Windows 11 updates now install much more quickly and consume less CPU power.

Microsoft has significantly sped up Windows Update with the latest major update to Windows 11. Rolling out earlier this month, version 24H2 brings many useful enhancements, and now Microsoft reveals it also reduces installation and restart times, along with CPU usage for monthly updates.

Monthly cumulative updates for Windows typically introduce new features or security protections, and version 24H2 optimizes this process with several new update methods, such as parallel processing of components, scalable RAM usage, and an optimized cache system. Thanks to these improvements, monthly updates on version 24H2 can now install up to 45 percent faster and consume up to 25 percent less CPU. Additionally, restart times are nearly 40 percent quicker on some devices.

Microsoft compared the performance of the latest 24H2 updates on a virtual machine to the older 22H2 version, noting similar improvements over 23H2, which shares the same servicing stack as 22H2. Further enhancements include reducing feature update download sizes by around 200MB by omitting built-in app downloads when the latest versions are already installed.

“For Windows 11, version 24H2, we extended this design to include Microsoft Edge, saving approximately 200 MB for some endpoints,” explains Steve DiAcetis from Microsoft’s Windows fundamentals team.