Make sure the system doesn’t fall victim to botched updates

Nov 13, 2018 12:42 GMT  ·  By

Patch Tuesday has become the day of the month when many Windows users actually block Windows Update, mostly because the updates that Microsoft releases every time are far from providing the flawless experience they are expecting.

As Microsoft’s main patching cycle, Patch Tuesday takes place every second Tuesday of each month, and it includes both security and non-security improvements for Windows and the other software products released by Microsoft.

Many Windows users learned the hard way that rushing to install the updates Microsoft releases every month isn’t really the best thing to do, so it’s no surprise that they actually turn to blocking Windows updates on Patch Tuesday in order to let others test their reliability.

While I can see why so many people do that given that it’s their data at risk, I wouldn’t recommend blocking security updates, especially because they address vulnerabilities which can be used by attackers against your computer.

So instead of blocking Windows updates, why not creating a backup of your system and then installing the patches when they’re published? This way, if everything goes wrong, you should be able to recover easily.

And one way to do this is to automate system restore point creation to take place before the Patch Tuesday cycle kicks off.

Enable System Restore

The first thing you need to do is enable System Restore for the drives you want to back up. To do this, click the Start menu and type System Restore.

Clicking the only result should point you to the System Properties screen showing the current protection status of your PC. Click the Configure button in the lower part of the screen, enable the option that reads Turn on system protection > Apply > OK.

After doing this for each drive on your system, System Restore should be up and running on the computer. Each restore point allows you to return to the configuration that was active when this backup was created.

Enabling System Restore on Windows 10

Setting up automatic restore points

Now that System Restore is enabled on your system, you need to configure it to create a backup of the data before the Patch Tuesday rollout starts.

As said earlier, Patch Tuesday takes place on the second Tuesday of each month, so we’ll set up a scheduled task to run according to this timing.

Open the Windows 10 Task Scheduler by typing its name in the Start menu. An administrator account will be needed to make changes here.

In the Actions pane on the right side of the screen, click the Create Task button. This will bring up a new screen that will require you to define when the task needs to run and what it should do.

First of all, provide a name for the task in the General tab. In my test, I picked Automatic Patch Tuesday backup for the tutorial. Check the options that read Run with highest privileges and Run whether user is logged on or not, so that the task will be prioritized and will also kick in even when your system is idle on the lock screen.

Setting up the task to run every second Tuesday

Next, you need to switch to the Action tab. Click New and in the Action section make sure Start a program is selected. In the Program/script field, you need to type the following:

powershell.exe This means the task will automatically launch the Windows PowerShell. To create a restore point, in the Add arguments box, paste the following command: -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "Checkpoint-Computer -Description \"Restore Point (Automatic)\" -RestorePointType \"MODIFY_SETTINGS\"" Click OK and we’re done here. Next stop, the Triggers tab when you need to set up the time when the task would run.

Again, click New and then in the Begin the task section select On a schedule. Your next settings should be the following:

Start: Any date
Monthly
All months
On second Tuesday
Enabled
At this point, your task is already ready to execute, but you can configure additional parameters that you may find useful. In the Conditions tab, you can enable the task to run only on AC power (if you are using a laptop), or configure the task to run only if the system is idle, so you won’t notice any slowdown while you work on the device.

Once you do this, click OK, close all windows, and the restore point should be automatically created according to your settings.

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Patch Tuesday has become quite a headache for Windows users
Enabling System Restore on Windows 10Setting up the task to run every second Tuesday
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