We've all been there. We've been absent-mindedly playing a game, unaware of the danger that lurks in the task bar, blinking, DEMANDING its due attention. You ignorantly refuse, only for it to jar you out of your stupor and bring your gaming session down around your ears. Your progress lost, your multiplayer match forfeited, you watch in impotent rage as the percentage ticks up, slowly, while telling you not to shut down your system, as if to taunt you. You don't know what it's installing, but it's irrelevant. You have lost, and Windows Update has won... but the question is, when was the last time this terrible fate befell you?

I personally just lost about 30 minutes of progress in KotOR2, including a bunch of character interactions. Minor, but still irritating.

Not game related, but I sometimes use my computer as an alarm clock and yeah, its nearly made me late for work. Fuck you, Windows updates.

Sorry for your loss! I turn that shit off WITH MY DICK so it never bothers me. Whenever I feel like it I turn it on and install the latest updates, then turn it the fuck off again.

Do you have 7? I didn't think it forced a reboot on 7.

@Barrock said:

Do you have 7? I didn't think it forced a reboot on 7.

It has a pop up. It gives you 10 minutes to postpone or to restart right away.

@Barrock said:

Do you have 7? I didn't think it forced a reboot on 7.

It does with certain updates. I find it's just annoying that I can't tell it to stop warning me, but it gives you the option to tell it to piss off for 1-4 hours. It's really distracting when it pops up and I'm very lazy.

Yeah you just turn the updates off.

I had spent the better part of 5 hours setting up a D&D session I was DMing at the time. You see I use a program on my laptop called Masterplan to set up my games. It was gonna be a big one too since this was the last game before we took a break for the impending release of Skyrim. Lot of story stuff, character interaction, detailed maps, an epic boss fight weeks in the making with a custom made monster (my first one in fact) etc. After I finished planning everything out I got up to go to the bathroom and when I came back, my laptop was in the process of rebooting from a Windows update. Nothing was saved and the session was gonna start in about a couple of hours.

How I kept myself from throwing that laptop through a window I'll never know. If I wasn't in the habit of shaving my head, I probably would have torn my hair out.

If you keep track of new Windows Updates (AKA can handle clicking the "install" button by yourself without forgetting for months on end, then you can set the updates to "download automatically but install manually". THen you'll never have that problem. I, however, always have a long list of updates needed whenever I check.

Just change your update settings... no big deal.

Part of getting this new PC I'm using is that I keep forgetting to go in and turn off sleep mode and windows updates as I leave my PC on all night while I sleep to download games and things like that. Just got up this morning and Planet Side 2 only got about 500mb in before my PC shut down for some reason and now I will have to wait all morning to get the rest of it. Which is a major piss off because I was planning to play it with a friend as this is the only day our weekends converge and have the same day off, and now I can't play any online games or watch any videos because I need to devote all the bandwidth to downloading the game.

Funny, this has only happened to me once and it was yesterday. I was playing Dark souls and about to kindle a bonfire, since Dark Souls saves so often I only lost a few seconds but it could have been much worse, like say, in the middle of the lenghty boss battle I had just ten minutes prior. I was still annoyed because I had no way of knowing it was about to update.

Never had that happen.

I've never had that happen to me before in a video game. I guess I'm smart enough to set the damned thing to manual and not let it do whatever it pleases. Hell, it's an option when setting up your computer.

It has annoyed me when I'm installing something, though. Especially with that postpone crap. However, that's my fault.

I've never lost any work or game progress or anything like that to it, but I've had my share of annoyances that came from that.

I've actually got mine set so it still downloads and installs the updates automatically, but I just edited my registry so that the reboot part can't happen without my say so.

If you want to do this, you just run regedit and under Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU (adding in any of those keys if need be) then create a new DWORD called NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers and set the value to 1. NECESSARY WARNING, EDITING THE REGISTRY IS SERIOUS, DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK. If you don't want to mess with the reg, there are probably scripts out there that will do it for you etc, or you could just turn off the auto updates as people have said. The thing I do like about my solution is it still does the download and install and gives you that once dreaded REBOOT or POSTPONE window, but it just has to sit there, impotent. I take some pleasure in that.

I just turned off automatic updates completely and then tell Windows when to update. Which leads me to the dilemma of having to choose when to stop using my computer for however long it takes to download and install those updates, but it's better than raging at losing a whole lot of progress.

Never had this problem, SOUNDS like it sucks though.

I only get pissed when it sometimes wants to update without telling me what updates are going to be installed despite me having the settings on "JUST NOTIFY ME, FUCK, DON'T INSTALL SHIT YET."

I always check & install updates once I turn on the machine, since the timeframe to when they're released is around when I turn it on. Sometimes there will be critical updates that can be published at a later date that needs a restart, but they are so far & between the regular schedule, and if I play a game or do other things while it asks, then I just save & quite and restart. So I can't say I have any issues with this.

It almost caught me out last night, the bastard!

I was watching a UFC stream and it started lagging at a pretty important moment, I took down fullscreen to check for other programs and crap like that, and there was Windows Update with like 2 minutes remaining.

I postponed it for another 4 hours this morning, I'll keep it at bay for as long as a I can, now.

Mine is impossible to update, yet ALWAYS reminds me that I need to update. So I'll try, and unsurprisingly, I get an error message with no solution, and I have to browse the Internet for solutions that could potentially harm my computer.

My PC wakes up in the middle of the night every thursday, installs tuesday's batch of updates and falls back asleep.

Oh, old thread. Hey guys, did you know that if it's buggin' you, you can turn automatic updates off? That's my secret to sleeping peacefully through the night.

I just set Windows Updates to alert me after which I go in and tell it what to download and install, and then I finish that up before going on with my day. I'll usually do it in the mornings before I take a shower, then take a shower/do other personal hygiene stuff while the computer does its thing. Other than letting it reboot while I get dressed sometimes (I hate reboot updates), the PC is ready to go by the time I'm clothed.

@Chop said:

Not game related, but I sometimes use my computer as an alarm clock and yeah, its nearly made me late for work. Fuck you, Windows updates.

When I listen to the bombcast in Chrome, it sometimes crashes flash, which then crashes the website I use for the alarm clock.

Somehow I still woke up right on time.

@BigDaddy81: Dude, that sucks.

-A fellow GM.-

It hasn't, because I turned off auto reboot.

An update broke and I'm too lazy to fix it so every time I turn my PC off it takes 5 minutes to attempt to install before turning off after the update breaks again. I think it's actually up to 2 broken updates now. It's been like that since July, which is annoying because I formatted and reinstalled Windows in June and probably won't until spring when I update my CPU and motherboard to something new and add a few things like a couple large capacity HDDs and a sound card. 

If people just restarted their PCs after patch Tuesdays, then it wouldn't be a problem for a whole other month.

Instead, people leave and postpone it, leaving their computer open to security holes and enjoy a month of being annoyed.

I've never had any issues with Windows updates. But then again, I've had the common sense to never turn on automatic updates...

When I leave my computer, everything I have open, I save. So I don't have to worry about reboots & can leave Update on.