I'm by no means a low-level OS developer but I can't help but wonder, wouldn't it be possible for Windows to partition off part of the disk to copy system-critical files and then quietly stage updates in the partition (all of this with minimal thread priority so that if some other process demands resources/threads, it will pause/defer itself!). When the staged update is complete, it gives you a friendly notification "You have a new update available!" which you can then complete as fast as your disk can copy files (or even just set some flag to toggle the partition in use... The old partition then becomes the new staging partition)
Does that make sense at all or is this an unrealistic idea? EDIT: Maybe this is how updates already work, I'm not sure
Does that make sense at all or is this an unrealistic idea? EDIT: Maybe this is how updates already work, I'm not sure