It’s not a crazy question. It goes something like this: should users/admins install and restart after a single Cumulative Update, or can they allow multiple such updates in series? I just tried the latter on a couple of PCs, and everything turned out OK. I believe it may take a little longer to do them one at a time anyway (because of the time delay of the “extra restart”). But recent experience strongly asserts that stacking restartable updates works OK.

If Stacking Restartable Updates Works OK, Let ’em Rip!

This time around, Windows 11 got KB50100474 (.NET Framework 3.5 and 4.8) plus KB 5010414 (CU for Windows 11 x64…). I ran the drill on my Lenovo X1 Carbon (production Windows 11) and my Lenovo X380  Yoga (Beta/Insider Preview Channel Windows 11). Both got to the desktop through the reboot process in under 2 minutes. In my experience with various updates, that’s pretty fast in general for any single CU let alone 2 of them together.

Running DISM’s start component analyze and cleanup functions afterward, I found 2 reclaimable packages resulted from the updates. Cleaning them up regained affected PCs about 1.93 GB of disk space in the component store. It took about 8 minutes to complete. Worth doing, for sure!

Note: Don’t be disturbed by the “double progress bars” (see next screencap) for the /startcomponentcleanup bit. That always happens unless you reboot the PC before running this command after applying an update.

After stacking two CUs it’s no surprise that 2 reclaimable packages show up in DISM analysis of the component store.

I must say MS has Windows 11 working pretty well of late. I have yet to experience anything serious in the update/maintenance department since last October, when the official release emerged into public view. Good stuff!

OK, so it’s “Patch Tuesday” once again. I’m updating my fleet of 10 PCs. I’ve got one eye on the clock and the other on a recent article from WindowsLatest. It’s entitled Microsoft: Windows 10, Windows 11 need eight hours online to deploy updates. As I update my various Windows 10 and 11 PCs I’m seeing times in minutes, not hours. Why assert WU update connectivity 8 hours vs minutes?

Why Is WU Update Connectivity 8 Hours?

As I’m timing my various machines, the X1 Carbon took about 7 minutes to handle the updates from start to finish. My production desktop is at 11 minutes and counting. What does the story say? Here’s the most salient quote (emphasis mine):

Your device should be online for at least eight hours to process Windows cumulative or feature updates properly. This period is called ‘Update Connectivity’ and eight hours is necessary to get the latest updates from Microsoft’s servers and successfully install them.

I can only understand this one way. This is the interval that’s needed when the user doesn’t initiate updates. It sure doesn’t take that long when one requests an update from WU. My production PC (i7-6700) took 15 minutes to get to the “Restart required” notification. Prior experience says it will take another 5 minutes, max to the desktop. So why 8 hours? It gets more interesting, as recited next…

More Interesting Quotes

“The Update Connectivity period includes a minimum of two continuous connected hours and six total connected hours after an update is available for download.

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,” Microsoft noted in a new blog post.

What does this mean?

It means it’s best to leave PCs connected to the Internet when the Internet is the source of updates for those selfsame PCs. Those who use their own servers to push updates (or other means of update distribution) won’t be subject to the same limitations. Fascinating, though: who knew?

This morning (October 26) Twitter is ablaze with reports of qualified PC getting the “Windows 11 offer” via WU. I just checked my eligible PCs still running Windows 10 (all both of them). The Intel i7 11th gen machine gets the offer; the AMD Ryzen 5800X does not. So, as Windows 11 upgrades gain momentum the coverage remains partial. I guess, it’s just a bigger piece of the overall pie.

Twitter Sez: Windows 11 Upgrades Gain Momentum

But gosh, I see dozens of posts on Twitter this morning from people with all kinds of PCs indicating they’ve accepted the offer. Most report a successful install. Some report hanging, of which most seem to involve the post-GUI install phase somewhere between 80 and 100% complete.

FWIW, such issues have been common with other new Windows versions. One could argue — and MS often does — that the whole point of the “gradual rollout” they now follow is to ensure the highest likelihood of success to those who get “the offer.”

What I Do if WU Upgrade Hangs

This hanging has happened to me often enough in my 7 years as an Insider that I’ve got a step-by-step approach to trying various fixes:

1. Power off and restart. Often, the install will pick where it left off and continue to completion.
2. If rollback happens after restart, I try using the setup.exe from an ISO equivalent to the current install version. That has worked for me in most (9 out of 10) cases.
3. If a standalone/local installer won’t cut it, that often indicates driver or hardware issues. I’ll often roll back and wait for the next upgrade or a new ISO to come along. For those who MUST get to Windows 11, the only thing left to try is a clean install from the same ISO as in Step 2. This works for 9 of the remaining 10 hard cases.

But as I’ve recently learned with the Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 9 that has a Thunderbolt Firmware issue I can’t fix for love or money, even a clean install doesn’t ALWAYS work. That’s why I’m sending that one back to Lenovo with a “Thunderbolt doesn’t work” note in the box. Sometimes, the forces of darkness do prevail. I can only add that I *HATE* when that happens.