hi this is Susan Bradley today I'm going to talk about some key
settings that I use for Windows Update this is the local group policy editor
and I'm just showing you this to use because it's a little bit easier to see
the settings this way I recommend that you obviously push these out via group
policy or this used registry keys bottom line that you push it out across your
domain I'm first gonna look at the Windows Update for business settings and
we have several in here to choose from this is on the 1803
Windows 10 version now first off I always make sure that I push off my
Windows 10 feature updates to a time and that I'm wanting them in my firm so the
first thing I do is I always choose semiannual channel for those of you
who've been using Windows 10 for a while you might remember it being called
current branch for business it's now called semiannual Channel and I defer it
to a time in the future and keep in mind that this setting here I'm not really
expecting Windows Update to do the the processing for me I don't I choose 3
into 60 days just because it's a point in time way on the future I'm going to
do the upgrading for the future update at a point in time when I'm comfortable
with it so I just choose this arbitrary date to push it out later on when I'm
ready for the next feature update I'll make a change to this setting but right
now I push it out way out into the future so I don't have to have an
unexpected install I also recommend now this is something that you need to sit
down in your environment and decide what you're going to set there's quality
updates quality updates are like security updates you may want to choose
this to defer your quality updates for a number of days in future versions of
Windows Home windows 10 home in fact they're allowing you to push it off for
at least seven days you can even pause the quality updates though pause those
security updates so you put a date and time
do you want to pause it and then from that point in time the security updates
are paused so if you choose to enable it and to defer it you can say eleven days
and what this means is when the security patches come out on Patch Tuesday it'll
actually wait 11 days before it installs the the patches on your system that
gives you time to evaluate if there's any side effects with Windows 10 updates
if there's any key issues in your environment that you just don't need the
installation of the updates at that time now I'm not recommending that you ever
not install updates please be clear on that my goal is to pick a time when it's
appropriate for your environment to install those usually it's not
appropriate on that day the patches come out unless you have some key critical
element usually most of us have an environment where we could push it off
at least a day if not a week and give us time to test and ensure these patches
are good for our environment once we determined that patches are good then
you can install them but you don't necessarily want to do them on that
first day so let's keep going and I'll show you some of the other items that I
change inside the Windows Update setting there's some key ones over here that I
actually disable and I'll show you what I mean so first off I choose an auto
restart window now you can change this and do more than eight to five but it's
no more than an 18-hour window that you can do so you want to enable this and
you want to say these machines cannot reboot between these hours again you
need to sit down in your environment and determine what is a good maintenance
window usually everybody has some kind of maintenance window that they can do
so evaluate if you can determine a good time the next thing I do is I disable
this automatically restart at the scheduled time and the reason why I do
that is actually interferes with some of the settings other settings that I have
so if you note down here if the no Auto restart with logged on users is for
scheduled autumn updates installation is enabled then
this policy has no effect so I actually disabled some of these
that have no impact on my Windows 10 environment you may still use these for
Windows 7 but I don't do them on Windows 10
next if you have a a situation where you're using with sus at the same time
as the Windows Update for business settings you want to absolutely make
sure that you choose this one that says do not allow update deferral policies to
cause scan against Windows Update if you don't have this enabled what happens is
is I'm gonna call it with sus and Windows Update for business policies
kind of fight each other they fight to see who's gonna win and usually the
windows update for business settings win and what that means is you may have
certain deferrals set for with us but if you don't have this setting enabled what
happens is the Machine goes well I'm gonna ignore you I'm gonna ignore what
Wis us has I'm gonna go out there and just scan against Microsoft Update and
whatever it says rules so you want to make sure you you have this setting
enabled so it does not do the dual what's called the dual scan then I also
disable this one that we've probably used quite a bit with Windows 7 and this
one's called no Auto restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic update
installations sounds wonderful doesn't it we've used it for years on Windows 7
in my personal experience if I have this enabled what ends up happening is I get
reboots on Windows Tim when I least want them like Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. when
people are coming into the office and they want to work all of a sudden the
machine will defer the updates past the weekend when I wanted them to install
and they come in and this says hey I'm not going to let that person reboot
because I sense somebody's on the machine and what happens on Windows 10
it it sometimes senses incorrectly in my personal opinion and what happens is
then it delays the rebooting and I want things to reboot on the maintenance
window that I wanted so I always make sure that I choose this no Auto restart
with logged on users and I set it to disabled
there's more in the article about these settings but that's a good overview and
a visual overview of some of the key ones that I use for Windows 10 thank you
and see you next time