy Editor, Start > Run > "gpedit.msc" (I assume no responsibility for whatever changes you may make, and you absolve me of all civil and legal liability by reading any part of this comment).
Reply
Lee Mathews said 9:02AM on 11-16-2008
Right...so where do DS readers that use XP home or Vista Basic find gpedit? ;-)
Ariel said 6:38PM on 11-16-2008
Lee Mathews (comment 15): XP Home and Vista Basic users are stuck doing this through the registry; see posts 2 and 3 for relevant information. Speaking strictly from a security standpoint, It is better to do a one-time registry edit yourself than to run a program containing unknown code every time your computer starts up.
In addition to not running programs which you cannot be 100% certain of what they do (which is always the case unless you download, read through, understand, build, and use the source-code version, which is not always available [it is in this case, though], or know how to debug executables -- something I expect most users of XP Home and/or Vista Basic generally don't know how to do), doing this the registry way will save some system memory, which can be put to better use.
One thing I will give credit to the program's coder, is that his program interacts with a windows message and does things through a proper event handling API, so most of the time, the program will consume no CPU.
However, given specific Windows settings, Windows will classify the program as frozen and kill it, and then shut down/reboot anyways
Not quite useful for Windows Updates, since there is a mechanism to do this built into the system, but there are some pesky installs that insist on a reboot after finishing without user consent... This would be a better use of the program...
Stefan Sundin said 8:10AM on 11-18-2008
When I make my programs I am very conscious about what performance impact they might have. I use the programs myself and read all the MSDN documentation available, so you can be sure that I try to make the programs as efficient as possible.
Also, it could be just as dangerous to make registry changes suggested by unknown people.
If you find any problem with the code, just make a review in Google Code and I will have a look.
Reply