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Updates and restarts: what to expect
Software has holes. The makers find them and ship fixes, called patches. An attacker’s easiest way in is a computer that never installed the fix. Patch Management installs them for you, on a schedule, so there is nothing to remember.
What gets updated
- Windows. The operating system itself, every month, plus urgent fixes when they come.
- Office. Outlook, Word and Excel.
- Chrome. The browser, which gets fixes most often of all.
Restarts
Some updates only finish after a restart. When one is waiting, the computer says so. Two habits make this painless:
- Save your work before you walk away. Lunch, the end of the day, a meeting. If a restart happens then, you lose nothing.
- Leave the computer on overnight, plugged in. Updates install while nobody is using it, and the morning is normal.
A laptop closed in a bag all weekend catches up on Monday. That first restart can take a few minutes.
What you may notice
A “restart to finish updating” message. Do it when you reach a stopping point. If a program misbehaves after an update, email [email protected].