>I tend to set the Windows Update to at most notify rather than automatically download or install. This gives me the ability to choose the time an update is performed -- that way I'll not be inconvenienced as much. Furthermore, when I do choose the update to be performed, I manually select to go to the website directly, rather than have it download in the background -- that way I'm not going to start doing something that will be an inconvenience to stop when Windows wants to restart. I'd found that once Windows wants to restart, it's best to let it restart as soon as possible. The longer you wait, you're apt to experience degraded system performance, or worse -- system instability (and typically it results in restart anyway -- but not in a controlled fashion).

Thanks for confirming this situation.