I had my servers configured by group policy to download updates and notify for install.
Unfortunately it seems microsoft did publish a recent update on the 2nd of course which cause the servers to install only this update. This update required a restart after installation. So most critical servers restarted and raised an alarm.
I have been looking for a solution and I notice that there is also a policy which states that "No auto-restarts with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates" which was not enabled. If course at 3:00am in the night no one is logged onto the servers.
i have enabled this policy and still don't know if it will solve my problem.
Any ideas on how I can completely stopping the servers to ever restart.
Best Answer
For some strange reason reboots started by Windows Update have a nasty track record of causing problems. The solution I've been using for years is to script the install and then reboot separately via a scheduled task. I've had no reboot problems since doing this.
I use version 2.4 of this script (because it just works and I see no reason to upgrade it), which I've modified slightly to create a flag file when a reboot is required. The script check for updates and installs any that it finds. That script runs late on Saturday night via the Task Scheduler. Early Sunday morning another scheduled task fires a script which looks for that flag file. If it's found the file is deleted and the server performs a reboot.