When it comes to Windows Update, one of the most discussed topics is the disruptiveness of restarts in the course of automatic updating. And for good reason—restarts can interrupt you right in the middle of something important.
The obvious question to ask first is why does the installation of updates even require a restart at all? Ideally, we would like all update installations to happen seamlessly in the background without a restart. But, in reality, there are situations where the installer is not able to update files because they are in use. In these cases, we need to restart your machine to complete the installation. The automatic updating experience thus needs to be able to handle cases where restarts are required. (more…)