Windows Reboots + installs updates without permission?

Law12389

New Member
Hi,
Two days ago I was surfing the web and my computer decided to close everything and reboot, but not before configuring updates without my permission which I think is what I had it set on. My first thought was that it was some kind of virus so I shut it down before they were installed (held down the power button).

In retrospect, this was probably a stupid thing to do because then when I started it back up I got the blue screen saying windows failed to start or something like that ("this could be a hardware/software issue" etc). Anyway after a few other things, I decided to just completely wipe it and start over as I hadn't backed anything up so I lost all my files and everything else.

Then, about an hour ago it happened again while I was in the middle of a game (just quit the game and started shutting down and installing updates without any warning that I could see). This time I just left it to see what happened and here I am. I looked at what had been installed in update history and there's a huge list including:

Update for windows Vista (25 of these)
Security update for windows Vista (50 of these)
Cumulative security update for IE7 for windows Vista (1)
Cumulative security update for windows mail for windows Vista (1)
Security update for windows media format runtime 11 for windows vista (2)
Security update for movie maker 6.0 for windows vista (1)
Security update for Microsoft .NET framework, version 2.0 (1)
Security update for Jscript 5.7 for windows vista (1)
Update for rights management services client for windows vista (1)
Microsoft .NET framework 3.5 service pack 1 and .NET framework 3.5 family update (1)

And I think that's it. Roughly 40% of them say they failed and they're all from today. I checked windows update and after I wiped everything it looks as though it reset the update manager to automatic update but I still don't know why it did it in the first place before any of this happened. Is this kind of thing normal? I've read a few forum posts elsewhere and some people are saying MS is basically evil and sometimes installs stuff you don't need/want even if AU is set to ask my permission first. I guess I just want to know if I need to worry, if any of those updates above are abnormal and if I can do something to stop this happening again because it's really frustrating.

Thanks in advance.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dell Dimension E521
    CPU
    AMD Athlon 64 X2 Duel Core Processor 4400+ 2.30GHz
    Memory
    1982 MB
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Dell XPS420
    Memory
    6 gig
    Graphics Card(s)
    ATI Radeon HD3650 256 MB
    Sound Card
    Intergrated 7.1 Channel Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dell SP2009W 20 inch Flat Panel w Webcam
    Hard Drives
    640 gb
    Cooling
    Fan
    Keyboard
    Dell USB
    Mouse
    Dell USB 4 button optical
    Other Info
    DSL provided by ATT
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