Prevent Windows 10 activation trouble; add vertical lines to a Word document
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Windows tip of the week

How to download updates manually

By Ed Bott

The most common way to get the latest security and reliability fixes for a Windows PC is to use Windows Update. You can also download any update manually from the Microsoft Update Catalog. This option can help save bandwidth if you have multiple PCs to update. It's also an excellent workaround if Windows Update is having trouble installing a specific update.

First things first: Bookmark the Microsoft Update Catalog: https://catalog.update.microsoft.com. Then learn how to find the exact update you're looking for.

The catalog contains an unfathomably large number of updates, including hardware drivers. To narrow the list, start by clicking in the search box in the upper right. Enter product="Windows 10" in the search box, for example, to display only updates for Windows 10. To refine the results even further, add the current year or the current month (in the numeric format yyyy-mm: 2019-06, for example). Or enter a Windows version number such as 1809 or 1903. If you know the KB number for an update, use that.

You can click any column heading to sort by that value. Sort in reverse order using the Last Updated column, for example, to see the most recent updates at the top of the list.

And be aware that there are separate update packages for x86 and x64 packages, so inspect the results carefully before clicking the Download button.

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