Windows Update
Other names | Microsoft Update |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Microsoft |
Operating system |
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Included with |
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Service name | Windows Update |
Type | Network service |
Website | support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-update-faq |
Windows Update is a
As the service has evolved over the years, so has its client software. For a decade, the primary client component of the service was the Windows Update
The service provides several kinds of updates. Security updates or critical updates mitigate vulnerabilities against security exploits against Microsoft Windows. Cumulative updates are updates that bundle multiple updates, both new and previously released updates. Cumulative updates were introduced with Windows 10 and have been backported to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
Microsoft routinely releases updates on the second Tuesday of each month (known as the Patch Tuesday), but can provide them whenever a new update is urgently required to prevent a newly discovered or prevalent exploit. System administrators can configure Windows Update to install critical updates for Microsoft Windows automatically, so long as the computer has an Internet connection.
In Windows 10 and Windows 11, the use of Windows Update is mandatory, however, the software agreement states that users may stop receiving updates on their device by disconnecting their device from the Internet.[1][2]
Clients
Windows Update web app
Windows Update was introduced as a
The Windows Update web app requires either Internet Explorer or a third-party web browser that supports the ActiveX technology. The earliest version of the web app, version 3, does not send any personally-identifiable information to Microsoft. Instead, the app downloads a full list of every available update and chooses which one to download and install. But the list grew so large that the performance impact of processing became a concern. Arie Slob, writing for the Windows-help.net newsletter in March 2003, noted that the size of the update list had exceeded 400 KB, which caused delays of more than a minute for dial-up users.[5] Windows Update v4, released in 2001 in conjunction with Windows XP, changed this. This version of the app makes an inventory of the system's hardware and Microsoft software and sends them to the service, thus offloading the processing burden to Microsoft servers.[5]
Critical Update Notification Utility
Critical Update Notification Utility (initially Critical Update Notification Tool) is a background process that checks the Windows Update web site on a regular schedule for new updates that have been marked as "Critical". It was released shortly after Windows 98.
By default, this check occurs every five minutes, plus when Internet Explorer starts; however, the user could configure the next check to occur only at certain times of the day or on certain days of the week. The tool queries the Microsoft server for a file called "cucif.cab
", which contained a list of all the critical updates released for the operating system. The tool then compares this list with the list of installed updates on its machine and displays an update availability notification. Once the check is executed, any custom schedule defined by the user is reverted to the default. Microsoft stated that this ensures that users received notification of critical updates in a timely manner.[6]
An analysis done by security researcher
Microsoft continued to promote the tool through 1999 and the first half of 2000. Initial releases of Windows 2000 shipped with the tool. The tool did not support Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0.
Automatic Updates
Automatic Updates is the successor of the Critical Update Notification Utility. It was released in 2000, along with Windows Me. It supports Windows 2000 SP3 as well.
Unlike its predecessor, Automatic Updates can download and install updates. Instead of the five-minute schedule used by its predecessor, Automatic Updates checks the Windows Update servers once a day. After Windows Me is installed, a notification balloon prompts the user to configure the Automatic Updates client. The user can choose from three notification schemes: Being notified before downloading the update, being notified before installing the update, or both. If new updates are ready to be installed, the user may install them before turning off the computer. A shield icon will be displayed on the Shutdown button during this time.
Windows XP and Windows 2000 SP3 include Background Intelligent Transfer Service, a Windows service for transferring files in the background without user interaction. As a system component, it is capable of monitoring the user's Internet usage, and throttling its own bandwidth usage in order to prioritize user-initiated activities. The Automatic Updates client for these operating systems was updated to use this system service.
