Usually Windows is OK about notifying you but for this last update I had 5 different people all call me VERY upset that they had lost important work because Windows Updates just hijacked their computer and started installing and then restarted WITHOUT NOTICE. I like the Auto install feature to ensure that updates aren't missed but really???? Why does Microsoft have to act like the very thing it is trying to prevent and take over your computer without your permission. At the very least if there is a user logged in their should be a window that REQUIRES a "yes" click before an auto-restart is performed. I have a solution to prevent this (below) but really it SHOULD be by default for everyone, not requiring specific knowledge of a policy to be set. My father has now lost part of his book he was writing (in Word) that he will never get back because of Microsoft's hijacking. I have the Group Policy Set "No auto restarts when users are logged in" but I am running Windows 7 Professional and it isn't so easy with the other versions. For those who don't have Windows 7 Pro/Ultimate to run gpedit.msc - Computer Config-Admin templates-Windows Components-Windows Update you can use the following - save in Notepad and rename to a something.reg file and double click. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU] "NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers"=dword:00000001 "AutoInstallMinorUpdates"=dword:00000001lforbes

Hi lforbes, I am sorry to hear about the inconvenience you have encountered with Windows Update. Windows Update will remind you if you need to restart your PC to continue installing an update and give you the opportunity to "restart now" or give you the option to postpone the restart. If you're away from your PC for an extended period of time, you may find that it will automatically restart your PC. Windows does this to help make sure all the latest security and other updates are applied in a timely manner, to help keep your PC more secure with little effort for you. If you're a system administrator and want to control restart behavior, you can use group policy to prevent automatic restarts from occurring anytime an administrator is logged on. Also, you can change how Windows Update installed the updates. To do so: 1. Go to Control Panel -> All Control Panel Items -> Windows Update -> Change settings (on the left pane). 2. Change the Windows Update settings to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them". 3. Click OK. For more information, please refer to: Windows Update Frequently Asked Questions Change how Windows installs or notifies you about updates Regarding the lost Word files, you can refer to the following knowledge base (KB) articles and see if the file can be recovered: How to recover a lost file in Word 2007 or in Word 2003 How to recover a lost Word document File Recovery For more information about the Word file recovery issue, you can contact Microsoft Office Support directly. Regards, Linda Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. ”

Windows just restarted my machine without permission, and yes, I lost some work. THIS IS STUPID. The OS should not force a restart without my permission.

Check your settings in Control Panel > Windows Update. SC Tom

The fact of the matter is that this should never happen. Forcing a restart, without allowing the user to save opened work, is not acceptable behavior for an operating system. Yet another Microsoft "lets leave everything on regardless of the affect it will have because we know better than our users" attitude.

Oh, I see, it is a feature, not a bug.. Guys (and Linda Yan), you can't be serious, "yes, it restarts because it is very important to install security updates". I really liked Windows 7 but today was the SECOND time that I lost very important work and almost 1 hour work. It also happened to at least 2 of my friends in the recent months. Yes, I left my computer: sorry to not to watch it every minutes, sorry to have a dinner. Yes, I should have changed this option at Control Panel, but why is it the default option? Many people don't even know what Control Panel is. Who was the programmer who invented this? I really hope he doesn't work at Microsoft anymore. How could you possibly think that installing security updates is more important that saving important work? What kind of sick idea is to restart an operating system without permission? I can think of much worse situations than mine was now. Some people even can lost his job because of this.

My computer decided to restart while I was playing a game! This "feature" doesn't help security, because it just drives people to turn off Automatic Updates to prevent this from ever happening again. Everyone I know and every computer I own has automatic updates turned off because of this. Another benefit of turning off automatic updates is that you never have to wait for a unexpected "Installing updates..." when you shut down. Maybe Windows could display reminders "Don't forget to install your updates!" instead of doing things automatically.

This just happened to me. I walked away from my computer for 30 seconds, and when I come back the computer is rebooting. The word document I had been editing for the last hour lost all changes. Because Word has technically not crashed, it has happily deleted my changes and any auto-recovery information. SO FRUSTRATING. When I press the reboot button on my computer in normal circumstances, Word comes up with a prompt asking me if I want to save changes, and DOES NOT continue with the reboot process until I answer this question. This is correct behavior. Why is it that when windows decides to restart the computer automatically to update, it gets to override the save prompt? If anything, this is the time NOT to override this prompt, because the user, unaware the computer wants to reboot, may have stepped away for a second? This is unacceptable behavior, under any circumstances. The user's work overrides EVERY OTHER CONCERN. Microsoft, get your priorities straight! I don't want to install updates manually. I understand the importance of updates being installed automatically. If I don't use auto-update I will never update. I don't mind the nag screen to reboot. It's understandable. But when I am trying to get work done I will postpone the updating. I shouldn't have to risk losing work because of this. Please, fix this. I'm about to rage and buy something Apple.

