3 a.m. reboot, courtesy of MS

[OsakaWebbie]

Between my husband and me we have three computers, all with Windows XP Home SP2. The two I use are set to only allow Windows to install updates after confirming with me, so I get the little yellow shield when there are updates requested, and I can choose Custom and control what is installed. My husband's PC is set to do updates automatically. I happen to sleep in the room where my two computers live, and they are normally up 24/7.

A few months ago one of my PCs woke me up in the middle of the night with the little tune that Windows makes when it is shutting down, and I got up in time to hear the tune of starting back up as well - it just rebooted all on its own. I didn't research why at the time, but just went back to bed wondering what demons had been playing with my PC. Then last night it did it again (at about 3 a.m. Japan time), and I mentioned it to my husband. He said that his PC also rebooted last night, with a message in his status tray saying that it had done an automatic update and then rebooted. (Mine had no such message.) On closer inspection, I discovered that although my PC was politely waiting for me to approve installation of this month's "delete the bad guys" tool, it had also done two updates without my permission, according to update history web page: "critical" updates for the Flash Player and for something called the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Controller service. And apparently it rebooted when it was done.

My second computer has the same settings as far as I know, but it has never rebooted without permission, and the history shows no updates in the last two weeks. It indeed was asking for my approval for both the update for the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Controller and the delete tool. Does anyone know what could be different between the two, that one of them, even with AutoUpdate set to confirm, still does things without asking (and reboots in the middle of the night!)? I had several programs open when it rebooted - I don't think I had any unsaved files this time, but what if I had? This is a bit unnerving.

 

[Glenn9999]

This is one reason why I don't trust any auto-update mechanism.

 

[linney]

All you can do is reset your settings for Automatic Updates in case there has been some glitch or corruption somewhere. It is not unusual for registry corruption to occur, it is a hazard of owning a computer, and maybe further exasperated by the fact that your computer does not reboot that often? That shouldn't be a problem but a reboot does freshen things up a bit.

You can further strengthen your computes resolve not to reboot in the middle of the night by applying the extra precautions mentioned in this article.

How to configure automatic updates by using Group Policy or registry settings

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/328010

Look at this section.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

Value name: NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers
Value data: Reg_DWORD: 0 (false) or 1 (true). If set to 1, Automatic Updates does not automatically restart a computer while users are logged on.

306525 - HOW TO: Configure and Use Automatic Updates in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306525&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

 

[OsakaWebbie]

I was quite sure I set my Update settings to "Auto Download, Notify before Installing" when I got this computer about six months ago (because that's one of the several things I always change when I get a new computer). But when I actually looked, behold it was set to "Auto Download, Scheduled Install at 3 a.m.", which of course fits the symptoms - the reboot last night was at 3:10. I didn't actually check the setting before writing because I wasn't even aware of the Scheduled Install option (it must be fairly new, perhaps even only in SP2); the old default was Auto-Everything, and I knew mine wasn't set to that because I would get the message telling me that there were updates waiting to be installed. Scheduled-Install would look the same during the day as Auto-Download-Manual-Install, and apparently most of the time I was responding to the Update notification within the same day, so only a couple times did it get to the time of the schedule. Will Rogers once said, "It's not what you don't know that hurts you; it's what you do know that ain't so." Either the setting somehow changed back, or I was just plain wrong in thinking I had set it (I'd love to accuse it of the former, but I have to admit that the latter is probably more likely). You mentioned glitches in the registry, but I'll start by assuming the only glitch was in my brain, and if it happens again, then I'll dig further.

So you can throw tomatoes at me for posting before checking the obvious, but they would just blend in, as my face is already red...