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Updating Windows Manually
Microsoft's Windows Update Site
By:
Colby Sawyer
Before beginning the Windows update process, shut your computer down for a minute and restart it. Close any programs that may open automatically when you restart. Open Internet Explorer (other browsers like Netscape will not work) on your Windows (all versions except Windows 95) computer and browse to this link: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com. Alternately, look in the Tools menu for a link to Windows Update. You probably will be greeted by a dialog box that looks like Figure 1. It's asking to install and run a small bit of software that will manage the updating process. While you don't have to check the "Always trust content from Microsoft Corporation" checkbox, you do need to click the Yes button.



Once the updater software loads and runs you click the "Scan for updates" link as in Figure 2. This looks over your installation of Windows for what updates are available. It is also important to bear in mind that this process makes revisions to Windows files, and the health of these operating system files is critical. So be careful here, don't try to do anything else with the computer while you are updating Windows, and perform all requested restarts.

The web page you're viewing is dynamic. It will report the progress of its scanning.

It is really the critical updates that are important. You may peruse the other categories if you wish, but taking the critical updates is highly recommended. In fact, the updating software assumes that the "Critical Updates and Service Packs" will all be installed. When you click on "Review and install updates" you will see a detailed listing of these critical updates

If you take a look through the listing of selected critical updates, you will note that they are almost all security related. IMPORTANT: It is possible that some of the critical updates detected will need to be installed separately. If so then you will have to run this whole process a few times until you have installed all of that type of update. Your choice is to either remove all the "must be installed separately" updates from the list, and install what's left, or work your way through the "must be installed separately" updates first, rebooting each time the system requests it. When you click the "Install Now" button, the first step of the process begins, which is the downloading of the update files from Microsoft. Depending on how your system is configured, you may see a dialog box asking you to agree to licenses terms for the update procedure- agree to those terms. Figure 6 shows a small dialog box that reports the progress of the download then installation of the selected updates. If you have a slow internet connection the download may take a while. The install process may take a while too, especially if there are a lot of updates, as in this example.

nce the system reboots, you can repeat the whole process to confirm that all available critical updates have been installed. Congratulations, your system is now up to date. If automatic updating is not available or is turned off, you may want to run this manual process on a monthly basis.

Written by:
Colby Sawyer