We’ve heard before that Windows 11 could be getting a ‘hot-patching’ feature with version 24H2, arriving later this year, whereby (some) future cumulative updates won’t require a reboot – and we’ve just been treated to another clue that this might come to fruition.
Windows Latest reports that PhantomOfEarth on X flagged up a new support article for hot-patching in Windows 11, though there’s a twist here in that it was evidently accidentally published – and swiftly yanked down by Microsoft.
It's gone. RIP https://t.co/MNX9PDXWKgAugust 23, 2024
The post can still be viewed using the Wayback Machine but as you’ll see if you take a look, the article is just a copy-and-paste of guidelines for crafting a support document (which, as mentioned, has clearly been mistakenly published).
The key part here is that Microsoft beavering away in the background with content relating to hot-patching for Windows Ge or Germanium – which is Windows 11 24H2, with Germanium being the codename of the new platform it’s built on – is a heavy hint that this is indeed inbound. If not, why be working on any material pertaining to hot-patching at all, at this point?
A seamless way of updating Windows 11
Given the date mentioned in the now-retracted article, which is 2024.08, this suggests we might see some kind of update from Microsoft on hot-patching functionality incoming for Windows 11 before the end of August.
Of course, all this could still come to nothing – but this does seem to be a feature Microsoft is planning, according to previous info from Zac Bowden, a reliable leaker on all things Windows.
Indeed, Bowden claimed that it’s planned for the 24H2 update, and he explained a bit more about how hot-patching would work in an info dump early this year. The long and short of it is that only some cumulative updates (the monthly patches that arrive for Windows 11) would be applied without a reboot – two in a row – before the third baseline cumulative update is pushed out that does need a reboot. Meaning two-thirds of updates would be hot-patched, but do note that the big annual updates for Windows 11 – like 24H2 – always necessitate a reboot, as these are far larger in scope, naturally.
It’d be pretty cool to have some of Windows 11’s monthly patches downloaded and installed on your PC seamlessly, with no need to reboot, so you can just keep on working (or gaming, or whatever you’re doing).
It’ll also remove that small amount of danger involved every time you reboot for an update on a desktop PC, where you pray that a power cut won’t strike. As if your PC is switched off during an update of any kind, that might be bad news, and could result in corrupted files – and maybe the OS not booting up at all, if you’re really unlucky.
