My colleague Robert McMillan at the IDG news service came across this great tip for changing the frequency for that oh-so-aggravating popup that comes up every 10 minutes after you install an update.

A blog poster at wdevs.com, who in turn found it from Codeproject, lists these steps:

Start / Run / gpedit.msc / Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update / Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations

I’ll supplement just a bit to add that you should choose “Enable” and then type in how many minutes you want to wait, as pictured here:

As you see, I changed my own setting to come up once an hour. I have my Automatic Updates set to download automatically but wait for me to install (as Stuart Johnston describes), and I usually want to wait until lunch or a meeting before I reboot. So that dang popup every 10 minutes drives me up the wall.

It’s worth noting that Microsoft says they have a good reason for setting it to 10 minutes. Being a good reporter, Robert asked a company rep if this was a recommended change, and got the response: “the specific blog you mention is *not* our guidance.”

The rep says the concern was that too many people would leave themselves vulnerable by forgetting to reboot after installing critical security patches. I think that’s a valid concern - but I also think that once an hour is entirely sufficient.