Windows weirdness with Automatic Updates

[Rhino]

I am running XP (SP1! - yes, I know that I really should upgrade to SP2
right away and I'll get to it as soon as I can but I haven't done so yet)
and am experiencing some odd behaviour with regards to Automatic Updates.

A few minutes ago, Windows told me that it was finishing up some automatic
updates and wanted to know if I wanted to reboot now or in five minutes; I
clicked on "restart later". Every five minutes or so, that same dialog pops
up and I click "restart later" each time.

The goofy thing is that I didn't _DO_ any automatic updates!! It tells me
every day that there are updates waiting for me - such as SP2, which I STILL
haven't installed - and each and every day, including today, I ignore that
and DON'T start the installation process. I haven't installed anything else
today - or in several days for that matter - although I have looked at a few
PDFs on web pages.

So why is this goofy dialog coming up? I didn't install anything so it
shouldn't think it is installing anything, let alone that it needs to
reboot. The dialog has no "cancel" option either, just "restart now" or
"restart later" when I want a "don't install anything and don't reboot
either" button.

It's not the first time this has happened. There have been a handful of
other days where the same thing has happened. In some cases, I had to click
"restart later" quite a few times over several hours, which got pretty
damned distracting. In one case, I clicked "restart later" a bunch of times,
then my show came on and I forgot about the dialog; after a few minutes, I
heard the machine reboot itself. There were no ill effects that I could see
afterwards. Ditto on the one occasion where I explicitly clicked "restart
now"; it didn't DO anything as far as I could tell but it quit bugging me.

Any idea why this dialog comes up periodically and how I can prevent this
from happening? It's very distracting. Rebooting would apparently solve the
problem but it would also disrupt my train of thought; it would take several
minutes for Windows to close everything and then reopen everything when it
came back up, plus I'd have to do the manual work of launching the multitude
of windows I typically have open.

Every time this happens, I wonder if some virus is effectively taking over
my machine and giving itself permission to be installed. But I've got the
AVG antivirus on and it updates itself every day and I've never seen any ill
effects from doing the reboot. (That doesn't mean there were no ill effects,
of course, just that the effects were pretty subtle and I missed them.)

Can you think of anything that might cause this weirdness and what I can do
to prevent it?


Rhino

 

[jonah]

I am running XP (SP1! - yes, I know that I really should upgrade to SP2
right away and I'll get to it as soon as I can but I haven't done so yet)
and am experiencing some odd behaviour with regards to Automatic Updates.

A few minutes ago, Windows told me that it was finishing up some automatic
updates and wanted to know if I wanted to reboot now or in five minutes; I
clicked on "restart later". Every five minutes or so, that same dialog pops
up and I click "restart later" each time.

The goofy thing is that I didn't _DO_ any automatic updates!! It tells me
every day that there are updates waiting for me - such as SP2, which I STILL
haven't installed - and each and every day, including today, I ignore that
and DON'T start the installation process. I haven't installed anything else
today - or in several days for that matter - although I have looked at a few
PDFs on web pages.

So why is this goofy dialog coming up? I didn't install anything so it
shouldn't think it is installing anything, let alone that it needs to
reboot. The dialog has no "cancel" option either, just "restart now" or
"restart later" when I want a "don't install anything and don't reboot
either" button.

It's not the first time this has happened. There have been a handful of
other days where the same thing has happened. In some cases, I had to click
"restart later" quite a few times over several hours, which got pretty
damned distracting. In one case, I clicked "restart later" a bunch of times,
then my show came on and I forgot about the dialog; after a few minutes, I
heard the machine reboot itself. There were no ill effects that I could see
afterwards. Ditto on the one occasion where I explicitly clicked "restart
now"; it didn't DO anything as far as I could tell but it quit bugging me.

Any idea why this dialog comes up periodically and how I can prevent this
from happening? It's very distracting. Rebooting would apparently solve the
problem but it would also disrupt my train of thought; it would take several
minutes for Windows to close everything and then reopen everything when it
came back up, plus I'd have to do the manual work of launching the multitude
of windows I typically have open.

Every time this happens, I wonder if some virus is effectively taking over
my machine and giving itself permission to be installed. But I've got the
AVG antivirus on and it updates itself every day and I've never seen any ill
effects from doing the reboot. (That doesn't mean there were no ill effects,
of course, just that the effects were pretty subtle and I missed them.)

Can you think of anything that might cause this weirdness and what I can do
to prevent it?


Rhino

You can try turning off automatic updates

Start>Settings>Control Panel (Classic view) > Automatic Updates and
hit the off button then re-boot, it should go away.

If it does not clear your problem you will have to update your PC
fully including SP2. but do it manually (see below).

You can turn Auto updates off but remember to check windows updates on
the 2nd Tuesday of every month to get the latest critical updates,
also when manually running windows updates use the "custom" button not
the express button it gives you control of what is actually installed.

And backup your files first in case it goes horribly wrong + do a
manual restore point.

Do you get paid by the word?



Jonah

 

[Rhino]

You can try turning off automatic updates

Start>Settings>Control Panel (Classic view) > Automatic Updates and
hit the off button then re-boot, it should go away.

If it does not clear your problem you will have to update your PC
fully including SP2. but do it manually (see below).

You can turn Auto updates off but remember to check windows updates on
the 2nd Tuesday of every month to get the latest critical updates,
also when manually running windows updates use the "custom" button not
the express button it gives you control of what is actually installed.

And backup your files first in case it goes horribly wrong + do a
manual restore point.

Do you get paid by the word?

Sorry, I am a bit verbose but I wanted to make sure I was explaining the
problem in sufficient detail that people could understand what was going on.

