What are these "random reboots" people keep mentioning?
My Windows boxes usually run about 12 to 14 days between (manual!) reboots, and those reboots are normally done to switch between operating systems.
It's been literally years since Microsoft removed automatic reboots and even updates can be be postponed for several weeks and scheduled at the user's convenience.
There are plenty of bad things about Windows, but tired old stories about "random reboots" or bluescreens just aren't part of it anymore.
Windows update will under specific circumstances automatically reboot the system. Any unsaved work will be lost. This, to my knowledge, has not been fixed yet.
When there's an update that requires restart waiting to be installed, don't restart Windows for few weeks and leave computer idle outside active hours. Windows will install the update outside active hours and reboot automatically.
It happened to me before. I know of three occurrences of this happening to other people in this year alone.
Interesting. Still doesn't match the "random reboot" claim.
First of all, rebooting outside of active hours and while the machine is idle is the expected and intended behaviour (esp. in Home edition).
Secondly, pushing back updates only works for several weeks - again working as advertised and by no means random.
Inconvenient? Maybe, though I honestly fail to see a scenario in which continuous operation for weeks is absolutely required on a desktop system, but YMMV.
But it's neither "random" nor unexpected in any way. If a properly scheduled reboot of an online machine once a month is unacceptable, then Windows just isn't the right OS for the use case.
Yes, they are not completely random, but users may perceive them as such. Technically, nothing on computer is truly random.
Non-technical users don't configure active hours usually. Many are not even aware of this feature.
I'm not sure I would call a feature that can (and does) cause data loss, when user doesn't follow minor update schedule, only inconvenient.
The three cases I mentioned, none were using Home edition. 1st was sister's co-worker that was running some heavy computations of the terrain they were analyzing. He left workstation running over night, expecting to get completed results the next day so he could continue working on it, but system restarted and he lost one day, because he needed to run it again during the work hours. 2nd was a friend writing master's degree. She had all her research documents opened at relevant positions while she was going slowly through the research while writing. She put computer into hibernate mode each night, so she could just resume where she left of next day. Same story, Windows rebooted, closing a few dozen documents. Fortunately, she had her work saved, but she still lost her state/organization of documents and needed to find relevant section of each document again. 3rd was an accountant who was working late and left computer for a few minutes. Again, Windows restarted closing everything. I find current design of updates and active hours very narrow minded. It may seem good in theory, but from my experience, it's bad in practice.
But hey, maybe Windows is not intended for professionals any more. Just home users and gamers.
Just a quick question - do you work for or contract with Microsoft or their contractors? Because the whole Internet basically disagrees with your take here.
My Windows boxes usually run about 12 to 14 days between (manual!) reboots, and those reboots are normally done to switch between operating systems.
It's been literally years since Microsoft removed automatic reboots and even updates can be be postponed for several weeks and scheduled at the user's convenience.
There are plenty of bad things about Windows, but tired old stories about "random reboots" or bluescreens just aren't part of it anymore.