I have recently choose Windows 7 as the Operating System for my home NAS. After testing FreeNAS, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server, I must say that there are many reasons that pushed me to this difficult choice and there are a lot of advantages to use Windows 7 as a File Server.
However I am not going to talk about this right now.
What I wanted to talk about is NAS availability: if there is one thing I expect from my NAS, it is it to be on and ready to serve all the time. Not a minute less.
Unfortunately this Microsoft OS is too often trying and sometimes succeeding in rebooting my home server in the middle of the night, when I less expect it. And this is something I don't like at all, not even to apply critical security patches that clever people at Big Brother Microsoft have crafted for me.
That's why I want to share a not-so-secret hint on how to stop Windows update from restarting your system once and for all. It is a easy painless method which, as usual under Windows, consists of adding a registry key.