Running Series: Win 7/Vista Aggravations (Part 2)

Welcome back, this is the second edition of my running series on Windows 7/Vista aggravations. In this segment, I'll address the nagging automagic updates and excessive collection of crash dumps.

Contents

1. Windows Update nagging
2. Crash dump tweaks

[Back to series]

Problem 1 - One of the really nice things about the "Automatic Updates" initiative from Microsoft is that it [correctly] assumes most users don't care to (or have the time to) constantly update their operating system (even if this means that there are large, gaping holes in functionality and/or security). All in all, this update system is pretty swell and by itself, it's a totally wonderful thing. However, problems arise when updates need to reboot the system in order to be completely installed.

Sure, that's understandable -- you can't update critical files while they are still "live" and we all understand that. It's just that we are usually in the middle of something and the damn update window pops up. At best, it's a curse-inducing annoyance and at worse, you'll be in the middle of doing something fullscreen, then next thing you know your full screen environment is gone and you've managed to press space (and magically the 'restart now' button was default-selected) to be pressed. We've all seen it...

For some users, depending on your update settings, you may be get even more annoyed because you can only postpone it either once or the update system ignores your postpone request and just goes ahead and reboots the system anyways.
 
 
Solutions
Some or all of these may be of help. Some of the solutions involve accessing the group security policy. This is done by running "gpedit.msc" from an administrative run-window. Here's a screenshot for gpedit if you need it.

1. When this pops up the first time, run the following, bolded text from an administrative command prompt net stop "windows update" (yes, with the double quotes). This will kill  the nag window. You need to run this as an administrator. You can make a shortcut to this if you'd like to streamline the process. This is the least invasive 'fix' so if you're not comfortable messing around with core system settings, this should alleviate all the symptoms.
2. Fire up gpedit.msc from a run-window and navigate to Local Computer Policy >> Computer configuration >> Administrative Templates >> Windows Components >> Windows Update.
• Now if you're one of the unlucky ones where you can postpone it once and after that the system reboots itself (or worse, the system ignores you and reboots itself anyways). Then you can try this. Loo k for the entry "No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations". If you set this value to "Enabled" then, it should prevent the forced reboot (although it won't get rid of the prompt).
• If you don't mind the prompt so much (because, the prompt itself is not evil, it just happens to be that we are busy when it wants to reboot) then look for the entry "Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations". By setting the value to "Enabled" and setting the delay to 1440 minutes, you'll only get prompted once per day.

Keep in mind, you need to manually restart your computer to actually have the updates finish their installation.

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Problem 2 - Crash dumps are handy when you're trying to help a developer track downa  bug (or you are the developer!) but more often than not, they simply take up space. Having the last crash dump is handy (in case you are inclined to try and figure out the problem), but Vista/7 keeps 50 of them! This is just a waste of space!

Solution.

• Fire up regedit. If you don't know how, here is a pointer to get you started.
• Navigate to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\CrashControl (FYI, HKML is an abbreviation for 'HKLM, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE')
• Edit the MinidumpsCount value to whatever you want. The default value is hex-32 (or dec-50). I reccomend 1, maybe 2. Here's a screenshot if you need it.