Updates are one of the most important maintenance steps you can take on your computer, helping to improve performance, fix errors, and increase protection against security threats. However, installing updates can be stressful, as it often takes a long time, and when the loading screen freezes, it’s difficult to tell if anything is actually happening, which can lead to a variety of situations such as interrupted updates.
What happens if the power is turned off while the computer is being updated?
If you’re stuck waiting for a long time on the loading update screen, you might force a shutdown in desperation in hopes of fixing the stuck update, and other times you might experience an unexpected power outage or your laptop battery draining during the update process. However, in some cases, it is possible to accidentally close the lid or unplug the computer while the update is still running. When any of these things happen and your device shuts down midway through an update, you might think that the computer will boot up normally and updates will resume with the next update, but that’s not always the case.
When the installation process is interrupted, there is a risk that the computer will not function properly the next time you turn it on. For Windows computers, this can result in endless reboot loops or annoying pop-ups with the message that the update could not be completed. Modern macOS devices (post-Big Sur) are immune to outages because updates are applied to a separate system on the boot drive rather than to the active system volume, allowing them to revert to a previous version of the software on boot. However, this does not make them completely immune to problems caused by failed updates.
Why doesn’t shutting down the device during an update always damage the device?
The system update process has two phases: download and installation. During the download phase, the computer simply retrieves all the files and data that make up the update from online sources. There is little risk if you accidentally shut down your computer during this phase. After you reboot, it will either resume the download where it left off, or it will re-download the file if the last attempt was damaged. In both cases, your computer or laptop will not be harmed by sudden interruptions.
On the other hand, if you shut down your computer during the installation phase, there is a good chance that the system will encounter problems the next time you power it on, even serious problems, so there is a reason why your computer tells you “Do not turn off your computer” at this stage. If the new software is a major update, it usually involves replacing critical system files. Interrupting this step may seriously affect your computer, such as being unable to restore the previous system version, random BSOD errors (Windows), forced restarting, or in worse cases, being unable to boot.
To prevent any surprises, you should allocate your time properly for system updates. If you’re unable to perform distribution while an update is rolling out to your device, you can choose to pause the update on Windows or schedule the update on a macOS device.
Source: KOCPC Chinese