Enthusiast under the nickname Albacore revealed a simple way to fashionably speed up the installation of updates through Windows Update in Windows 11 with one click of the mouse. Experts from Neowin tested the guess and found out that indeed, updates are installed faster by an average of 18%, provided that the Settings program is closed during the installation of updates. In this case, all the work is done by the MoUSO Core Worker process.

It didn’t take long for Albacore to verify this assumption. Neowin deployed a virtual machine on a laptop to simulate a low-powered computer that barely meets the hardware requirements of Windows 11 with only two CPU cores and 4GB of RAM, installed the operating system cleanly, turned on update notifications, and began testing.

The testing process measured the time it took to install updates from the time you clicked the “Check for updates” button until you received a message that Windows 11 is ready to restart to install available updates.

The test did not use the event log because Windows creates a record of successful offline update installations, and the purpose of the study was to measure the installation time during the online phase, when the PC can continue to be used.

As part of testing, ten runs were made in Neowin: five with the Settings application closed and five with it open. The results turned out to be very stable.

When the Settings app was open, the virtual machine took an average of 20 minutes and 59 seconds to download and install available updates. After closing the Settings program, this time was reduced to an average of 17 minutes and 30 seconds. The difference was 18%.

The theory is that MoUSO’s main workflow creates additional CPU load if you leave the Settings app open while installing Windows 11 updates. Closing the app reduces the load and allows the computer to finish faster. You can check this yourself by running Task Manager while installing Windows 11 updates.

Of course, the exact results and the difference in time when installing updates depends on many factors, for example, what programs are running, how powerful your hardware is, how old the installation is, and so on. In some systems the improvements may be minor, while in others the results will be more significant. So, if you want to install the latest cumulative updates as soon as possible, close the Settings app, sit back in your chair and let your computer do its job without problems or supervision.