warning don't turn off your computer during this update
as often as you've seen this message you've probably wondered well
what exactly would happen if i turned off the computer or worse yet lost power
during an update and what if Windows update gets stuck and just never
completes is it safe to restart the pc or are you
doomed to have something go wrong so here's the deal back when Windows vista
first came out microsoft was trying to find a way to make the update process a
little more robust with more and more people getting updates delivered over
the internet so they introduced a mechanism called component based
servicing cbs then no not that one does a couple of things
differently to ensure that updates are installed correctly first it checks to
make sure that all required files are present before starting installation and
this is perhaps more relevant for what we're discussing today it marks an
update as complete after it's installed
cbs is part of the underlying architecture of Windows update so if
there's a power loss or you just unplug your computer during an update as
part of some kind of masochistic experiment it'll kick back in once you
boot back into Windows and see that an update wasn't marked as complete now i
won't know why the update wasn't completed but it also doesn't have to
instead cbs just rolls back whatever changes the updater made and restores
whatever the previous state was before you started the install allowing you to
try again later without damaging anything on your pc
so those please do not turn off your computer messages don't always mean that
you're at risk of an imminent catastrophe if you don't follow the
instructions with a caveat cbs obviously requires
critical files that help run Windows itself in order for it to operate
so while cbs might work perfectly if a shutdown occurs while Windows is
updating the gui or installing some
non-critical feature you still might be in for a world of trouble if the power
loss happens while core Windows components are being updated and
unfortunately you've got no way of knowing when that's
happening because Windows doesn't tell you
the result can be anything from certain aspects of Windows not functioning
correctly to Windows refusing to boot at all instead giving you a blue screen of
death or simply a blank display when you try to start up the system uh-oh but if
this happens try not to panic even the most disastrous failed updates
shouldn't touch the personal data on the drive so if your pc won't boot into
Windows you can use a Windows installation usb drive that you can
easily create on another system and boot into that under troubleshoot then you
can use startup repair to fix the damaged Windows files that are giving
you the issue then if that doesn't work for some reason you can always open up command
prompt from that same usb type notepad.exe to open notepad then use the
open command in notepad to bring up a file explorer window that will allow you
to copy any files you need to another storage device
or this is the much easier way you can just remove the drive from your computer
entirely connect it as a secondary drive to a different pc and copy all your
files that way but okay what if you feel like you have to restart during the
update process because Windows update is simply not moving and is stuck at a
certain percentage for a very long time like even for hours this can happen for
any number of reasons but if it's been stuck for an excessive
period and it looks like your drive isn't busy anymore like the leds not
blinkity blinking it probably won't hurt anything to restart the system and take
another crack at it once it comes up you can use a troubleshooter that's built
into Windows to clear the Windows update cache which can often fix problems with
Windows update just type troubleshoot Windows update into the Windows 10
search bar to find it so bottom line then try not to panic if your update
gets interrupted far worse things could happen to your data like having Linus
handle it apparently this script was not written assuming that i would host it
but i did john i saw that and i also saw our sponsor thanks to storyblocks for
sponsoring today's video storyblocks helps you bring your stories to life
without sacrifice due to time budget or lack of other resources although usually
it comes down to time and budget doesn't it they feature over 1 million different
stock assets for you to use and you can save a ton of time using their
in-browser video editor they've got pre-designed templates animations and
outros and storyblocks uses an affordable subscription model with their
unlimited all-access plan giving you unlimited video and audio downloads
instead of a costly pay-per-clip model we use it here on techwiki all the time
because we don't always have the time or budget remember that to go out and shoot
the perfect b-roll footage so check out story blocks today at storyblocks.com
techquickie thanks for watching guys like dislike check out our other videos
leave a comment if you have a video suggestion for techwiki and don't forget
to subscribe you can't i forbid it