You select Start – Control Panel – Windows Update. Select “Change Settings” on the left side – under Important Updates the options for changing how updates are installed are greyed out and there is a message at the top of the window that “Some settings are managed by your system administrator.”

If your system administrator did not set up a policy to control when Windows Updates are installed, you need to correct this.

1. Log onto the machine as either a Domain Administrator or a user with administrative rights.
2. Click the Windows Start button and select “Run.” In the text box displayed, enter “regedit” and press the “OK” button. This opens the Windows registry.
3. Navigate to the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU\” directory in the Windows registry. This directory holds four values that control auto-update features.
4. If there is a value named NoAutoUpdate, right click on it to get the drop down menu and select “Delete”
5. Repeat to delete the keys AUOptions, ScheduledInstallDay and ScheduledInstallTime. (You may or may not have all of these keys)
6. Close the Windows Registry
7. Click the Windows Start button and select Control Panel. In the Control Panel select Windows Updates. Select the Change Settings option. You should now be able to set the Windows Update options as you need.