I saw that happen once in a big presentation.

There was a team of students presenting their work to ~200 people. Right in the middle, a pop-up says updates are finished and the computer needs to restart. It has a helpful 60-second countdown, but "cancel" is grayed out, so all they can do is watch.

I was only in the audience and I still have nightmares.

"Don't turn off" is the worst kind of status message.

When it eventually hangs for various reasons, you actually do need to turn off your pc for it to complete or to let it roll back in an error state.

When "just hang in there" is still present on the third day you'll start wondering why you bought that piece of furniture and won't mind the consequences of turning it off.

This might take several minutes

...or itcould take several hours

Should make that screen the first slide of the PowerPoint

My favorite windows update was when I was attending an onsite coding competition hosted my Microsoft. We were all in this large meeting hall that looked like a theater, and we spent first 10 minutes or so at the start of the competition just looking at Windows update, with the Microsoft rep apologizing to us, because his pc decided to do the "Forced update restart you cant postpone any more" literally two minutes into the presentation

That is an MS Teams Room system in the conference room, it runs Windows IOT. Whoever manages those rooms should have set the working hours of the room so it didn’t apply this update during business hours. By default the system updates at 2 or 2:30 AM, I forget... so might be a weird MS bug or someone fudged up a config

Source - installed a lot of these a few years ago.

You should start your defense saying the same thing.

Much as I always feel Microsoft has made some horrible missteps around automatic updates...I also think many many users are vocally and unabashedly following horrible update policies.

The biggest one is "Fuck you, Microsoft, I don't ever want to update." A simple truth about Windows is that it is currently the most popular operating system in the world. If that OS was Unix-based, the resulting truth would still be true: The most popular OS is going to be the most common target for vulnerabilities, hacks, malware, and exploits. Far more than an antivirus, keeping that computer up to date is the most important step for keeping it secure.

This is true not just of computers used to manage your bank account and nuclear launch codes, but of the swarm of "convenience" computers sitting inside a campus network that could spread a virus to everything on the Wi-Fi.

So, looking at this image, it's a shame on Microsoft moment if this update came from nowhere, or they once again blatantly ignored the configured update time. It's a shame on the campus moment if someone was repeatedly closing the "Time to update" popup.

Cool ceiling tile

Its the final boss.

You need to fight the windows update!

The longer I use Linux, the harder it becomes to see where windows users are coming from. Its gotten to the point where seeing people use windows in public feels incomprehensible to me, like watching people go to work on a pogo stick instead of a car.

this is why you use linux

Every day, my work computers force a shutdown-update, take 20 minites, fail the update, recover from the failed update, and then force a 24-hour timer to do it again that I can't turn off. IT doesn't care.

I had windows do a large update in the middle of an exam once. Like the major version number changes or something, took probably like an hour and a half. I was quite lucky with the exact timing and the fact that I am usually able to finish exams quickly as I did end up having half an hour for the exam, but it did make the whole situation a bit more spicy than necessary.

That's the least of your worries. Once it reboots, its proprietary spyware...errr...AI...will resume taking screenshots of everything you do.

Good luck on your defense! Goodspeed

Depending on how the windows network is set up, this may happen every time someone logs in

Today's thesis is an improv on why windows sucks.

I don't get it. I never had my PC randomly updating itself without my consent. I simply keep my OS updated like everyone should. I do this by installing the update once I get notified (I simply update when I shut the thing down). Why is everyone so weird about this? Or is this a home edition problem? Don't use home edition.

Well, aside from this I hope it all went well OP!

This is on you. You prepare your computer ahead of time. Do updates the night before, check if everything works. You also have an empty battery? Like I loathe windows as much as anyone, but this would never ever happen to me. I triple check it all, especially if it runs windows.