Technology Tips – Published June 2021 in the Guide and Digest
By Don Trauger – Kennett
The standard configuration for Windows Update works automatically by updating your Windows PC beginning on the second Tuesday of each month and continuing thru the fourth Tuesday. It corrects known bugs, refines features and most importantly corrects security issues. That sounds easy enough but Microsoft doesn’t fully check these updates for errors which can render your PC inoperable until they offer a patch to fix the offending update. In an effort to provide a work-around, you can delay these updates until the problem is fixed then you can update your PC. It’s very easy to see that Microsoft issues updates starting on the second Tuesday of each month then spends the rest of the month figuring out how to fix them. Let me guide you away from this scenario.
Here’s how to configure Windows update to avoid Microsoft’s mistakes. In Settings click Update & Security. If you see Pending downloads press the Downloads button to allow the process to continue until completed. Assuming you get your updates on or just after the second Tuesday of the month, move down to and click Advanced options. Scroll down to Pause updates. Click the down arrow in the field and select the last Friday of the current month (at the earliest) or the first Friday of the following month. Microsoft limits you to a 35 day maximum delay. Whenever you receive your new updates then you can reset a new 35 day delay window.
You can see this feature will always delay updates up to 35 days. However, the first time you use it depends on receiving stable updates during the second week of the month that don’t require patching during the third or fourth weeks of the month. Be alert to any system problems that occur after an update. If you see a problem go to Settings click Update & Security and click the Resume updates button and download the fix. It may take a week or longer to download a stable fix. Once an issue has been corrected reset the update delay.
Now for a new issue. Although it’s been going on for awhile now, Microsoft seems it can’t offer an update sequence that is problem free. What I mean is that during the updates it pops up small windows that say Click restart now. They may come in the middle of a download or during an installation of the updates. I figured Microsoft knows what they doing so I clicked Restart which I thought would speed up the process. It didn’t speed up the process but instead created errors that were logged into the Reliability Monitor. You can read my previous article about the Reliability Monitor here: https://hersheysmill.org/?s=reliability+monitor. Furthermore, when checking to see if an update was installed successfully in View Update History of Windows Update, it said it was successfully installed. What to believe? I’m not sure how to answer that except to say when Windows Update starts its process, let it complete the downloads and installations to the point nothing is taking place and it’s quiet. Now you can press the Restart button in the window or in the lower right corner of the screen to complete the update process.