HOW TO TAME WIDOWS UPDATE

Windows Update is surely the least loved part of Windows. Since automatic updates were introduced back in the XP days, they’ve doubtless been blamed for millions of postponed presentations and lost essays, as the OS has repeatedly chosen the worst possible times to apply updates, or to ditch open documents and restart.

Unfortunately, a piece of software as complex and as fundamental as Windows does need periodic updates. With an estimated 1.5 billion people using it every day, bugs and security holes are going to be discovered that urgently need plugging.

Microsoft has another incentive to keep everyone current: Windows releases have a long lifespan, with Windows 8, 10 and 11 all still officially supported. That’s a lot of different code streams to maintain, and the company certainly doesn’t want to be supporting multiple sub-versions within those releases. It’s in its interest to ensure that everyone moves up to the latest code as it becomes available – and since it controls the platform, that’s what happens.

But while there’s no getting away from Windows Update, you can learn to live with it. Once you understand what it’s doing, and how to configure its behaviour to suit your needs, you can get the benefits of automatic updates with… well, perhaps not zero downsides, but a lot fewer than you might fear.

What’s it sending me?

There are two main types of update that are ordinarily delivered by Windows Update: quality updates and feature updates. The former are the regular patches that help keep Windows running smoothly, such as security enhancements or bug fixes. A quality update shouldn’t have any visible effect on the way your computer works – except perhaps that it crashes less often, and doesn’t get hijacked