[Arrath]

> I am forced to use a Windows machine sometimes for work, and to me the unpardonable sin is that Windows seems to randomly reboot _without asking me_! I come to my office and all my open sessions are gone. How do you turn this off?!

That's the neat part, you don't! Windows loves to revert those settings after every major update, even if you dig into the registry and scheduler and change the settings at the source. It is one of my biggest gripes.

[EricE]

One of the best things Apple added to macOS a while back was the reopen all windows on startup. I don't even think twice about rebooting my Mac any more. Windows could sorely use the equivalent.

One way I dramatically reduce the amount of random reboots is I have a thing that looks like a USB flash drive but it has a few switches on the side - one of them, when activated, randomly moves the mouse every 1-5 minutes (there is also a hardware wheel knob that lets you customize the duration). It was meant to be a practical joke thing - slip it onto the back of a friends PC and drive them nuts, but it works great at tricking Windows to think the computer is being actively used. It doesn't stop all reboots caused by Windows updates, but it dramatically reduces them.

I also use it to keep my work PC awake when attending online meetings, or especially when I'm presenting. We have mandatory screen saver timeouts and for some reason I can't convince the IT overlords to tweak group policy to allow non-admins the ability to enable presentation mode. Oh well. At least they haven't resorted to only allowing whitelisted USB devices to run so my little joke USB fob still does its thing. I got it from Think Geek in their heyday but there are tons of similar devices on Amazon.

[vsareto]

Tell your browser to reopen the tabs it had when it exits. Try looking into these settings as well: https://www.windowsdigitals.com/windows-10-reopen-applicatio...