This just happend to me at work, on the "new fancy" computers whit windows 7, and since i have customers at work that can get me away from the computer for more than 10 minutes at a time if not longer, just working on a normal budget whit a few hundred rows of numbers.. allways fun to write those again and spend a hour or so calculating and double checking... So what could go wrong went wrong, i got distracted by a customer, then i guess windows updater decided it needed to install a important update or something, more important than what im actualy working on and restart, of corse i didnt lose everything, apparently office 2007 has some recovery featore or something so i only lost a hour or so of work. anyway the computers are locked in a "user" that cant change any administrator settings, so woopdedo, if the updater shows up, thers nothing i can do but press save and restart. I know this wouldnt be a issue if my work had a actual "it" guy, but the default settings whit updates from microsoft shouldnt be set to force restart.... if windows was made from googles search engine result then it would set default on this matter to NOT RESTART AT ALL, at best maybe show a tiny text bubble suggesting it be a good idea to restart. Important updates arnt that time critical, a hacker wont suddenly take over my computer between the important update to when i could manualy restart after seeing a message about a important update. And if they were time critical then why do i see newspaper articles about virus this and that and not patched yet and holes in this and that. The day i get hacked between the time i get a update to when i restart, OR at the same time my computer blows up OR i slip on a banana and die, ill donate my computer to microsoft for security.studdy... Id say the chances are about equal. (EULA : I take no responsibility if i dont slip on the banana because it wasnt slippery, but i still managed to die from the event).

Ouch, I've been burned by that too. Now I always set the "No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations" local GPO setting in Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Update. So far I haven't run into any more auto-restart issues, but now I am a slacker about restarting... -- Mike Burr Enterprise High Availability, Disaster Recovery, and Business Continuity Planning Learn to Troubleshoot Windows BSODs

Same thing just happened here. Usually it ask me if I would postpone the restart but this time I got no notifications at all. So I would suppose there is some type of bug here since I am supposed to get a notice right? Does the prompt show in front of all windows of all programs? Did it just show up while I couldn't see it? And how should the auto restart have higher priority than the save prompt? I am sitting here and it happened WHILE I was working and I saw the save prompts and before I hit yes the program was already terminated. I watched the whole process but there was NOTHING I could do to stop it. And to make matter worse I was using notepad so no autosave or restore files at all. Seriously if this has been a problem since 2010 why hasn't someone working on win7 fixed it. --> Iforbes: unfortunately I don't think your code is working on Home Premium. it says something like I can't insert values other than binary. Not sure if I did the right thing though. But thanks anyways.

Hi friend, You can easily recover word files.These files get corrupted very easily.Sometimes you may accidentally deleted the word files along with unwanted files,sometimes due to virus attacks the files get corrupted,due to hard drive corruption, power shutdowns and many other reasons.It all such cases word file recovery is possible by using a good file recovery software. Word file recovery software supports files from different file formats and also supports all versions of Windows operating system.You can easily download the free trial version of word file recovery software.

I can NOT beleive that people are actually talking about recovering files!! How about Microsoft not rebooting the computer (lets fix the problem, not the symptom). I could have sworn that I had the auto update settings to ask me, but I was just working along with at least a dozen things open, not the least of which were 4 or 5 CAD dwgs. Suddenly (WHILE I WAS TYPING AND WORKING) it just systematically shut down everything in front of my eyes. Didn't ask, it wasn't idle - it just shut me down. I can NOT believe that they would program something so STUPID !!!!!! I have lost HOURS of valuable work --- MS, maybe you should reimburse me!! I have NEVER seen anything like this before. No warning, no notice, no nothing - just shut down. UNHAPPY CAMPER.

Yes just lost two hours of Photoshop work and this now effects the jobs future. Plus because I was in Photoshop I was in a screen mode where I could not see any warnings as with previous statements. The whole point a 'WARNING' should not exist anyway. Yes up dates are important but just do this processes when I command a shut down.

I was just finishing off an hour's worth of email writing in Windows Live Mail '11 to be kicked out of my work losing the whole message. After reboot, I naively went to the drafts folder thinking "ha, there's no way I'll have lost that work, it'll have been saved in drafts..." Wrong. I was also wrong about hoping the 12 SQL Scripts I had open in SQL Management Studio would be recovered. And the C# files I had open in VS 2010. Words fail me. This is akin to the knee jerk reaction resulting in the security theatre surrounding air travel these days. Someone shouts "Hacker!" or "Virus!" and Microsoft jumps on it as an excuse to auto reboot and lose customer data and sell it as a feature for OUR benefit!!! So, I've set my updates to ask before installation.. Lets see if Windows listens.