Today I received my new laptop (yay!). One of the first things I do after setting up a new machine (because if I forget I am sure I’ll shoot myself in the foot at least once before doing so), is turning off allowing Windows Update to restart my computer after it has installed updates. I don’t mind that window reminding me of it… I just don’t want to come to my computer in the morning and find it has thrown away stuff or interrupted a process I started the night before, because it needed to restart.
Automatic updating, fine, but let *me* decide when to reboot, okay?

Here’s how you do that…(at least in Windows 7, don’t know about other versions, use all this at your own risk etc.):

• Hit Start, and run “gpedit.msc”
• Expand Local Group Policy / Computer configuration / Administrative template / Windows components / Windows update
  

• Find the key “No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates Installations”.
• Double-click it and set to “Enabled” (Yes, that can be confusing).

Et voila, no more unexpected reboots.