ITS is always concerned about the security and robustness of our campus computing environment.
One of the proactive features of our security environment is the requirement that all CSM owned computers be maintained in as up-to-date a state as possible.
To do this, ITS monitors and updates as necessary all CSM computers that are running Microsoft Windows.
One unavoidable side effect of automatic updates is that sometimes automatic rebooting of a computer system might occur at an inopportune time.
This is especially possible in the case of unattended laboratory computers that are running multi-day simulations or experiments.
It is possible for computer users to temporarily pause Windows updates so that system changes do not take place while other processes are running.
This knowledge base article outlines this process.
It is suggested that if you intend to suspend updates for a period of time, that you manually run Windows Update just prior to pausing updates.
This will ensure you're fully up-to-date at the time the pause begins.
1. Open up Windows Settings and select Windows Update.
2. If one week's pause is sufficient, click on Pause updates for 7 days. Otherwise, select Advanced Options.
3. Under the Pause Updates section, click on the Select Date drop-down list.
4. Select a date up to 5 weeks in the future for when automatic updates will resume.
5. Now you will see that the Pause Updates button now reads Resume Updates.
You can go ahead and resume the updates at any time by clicking on Resume Updates.
On Windows 11 the process is the same, but the Window layout is slightly different.
Here, you can select the pause period from the drop-down menu similarly to Windows 10, except with a not quite so granular set of selections.
2022.12.16 - dkearney