Sep
21
Written by:
Shawn Bass
Friday, September 21, 2007 9:43:54 PM
Skywing's debugging/reverse engineering blog is one of many RSS feeds that I keep try to keep current on. He posted an entry a few days ago titled "Never, ever, EVER wake a computer from suspend without user consent" regarding a situation where the Windows Update service woke his PC from standby at 3:00am on a Patch Tuesday. While waking a PC to apply patches isn't a horrible situation, it definitely becomes one when your laptop is zipped up inside a backpack or laptop carrying case. I personally have had this happen to me only once, but it wasn't related to Windows Updates. It was related to a failed standby that I didn't notice for an hour or two (when I finally pulled it out of the bag, the laptop was ready for egg frying). Anyway, the fact is this is a legitimate issue that should be handled by the operating system. The most surprising part of the article for me was the comments that some people left. It seems that some posters believe that this is all Skywing's fault and if he had disabled Windows Updates, or changed the way he was suspending, etc. then this wouldn't have happened. Guys, you're missing the point! The point is that the operating system should be intelligent enough to not wake on it's own to apply patches as the laptop could be in an area that it shouldn't be powered on (i.e. airplane taking off). Bottom line: Windows Update needs to not wake a PC to apply updates without receiving user confirmation, or at a minimum it should force the system back into the same power state that it resumed from after the updates are complete.
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