Restart Now? [ ] Obey [ ] Comply

One of the error message dialog boxes we had in the Beyond Cyberpunk! HyperCard stack offered the user two choices: “Obey” or “Comply.” A lot of people got a kick out of this and it was mentioned in several reviews. In the context, there really only was one choice, so it worked as a joke, not as a painful interface conundrum.

The same cannot be said of one of Windows XP’s worst user-surly interface annoyances (and there are PLENTY of them in XP). Does this look familiar:

Updating your computer is almost complete. You must restart your computer for the updates to take effect. Do you want to restart your computer now?

[ ] Restart Now [ ] Restart Later

If you don’t want to stop what you’re doing to restart and you select Restart Later, it’ll ask you again every ten minutes until you restart. Total pain. Well, there is a fix. Daniel Turini posted this how-to tip on The Code Project.