Automatic Updates in Windows XP gained notoriety for repeatedly interrupting the user while working on their computer. Every time an update requiring a reboot was installed, Automatic Updates would prompt the user with a dialog box that allowed the user to restart immediately or dismiss the dialog box, which would reappear in ten minutes; a behavior that Jeff Atwood described as "perhaps the naggiest dialog box ever."[8]
In 2013, it was observed that shortly after the
Windows Update Agent
Starting with
Windows Update Agent can be managed through a
Unlike Automatic Updates in Windows XP, Windows Update Agent in Windows Vista and Windows 7 allows the user to postpone the mandatory restart (required for the update process to complete) for up to four hours. The revised dialog box that prompts for the restart appears under other windows, instead of on top of them. However, standard user accounts only have 15 minutes to respond to this dialog box. This was changed with Windows 8: Users have 3 days (72 hours) before the computer reboots automatically after installing automatic updates that require a reboot. Windows 8 also consolidates the restart requests for non-critical updates into just one per month. Additionally, the login screen notifies them of the restart requirements.[15]
Windows Update Agent makes use of the Transactional NTFS feature introduced with Windows Vista to apply updates to Windows system files. This feature helps Windows recover cleanly in the event of an unexpected failure, as file changes are committed atomically.[16]
Windows 10 contains major changes to Windows Update Agent operations; it no longer allows the manual, selective installation of updates. All updates, regardless of type (this includes hardware drivers), are downloaded and installed automatically, and users are only given the option to choose whether their system would reboot automatically to install updates when the system is inactive, or be notified to schedule a reboot.[17][18] Microsoft offers a diagnostic tool that can be used to hide troublesome device drivers and prevent them from being reinstalled, but only after they had been already installed, then uninstalled without rebooting the system.[19][20]
Windows Update Agent on Windows 10 supports peer-to-peer distribution of updates; by default, systems' bandwidth is used to distribute previously downloaded updates to other users, in combination with Microsoft servers. Users may optionally change Windows Update to only perform peer-to-peer updates within their local area network.[21]
Windows 10 also introduced cumulative updates. For example, if Microsoft released updates KB00001 in July, KB00002 in August, and KB00003 in September, Microsoft would release cumulative update KB00004 which packs KB00001, KB00002, and KB00003 together. Installing KB00004 will also install KB00001, KB00002 and KB00003, mitigating the need for multiple restarts and reducing the number of downloads needed. KB00004 may also include other fixes with their own KB-number that were not separately released.[22] A disadvantage of cumulative updates is that downloading and installing updates that fix individual problems is no longer possible. KB stands for knowledge base as in Microsoft Knowledge Base.
Windows Update for Business
Windows Update for Business is a term for a set of features in the Pro, Enterprise and Education editions of Windows 10, intended to ease the administration of Windows across organizations. It enables IT pros to:[23][24][25]
- Switch between the standard and the deferred release branches of Windows 10. This feature has since been removed as Microsoft retired the deferred branch.[26]
- Defer automatic installation of ordinary updates for 30 days. Starting with Windows 10 version 20H1, this feature is more difficult to access.[27]
- Defer automatic installation of Windows upgrades (a.k.a. "feature updates") for 365 days. Starting with Windows 10 version 20H1, these updates are no longer automatically offered.[27]
These features were added in Windows 10 version 1511.[28] They are intended for large organizations with many computers, so they can logically group their computers for gradual deployment. Microsoft recommends a small set of pilot computers to receive the updates almost immediately, while the set of most critical computers to receive them after every other group has done so, and has experienced their effects.[29]
Other Microsoft update management solutions, such as
Complementary software and services
As organizations continued to use more computers, the per-machine Windows Update clients started to become unwieldy and insufficient. In response to the need of organizations for deploying updates to many machines, Microsoft introduced Software Update Services (SUS), which was later renamed
Update packages distributed via the Windows Update service can be individually downloaded from
can consume these packages.Microsoft offers
A number of tools have been created by independent software vendors which provide the ability for Windows updates to be automatically downloaded for, or added to, an online or offline system. One common use for offline updates is to ensure a system is fully
Service
At the beginning of 2005, Windows Update was being accessed by about 150 million people,, and processes an average of 90,000 page requests per second.
Traditionally, the service provided each patch in its own proprietary archive file. Occasionally, Microsoft released
In August 2011, the update service was decommissioned for Windows 98, 98 SE, ME and NT4 and the old updates for those systems were removed from its servers.[39][40]
On August 3, 2020, the update service was decommissioned for Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003 and Vista due to Microsoft discontinuing SHA-1 updates. As of 2021[update], the old updates are still available on the Microsoft Update Catalog,[41] or through third-party services, such as Legacy Update, which is a community-driven third party replacement for the Windows Update servers from 2000, XP, Server 2003 and Vista,[42] or Windows Update Restored, which is a community-driven replacement for Windows Update on older Windows versions (e.g. Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000, and XP RTM) designed to replicate the functionality of older Windows Update versions.[43] Updating Windows 7 and Server 2008 via the Windows Update service were also affected at the same time SHA-1 updates were discontinued for older Windows versions prior to 7 and Server 2008, however, Microsoft has provided SHA-2 patches that allowed Windows 7 and Server 2008 to continue receiving updates.[41]
Microsoft Update
At the February 2005
Command Line Updates Tools
There are only a handful of command line tools to install windows updates. A very common tool which already works under Windows 7 and has no external dependencies is for example: wuinstall.exe. It can push windows updates to a computer (wuinstall.exe /install).[citation needed]
Office Update
Office Update is a free online service that allows users to detect and install updates for certain Microsoft Office products.
The original update service supported Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003 and Office 2007. On 1 August 2009 Microsoft decommissioned the Office Update service, merging it with Microsoft Update.[45] Microsoft Update does not support Office 2000.
With the introduction of the
References
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Canada. You may stop receiving updates on your device by turning off Internet access. If and when you re-connect to the Internet, the software will resume checking for and installing updates.
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To resolve this issue, install Cumulative Update 21
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- ^ Azzarello, Pat (10 May 2017). "What is Windows Update for Business?". Windows for IT Pros. Microsoft. Archived from the original on 11 June 2018. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
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