Microsoft Says Windows May Need Up to 8 Hours to Update | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Says Windows May Need Up to 8 Hours to Update

tomshardware.com

36 pointsrbanffy40 comments

Time is misleading. Their implying that a computer needs 8 hours to finish an update.

From the actual release: "One of the most impactful things we explored was how much time a device needs to be powered on and connected to Windows Update to be able to successfully install quality and feature updates. What we found is that devices that don’t meet a certain amount of connected time are very unlikely to successfully 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. This allows for a successful download and background installations that are able to restart or resume once a device is active and connected."

What the are saying is "you need to be able to reach the download server for at least 8 hours after an update drops in order to reliably install it."

Misleading? Yes, but a meaningful difference? Not really.

The different between: 1. Your computer must be able to connect to a Microsoft server 2. Your computer is going to be actively installing an update, and possible unusable

Is very much meaningful

Another thing is when TiWorker.exe (Updating system) or MsMpEng.exe (Antimalware system) start consuming so much CPU that it starts to heat up my laptop and its overheating system kicks in and shuts everything down. It's really annoying.

That’s uh, not normal. You should probably replace your thermal paste between your heat sink and cpu. Your cpu should be able to throttle down as needed to reduce temperature even if your fan can’t keep up. If it’s not doing that, it isn’t cooling down at all.

MS update stuff consuming loads of cpu is normal. It makes my 6c12t desktop computer scream, so pushing a laptop into thermal protection is not out of the question.

A computer operating correctly should never go into thermal protection, even with an insane load. Thermal protection is a CPU's last resort to return to sanity and its likely physical damage could result if the thermal protection isn't applied fast enough.

But FWIW, my mornings usually consist of updating everything for me, personally. I never have updates happen unexpectedly. There's a script I run when I sit down to my computer for the first thing, every single day.

Oh no, laptops thermal throttle all the time. As do most of the desktops.

It's part of normal operation for any CPU/GPU released in last 10 or so years.

There is a reason why intel advertises a regular and "Boost" clock speeds. Boost clock is not sustainable without heavy duty cooling and the CPU will throttle down once it's heated up.

Throttling's normal and expected. OP indicates "shuts everything down" though -- which sounds more like the CPU turned off to prevent damage. That shouldn't happen if the cooling is working properly.

I think the miscommunication is around "shuts everything down". Some of us are reading that as an emergency power-off event far beyond normal thermal throttling, which is just a reduction in clock speeds within the typical variable clock range of the power management system.

I don't know if it still holds, but some older systems also had a third category of throttling in between the normal speed range and an emergency power off. They would stutter badly as if they were applying some duty cycle and alternating between a suspended state and a slowly clocked state. This would show up as really frustrating IO buffering and UI latency, similar to how a machine might behave if it were stuck in a virtual-memory swapping storm and processes would freeze/unfreeze sporadically.

Intel's i9 regularly dropped to 400-800mhz on macbooks.

Windows update is the number one driver for people switching to Linux in my experience. I personally know at least 20 people who are are non-technical who switched to Linux solely because of windows update.

We do get update notifications in many linux distros as well. I guess the difference is how aggressive the windows updates are. Its like having a gun to the head if at all there give a choice in the first place. The fact that windows is still kicking around with these shitty ux practices says how low the desktop or laptop market must mean to companies these days.

The major difference is Linux can update in the background, with out much effect on working performance. Linux also doesn't force you to update, or block shutdown/boot events to perform an update. Its simply a much better experience.

This is so weird to me because I'm very much a turbo nerd power user Linux dork and I will still contend that Windows has a significantly easier user experience. I certainly don't use Linux because it's a convenient desktop platform.

Most people do everything in the browser, so Linux Mint gives the end user everything they need with little down side.

It is significantly more predictable, though. If I switch on my Windows computer to do some work, say, for a deadline, it's out of my control what happens next. If I'm unlucky, there's literally nothing I can do to make the computer functional and meet the deadline because it's stuck updating something.

Linux has warts, but being able to switch on your computer and definitely use it is pretty important.

It doesn't help if it boots, if then I have to continously battle with my wlan configuration that every other device on the house doesn't have any issue talking to.

