How To Discussion - Turn Off Automatic Windows Update

[Steven]

Turn Off Automatic Windows Update on your Show Computer before your show goes live. (If your computer is hooked to your internet.)

My second year, I forgot to do this. Nothing worse than coming home from work expecting to hear your music playing and lights going only to find out your computer re-booted after an automatic software update. Then instead of getting dinner you are running off to get the computer back online.

I set my (XP) computer to auto-login at boot, and to "Launch at Startup" the LOR control panel. It is on the Internet, and it runs Windows Update at 3:00 a.m.

I never notice when it runs an automatic Windows update, because it automatically restarts and the show starts at the regular time.

I also have it auto-launch the TinyRDS program.

[DownTown]

I set my (XP) computer to auto-login at boot, and to "Launch at Startup" the LOR control panel. It is on the Internet, and it runs Windows Update at 3:00 a.m.

I never notice when it runs an automatic Windows update, because it automatically restarts and the show starts at the regular time.

I also have it auto-launch the TinyRDS program.

I think the most important point of turning off the automatic updates is that you don't want Microsoft to be making changes to God knows what on a production machine during the season. This isn't just a bad practice, it is on the top of the list of Worst Practices. During the lighting season, I make no changes to the OS, software or drivers on my show PC. This means NO software installs or updates. If something changes that happens to break your show, you might be able to back out the change... but you also might NOT be able to. Once the lighting season comes to a close, I will take the Windows updates that I missed.

D.T.

Edited July 19, 2012 by DownTown