Interrupting shutdown updates

[#1]

My wife's laptop is connected to my modem via a wireless link. Part way through installing the latest lot of updates that you get during shutdown, the wireless link seems to have been lost. The pc has been stuck on one update for about 8 hours. I have rebooted the modem, but that doesn't seem to have made any difference.
Any suggestions please, before I hard power down?
Thanks

[#2]

If it's stuck and unresponsive, not much else you can do.
If it's still responsive, take a backup of the vital stuff before you do a hard power down.

[#3]

Vilefox to the rescue of penneck twice in less than two weeks. Thankyou Vilefox. PC is unresponsive, so I have hard powered down. Can only reboot as far as the login - I don't know my wife's password - but the light for the wlan is amber which indicates it isn't working. I will have to get a cable and hard link it to the modem. Searching Google has suggested that the wlan driver may need updating, so I may have to get that.

[#4]

An update - the pc is working okay now including the wireless link, but it would be nice to be able to stop it losing this link. Has anyone got any suggestions, please?

[#5]

when doing the updates you have to have it hard wired, the wifi connector gets shut down before it does the download so it just sits waiting for the download until you get bored and switch off, I haven't found a way round this which is why on the tablets (same problem) I always download the updates then do the shutdown or restart install method, I suspect its related to the order in which things power down during a reboot or switch off sequence and they haven't changed it to give an override to it for when updates are taking place....

[#6]

Hello nanotm. Forgive my ignorance, but how do you download the updates before you shutdown the pc? I've always had to wait until they are forced on me during a shutdown. It doesn't help that I'm not sure when the updates are ready at MS for downloading. If I remember correctly from my XP days, it used to be on a Thursday evening - is that still the case? I suppose if I knew how to do the download when I wanted to do it, I could do it as a matter of course, before I shutdown, every time I shutdown, but that would be a bit of a faff if it was only necessary one evening per week

[#7]

on windows 10, hit the notifications icon (normally next to the date /time in the notification area of the task bar), in the bottom of the pane hit the "all settings" button and then update &security in the window that opens up, click check for updates, most operating system updates come out on a Wednesday for us (Tuesday afternoon /evening for the USA) definitions updates for defender come out more often,  once its done the check it will tell you there are updates available and you can choose leave till next restart/shutdown /few days or do it now, select do it now and it will tell you when to shutdown (if needed)
at east that's how I get round the wifi cutting out issue on shutdown /download

[#8]

On my Linux system, availability of updates is marked by a green icon turning to blue.
Updates are never forced on you though. 

[#9]

Quote from: vilefox

Updates are never forced on you though.

which potentially compromise security, there's pro's and con's for both methods but decades of research has clearly proven the windows 10 method to be better than prior iterations with so many people claiming their system was corrupted by M$ in the past because they failed to do an update and got compromised and a follow-up update borked the system .... to be honest I don't understand why they didn't just have it instantly download the updates the second they became available and installed at next shutdown /restart, it would do them in a more timely manner
either way I'm one of those that has always done the updates the day they became available and now I don't have to go round the house making sure each of the kids does them on time either since the pc automatically does them for them

[#10]

I thought the updates do get downloaded in advance of the shutdown, then they start installing at the shutdown. Or you can go to Windows Update and start the installation whenever you like, but then it will probably nag you to reboot to finish the installation.

[#11]

My pc is still on Windows 7, as is my wife's pc. I've found Windows Update on my pc, so I guess its in the same place on hers. She will have to get into the habit of running Windows Update every Wednesday evening, and putting up with any reboots.
Thanks to all for your help

[#12]

Having got a bit fed up with the seemingly ever-increasing wait for Win7 to check for updates on start up every day, I switched it to manual updating. That worked fine for months until about a week ago, when I repeatedly got an 'unexplained error' message, which after much research and experimentation I could only get rid of by switching back to auto check for updates.
Have not tried switching back to manual after the latest batch of updates to see whether the problem persists...

[#13]

Cunning...

[#14]

I've just tried to run Windows Update (selected from the menus), and the only thing it mentioned waiting to be downloaded was Windows 10. I have been offered this free upgrade to Windows 10 for months, and I have been ignoring it until Windows 10 is getting better reviews, just in case. Anyway, Windows Update didn't mention any Windows 7 updates, so I did a bit of digging and found there were several waiting hidden deep in Update. They needed to be ticked to indicate I wanted them, but in that list, and already ticked was Windows 10. If I had just said Go to Update, I would have got Win 10 even though I don't want it (not yet). I unticked it, then told Update to Go.
The update has worked okay, but now I need to warn my wife about this little trick of MS
Cheers

[#15]

Microsoft have been getting progressively more aggressive pushing Windows 10 
Have to say, I upgraded my own laptop (Windows 7) and my work laptop (Windows 8.1) to Windows 10 within a week or two of it's release and I've been very happy with it on both machines - having to work on Windows 7 at client sites now feels like going back to the dark ages
I did have two issues, though.  The first was with some VM software (VMWare?) when I initially upgraded the work laptop.  I simply rolled back to Windows 8.1, got the VM software working, then did the Windows 10 install again and everything worked fine.
The second issue was with drivers for my 3 (?) year old HP printer/scanner/etc.  Once HP got around to releasing drivers for Windows 10, everything worked fine.
Some of my colleagues had issues with Dell laptops that came with SSD drives as Dell took their time releasing the appropriate drivers.  Both my laptops are Dells and both have after market SSDs: I haven't had issues with either.
Basically, unless you're concerned with the amount of data about you that MS are gathering via Windows 10 (if you are, then you'd probably best go Linux), I wouldn't wait to upgrade.  You have a month or so to change your mind anyway - as mentioned above, I've used the rollback to the previous version and it works.