Windows Should Be Online for at Least Eight Hours for Updates to Install Properly, Says Microsoft

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Windows users who want to ensure that their operating system’s latest quality and feature updates are installed properly will want to keep their machines powered on and connected to the Windows Update service for at least eight hours.



That’s according to Microsoft’s David Guyer, a program manager for Windows Updates, who explained in a recent article relating to update connectivity data that Windows updates are “very unlikely” to succeed if the target machine isn’t online long enough. Microsoft calls this measurement Update Connectivity, the length of time that a device is powered on and connected to Windows Update.



“Specifically, data shows that devices need a minimum of two continuous connected hours, and six total connected hours after an update is released to reliably update,” Guyer explained. “This allows for a successful download and...
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Yeah, that's not going to happen.

I boot into windows, launch my game, and then immediately shut it off again afterwards.

No way in hell I'm just going to leave windows running all the time.

Try again Microsoft.
 
There is actually truth to this. When doing patch deployments on multiple systems, you really do need an eight hour maintenance window at the very least.
 
My machines would be powered off if I wasn’t running folding@home and open pandemics 24x7. Since I am, windows update gets to have its 8 hour window… at least till I start moving machines back to Linux.
 
My backup pc is rarely powered on for more than 20-30 minutes, just enough to sync files. It still gets updated all the time, so I don't know where does this 8 hours comes from. Maybe it only applies to feature updates but I'd rather those didn't happen at all.
 
Dan_D said:
There is actually truth to this. When doing patch deployments on multiple systems, you really do need an eight hour maintenance window at the very least.
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I don't understand why it should take so long.

I usually just refresh available updates and install them in Windows Update Settings every once in a blue moon. It rarely takes more than a few minutes, and they install properly.

Just leaving the machine on and letting it do it at Microsofts pace seems... uh.. suboptimal.
 
When I had DSL it would take days. 3 computers all trying to update at once could completely choke out the internet and that Update thing were you could get it from a local PC never seemed to do anything to lighten the load. Most patches were pretty small and happened overnight, but the occasional big one hit and all you could do was wait. You could always tell Windows was updating somewhere because Spotify would start to buffer.

We would leave our computers on 24-7 so all the updates (not just Windows - games and all) could go overnight, and try to setup or block everything so it wouldn’t update during the day and kill the internet. Steam could never catch up.
 
Zarathustra said:
I don't understand why it should take so long.

I usually just refresh available updates and install them in Windows Update Settings every once in a blue moon. It rarely takes more than a few minutes, and they install properly.

Just leaving the machine on and letting it do it at Microsofts pace seems... uh.. suboptimal.
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In large network deployments it's a different deal. With home users I suspect its a blanket statement to ensure people with garbage internet connections have enough time to download and install the updates. On my connection it only takes a few minutes even on test bench systems. That being said, I do keep my install media as up to date as I can.
 
Brian_B said:
When I had DSL it would take days. 3 computers all trying to update at once could completely choke out the internet and that Update thing were you could get it from a local PC never seemed to do anything to lighten the load. Most patches were pretty small and happened overnight, but the occasional big one hit and all you could do was wait. You could always tell Windows was updating somewhere because Spotify would start to buffer.

We would leave our computers on 24-7 so all the updates (not just Windows - games and all) could go overnight, and try to setup or block everything so it wouldn’t update during the day and kill the internet. Steam could never catch up.
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My father in law for the longest time (too long) only had dialup. It took DAYS to get updates.
 
Burticus said:
My father in law for the longest time (too long) only had dialup. It took DAYS to get updates.
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Yup. And Microsoft Update is horrible. It has ~some~ scheduling now, but it's hardly intuitive. Can't pause an update in progress. Can't throttle bandwidth. Once it starts, it's just suffer through it until it gets done, or live with the PC offline or shut down.

That was one of my big hangups (among many) with XBGP on the PC as well - lack of controls for patches/downloads; it all went through the Store which seems to follow the same rules as Updates and just assumes everyone has a fat pipe and bandwidth is never an issue.
 
Brian_B said:
Yup. And Microsoft Update is horrible. It has ~some~ scheduling now, but it's hardly intuitive. Can't pause an update in progress. Can't throttle bandwidth. Once it starts, it's just suffer through it until it gets done, or live with the PC offline or shut down.

That was one of my big hangups (among many) with XBGP on the PC as well - lack of controls for patches/downloads; it all went through the Store which seems to follow the same rules as Updates and just assumes everyone has a fat pipe and bandwidth is never an issue.
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Yeah, i never understood how even the biggest update linux takes about 5 minutes, and usually doesn't even require a reboot, whereas windows... Man is it a slog.
 
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Ditchinit said:
Remember when ... if a download was interrupted, you had to start over again from the beginning?



Pepperidge Farm remembers.
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I even remember the time when your dialup connection was interrupted billing would start again, so by the day's end I had 50 crashed internet explorers running in the background because rebooting was off the table.
 
Ditchinit said:
Remember when ... if a download was interrupted, you had to start over again from the beginning?



Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Click to expand...

I remember doing win 95 and office installs from like 50 floppy disks and one of them, usually disk # 48 of 50 or whatever would fail.
 
Burticus said:
I remember doing win 95 and office installs from like 50 floppy disks and one of them, usually disk # 48 of 50 or whatever would fail.
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I'm pretty sure it was half that many floppies, but yes. Inevitably you would get through most installs with a large amount of floppy disks and run into problems.
 
I've always advised people to at least once a week or so just turn on their machine for a day and let it do its thing if they are not going to use it for weeks at a time. I remind them that aside from a security standpoint to hardware limitations and download speeds they could be setting themselves up for a series of bottlenecks if they don't. I cannot tell you how many people have come up to me with their underpowered laptops or tablets wondering why they're running so slow and then I check and see a dozen or more updates all jumping over each other to download and install. Meanwhile, those poor CPUs, and drives, are at max utilization making even something simple as checking email a tortuous event. What's worse is when they've only turned them on for a moment here and there and something borked because it was never able to finish. Not saying I'm a huge fan of updates but there are definitely ways to make the experience worse.
 
I use my laptop once a week for about 4-6 hours. It always feels like the thing is trying to update anytime and every time I use it. It's probably more typical of what Microsoft is talking about as it's not connected to a hard line and thus has to download over a sketchy wireless connection in my house.
 
Eight hours sounds about right for the amount of time it takes to remove the crapware that's (re-)installed with the update.

BTW, it is (or was) possible to lie to Windows and force it to behave as though the connection is metered. That can sometimes be useful to workaround some issues related to Windows Update, especially for users without access to Enterprise edition.
 
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