Install updates and shut down

[yksyks]

This started to appear some time ago among the listbox items on the Shutdown dialog. At first I thought it’s something pertaining to Vista, but appears on XP Pro as well now.

I’ve read some articles about this new “feature”, but does anyone know what the reason behind this is? Is it really necessary to physically turn off the PC instead of rebooting? I know it’s safer and sometimes necessary because of some peripherals that cannot be reset by software, but I absolutely hate three things:

• I don’t know what’s this update and how do I get rid of it eventually.
  
• It’s not installed and not even offered along other updates that require reboot.
  
• It’s never notified anywhere, unlike other “regular” updates. Just now I realized that this appeared a week ago and as I didn’t have time to perform the operation, I forgot it completely. In the meantime I rebooted my PC twice, but this item silently resides in the Shutdown dialog. If it’s really so important, how do I know about it, when I never switch my PC off?

[Curt]

Would you please see if you can add links to some of those articles, so one can read more? I for one have never heard of this phenomenon (but then again, I seldom update)!

[Grorgy]

i've seen that message a few times, i usually dont try and close down when im updating  but sometimes things happen, as far as i could tell it just gave yhe option to continue with the windows update installations or stop it till later

[lanux128]

this is news to me too, 1st i thought yksyks was referring to the "update and shutdown" option but i couldn't find anything on this.

[Stoic Joker]

I don't think it has anything to do with necessity. It's just for convenience ... Lazy people tend to skip updates because they're "to busy" to interuppt their computing session to do them. So... MS add an option to automatically kill two birds with one stone. When Too busy person is "done" with the computer they can simply shut it down and it will update itself. Which is why it grabs the default so they don't even have to bother remembering it's there.

Any good netizen (much as the term irks me) should do their part to keep their machine's security up-to-date, this just makes it easier for the less diligent ones.

Note: I spend a ton of time installing security updates on client machines (I refuse to let one go out-the-door unless it's current) and none of the updates have ever required a complete shutdown.

[yksyks]

Lanux128 supplied probably the best link regarding this topic, thanks. Anyway, I didn't get it fully. There's an option described how to switch his feature off, but what happens then? Do I miss all similar updates? Or are they processed as others, i.e. requiring simple restart?

Stoic Joker: For people who never switch theirs PCs off it's not safer. In contrary, if you don't intentionally open the shutdown dialog, you'll never know such an update is waiting to be performed!

[Stoic Joker]

Stoic Joker: For people who never switch theirs PCs off it's not safer. In contrary, if you don't intentionally open the shutdown dialog, you'll never know such an update is waiting to be performed!

-yksyks (June 25, 2008, 08:15 PM)

The default settings are set up for the main stream user that treat their computers like any other appliance (e.g. TV is turned off when the show is over...). People that leave their comps on 24/7 (like me) turn off the auto-rebooting defaults to avoid loosing information from large projects that are left open. Both of the other Win update options flag the user from the system tray about the existance of any updates that are available.