Kill The "Do You Want to Restart Now" Nag

I am sure this is not new to geeks like See Hua, but I discovered this convenient trick to get rid of one of the many annoyances in Windows. If you have spent some time with Windows (any of the recent versions including XP, Vista or 7), you would most likely have come across this lovely dialog:

You click on "Restart Later" hoping that it would go away; but no, it keeps coming back to you like a nagging aunt. Some days your machine gets more impatient, and it shows you this version instead:

Sometimes it's even worse, where the option "Restart Later" is grayed-out and you can do nothing except to watch your computer restart in horror.

Now, imagine that this happens in the middle of watching your favourite movie, or presenting your powerpoint slides. Should we let Windows take us hostage for its "restart now" compulsion? Of course not. There's an easy way you can kill off this nagging dialog when it appears.

Here's what you do. The following instruction is for Windows XP only, for Windows Vista or Windows 7 please refer to this page.

1. Go to Start --> Run
(for those who like keyboard shortcut, you can also use the combination "Win + R")

2. Type net stop "automatic updates" then Enter.

3. You will see the Command Line window for a brief second and voila, the nagging dialog would be gone. You don't have to worry about the update not being installed because the Windows will still install it automatically the next time you restart your computer.

That's it, a public message by CY.