I realize that a restart may be required when installing some programs, but I was not expecting my PC to just automatically restart without warning me ahead of time. I had a lot of stuff running and am just lucky that I didn’t lose anything.
Why is this being done?
Are you sure that Windows Update did not cause the restart of your PC.
Zwift doesn’t cause an unapproved automatic restart. The newest launcher sometimes requires a restart due to the C++ packages it installs to enable Bluetooth compatibility, but when that is the case a dialogue box comes up asking to restart. There’s an option to do it later. If someone quickly clicks through the launcher install they may not realise that they accepted the immediate restart.
Thanks for your quick reply folks. I am quite sure that I did not click through the restart dialog box - I had the same thing happen on all three PCs on which I installed the Zwift program (luckily I was prepared for the problem to occur on the 2nd and 3rd install).
However, I found an entry in the event log that says that the VC_redist.x64.exe program caused the restart, so you are right about the C++ package. However, I found some information on another site about the VC_redist.x64.exe program causing restarts without a prompt. Here’s an extract from a post I found
“The issue as it turned out was windows. As some of the windows flavors require a restart when a vc++ library (2013) is installed. I was using install anywhere to create an installer for our product which required the vc+_ (2013) installation.
It was abruptly exiting due to the restart.
Anyways giving a NORESTART have worked wonders.”
I would have expected that your install process uses the /NORESTART option for the C++ install, so I have no thoughts about why I experienced this issue when no one else has.
Best way to avoid this is to use launcher 1.0.50, which doesn’t install the C++ packages (just add them manually if Bluetooth doesn’t work) but does run the game much better for no apparent reason. 