Windows Updates – Truly Important for Your Computer Health

Are you someone who thinks that Windows Updates appearing on your computer are unnecessary and an annoyance? The time it takes to update may slow other processes down a bit, depending on your network download speed, so you cancel the updates?Windows Updates are critical to the support and health of your operating system, whether it is Windows 7, or if you are still using Vista or XP. On your Windows computer go to the My Computer icon, right click and see what OS and Service Pack are displayed. If you are still using Windows XP, you should see Service Pack 3. If it is Vista, then you should see Service Pack 2. Even Windows 7 has Service Pack 1 already in process.

You could be missing many critical changes to improve your system operation and security. In XP Service Pack 3 alone, there are 1174 individual updates to process. This free update is critical for your system.

You should allow the PC to run the Automatic Updates from Microsoft to make the process as painless as possible. In “My Computer” go to Automatic Updates, where you can set the timing of the download and installation, as well as choose some other options including notification of updates, and whether or not to actually install or just view them. If your PC is left on nightly you should set the Automatic Update to run at a convenient time during the night, when you are unlikely to be using it. You are anble to use the machine as needed when updates are running, but you will have to restart it at some point to complete the process.

Another option is to let the notification of updates come up, and then choose the “manual install” option that is displayed. This allows the user to pick and choose specific updates tailored for actual needs. Pick those most critical and relevant. For example: you have MS Office 2007 and the available updates list includes Office 2003 updates. Since you no longer need these, you can uncheck and skip them in the list. This is the flexibility of Windows Updates.

Windows Updates, extremely important to keep your machine in its best operating condition.