Microsoft Gives Windows Update A New Pause Button

Let Someone Else Beta Test Windows Update Patches

Microsoft are improving your Windows Update experience in four ways, unfortunately none of them are improved testing to ensure they don’t regularly release updates which bork your PC.  Instead they will add a new option to the Windows Update screen which lets you pause the installation of Windows Updates to a specific date in the future.  This should hopefully ensure that any bad updates are fixed before that date, though one hopes the user can’t just pick a date in 2099 to prevent any updates from ever installing.

In addition to pausing Windows Update, Microsoft will also let you skip at least some updates from installing during their OOBE so you can get to your desktop after a fresh install much more quickly.  They are also bringing back the ability to shutdown or restart when you have pending updates, without installing those updates.  This is a feature we used to take for granted and it is about time it was brought back.

The final change seems like something that should have been announced on the 1st of this month, but is unfortunately an accurate representation of the level of service we now expect from Windows Updates.  When a driver update is pushed to your machine via Windows Update, Microsoft will now actually tell you what piece of hardware is being updated.  Instead of just being a generic ‘Driver Update’, you will now get access to such privileged details such as “Audio Driver” or “Display Driver”.