So I just accept as fact of life that on a Asus 1215B, bought with Linux pre-installed, I have to reboot the network configuration every now and then.

I guess it is still better than when Canonical replaced the wlan driver with a half-working one because FOSS rulez, or having 3D capabilities downgraded to GL 3.3 support, when the legacy AMD commercial driver was capable of GL 4.1.

I guess the difference is that these problems are fixable: maybe they're going to be annoying to fix, but you can actually do it.

In windows, some problems are simply outside of your control, or if you dip down into the registry to fix them, and that's possible, then your fixes can get unfixed on update.

To be honest, I just find it mind-boggling that all around the world, there are offices of high-paid professionals waiting for windows to finish updating minecraft before they can actually do some work.

Fixable how?

I have to become a kernel hacker and AMD driver contributor to fix them?!?

If they are waiting for Minecrat to update then they are overly paid.

It's probably just a matter of fixing some inane configuration file under /etc/.

Don't get me wrong - I find that kind of thing annoying too. But it's nothing compared to the Windows approach of interrupting your work to give you a popup about 'connecting your device' or whatever.

It's relatively easy to disable the updates via a simple group-policy. You can still install them manually.

So Microsoft is trying to blame users for their computers being out of date, when it's their automatic system failing... Keeping computers on overnight should not be required for proper updates, most computers are practically idle most of the time anyway, do it then. Furthermore, this data is specifically about laptops, so it's possible some of the problem is due to laptop-specific battery optimisation, and so doesn't affect desktop users. I hope they try to investigate the issue further, currently there's very little to go on.

It doesn't take windows 8 hours to install upates. The reason why it takes 8 hours is that the update process doesn't start until it has been determined that you have stable power. One of the criteria for that is that the computer has been on for a couple of hours without power interruption.

A proper update process should be able to pause immediately when power is lost, thus not needing to care about whether there is stable power - if power suddenly goes away the entire thing should pause and thus not waste battery power.

It's kinda wild that people put up with this stuff, I've had windows update permanently disabled since 7 or maybe even XP. It is exceedingly rare that anything good ever comes of it. I just can't imagine a world where my computer decides to interrupt me, or where I want to use it and it's inoperable. It's just so crazy that people put up with having tools in their lives that they can't rely on.

Computers being "out of date" doesn't stop them from working, it's most often updates that break things.

I'm still on Windows 7 at home, but it's getting harder and harder to hold out.

99% of things work as expected though.

I'll probably move to linux soon.

FWIW Windows 10 LTSC is pretty solid, it removes most of the cruft and if you install it airgapped and disable all the updates/automatic driver installs and security crap before you let it online it's really a pretty solid operating system.

Since Microsoft fired their test staff, their Updates have become unstable and dangerous. It seem obvious, so I have to think they wanted it this way. See, they put the cost of testing on their customers. Genius!

Nowadays updates nowadays are basically a full OS reinstall under the hood.

They outsourced the QA team to the general public.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/12/12/micro...

The global energy required for Windows Update must be incredible. They really need to optimise it.

I keep WU postponed for a month or two and when I feel daring I let it play. But it always finishes its job in an hour. Windows 10 Edu here. Maybe a key point is to disable the built-in bittorrent distribution ("delivery optimization")? Apart from disagreeing with Microsoft using your PC as a CDN node.

Why does Microsoft insist on monolithic updates, where other OSs update small components?

I have had the situation when the update was downloading for a long time then indicated that it had failed, wasting all the data that was already downloaded, probably around three quarters of a gigabyte.

On the other hand, I have an OS that updates individual apps and individual libraries. If something fails along the way, at least I have updated most of what was downloaded, leading to little wasted data.

> 8 Hours to Update

And that be perfectly fine if it didn't do it in a middle of presentation. And yet here we are.

So just like my Fedora

My Fedora can do an inplace system upgrade (reinstalling every package) in a lot less than 8 hours. But I do have blazingly fast (/s) 10Mbps internet.

Both upgrades to 34 and 35 needed about 8 hrs for me. 100Gbps. 1TB HD

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