Okay, I understand that turning off automatic updates might prevent the
problem from recurring but I'm concerned that I don't know why Windows was
giving me the "Restart now"/"Restart later" option in the first place. I
didn't ask for any updates to be installed so what was it doing? What was it
installing and why was it doing so without my permission?

I don't actually want to turn off automatic updates, I just want to be able
to ignore them for a while until I finally have a chance to do a proper
backup of my system. Then I'll install SP2 and let the automatic updates
take place whenever they arrive.

Rhino

 

[Alias]

Sorry, I am a bit verbose but I wanted to make sure I was explaining the
problem in sufficient detail that people could understand what was going on.

Okay, I understand that turning off automatic updates might prevent the
problem from recurring but I'm concerned that I don't know why Windows was
giving me the "Restart now"/"Restart later" option in the first place. I
didn't ask for any updates to be installed so what was it doing? What was it
installing and why was it doing so without my permission?

I don't actually want to turn off automatic updates, I just want to be able
to ignore them for a while until I finally have a chance to do a proper
backup of my system. Then I'll install SP2 and let the automatic updates
take place whenever they arrive.

Rhino

Disable AU. Forever. Go to the website for updates every second Tuesday
of the month, when they come out. Call MS and get the CD for SP2 and
make sure your machine is clean before installing it. AU has caused many
problems and is obviously flawed.

Or, be stubborn and insist on doing things your way and continue to have
these types of problems.

Alias

 

[jonah]

Sorry, I am a bit verbose but I wanted to make sure I was explaining the
problem in sufficient detail that people could understand what was going on.


Okay, I understand that turning off automatic updates might prevent the
problem from recurring but I'm concerned that I don't know why Windows was
giving me the "Restart now"/"Restart later" option in the first place. I
didn't ask for any updates to be installed so what was it doing? What was it
installing and why was it doing so without my permission?

I don't actually want to turn off automatic updates, I just want to be able
to ignore them for a while until I finally have a chance to do a proper
backup of my system. Then I'll install SP2 and let the automatic updates
take place whenever they arrive.

Rhino

OK Rhino,

If you have had Automatic updates running it will periodically go to
the MS Update Servers and look for updates then depending on your
settings it will download and install or download and inform you it is
ready to install. After this it will ask for a re-start. At some stage
yours has downloaded an update and then got corrupted so it thinks it
has installed an update but on reboot when it checks the update is not
flagged as installed so it keeps on asking for re-boots.

It has probably not installed anything it just thinks it has.

Turning off Auto updates is the best way to avoid this problem and
several hundred other update glitches that come with auto updates.

Fully updating manually will fix it.

Other than that you can re-install a backup from before the problem
surfaced.

Jonah

 

[Rhino]

on.
OK Rhino,

If you have had Automatic updates running it will periodically go to
the MS Update Servers and look for updates then depending on your
settings it will download and install or download and inform you it is
ready to install. After this it will ask for a re-start. At some stage
yours has downloaded an update and then got corrupted so it thinks it
has installed an update but on reboot when it checks the update is not
flagged as installed so it keeps on asking for re-boots.

It has probably not installed anything it just thinks it has.

Turning off Auto updates is the best way to avoid this problem and
several hundred other update glitches that come with auto updates.

Fully updating manually will fix it.

Other than that you can re-install a backup from before the problem
surfaced.

Thank you! I was trying to understand why this behaviour was taking place
and now you've given me a plausible-sounding reason for it. I had started to
install SP2 at one point but aborted very early in the process so maybe
that's why Automatic Update is getting confused and giving me this odd
behaviour. I still don't see why it only happens very sporadically - usually
weeks between occurrences of this "attempted update" - but I'm not going to
anguish over it. As long as there's a rational non-dangerous explanation,
i.e. it isn't a virus or whatever, then I'll just assume it's flaky code
from Microsoft and I'll work on getting the system back into tiptop shape.

I'm working on taking my backup even as we speak; once I've taken the
backup, I plan to install SP2 and any subsequent updates so that I can get
caught up.

If I turn off automatic update now and then try to do a manual update
sometime this weekend when I have the backup done, will the manual update
process be smart enough to install SP2 and any of the subsequent updates in
the correct order or am I going to need to find out what order to install
them?

Rhino

 

[Rhino]

Disable AU. Forever. Go to the website for updates every second Tuesday
of the month, when they come out. Call MS and get the CD for SP2 and
make sure your machine is clean before installing it. AU has caused many
problems and is obviously flawed.

Or, be stubborn and insist on doing things your way and continue to have
these types of problems.

I'm not trying to be stubborn! I'm simply trying to get a rational
explanation for why this weird behaviour is happening in the first place
before I do anything about it. For all I know, a virus has hijacked the
machine - or is attempting to do so - and that will affect how I proceed.

'jonah' has given a plausible-sounding explanation in his reply to my
followup question so now I'm satisfied on that score. Now, I'm going to turn
off Automatic Updates, take a backup, install SP2, etc. so that I can get
this machine into a better state.

Rhino

 

[Alias]

was it


I'm not trying to be stubborn! I'm simply trying to get a rational
explanation for why this weird behaviour is happening in the first place
before I do anything about it. For all I know, a virus has hijacked the
machine - or is attempting to do so - and that will affect how I proceed.

'jonah' has given a plausible-sounding explanation in his reply to my
followup question so now I'm satisfied on that score. Now, I'm going to turn
off Automatic Updates, take a backup, install SP2, etc. so that I can get
this machine into a better state.

Rhino

Good luck!

Alias