Stop Update from hijacking the Sleep or Shutdown Button

Summary : Windows 7 and Vista have change the Sleep/Shutdown button into an “Install Updates and Shut Down” button, thus make me uncomfortable.

Maybe most people who running Windows 7 or Vista will notice that Windows 7 and Vista have change the Sleep/Shutdown button into an “Install Updates and Shut Down” button whenever there are updates from Windows Update. If you always use the Sleep function on your computer by running XP, you will not accustom to the change when you come to Windows 7 or Vista. Here, I introduce how to stop Windows Update from Hijacking the Sleep/Shutdown Button in Windows 7 or Vista.

Here are the screenshots of the change.

 
 

Manual Registry Hack

If you’d like to manually create this hack, you can open up regedit.exe using the start menu search box and then browse down to the following key, creating the key if it doesn’t exist.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU

 

Add a 32-bit DWORD value called NoAUAsDefaultShutdownOption with a value of 1. No reboot should be necessary.

Now our Sleep button should be back to the way it was, but if you wanted to use the Install Updates and Shut Down option, it’s still available via the shutdown menu:

 

Download Registry Hack
Unzip the file and double-click on the StopHijackingMySleepButton.reg file to activate the registry hack. You shouldn’t have to restart anything, as the changes will happen immediately. There’s also a registry file to uninstall the hack.