# What's the longest you've had to wait for a Windows update to complete?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-youve-had-to-wait-for-a-windows-update-to-complete/668387>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [September 9, 2013, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-youve-had-to-wait-for-a-windows-update-to-complete/668387 "2013-09-09T04:08:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-youve-had-to-wait-for-a-windows-update-to-complete/668387/1 "2013-09-09T04:08:15Z")

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My brand new laptop wanted to install five updates tonight, so I let it. It’s been stuck on update number one for thirty minutes now. I don’t know how long to wait before feeling nervous–nor what to do should things reach that point…

It’s not a super fast machine (a cheap $400 laptop) but still… A8 processor so not exactly a Celeron either…

How long have you had to wait for updates to complete?

(It’s a Windows 8 machine btw.)

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**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-youve-had-to-wait-for-a-windows-update-to-complete/668387/2 "2013-09-09T04:13:20Z")

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I don’t know whether it would a good idea or bad idea to just let it do its thing overnight. But I may not have another option other than switching the thing off mid-update, which sounds foolish…

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**Author:** ![LionelHutz405](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lionelhutz405/32/536_2.png) [@LionelHutz405](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LionelHutz405)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2013, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-youve-had-to-wait-for-a-windows-update-to-complete/668387/3 "2013-09-09T14:51:29Z")

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Do an alt-tab just to make sure there isn’t a dialog box hidden that’s waiting for your input.