Leaving a Windows PC untouched for months can turn the next boot into a marathon. A report from The Register describes a machine that, after a long period of inactivity, spent roughly seven hours installing updates before the user could get back to work. The incident illustrates how deferred patches can accumulate into a single, time-consuming update session.
According to the report, the underlying issue is that Windows attempts to apply a long backlog of updates in one go. The Register's headline notes the contrast: Microsoft has made the OS itself more efficient, but the update pipeline remains a bottleneck. The piece frames the experience as a "hostage situation" for users who delay updates.