Does anybody else find Windows’s ‘autonomous shut-down and update’ feature phenomenally annoying? I mean, who’s supposed to be in charge here exactly?!? Is there a way to disable it? I’ve got Windows 7

Yep under update settings in control panel

Is there a way to disable it?

yep.

LMGTFY

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/turn-automatic-updating-on-off

Control Panel – Windows Update – Change Settings

You can tell it what and when you want to update, and whether it’s automatic or manual.

hit the windows button and type windows update should be the first hit on the list, there’s a change settins link on the left, click that and decide what you want, “download but let me choose when to install” is probably what you want

http://xkcd.com/1328/

Spot on, thanks for that! 🙂