Nobody is perfect. That goes for you, me and the people involved with the creation of Microsoft Windows. Your operating system is a massive program with more code involved than most people could even imagine. It’s no small wonder that things go wrong. Errors crop up, security holes are found and exploited and new features are added to make things easier for users. These tweaks are released by Microsoft as Windows updates.

Keeping Windows 8 Up to Date

To download updates in Windows 8, you’ll need to access the Charms bar. Move your cursor to the top or bottom-right corner of the screen and slide it towards the center. When the Charms pop out, click “Settings” and then “Change PC Settings.” This will launch the full-screen modern PC Settings utility.

Once in PC Settings, scroll to the bottom of the left pane and click “Windows Update.”  Click “Check for updates now” to have Windows determine whether or not there are updates available for installation. It may take a few minutes for this process to complete, though that will depend on the speed of your Internet connection.

Once done, Windows will let you know what it found. If you see “No updates available,” you’re done. If there are updates that you should install, you’ll see one of two messages.

If you have automatic updates set up, you’ll see “We’ll install # important updates automatically.” In this case, you can wait and allow Windows to install the updates according to its schedule or you can click the quote mentioned above and click “Install.”

If you don’t have automatic updates set up, you’ll see the message “Download and install updates (### MB total).” In this case, if you don’t manually install them, they’ll never be installed. Click “Install” to download and install the available updates.

Selectively Install Updates

If you follow the procedure described above, you’ll download and install all updates applicable to your system. This will ensure you get all of the important security patches and bug fixes that you need. However, there are situations where a certain update will disagree with your computer software or perhaps you need only a single update to be installed quickly. In this situation you’ll want to pick and choose which updates get installed.

To view the list of available updates and select which ones get installed on your computer, you’ll need to make a selection from the PC settings. If you don’t have automatic updates configured, you’ll need to click “See details” where it appears below “Download and install updates.” If you have automatic updates, click “We’ll install # important updates automatically.” Regardless of which way you went, you’ll next have to click “Choose important updates to install, or install optional updates.”

This selection will take you to the old-fashioned Control Panel. From there, click “# important updates are available.” From here you can select the check boxes of the updates you want, or deselect those you don’t. You can also select “Optional” from the left pane of the window to view optional updates you can install. This procedure is the same as it was in Windows 7. Once you've made your selections, click “Install.”

Enable Automatic Updates

To ensure that your computer is always up to date with the lasts patches and bug fixes, you really should enable automatic updates. This will allow Windows to download and install any important updates in the background without troubling you. When updates are installed you’ll simply have to restart your computer to complete the installation.

To enable this feature in Windows 8, you’ll need to head to the old fashioned Control Panel, just like in Windows 7. You can access this from the Desktop by opening the Charms bar, selecting “Settings,” and clicking “Control Panel.” From the Start screen you can use the same procedure or simply start typing “Control Panel.” The search charm will open up and provide a link in the results.

Once in the Control Panel, select “System and Security.” Next, find “Windows Update” and click “Turn automatic updating on or off” which is just below that heading. Click the drop-down list to make your selection:

• Install updates automatically
• Download updates but let me choose whether to install them
• Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them
• Never check for updates

We recommend you opt to have them downloaded and installed automatically. This ensures your computer is protected as quickly and thoroughly as possible. Click “OK” when your selection is made and you’re good to go.

Now you know how to keep your computer up to date. Whether you need to manually trigger an update for a quick fix or set up automatic updating in Windows 8. If you know anyone who could use this knowledge, be sure to share this article with them via Facebook, Google+ or StumbleUpon.