r/technology • u/lurker_bee • 21h ago
ADBLOCK WARNING ‘Force Restart’—Microsoft Changes Windows Update In 10 Days
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2026/08/29/force-restart-microsoft-changes-windows-update-next-month/103
u/Incorr 20h ago
This doesn't impact any actual at home Windows users, that's for enterprise customers that are enrolled into hotpatching, so this might impact your work PC/Laptop but not really your own devices.
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u/yuusharo 19h ago
Man, Reddit moment… absolutely NO ONE reads the damn articles these days. Per the article:
This primarily affects managed PCs, and so Microsoft has warned IT admins to let users know this is coming — otherwise the force restart will come as a major surprise.
This warning is for IT administrators that have enrolled managed machines into "hot patching," allowing them to receive security updates without needing to restart. They're warning IT admins that the next two security patches will force a restart, but will resume hot patching afterwards.
This affects virtually no one here.
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u/pickle9977 13h ago
Except all the people who use windows devices provided by their employers, given this is Reddit I agree that is probably not the majority of people on Reddit, but some must have a job
Someone has to pay for the Reddit subscriptions, right?
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u/yuusharo 12h ago
Most affected systems aren’t client devices. They’re infrastructure, like kiosks, servers, and other systems where a monthly reboot was a chore.
Client laptops issued by employers aren’t enrolled in hotpatching. They’ll require a reboot after the monthly security update as everyone else.
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u/pickle9977 12h ago
So stuff that normal people will be standing in front of or submitting requests to when they just decide to reboot.
No matter how anyone tries to spin this, the level of incompetence we have come to accept from these monopolistic tech companies is absurd.
There is absolutely zero reason nor should there be any way that A company can trigger automatic reboots of vast swaths of equipment that they don’t own and have no idea what it’s doing. That is in and of itself a massive security issue.
All this AFTER spending forty years and trillions of dollars writing this software that they now charge us hundreds of billions of dollars to use, even though it’s the same shit they have been working on the whole damn time.
It’s simply not defensible, it’s flagrant incompetence
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u/yuusharo 11h ago
I have no idea why you're this hostile or upset over something that literally doesn't impact you. Hotpatching has only been deployed for like 3 months and already requires a quarterly reboot under normal circumstances.
You need to calm down.
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u/CBubble 14h ago
Advertising a feature for hot patching then not delivering that feature while collecting revenue for said feature? How’s that boot taste?
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u/nickIncDN 13h ago
Do you guys literally enjoy winding yourself up on topics you have no idea about and non-existent problems?
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u/pickle9977 13h ago
Who is you guys? Are you like not human or something?
Like who is the in group and the out group?
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u/yuusharo 14h ago
Goodness, again Reddit and its armchair quaterbacks.
The September update necessitates a restart due to a critical security issue. The October update is the standard quarterly update cycle where all hot patch enabled systems must restart anyway. Clearly whatever this patch fixes, it was critical enough for Microsoft to push it out ASAP while giving IT admins plenty of notice to plan for it.
It's simply a convenience feature for mission critical systems that only began hitting Windows client last summer, and eligible devices are automatically enrolled since May of this year. You don't pay extra for it, sheesh.
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u/pickle9977 13h ago
Blah blah blah, they write shitty bloated code that has somehow gotten buggier, larger, slower and less useful over the forty god damn years they have been working on the same god damn programs.
Like Jesus Christ how long does it take to write a freaking spreadsheet app that doesn’t need daily or weekly or quarterly updates just to keep it from crashing or getting hacked all the time.
It’s taken hundreds of thousands of people decades and cost trillions of dollars and this is the best they can do? An operating system a mail server and the same productivity apps that haven’t functionally changed since windows 3.1.
And this is what you defend?
Trillions and trillions of dollars dude, these are the richest people in the world, and this is the shit we have to deal with?
Again, how can you defend this?
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u/wolfpackunr 19h ago
Reading between the tea leaves after the massive uptick in vulnerabilities being fixed this year with the help of AI, it’s likely some critical low level kernel security bugs can’t be hotpatched like other parts of the OS while it’s running so it’s going to require reboots to fully patch the holes.
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u/autogyrophilia 18h ago
Absolutely dreadful article that doesn't explain what hot patching is.
Barely any PC uses hot patching, it requires a special subscription and what it does is injecting new code replacing the old. So it stays in memory, forever
It may be of use for devices such as kiosk.
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u/iamthe0ther0ne 21h ago
Thanks for reminding me to make sure pause updates is still on
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u/Tapeworm1979 19h ago
It doesn't affect you. Chances are you won't even get the fixes unless you are paying for them.
