Windows Vista Restart just cost me £75*

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Grrr, I understand that Windows needs to update; it’s a big juicy target for virus creators etc. That’s why I never refuse any updates, but today with absolutely no warning, (or if there was a warning it was on a window that never moved itself to the front), Windows decided to restart and update. What the Fuck?

I was in the middle of a Blackjack game at £25/hand. I had an 11 which I would have Doubled against the dealer’s 5. Because of Windows’ automatic update I couldn’t deal with the hand and I was auto-stood. On 11:dubious:. So Windows just cost me £75. Why the hell would Windows restart whilst the user is in the middle of something without explicit permission?

  • There is of course a small chance that the update saved me £25, but that’s not the point.
2

Yup, I got that update yesterday. There was indeed a dialog box that gave me 5 minutes’ warning, or the chance to put the restart off for a ‘snooze’ period of 10 mins, 1 hour, etc.

Really really intrusive anyway, having it on a timer. What if I was running something in the background and was away from the compy?

Fuck that shit. Sorry about your £75. Fuckers should refund you.

All this on top of the reality that Vista is an unreliable piece of shit that sucks arse.

3

I’m using Windows 7 now, but I’m pretty sure that it’s the same in Vista. Under Control Panel/Windows Update/settings you can set it to either download the update and you choose if and when it’s installed, or you choose whether and when to download and install it.

At least you’d be in control then.

4

Apparently, even with Windows Updater set to notify you, it can still install updates to the Updater automatically.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9778152-7.html

Way to break a simple feature, Microsoft!

5

This is why I have auto updates turned off completely. Then I just go and manually update every now and then.

6

One thing that Vista hasn’t been for me is unreliable. Performance-wise, it does suck arse, though.

7

The Microsoft Update blog has a post about auto-rebooting:

I have Update set to only notify me of updates, and it never reboots automatically. Once you run Update, if it needs to reboot, you will get the “reboot now or delay for X hours” prompt.

8

I have my Vista to always ask before updating, I’ve never had it fail. First of all, when it asks you to update, you have to say OK. Then the computer goes through that admin thing where you have to verify again. There’s no way it could update automatically because of that.

Then it gives you the timer. Most likely you didn’t realize you hit something. It easy enough to hit the restart later and then restart it now.

It makes sense because if it needs to be updated and you delay it, it could cost you more than the money