Windows – Make windows 8 install updates when shutting down without disabling fast boot

shutdownwindows 8windows update

TL;DR: Scroll to the bottom bolded part

When logging in to my Windows 8 PC, there's a yellow message like this:

Windows Update

Your PC will restart in 2 days to finish installing security updates.

Sure, update notifications.

I'm a long time user of Windows, having used it from 95 (although I don't remember much from that period). XP, Vista, and Win 7 all exhibited the following behavior:

  • There are updates.
  • I don't care about them.
  • When I leave work, I initialize shutdown of my PC.
  • Windows installs the updates and shuts down my PC.
  • When I get to work the next day, it has to spend maybe 1 extra minute to finish up.
  • I can get back to work.

Windows 8, instead, decides to not install updates during shutdown. Apparently shutting it down and booting backup isn't a restart. Weird terminology they're using there.

Thus, with windows 8, my process is as such:

  • There are updates.
  • I don't care about them.
  • When I leave work, I initialize shutdown of my PC.
  • Windows shuts down my pc.
  • When I get to work the next day, I boot my pc up.
  • Windows sees that it's automatic restart time, and spends 2 minutes or so installing updates.
  • Windows then does a hard restart.
  • After booting, windows finalizes installation of the updates.
  • In these 3 minutes, I've mentally labelled my workstation as "unavailable" and gone off to do semi- or non-work related things (talking to co-workers, getting drinks, toying around with my phone…)
  • When I get back to my workstation, 10-30 minutes later…
  • I can get back to work.

So I google and find out this "not installing updates on shutdown" is due to fast boot.

I like fast boot and don't want to disable it. I don't want to do a cold hard shutdown every time I leave for work if this makes booting the PC slower. I can probably wait the extra 10 seconds, but ideally, when I shutdown my PC, it either installs updates via a full shutdown, or it does a shutdown for fast-boot.


How can I configure Windows 8 as such that it will, on shutdown:
if there are no updates, do a shutdown with fast boot – if there are updates, do the full shutdown? Even better would be if it did the full restart and did a fast shutdown afterward, that'd make my boot process take the same time, regardless of whether it needed any updates.

Best Answer

Simply press and hold the shift key when clicking on Shutdown. This invokes a full shutdown and installs the updates. And when you normally shutdown Windows it still uses the new fast boot.