The Microsoft WMF Exploit unleashed a lot more than worms.

A couple of days ago Email Battles reported that a few users suspect that their Windows Automatic Update settings may have been overridden, resulting in an unauthorized system reboot. Since then we received a number of comments from users and admins, at Email Battles and on other forums, concurring with those perceptions.

Undoubtedly, many are simply mistaken. Perception, after all, is among the greatest of human frailties. Others, however, are quite likely managers and users with long experience in updating Windows. In the rush to push out a fix, did Microsoft override admin settings? Is there a bug that was triggered by unique software clashes? Or have folks simply misconfigured their systems in a way that allowed automatic reboots to happen?

Microsoft’s Security Response Team quickly brushed aside the notion that Redmond overrode administrative settings. As they’re in a position to know what they did, and we’re not, we’ll concede the point. But the claim by some that Windows Auto Update’s rebooting behavior is a feature instead of a bug? Sorry. Can’t agree.

The web has long been alive with complaints about the rebooting behavior, along with nostrums for correcting it, from Microsoft as well as others. Simple features don’t usually command the amount of corrective copy that Windows Automatic Update has warranted. A walk through the Email Battles Backgrounder links at the foot of this article will help confirm this notion. Meanwhile, this article will tell you how to disable Windows Auto Update rebooting for most recent versions.

Running any version of XP prior to Service Pack 2? Back up your registry, then add or change this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\ Policies\ Microsoft\ Windows\ WindowsUpdate\AU

If it doesn’t already exist, create the DWord value “NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers”. Set it to 0 if you want Windows to automatically restart, or 1 to prevent automatic restart. Then exit and reboot your computer. The result: As long as users are logged on the system, it won’t take matters into its own hands.

Post-XP SP2, one user reports success at disabling automatic restarting after updates on XP Home by:

  1. Disabling Windows Automatic Updates;
  2. Opening Task Manager (by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del);
  3. Ending all instances of wuauclt.exe, then;
  4. Making the registry changes noted above.

Once Service Pack 2 is installed, XP Pro, 2000 and 2003 users can stop automatic reboots by editing Group Policy. Start the Group Policy editor, select Windows Update in the Windows Components portion of the Administrative Template, and choose No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations. You can also completely disable Windows Update at the Group Policy or User level.

Beyond that, Microsoft provides exhaustive instructions for managing Windows Updates on networks. Its old program, Software Update Services (SUS) was replaced as of 6 December 2006 by WSUS (Windows Server Update Services). Adding a letter to the acronym gave SUS more oomph, don’t you think?

If you haven’t yet upgraded from SUS you have some prep work ahead. Before installing WSUS server, make sure you’ve downloaded BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Services 2.0) for Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003. BITS does a P2P-like thing, downloading updates in the background and sucking up all the network bandwidth it can get. Also, at a minimum, you’ll need MSDE 2000a for Windows 2000, WMSDE for Windows Server 2003, or SQL Server 2000 with SP3. WMSDE comes in the WSUS download. Microsoft has step-by-step guides for deploying, migrating to and running WSUS.

And if, after all these gyrations, it still doesn’t work, remember: Just because it’s Microsoft’s product, doesn’t mean they have to take responsibility for it. As so many of our contributors like to say, “Read your EULA.”

Have you come across a better solution for the Windows Automatic Update rebooting bug feature? Let the rest of us in on it here. We’re all ears.

Email Battles Backgrounder: