What happens if you turn off your computer during Windows 10 update?

From time to time, Microsoft sends updates to support Windows 10, whether they are cumulative updates or major updates like the ones released every 6 months. Usually, after receiving and automatically installing any of these updates on your computer, you may see a message “Getting Windows ready, Don’t turn off your computer” on the screen during shutdown/restart. This makes you anxious and restricts you to wait until the installation process is complete, as the phrase “Don’t turn off your computer” may cause concern. But what if you are in a hurry and cannot wait? Well, you can force shut down the computer, which will result in the update installation process failing. But to what extent will it fail? Will this action cause problems with the computer? To find out exactly what happens, we conducted some tests, and here is what we discovered!

We started these tests when Microsoft sent the first cumulative update KB4482887 in March. After Windows Update finished downloading and installing the update, we forcefully restarted our computer (by pressing and holding the Power button) while the “Getting Windows ready. Don’t turn off your computer” message was displayed on the screen. Once Windows restarted, we quickly accessed the normal login screen as if nothing went wrong.

After the normal Windows 10 login screen appeared, we entered our credentials and the desktop was displayed very normally. However, a notification appeared stating “We couldn’t finish installing updates” on the Action Center, indicating that Windows could not complete the update installation. In other words, the Windows 10 update failed. However, apart from this notification, the Windows system was working correctly. Of course, this update will be reinstalled later because the update files are already downloaded on the computer and ready to install. So, you will see the message “Getting Windows ready. Don’t turn off your computer” again when trying to shutdown/restart your computer.

We cannot determine the exact outcome through a single test, so we performed additional tests to see the worst-case scenarios that the Windows system may encounter due to this action (shutting down the computer while updates are being installed). In the second test, we restarted the computer while the message “Working on updates, 27% complete, Don’t turn off your computer” was displayed on the screen. Note that the update application was at 27% at the beginning. During Windows restart, a message “We couldn’t complete the updates, Undoing changes, Don’t turn off your computer” appeared, indicating that the process failed and the changes made during the 27% update application were undone. Once this screen disappeared and the computer restarted, Windows booted up normally and everything was working without any errors.