Patent 7895590 was granted and assigned to Microsoft on February, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An update at shutdown process is disclosed that installs software updates on a computer during the computer's shutdown procedures. On a computing device with an automated shutdown procedure, during the shutdown procedure an update at shutdown process is executed. The update at shutdown process evaluates whether any software updates are currently stored, or are locally available, on the computing device. If there are software updates to be installed, a further evaluation determines whether any of the software updates may be installed without any user interaction. Accordingly, each downloaded/locally available software update that is identified as being installable without user interaction, is installed during the shutdown procedure, thus minimizing the impact that the software updates have on the computer user's use time.