Windows Updates Rebooting Servers

pham0329

I'm running into problems with my servers rebooting due to updates being applied and I can't figure out how/why the updates are installed.

I have a GP that specify that my servers should only notify me when updates are available, yet it's being downloaded and installed automatically. I verify with gpresults and Group Policy Results wizard that there are no other GP settings that are overiding my updates settings. I even check the update settings on the server itself and it reads notify to download and notify to install. I tried setting the policy not to reboot when users are logged on and the servers always have a user logged on, yet it reboots anyways.

It's getting to be a problem now as we're a 24/7 operation and we have several servers doing this

gateway

How are the servers getting the updates? WSUS, a 3rd party tool or direct over the internet to MS?

pham0329

Servers are all configured to get updates from WSUS

undomiel

If you're pulling them from WSUS then set the servers to not check for updates. You're not saving all that much time having them download ahead of time. For extra paranoia you can also set the windows update service to disabled. Are these terminal servers that users could be telling them to install the updates and restart?

pham0329

I understand that by setting it to notify to download kind of negate WSUS, but that's not really my concern right now.

These are not terminal servers. 2 are DC, 1 is a Hyper-V, and 2 are Exchange.

I dont want to set them to disabled because I feel that I'm going to forget to check for updates

gateway

Have a look at c:\windows\windowsupdate.log
That should give some clues as to what's going on.