Why did My laptop lag when I am installing 1 window update?

[Koolman511]

My laptop has 8GB of RAM and Intel i7 quad 2630m. I had mozilla firefox + google chrome opened with 3-6 tabs while playing youtube video but when I was installing this 1 windows update my laptop lagged until it the update was nearly completed.

I don't think I should be lagging but my question is when installing windows update is it normal to lag and does it use the CPU or Hard drive?

 

[NoelDP]

Which Update??

Some updates do a lot of work - and some do very little.
.NET updates can be very intensive, and require re-optimisation of the framework, which may make the system lag for a few minutes.

 

[Anak]

Koolman511 if I read your post correctly, you had:

mozilla firefox + google chrome opened with 3-6 tabs while playing youtube video...

while you were doing this Windows update?

You can certainly use your machine as you see fit, and it does seem like a powerful one, but it would be prudent to close all other programs, and files when updating Windows system files. especially .net .

Maybe Noel could clarify, it just seems like your only playing with fire if your updating that way.

 

[NoelDP]

Having other programs running while doing updates isn't best practice, but Windows can almost always work around it. If necessary it will put the updates into a 'Pending' folder, and then force a reboot to complete the installation.

 

[Anak]

Thanks Noel!

EDIT:

I never had luck that way even back to the 3.1 days, so, I install in groups; .net, security, general, etc. .
Does take a little longer, but if it makes my machine happy, I'm happy.

 

[NoelDP]

I'm with you, when installing a bunch of updates - I always leave the .NET ones until last, and install them a couple at a time (oldest first).
However, if the machine is kept up-to-date, I simply let Windows deal with it unless I know there are likely to be problems. MS has got a LOT better at updates over the years - I remember Win95 and win98/ME ones being a real PITA!