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Q: My mom is afraid of updates – afraid that she will allow something malicious to be downloaded. She said on her last computer that the updates were done in the background, and she was never bothered with having to make a decision. What settings need to be made to her Windows 8.1 laptop to make it easy for her?

– Gaye E.
Fort Walton Beach, Florida

A:  Gaye, you tell Mom that The Geek said, “Say whaaaat?!?”  She’s afraid of updates?  Updates are probably the one method of putting software on your computer where you needn’t worry about something malicious being installed.  Configuration changing? Perhaps.  System degrading?  Occasionally. Error-riddled? Absolutely, but malicious?  Very unlikely, because updates (in the true sense of the word) are simply new versions of your existing software, and are usually installed directly by the software’s vendor.  There is far more for Mom to be afraid of if she browses the web, and doesn’t know not to enter her (or her contacts’) e-mail address into web pages that kindly offer “Send this to your friends!” Or if she gets roped-in by dialogs that say dumb stuff like “467 viruses were found on your PC!  Click here to clean them up now!”  Or any of the other 3,177,642,795 scams that are floating around the web.  By the way, in the previous two examples, the former is an e-mail address harvester that puts people’s addresses on SPAM lists, and the latter is a Trojan horse (a type of malware that presents itself as something useful or desirable, but which contains a malicious payload of some sort).

As for real, genuine updates, there’s nothing to be afraid of (well ok – there’s very little to be afraid of). Windows 8.1 is very happy to automatically update itself for you as patches and updates are rolled out by Microsoft.  This procedure works for Windows 7 also, by the way.  Just do the following:

Click the Windows Start button, and in the “Search programs and files” box, type the word Update. In the list of results, click on “Windows Update”.  In the box that comes up, in the navigation panel on the left side, click on “Change settings”.  Under “Important updates” choose “Automatically install new updates” and choose a time for updates to install.  If you leave your computer on all the time, choose a time in the middle of the night.  Otherwise, you’ll have to wait whenever Windows downloads and installs updates.  If you want “Recommended updates” also, be sure and check the box that says “Give me recommended updates the same way I receive important updates”.  I don’t necessarily recommend that setting, because Microsoft will push out every little driver and feature update to you whether you want it or not.  You also might wake up one morning to find your Internet Explorer has automatically been updated.

One thing to keep in mind about automatic updates: if an installed update requires your system to be rebooted, it will reboot. That means any stuff in open applications will be lost.  So, remember to save your work before you walk away (that’s a good practice anyway).

If updates are scary, then automatic updates must be downright terrifying! Allay your fears, Gaye’s Mom’s daughter, for knowledge is power, and I offer you this link to a Microsoft article that will explain automatic updates in even more painful detail: tinyurl.com/k3crp7c.  Good luck, and happy computing!  And try not to be afraid!