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Windows10PLAEN

More than five years after Windows ten launched, Microsoft has never managed to curtail one of the operating system'due south most abrasive features: its willingness to restart the computer while piece of work is being done. For all the company's claims about how it has optimized this process, it pretends not to empathise that users by and large hate forced reboots.

As Sean Hollister points out for The Verge, he had actually been in the procedure of writing about Microsoft'southward new addiction of force-installing links to the Progressive Web Awarding (PWA) versions of its Part suite. PWAs are applications that are supposed to behave like a native application despite running in a browser window. Hollister got up to consume dinner, came back to his desk, and found his own motorcar had forcibly restarted, leaving him with — you lot guessed it — the aforementioned PWA applications.

Microsoft is once once more distributing its software like malware. While I am not accusing Microsoft of aircraft a trojan, applications that forcibly install themselves without user consent are, in fact, malware. There's nil new virtually the apps themselves; they're the same version of Office yous could previously employ online. The difference is, now they've stuffed themselves into the Start Menu and then Microsoft can advertise its cloud services to you. Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, has made Azure a major part of Microsoft'due south business going forward, to the point that the company claims Amazon and Facebook are its major gaming competitors rather than Sony and, to a lesser caste, Nintendo. This is, presumably, role of the effort to shove users into new paradigms of usage.

It's Your Estimator, Non Microsoft'due south

Hollister acknowledges that putting spider web links in the Outset Carte du jour is a adequately mild annoyance, but writes:

[T]hey're the latest proof that Microsoft doesn't respect your ownership of your own PC, the latest case of Microsoft installing anything information technology likes in a Windows update upwards to and including bloatware, and the latest example of Microsoft caring more nearly the lesser line than whether a few people might lose their work when Windows suddenly shuts downward their PC. Luckily, I didn't lose any work today, but a friend of mine recently did:

Given Microsoft'south ongoing and presumably permanent hostility towards user control, I'd like to take a moment to inform readers of a utility called the Windows Update Blocker (WUB). The Windows Update Blocker does exactly what information technology says on the tin can: It prevents Microsoft from ever rebooting your PC to install updates or installing updates without permission.

At that place are real reasons non to use this utility. If you activate this utility and practise not regularly turn it off to allow the machine to receive security updates, you risk being unprotected when new vulnerabilities appear. It's a bad thought to turn Windows Update off and and so forget to update manually, and then if you lot cull to get this route, you may want to set a periodic alert to remind y'all to update every few weeks or months. Information technology'southward possible for a person to actively want to be updated every bit before long as patches arrive while refusing to allow Microsoft to reboot their system out from under them.

I disable Windows Update on all testbeds after patching them up because I've been burned before by having an update arrive 5-ten days after I configured the system. I've been in the middle of 6-8 hour criterion runs (SPEC Workstation takes a while) and had the system rebooted out from nether me, forcing a complete restart of the tests from scratch.

It is not sufficient to define "Active Hours." It is unreasonable to expect people to proceed an exact log of what their Active Hours at all times and then they can remember to modify them while working late. It is, apparently, too much work for Microsoft to program Windows not to reboot a computer outside of Active Hours if the keyboard is in apply, or if the CPU and GPU are both loaded. I can understand why this might be so — the company might be afraid of malware deliberately loading the CPU and GPU every bit a way to keep Windows Update from running.

But if this is truthful, the correct way to bargain with it is to nowadays the user with a periodic message that says "Windows Update has non rebooted to install patches because you lot appear to exist using the computer. Please schedule a fourth dimension to reboot or press the 'Delay' push button to run across this prompt again in four – 24 hours." The only thing Microsoft needs to do to fix this trouble is bring back a feature that used to be a staple of Windows: The ability to delay a reboot. In Windows seven, if the "A restart is required" prompt popped up, and you didn't answer it, the machine assumed that it should not restart.

I'k not recommending that people install the Windows Update Blocker, because it'south bad policy to recommend people make their computers less secure, as if this carried no potential downsides. But given Microsoft's behavior and its pregnant, negative ongoing impact on cease-users, it's time to talk about solutions, fifty-fifty imperfect ones. Windows Update Blocker won't forestall Microsoft from eventually installing its malware-ish PWAs, but if you delay the installation until you're gear up to deal with it, you'll at least know what yous're getting into and where the problems are. PWA installations, incidentally, tin can be removed in the "Add/Remove Programs" department of Settings or Command Panel.

The correct answer to the question "When is information technology acceptable to reboot the user'southward computer without permission?" is "Never." Microsoft would like to pretend otherwise. Anybody deserves the correct to decide if they want to rent a PC that Microsoft retains control over, or if they prefer owning it themselves. The simply time it ought to be permissible to reboot or shut downwards a computer without the consent of the user is if shutting the machine off is the only mode to prevent thermal or electrical damage. In those circumstances, the CPU has far faster reflexes than whatever human could friction match. In every other state of affairs, consent should be required.

If Windows tin can reboot at will through a procedure I take no opportunity to interrupt, I'm not the person in command of the PC. Until and unless Microsoft wants to get-go paying me to employ i, they've got no right to interfere in how it operates.

Edit: As Techutante states below, there's a unlike way to do this as well: Windows x Pro users can configure gpedit.msc to cake automated reboots. Windows ten Home users tin choose to modify their registry and install gpedit.msc, though we exercise not recommend screwing around in the registry unless you are sure you know what yous're about. I practise not know for certain if WUB and the gpedit.msc method conduct identically in all circumstances, but bold that they do, it's of import to remember to periodically restart your machine if you use this approach.

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