Manually Checking for a Windows Update on Your Laptop

Digital Literacy For Dummies

Windows updates happen frequently — almost every Tuesday. If you’re about to leave and want to ensure that your laptop has the latest update, and its installation schedule won’t interfere with your schedule, do a manual update check. Follow these steps:

Save your stuff and close all programs.

If an update is looming, you’ll need to save anyway, so you might as well get that step out of the way.
Open the Settings app.

Press Win+I in Windows 10.
Choose Update & Security.
If you see the text A Restart Has Been Scheduled, then click the Restart Now button to apply the update.

The update is installed and your laptop restarts.

If an update isn’t pending, then you see the Check For Updates button (in Step 4). Click that button to pressure Microsoft into confessing whether an update is available or not. If one is, you can install it right away. Otherwise, you’re good to go.

About This Article

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.