[EvanAnderson]

Windows 7 update installation was easy to bypass, however, and still get a clean shutdown. You could use the command/line shutdown command to restart or shutdown w/o installing updates. In Windows 8 and following they put that idiocy into logonUI.exe (which runs outside your logon session) to force update installation.

[dkersten]

Well, if there was a way to bypass it, I never found it. Often when I shut down, it gave me the "windows is updating, please wait and don't turn your computer off" message with no options.

[EvanAnderson]

It's the reason I developed the muscle memory for Windows-key / R / shutdown -r -t 1 -f / Enter.