Windows updates

[stewstew5]

My computer is taking a while to update and powers down due to disuse about halfway through. Is there any way to bypass the update and just go to the login?

[Winter_Wolf]

Have you tried sitting there and jiggling the mouse every five or ten minutes? I'm actually being serious. I've had to do that for a few program installations and I think if you're in the boot up screen the computer will register that it's supposed to stay active if anything tries to interact with it. Might even work if you tap the space bar. Otherwise I'm Not sure.

[TheBrain]

I don't recommend making a regular habit of this but when updates are taking too long or just not working I just press the power button until my computer completely shuts off and then turn it back on.

Once your computer is back up, go to your power settings in the control panel and you should be able to adjust how long your computer has to be inactive before going to sleep.

[factotum]

I don't recommend making a regular habit of this but when updates are taking too long or just not working I just press the power button until my computer completely shuts off and then turn it back on.

That is really bad advice. If the update is just taking a long time then you could well have just shut it off while it's halfway through updating a critical system file, leaving your system in at best an uncertain state and at worst unbootable. If you're 100% sure that the update has actively failed (e.g. the system has been sat without any disc access at all for a good while) then you could probably do this, but it's best avoided when possible.

[TheBrain]

That is really bad advice. If the update is just taking a long time then you could well have just shut it off while it's halfway through updating a critical system file, leaving your system in at best an uncertain state and at worst unbootable. If you're 100% sure that the update has actively failed (e.g. the system has been sat without any disc access at all for a good while) then you could probably do this, but it's best avoided when possible.

Been working in IT for years and done this numerous times, never had a problem.

[Silfir]

Lots of people text and drive without getting into accidents. Doesn't make it a good idea!

[TheBrain]

Lots of people text and drive without getting into accidents. Doesn't make it a good idea!

That's a silly comparison. One is life threatening, the other is simply contrary to "best practice". If your computer was built in the last decade I wouldn't worry about it.

You could say that no one should ever turn their computer on because there's a chance the power supply might catch on fire. Which sounds silly but I've seen that happen twice. I've never seen an OS get corrupted due to a forced reboot during an update.

[Sermil]

I've lost computers to force-power-cycling. Not even updating, just happened to be a bad state when they went down. Had to reinstall the whole OS.

Of course, these were 80's Apollo computers, which were approximately as stable as a pencil balanced on its tip with a frightened cat on top.

[obryn]

Newer versions of windows - definitely including 10 - should never die from an incomplete update.

In yesteryear, yeah. But nowadays? Nah.