Windows 8 Promises Fewer Annoying RestartsWindows 8 Promises Fewer Annoying Restarts

Windows 8 Upgrade Plans: Exclusive Research

Windows has a bothersome habit of interrupting users and asking them to shut down their PCs so that an update can be installed. That will occur less frequently in Windows 8 as a result of changes Microsoft is building into the operating system, a company official said.

Windows 8 "will make restarts less annoying," said Farzana Rahman, group program manager for Windows Update, in a blog post. "The challenge we faced was to find the balance between updating with speed and giving notice to the user for upcoming restarts."

Windows 7, the current version of Microsoft's PC OS, gives users a number of options when it comes to update notification and installation. Users can select to have updates installed automatically, they can opt for notification when an update is available, and they can choose to be notified only before an update is installed.

Those who choose to have updates installed automatically can elect to have the update occur at a predetermine time, or they can opt to have it installed as soon as it's available.

[ Waiting for Windows 8 on a tablet? Read Nokia Reveals Windows 8 Tablet Plan. ]

Most of those options will remain in Windows 8, with one big difference. Users will only be asked to restart their PCs so that an update can take effect once per month--on patch Tuesday. That's usually the second Tuesday of each month, when Microsoft releases important security updates, most of which also require a restart to work properly.

"With this improvement, it does not matter when updates that require restarts are released in a month, since the restarts will wait till the security release," said Rahman.

Rahman said there's one major exception. Updates that are issued in response to a serious security threat, such as a Blaster worm, will be issued as soon as possible and users will be asked to restart their PCs immediately upon downloading the update. "This will only happen when the security threat is dire enough," said Rahman.

With Windows 8, Microsoft also is changing the way Windows notifies users about the availability of an update. With Windows 7 and previous versions, users get a pop-up notification when an update is ready. "Having a restart notification or dialog pop up in the middle of an important presentation, a game, or a movie is not a pleasant situation," said Rahman.

Windows 8 will abandon the pop-up notifications and instead inform users that an update is ready through a message on the log-in screen. For users who have chosen to have updates installed automatically, the message will persist for three days, giving the user the chance to restart at a convenient time, before restart is automatic.

In enterprise settings, IT administrators can set a policy to prevent automatic restarts in all cases.

One area in which the Windows 8 update process will be the same as with previous editions of Windows is third-party updates. Rahman said Microsoft has received a number of requests from users for all software updates to be handled through Windows Update.

He said such an approach isn't practical. "The wide variety of delivery mechanisms, installations tools, and overall approaches to updates across the full breadth of applications makes it impossible to push all updates through this mechanism."

Microsoft, will, however, provide a central update service on Windows 8 for Metro-style tablet apps downloaded from the Windows Store because those apps have been previously vetted by Microsoft, according to Rahman.