Windows Reboots + installs updates without permission?

Hi,
Two days ago I was surfing the web and my computer decided to close everything and reboot, but not before configuring updates without my permission which I think is what I had it set on. My first thought was that it was some kind of virus so I shut it down before they were installed (held down the power button).

In retrospect, this was probably a stupid thing to do because then when I started it back up I got the blue screen saying windows failed to start or something like that ("this could be a hardware/software issue" etc). Anyway after a few other things, I decided to just completely wipe it and start over as I hadn't backed anything up so I lost all my files and everything else.

Then, about an hour ago it happened again while I was in the middle of a game (just quit the game and started shutting down and installing updates without any warning that I could see). This time I just left it to see what happened and here I am. I looked at what had been installed in update history and there's a huge list including:

Update for windows Vista (25 of these)
Security update for windows Vista (50 of these)
Cumulative security update for IE7 for windows Vista (1)
Cumulative security update for windows mail for windows Vista (1)
Security update for windows media format runtime 11 for windows vista (2)
Security update for movie maker 6.0 for windows vista (1)
Security update for Microsoft .NET framework, version 2.0 (1)
Security update for Jscript 5.7 for windows vista (1)
Update for rights management services client for windows vista (1)
Microsoft .NET framework 3.5 service pack 1 and .NET framework 3.5 family update (1)

And I think that's it. Roughly 40% of them say they failed and they're all from today. I checked windows update and after I wiped everything it looks as though it reset the update manager to automatic update but I still don't know why it did it in the first place before any of this happened. Is this kind of thing normal? I've read a few forum posts elsewhere and some people are saying MS is basically evil and sometimes installs stuff you don't need/want even if AU is set to ask my permission first. I guess I just want to know if I need to worry, if any of those updates above are abnormal and if I can do something to stop this happening again because it's really frustrating.

Thanks in advance.

Welcome

You have to realize that we are not there, with the ability to look at the machine and the settings. May I suggest that you follow these instructions and make sure that you are on the proper settings
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/120695-windows-update-windows-automatic-updating.html

and

Windows Update - Enable or Disable Automatic Restart - Windows 7 Forums