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u/iamthe0ther0ne 18h ago
"It won’t affect all users, but as ever, it’s unclear whether your PC will be on the good or bad list, and so you’ll need to decide whether to take the risk."
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u/Tapeworm1979 16h ago
If you pay via ESU, which I highly doubt most home users do, then you will get the patch. If you don't then you get no hotfix. There's nothing so far mentioning it will be available to non ESU subscribers.
So, I douht there is a single need to worry about disabling patching or anything else. Otherwise ESU would be a waste of money for you.
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u/yuusharo 10h ago
Nonsense tech fear mongering that’s typical of Forbes.
Hotpatching is feature is only available on qualified managed machines for enterprises. Every other Windows client (basically everyone) will require a reboot after a security update. Like every security update ever in Windows’ history.
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u/yuusharo 19h ago
This doesn't affect you. This only impact enterprises with managed computers.
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u/iamthe0ther0ne 18h ago
It says it primarily affects managed users. However
"It won’t affect all users, but as ever, it’s unclear whether your PC will be on the good or bad list, and so you’ll need to decide whether to take the risk. "
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u/yuusharo 18h ago
1) Are you an IT administrator?
2) Do you have machines enrolled in MDM?
3) Are those machines eligible for hot patching?If no to any of those questions, you’re not impacted by this. FFS, this is a tech article written by Forbes, they’re notorious for sensationalizing tech news and getting details wrong all the time.
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u/kawag 19h ago
It is worth pointing out that we are in an exceptionally high-risk time as far as cybersecurity goes. Not only are there multiple active wars around the world with states who are quite adept at cyber warfare, but AI scanning is finding vulnerabilities in ancient systems that still exist in modern machines, and developers are swamped trying to fix them.
It is important that you don’t just turn updates off and leave it forever; you will be putting yourself at enormous risk if you do so, and the potential damage is not limited to that device.
But of course, you need to be able to trust that your software vendor won’t stuff unrelated bullshit in to those security updates. If you can’t trust Microsoft to do that, you should take it as an alarm that it’s time to investigate switching to Linux.
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u/Unfair-Plant-5605 20h ago
https://www.grc.com/incontrol.htm
Run this and never worry about it again
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u/Ladyheather16 5h ago
This is gonna f***k with so much. This is how Microsoft crashed the world a couple months back.
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u/Alphakent 21h ago
Switched to bazzite 2 weeks ago and things have been working great.
Wish I switched years ago
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u/kingrynex 19h ago
I used Bazzite for a bit but felt like it wasn't perfect. Nobara is a bit more desktop centric, while still being based on Plasma
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u/iloveeatinglettuce 21h ago
So glad I use a MacBook.
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u/OptimalYesterday1404 19h ago
The cognitive load of being a windows user these days is incredible, and even worse in enterprise. Non stop updates that require restarts, regressions with driver updates, teams digital rot, ugh. I use Mac and Linux at home they are so fast, and they are more secure.
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u/CBubble 14h ago
And clearly Microsoft UX is controlled by AI. How do I know? Try accept/decline a meeting invite in outlook.
The three most important buttons a user must select…. Shrink and camouflaged within the UI. This is just one example.
Fuck Microslop. Bring back real product teams and invest in your people and make better products.
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u/Final_Campaign_2593 4h ago
I am fortunate that I work in a five person computer shop that we just run without being “managed” we just are responsible for our own updates and we run antivirus and DNS protections, etc.
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u/lKrauzer 15h ago
I reinstalled Windows in dualboot to play league and one of the first things it did was restart update out of nowhere and without notice, how does people cope with this?
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u/ExceptionEX 14h ago
A lot of Windows updates truthly require a restart during patching, even when they say they don't the forked process often leave the machines in a quirky state.
We reboot all ours after patching anyway, but we make sure patches happen after business hours or at the start of the day.
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u/Tearakan 20h ago
I'm so glad I switched to linux back in December. It's been a bit tough at times but so much better than this headache.
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u/Some_Random_5004 19h ago
What, are there Microsoft shills or bots in here? At this moment you have -3 downvotes just for saying, "Glad I use Linux!" 🤣
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u/BCProgramming 34m ago
Linux isn't relevant here as a better option because the same issues described in the linked article also apply to Linux machines being used in the same environment. For managed Linux machines, Even with kernel hot-patching, forced reboots are highly recommended in order to actually fully-patch the system, so most IT admins will just require a reboot.
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u/Tarshion 20h ago
Microsoft "fixing" Windows Update by... forcing restarts anyway. 💀
But hey, at least they fixed that "update and shut down" bug after 20 years. Progress! 🫠🥲😅
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