This past summer many people were impacted by Skype’s outage. The company said that one of the contributing factors for the outage was that Windows users kept the default time setting for their automatic updates. As a result, they were inundated with a huge number reconnect requests at the same time. I’m not sure I buy that theory. In any event, we provide the steps to take to change your default time for Windows Automatic Updates. (Includes online tutorial for Windows XP.)

Windows has many default settings. One of these is the time your computer should query Microsoft to see if updates are available. Most people, who use this feature, keep it at the default time of 3:00AM. That makes sense for many people since they probably aren’t using their machine at that hour.

Sometimes if a number of people do something simultaneously, it can have unforeseen consequences. For example, Skype is saying that after the automatic update, all these Windows machines had to reboot and reconnect to their service. Regardless of this outage, you might want to change your update time especially if you are working at that hour.

To change the time Windows checks for Automatic Updates,

1. From your Start menu, select Control Panel. One of two views will appear based on your settings.

2. If you use the Classic View, select Automatic Updates and go to Step 5.

3. If you use the Category View, select Security Center.

4. Click Automatic Updates in the Manage security settings for: section.

5. In the Automatic Updates dialog box, select the radio button for Automatic (recommended)

6. Click the arrow control to the right of the hour list box.

7. Select your new hour.

8. Click OK.

As you can see from the Automatic Updates dialog, there are other installation options available. Although I wouldn’t suggest turning off Automatic Updates, you might select one of the other choices. Microsoft has been good by releasing patches on a regular monthly schedule, but there have been a few critical patches released earlier.

Related Resources

• Online Tutorial: Changing Automatic Updates on Windows XP
• Microsoft Article on Updating Windows Vista