Update and shut down no longer restarts PC, 25H2 patch addresses decades-old bug
70 comments
·November 3, 2025SirFatty
nusl
Different teams, perhaps. No idea. A monster org like this must be massively disconnected internally, specially for non-critical bugs and such.
rs186
I used to always think like that and try to come up with these excuses.
Until I read the story about how Steve Jobs was mad about the fact that Mac was slow to start and asked teams to fix it. Surprise, they fixed it.
And it's not like nobody could say anything at Microsoft. Someone on HN posted this email (originally from a different website):
https://www.techemails.com/p/bill-gates-tries-to-install-mov...
However, my guess is that this email got nowhere, because the experience of using Windows isn't so different decades later.
What this means is that 1) Microsoft is first and foremost a business oriented company, and what matters to them most is feature set, compatibility, support etc. As long as things mostly work, it's fine. Usability is at the bottom of the list. 2) Windows is just not important to Microsoft any more.
I bet that Satya Nadella has grumbles about bugs and ads in Windows 11, and likely has run into this specific bug first hand. But when he decides that "ads revenue trumps everything" and "these are just small bugs that don't really matter", he immediately forgets about it all.
jwr
> Until I read the story about how Steve Jobs was mad about the fact that Mac was slow to start and asked teams to fix it. Surprise, they fixed it.
What was different then was that Steve Jobs actually loved computers and used them. That is not the case for our modern computing behemoths (Microsoft or Apple).
Dogfooding is a thing, and having a person in power who can say "no" is important.
piker
"Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up."
In 2003 already; Amazing!
transcriptase
I just assume the entire Windows team uses OSX on their own time but have some kind of neural defect that prevents them from taking any lessons from it.
pif
> Microsoft is first and foremost a business oriented company, and what matters to them most is feature set, compatibility, support etc. As long as things mostly work, it's fine. Usability is at the bottom of the list.
Blame their customers. Those people accepted random reboots for decades.
wat10000
That Steve Jobs story is from 1983 and the entire Mac team could probably have fit into a reasonably large conference room.
ToucanLoucan
It’s frankly wild how many weird problems and UX pitfalls I experienced with my first PC in roughly 2005 are STILL issues.
The fuck is Microsoft having all these engineers work all day on?
SirFatty
I've been supporting MS as a career for 30+ years, so trust me, I understand that.. and it's a common excuse. But I don't accept it.
hiddencost
New priorities get funding and promotions, so everyone abandons unglamorous but critical work.
riffic
Conway's law would say so.
pjmlp
It is easy to have such hubris, when the competition at the shopping mall where most folks buy hardware is either crimpled Chromebooks and Android tablets, or overpriced Apple laptops, at least in what concerns most tier 2 and 3 countries.
It would be nice to have somethig like Asus or Dell XPS, with Ubuntu LTS fully working laptop hardware at Dixons, FNAC, Publico, Worten, Cool Blue, Saturn, Media Markt,..... but it ain't happening.
However after the netbook phase, that is yet to happen again.
riffic
That's actually a key point to make. To generalize, people don't install operating systems. They buy a device with some sort of operating system on it.
medwards666
No, the truth of the matter is they needed Copilot in there to analyse and identify the bug for them. And then write the code to fix it...
noir_lord
> Typical Microsoft hubris.
That hubris combined with a whole bunch of decisions I resent/actively dislike and the hassle to opt out of things I never asked for is why for the first time since the late 80's I don't have any Microsoft OS's on any of my PC's.
I only used windows 11 for gaming and I don't really do that much anymore - I may have a look at steam/proton but not really in any hurry either.
90-95% of my computing life was spent inside Linux anyway.
Tadpole9181
These kinds of comments make me question how many folk here are actually in tech or if my experience has been uncharacteristically grim.
Does your company not have hundreds to thousands of backlogged tickets and bugs? Are there not different teams for different parts of the system? No triage policy for prioritizing work?
McGlockenshire
Well, as it happened, when I was part of a company that released software, we prioritized high-visibility bugs that users complained about often.
This is a high-visibility bug that users complain about often.
delfinom
"Update and shutdown" always worked for me in Windows 10 :shrug:
Probably race condition galore that was hard to repro.
ale42
I had often reboots followed by more update installation and then a shutdown, so I assumed this was working as intended (i.e. finish installing the updates, which might require a reboot, and then power off).
aaronmdjones
I wonder if they'll backport this fix to Windows 10 (Very much doubt).
I also wonder if they'll ever fix the menu entry delay bug. At the moment neither of the "Update and ..." options is in the menu when you first open it. Opening the shutdown menu then checks if there are updates available to install and will then add those options, shifting the existing menu entries. Which makes it incredibly easy to quickly click on an option you didn't want.
hollow-moe
My laptop did something like it last night but not exactly : it booted from HIBERNATION to apply updates and reboot. Auto updates have been turned off for a while and yet this happens. You can't trust micro$oft for even the smallest thing. Edit: And I'm fairly sure this is a wanted malicious behavior. The thing was hibernating for quite a time before doing it, like it would wait for me to leave the office/for the computer to be in a bag on the way back home and I wouldn't notice what happened.
yalue
For a long time, windows had two options:
1. Update and restart and prompt for bitlocker password and update and restart and prompt for bitlocker password and restart
2. Update and restart and prompt for bitlocker password and update and restart and prompt for bitlocker password and shut down (and restart)
Finally, they fixed the last bit of option 2
waltbosz
That was a bug? I always thought it was because of my dual boot configuration.
coolness
Yeah, even with this fixed it's going to be annoying because it first restarts, so you have to stay at the PC to select windows in grub
MereInterest
Full-disk encryption, as useful as it is, also makes this a royal pain. Updates can't be performed unattended, because each restart done during the updates requires providing the password before continuing.
snmx999
You can set grub to select the lastly selected menu entry.
nerdjon
I honestly thought the same and kind of just gave up the idea of hitting that at night and being done.
Figured having 4 OS installations was already fairly niche that it was largely a self imposed issue. Looking forward to confirming that this fixes the issue in my use case.
cybrox
Looking at the rest of their recent update history, this likely just broke...
Task failed successfully.
8cvor6j844qw_d6
I noticed Windows's start menu only updates certain tracked files (e.g., remove deleted files) on a normal shutdown + start, and not on a restart.
Which is odd because I was under the impression a restart is the only "true" shutdown due to fastboot behavior.
I didn't look too much into it and chalked it up to a quirk of Windows start menu behavior in tracking recent files.
poolnoodle
I can't believe I'm alive to witness this.
portugueasey
I’ve always assumed it’s either just something my corporate laptops like to do (my older HP would often switch itself back on even when you told it to shut down, forgetting about any updates), or that I had just clicked the wrong button.
Well, guess that’s my mentally stability so slightly restored!
AJRF
This happened to me last night! I was going to bed and I clicked Update and Shut Down, then I went in to the other room.
After a few minutes I could see the blue glow of my Windows background shining on the wall.
Glad it is fixed!
AaronAPU
I have always blamed my Dell desktop for this.
Incredible.
"Microsoft shipped a broken “Update and shut down” toggle with Windows 10, and it never acknowledged it until now."
I guess they know what's best for the user base, and this was obviously deemed not important. But boy did they get Copilot integrated in everything post haste.
Typical Microsoft hubris.