Windows Automatic Updates SNAFU-ed Again?

This week, according to reports around the Web, some users woke up to rebooted Vista machines. One thing about Vista is that when you update it, it'll tell you with a message in the system tray after logging in ... and that's what happened in these reported cases. The machines, which had been set to either not install update or get permission before installing therefore had their machines patched and rebooted. Additionally, forum reports indicated that some machines had their update settings modified to Auto Update.

Now, I haven't seen this myself, and none of the machines I checked had any of their settings changed or rebooted automatically. On the other hand, based on the prior finding (and admission by Microsoft) that Windows Update updated itself no matter what the setting, the questions are natural.

On Friday Microsoft responded, saying no changes had been intentionally made in Windows Update, but asking that users who had seen this issue contact support. From their blog post:

We are still looking into this to see if another application is making this change during setup with user consent, or if this issue is related to something else. We are continuing the investigation, and as I have more information I will update this post.

If you are running into this issue, your help would be greatly appreciated. You can contact support, and they can walk you through the steps necessary to provide logs and other useful data.

Nate Clinton
Program Manger (sic)
Microsoft Update

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

I like that last line, BTW (heh).