Prevent Windows 10 with Veeam Backup Server from restarting

[Tad Bittoomuch]

Hi everyone:

 

I've got an ESXi host with about 15 virtual machines that I perform incremental backups on to a Windows 10 machine using the free edition of Veeam Backup and Replication.  For about a month, it's been fine.  The Windows 10 backup machine hasn't restarted due to updates, until at least a few days ago.  As a result, I haven't been getting daily backups of my environment.  I only noticed today when on a whim I decided to remote desktop into the Windows 10 machine to find that it restarted for some reason a few days ago, probably because of Windows Update.

 

I am wondering if there's a foolproof way of completely preventing Windows 10 from restarting.  Here's a screenshot of my Windows Update Group Policies:

 

 

Should I enable/disable any others, or is there another way to prevent Windows from restarting?  I don't really want to go the 'defer updates' route because at the end of the period you deferred the updates for I believe you must restart.

I suppose I could deal with monthly or quarterly restarts but I'd prefer to know when it happens.

 

Also I'm sure there are better backup methods than Veeam, and it's probably blasphemy that I'm running it on standard Windows 10 (although I did try the evaluation of Windows Server, but that shuts down every 10 days - not ideal), but it works good enough for what I need it for (except for the automatic restart thing).

 

Also, let me know if you think this is a good idea:  the group policy No auto restart with logged in users for scheduled automatic updates installations - does that mean a remote desktop logged in user would prevent Windows from restarting?  If so I could consider converting the Windows 10 machine into another ESXi host, put another Windows 10 VM on it and then have the backup server and the other VM logged into each other, so neither can restart.  This is probably a crazy idea that wouldn't work, but if this doesn't come to anything I might give it a go.

 

Thanks for reading

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, Tad Bittoomuch said:

I am wondering if there's a foolproof way of completely preventing Windows 10 from restarting.  Here's a screenshot of my Windows Update Group Policies

 

Just point to a non existent URL for the update source and that will stop all updates, when you want to actually update just disable the GPO and check for updates.

[porina]

I prevent WU from running when it wants by blocking associated sites at my router. It can't restart for updates if it can't download the updates in the first place. It has a side effect of killing MS store, in case that is of any interest to you. Maybe I can block a bit less but what I do works for now, so I'm not motivated to change it. To get a list of sites, MS have a webpage somewhere with a list of URLs it wants you to whitelist. Just add to blacklist instead, and done.

 

When you actually do want updates, just disable the block temporarily.

[leadeater]

Or if you don't want to do it manually try this:

 

Will only reboot once a month on the last Sunday of the month.

[Tad Bittoomuch]

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Just point to a non existent URL for the update source and that will stop all updates, when you want to actually update just disable the GPO and check for updates.

This is brilliant, thank you!

 

4 minutes ago, porina said:

I prevent WU from running when it wants by blocking associated sites at my router. It can't restart for updates if it can't download the updates in the first place. It has a side effect of killing MS store, in case that is of any interest to you. Maybe I can block a bit less but what I do works for now, so I'm not motivated to change it. To get a list of sites, MS have a webpage somewhere with a list of URLs it wants you to whitelist. Just add to blacklist instead, and done.

 

When you actually do want updates, just disable the block temporarily.

This is quite an elegant solution, that probably blocks a lot of the Windows 10 data collection as well.  I would do this, however there are other Windows 10 PCs on my network that may need access to the microsoft store and normal Windows Update.

 

Thanks for your replies

[Enderman]

You can use windows task scheduler to make your VMs or any program start itself automatically after a restart.

This way if the PC does restart even in the case of a power outage or something else the servers will start back up on their own.