Fuddland

This is the ill thought-out and quietly-added “feature” of Windows XP SP2 which has caused Imogen and Matt, amongst I’m sure many others, to lose valuable work:

No operating system should ever assume it’s safe to reboot without the express permission of the user. If the updates are critical to the security of the system, by all means temporarily disable any internet connections, but don’t reboot it in the middle of the night, there’s no way it can know it’s not losing valuable work in the process. These points aside, five minutes is a ridiculously short warning time—that’s time enough to be off making a cup of tea or talking on the phone away from the computer. If they wanted to force a reboot, twenty-four hours notice would be much more apt.

To prevent this happening, change your auto-update settings to one of the middle options: it can either download any updates then wait for permission to install, or just notify the user of their existance.

#1

Gordon | 2004 / 12 / 17 – 13:15

i’ve yet to upgrade to SP2 and I’ve yet to find a good reason to do so!

#2

Jann | 2004 / 12 / 17 – 16:40

Gordon. Grumpy old man. Harrumph!

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