First of all : an update sitting at 30% for twenty minutes is not stuck. A great deal of damage comes from forcing a shutdown too early.
Windows shows a percentage that does not faithfully reflect the work under way. A major update can stay on the same figure for tens of minutes, then finish all at once. The real risk is cutting the power in the middle of writing system files.
A sensible rule : on a machine with a mechanical drive, allow up to two or three hours for a major update. On an SSD, half an hour is generally enough.
The drive activity light is your best indicator : if it is flickering, the machine is working, leave it alone. If it stays dark for more than an hour and nothing moves, the update really is frozen.
An update that fails every time, always at the same point, with an error code, has a specific cause. The three most frequent :
A computer left off for six months has to catch up on all the accumulated updates, sometimes in successive waves with several restarts. The machine will be slow and will look stuck for hours. That is normal : plug it into the mains, leave it connected, and do not use it during that time.
No. It is a tempting thought after a bad experience, but a machine that no longer receives fixes becomes vulnerable to flaws that are actively exploited. What is reasonable is to control the timing: active hours let you set a window during which Windows will never restart on its own.
An update interrupted at the wrong moment can damage the startup files. Repair without reinstalling is possible in most cases, but it needs external startup media. See PC will not start, or call us : we work remotely while the machine still starts, and in the workshop otherwise.
Avoid it absolutely while the drive is working. A shutdown while system files are being written can leave Windows unable to start. Only force a shutdown after a long, complete standstill.
That is the sign of a specific, repeatable cause : not enough disk space, a corrupted file or an incompatible driver. The error code shown tells you which.
In normal operation, no. Temporary user profiles do occur after a major update : the documents are then present but in another folder, and recoverable.
Would you rather we took care of it ? See our computer repair at home service, in Lyon and across the Rhone.
We unblock the situation without reinstalling, in most cases.
Automatic assistant: it can make mistakes. Never share a password or a card number.
