Windows Update: Control Bandwidth

Here's a performance tip affecting online traffic in particular; control the bandwidth allowed for manual and background Windows Update activity.  Use this to speed up manual updates when you aren't doing anything else, and slow down background activity when you are busy!

The settings for this are buried deep in Settings, Update and Security.  Go down to "Advanced options", then scroll down below what may appear to end with "Pause updates", to "Delivery Optimization" and click into that link.  Then "Advanced options" on the next page that appears, to finally reach the playground.

I choose the "Percentage..." radio button, then check the boxes for "...background" and "...foreground", to accept the defaults, or set to taste.  The "...foreground" setting should apply when you manually visit Settings, Updates and click "Check for updates", then "Download and install".

UI safety tip

It's so easy to beef about mandatory Windows updates, that you can miss what control is offered, and it's easy to miss things hidden below a "scroll" you didn't know was there.  

You can fix that UI risk via Settings, Ease of Access, scroll down (of course), "Automatically hide scrollbars in Windows", and turn that Off.  UIs should tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; hence the advice to "always go Custom, check every Advanced" etc. when dealing with software, especially in contexts where vendor goals may mis-align with yours.

Vive la difference!

I was working on two laptops, neither of which are supported in Windows 11.  Both had Intel i5 processors, before AMD shamed Intel into offering more cores in the 8xxx generation, when up-spending on laptop "i5" and "i7" got you what would be called "i3" in a desktop PC - but one was a Generation Zero xxx with a SATA SSD, and the other was a generation 7xxx with a hard drive.

Guess which was slower, and why?  Yep, the 7th generation system went 100% storage and bogged down so badly, WhatsApp Web would give up and release the link, windows would grey out as Not Responding, and it was hard to get a click in edgeways.  The hogs were Windows background rubbish; not just the visible Windows Update but "App" updates and Feed, even though the News pimple on the Taskbar was long disabled.  It felt like something one just had to accept... at the time.

Later I was manually catching up a fresh Windows 10 to 11 upgrade, which had downloaded and installed overnight.  Next morning I clicked to Restart, and the new Windows installed fairly quickly and cleanly; then off to Windows Update, Check for updates... and that took hours to download 10%.

I finally got a clue, and checked the settings described above - and yes, way back when originally setting up Windows 10, I'd set both bandwidth % sliders to minimum, when still allowing peer-to-peer update traffic over LAN, but not Internet.  Once I changed the "...foreground" slider to max, the remaining 90% of the download, and the install, was done within minutes!

So if you're wondering why a routine Cumulative is taking as long as an OS download and install, go dig into that "advanced..." etc. UI, and ye may find what ye seek  :-)