With the exception my gaming machine I have abandoned Windows. Still, however, I do some times deal with it.

One of the more common annoyances is trying to shutdown when Windows has downloaded, but not installed, updates. In this case Windows may take forever and a day to finally cut the power. If you need to go somewhere in a rush, this blows. If you are on a laptop and the battery is about to die you are better off with hibernation (which has to be enabled, takes up a decent amount of disk space, and has its own problems), putting the machine to sleep (which has its own problems), or just letting it die at the desktop. If you interrupt the update process– say, because it has been nearly 30 minutes– you risk explodeorizing your install.

There is an option built into Windows 7 that will allow you to add an ‘Install Updates And Shut Down’ in Shut Down Windows dialog box option. For some reason it is not enabled by default, but that is pretty easy to take care of:

• Start, Run, enter gpedit.msc.
• Surf over to User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Update.
• Edit Do not adjust default option to ‘Install Updates And Shut Down’ in Shut Down Windows dialog box to be Enabled. Make sure Do not display ‘Install Updates and Shut Down’ Option in Shut Down Windows dialog box is not set to Enabled.

The option will only appear when there are updates that need installing. You could also change your Windows Update settings but if you got here you probably are not interested in doing that.

I have not tested this with other versions of Windows. I assume this applies to Vista/Server 2008 and up but do not hold me to that.