Automox Prompts for Reboot after User Reboots Manually

  • 11 November 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 832 views

Userlevel 2

Hi!


Not sure if this is a “you’re doing it wrong” or a “this is how it works” or an actual problem, so hopefully you can help me out.


We have our policy set to install updates in the background at 3pm on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday - we figure this gives time for them to install and update and finish up close enough to 5pm that restarting (or leaving the PC running overnight) isn’t a huge imposition on our users.


One thing I have noticed, and had a user notice today, is that if you postpone Automox’s restart request, but shut down\restart yourself later (e.g. the other week I used Windows’ Update and Shut Down option it gave me on the Start menu and did this), Automox will prompt for a restart once Windows is loaded again which seems redundant given that we’ve just restarted.


Is this intended behaviour, or is Automox only keeping track of restarts when it does them? I know Windows cheats with restarts if you use the Shut Down command and does a weird hybrid shut down\hibernate thing most of the time, but even after a full, user initiated restart, I wouldn’t expect Automox to insist on another.


Thanks! 😊


3 replies

Hey, @Douglas_C - long time no see! 😉 I’m Chad, our new(ish?) Technical Community Mgr. Thanks for stopping by! In short, this is expected behavior. The AX agent doesn’t have any awareness of processes outside of the AX Agent. I verified this with our Support manager) So generally-speaking, here’s how our policy execution/reboots work:

 


  • Automox has a policy that has a patch that needs a reboot after applying it
  • Automox sees this and before the policy runs, schedules a reboot and notifications to run after the policy finishes
  • Until that reboot associated with the policy reboots, Automox will continue to try and reboot the device based on that policy

     

 

 

I hope that helps! Feel free to reply back/PM me with any other questions. Cheers!

 

I agree with Doug. I dismissed the notification since I don’t work with distractions, then later rebooted my PC myself overnight.

I had an extremely unpleasant surprise the next morning when this Automox “product” reset my computer in the middle of typing & lost a fair bit of my work.

Professional software?  Not what I expect.
Good enough?  Not by a mile.

I have mentioned this behaviour to support several times and tried to request a feature update without any joy. I posted the following 3 months ago but evidently hasn't gathered any traction.

 

 

Reply