Wednesday, July 15, 2015

How to shut down Windows 7 without installing updates

Living here in good old South Africa we get to experience something I think everyone on earth should get to experience - Load Shedding. Ahhh load shedding. Nothing speaks of a government's incompetence as something like load shedding does. Anyway, with our power going out way more than it should, I have to shut down my PC way more often that I would like. I believe in turning the thing on, and leaving it on.

Anyway, if you don't shut down your PC as often, the updates kinda builds up, and when you do want to shut down, your PC decides that this is now a great time to install the updates first. And yes, it sometimes takes more time than what you have! I foolishly thought one afternoon that 15 minutes would be more than enough time. Sadly it was not. In the middle of updating, where the PC says "please do not turn off your machine" the load shedding kicked in. Luckily nothing bad happened, but still.

So, there is a way to shut down your computer without installing the updates first. It's a bit of a pain, but luckily it's not difficult to do. All you need to do is go to the Switch Users screen. Next to the shut down button on Windows 7, click on the arrow, then click Switch Users:


From the next screen you can Shut down as well, and without installing those nasty updates. Anyway, Windows 10 is coming in two weeks, and I plan on upgrading. It is free for a year after all, so I thought why the hell not :) Hopefully this issue is sorted out there...