advice on these available updates

donnajunkie

I will look into backing up. Will a usb stick do? External hard drives are a bit pricey especially after only recently spending a load of money on the pc.
Surely a virus or disk failure have a very small chance of happening.
Getting errors during an update are the most likely issues arent they? This is why i ask is there anything i should know about the update process so i dont select the wrong thing assuming selecting something is required. It may well be as simple as a download and install but as it doesnt tell you beforehand i am asking here to avoid surprises. Also what to do if i get errors. I guess using a back up is the answer to that.

Frozen_up_north

Updates in Windows 10 are generally completely safe, they are released monthly. Just be aware that occasionally a driver for older hardware isn’t kept up to date, the latest I’ve come across was a 10 year old serial card that is “unbranded” and stopped after a Win 10 update. I’ve had an ATI Radeon graphics card that needed a manufacturer driver update and a couple of occasions where a Samsung printer “vanished” and needed re-installation. Nothing catastrophic though.

Re: backing up to USB memory sticks... You would need a huge card or stick, a typical Windows + programs + data installation is at least 50GB and it helps to keep more than just one backup. I use a 2TB USB 3 powered drive that will fit in a large pocket. They are typically £50 to £60 for a decent brand, such as Seagate.

that

donnajunkie wrote: »

I will look into backing up. Will a usb stick do? External hard drives are a bit pricey especially after only recently spending a load of money on the pc.
Surely a virus or disk failure have a very small chance of happening.
Getting errors during an update are the most likely issues arent they? This is why i ask is there anything i should know about the update process so i dont select the wrong thing assuming selecting something is required. It may well be as simple as a download and install but as it doesnt tell you beforehand i am asking here to avoid surprises. Also what to do if i get errors. I guess using a back up is the answer to that.

If you have no data on the PC, dont mind loosing bookmarks, documents, photos and settings etc, are happy to do a brand new install when things go wrong, you do not need a backup

Everybody I know has had at least one failed disk. here at home I was building a laptop 4 weeks ago and that disk failed. At work beside the normal drives, we have had multiple failed ssd and I have a friend with a failed ssd too. Everything eventually breaks. Everything seems to break when you need it the most

For many updates work. I have had one failed update on 10, but that was through me deleting the swap file on shutdown - i broke the standard configuration. They do not work for every one, but work well for most

usb sticks tend to be small, slow and can be unreliable. Ideally you want more than one backup, unless you are happy starting anew each time

Joe9090

that wrote: »

If you have no data on the PC, dont mind loosing bookmarks, documents, photos and settings etc, are happy to do a brand new install when things go wrong, you do not need a backup

Driver back up used to be an important part of reinstalling Windows but I have done a few new Win10 installations and they have all gone well using the media creation tool.

What would you have done in the OP's case?

donnajunkie wrote: »

That looks daunting.
The reason i am worried is during the process of an update for a graphics driver it gave 4 items and i had to select one. It was all about current driver,new driver etc. I didnt have a clue and selected what i thought was best. Afterwards the pc would not start up properly. I ended up having to select reinstall windows to solve it. I simply want to avoid any catastrophic problem like that.
Will all those available updates just download and install or will they have options or tasks along the way that i need to know what i am doing? Things like these updates should be accompanied by instructions in my opinion. If its just download and install then it could just say that but if theres more they should cover that too.

donnajunkie

I have completed all the updates seemingly successfully. There is now an available realtek card reader driver available that failed the first time then i tried again and it said it already existed do i want to replace, so i did. It then said a seperate installer would start but nothing started and it still says realtek card reader driver available.

almillar

I will look into backing up. Will a usb stick do? External hard drives are a bit pricey especially after only recently spending a load of money on the pc.

Don't back up onto only a USB stick. You've actually already got an excellent backup drive - you can reuse the one that's inside your old computer!