In summary:
- PCWorld reports that Windows update problems may not actually stem from the updates themselves, according to Microsoft veteran Raymond Chen.
- Updates often force system restarts that reveal pre-existing conflicts from previous driver installations or policy changes that hadn’t taken effect yet.
- Regular restarts after any system modifications can prevent these issues and simplify troubleshooting when problems do occur.
Whenever Microsoft releases new updates for Windows, it’s pretty much expected now that users around the world will run into all kinds of error codes and messages. But one Microsoft veteran thinks it’s wrong to assume problems are always caused by the updates themselves.
In a recent post on his Microsoft dev blog, Raymond Chen says: “Before you check if an update caused your problem, check that it wasn’t a problem before the update.”
What he’s saying is that issues can actually stem from various other changes that might’ve happened around the same time as the update. For example, the IT department installed a new driver, modified a group policy, or updated a program. But you haven’t restarted your system in a while, so those changes haven’t fully taken place.
Then comes Patch Tuesday and you install the latest Windows update, which forces a system reboot. Now the new software, driver, or incomplete config settings bump into each other and break things. In cases like these, it wasn’t the Windows update itself that broke your system—it was the fact that your system finally restarted.
The takeaway? Windows users should make it a habit to restart their computers after every change and before installing Windows updates. Make sure there are no problems prior to installing that new Windows update. It’ll make troubleshooting easier.
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This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC för Alla and was translated and localized from Swedish.