Updating it properly

[chrisabril]

Hello guys, I just got my new SP4 256 GGB about a week ago, and although I'm really enjoying it so far, I've been having some issues, some of them weren't that important, but yesterday it got much worse, so, after reading many comments about it getting all buggy because of updates getting all mixed up, I decided to reset (or refresh? I'm not sure which is which) in order to do things right.
So, my question is: how do I update it properly? I read that it isn't recommended to force updates and it's better to wait for it doing automatically, but it's been about an hour since I reset it and it hasn't started updating yet, and I think auto updates are enabled.

Thanks.

 

[leeshor]

Welcome to the forum

A refresh leaves everything pretty much as it was. A reset puts it back to factory and cleans up EVERYTHING.

I feel it's not a good idea to force anything, however I guess that depends on how you define force. You should check for updates manually and update, restart, until there are no updates remaining.

I do suggest you wait 15 seconds before a restart if/when prompted and at least a minute after a restart before checking again.

I modified your title as the HowTo is reserved for tutorials.

 

[chrisabril]

Oh sorry about the tittle, it's good to know.
I guess I did a resfresh then since I'm keeping all my files. I intended not to update anything manually and just wait for it updating on it's own, but it doesn't seem to be finding any update even tho the auto-update thingy is enabled.
I'll do it following your steps, hope there are no update conflicts this time. Thanks.

 

[leeshor]

I can tell you from experience that you should check for updates regularly so as not to be caught off guard. I had a customer try to postpone an update and the system restarted while he was working on something. He's not all that happy with me right now for not mentioning it ahead of time. That may be rare but it happens.

 

[GreyFox7]

I probably have mentioned something about taking time with updates and there are a few things that it applies to.

one is, some people do their setup and immediately start installing software while not realizing that updates are also running in the background. I think this is somewhat risky although technically allowed and in theory shouldn't cause problems.

two, sometimes a system has trouble with updates for whatever reason and sometimes a little patience can payoff. instead of immediately rebooting give it a minute to settle and reach a quiet point first.

Checking for updates, running, then checking again immediately sometimes fails.... Windows update does a lot of "processing" seemingly an inordinate amount at times... let it figure out whatever it's chewing on. have patience.

Occasionally when I need to update a system that hasn't been updated in a while and it has a lot of updates to do or if you have done a Refresh on say Windows 7/8x and there are tons of updates to do (same with Win 10 in a few months) I have found it's more successful if you download the updates or wait for it to download the updates then do the Shutdown and Update option rather than doing Updates while it's running. A lot of processes will be shutdown in this scenario and fewer in use files will be encountered resulting in better overall success in my experience.

Hope that helps clear up some things...
in theory Windows Update is an exact science and it works perfectly without error every time. In practice there's an art to Updates and it pays to pay attention. Almost every time I get greedy and try to save a minute here or there I end up wishing I had just stuck to the plan. Patience.