Microsoft recently confirmed the release timeline of Windows 11 24H2 in a community post. But that wasn’t all that the Redmond giant had to share. The post introduced a feature called “checkpoint cumulative updates,” which transforms the way your Windows 11 PC will update in the future.

This new update system will release updates as checkpoints, a concept that aims to reduce the size of updates. If your PC has a checkpoint cumulative update installed and the next one arrives, only the missing components between the two updates will be downloaded and installed.

Think of it as keeping what’s missing/new and discarding the rest. Rather than downloading a huge update file, your PC can download the missing features and patches update faster.

How does that solve Windows 11 Update problems?

Windows updates tend to grow in size with each month. This happens due to the addition of new features and patches, which make the update file grow bigger. But with cumulative checkpoint updates, the file size bloat can be fixed.

So, with each monthly cumulative update, your PC will only download what’s needed rather than the complete package. For example, you downloaded the checkpoint cumulative update for Windows 11 24H2, which was huge in size.

After that, you only need to install the monthly cumulative updates that will contain incremental differentials and will be much smaller.

Microsoft shared that it might “periodically release cumulative updates as checkpoints.” Consequently, cumulative checkpoint updates will make it easier for users to download and install updates and also reduce the burden on Microsoft for managing large update files.

When do cumulative checkpoint updates come into play?

With Windows 11 24H2, Microsoft will implement the concept of checkpoint cumulative updates. That’s still a few months away. Note that Windows Server 2025 will also adopt this update concept.

Windows 10 users will continue to receive the cumulative updates as they have done so far. It is because Windows 10 consumer editions will retire next year, and that’s why they aren’t on the list.

You won’t have to do anything different to install the checkpoint cumulative updates on your PC. The same goes for Windows Update for Business, Windows Autopatch, or Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) users.

However, if you download updates using the official Microsoft Update Catalog website, you will find more than one update package file available for download. Microsoft clarifies that “There will be one file for each checkpoint, plus an additional file that contains cumulative payload from the latest checkpoint.”

Windows 11 update mechanism is set to improve in the coming months but the infuriating bugs additions persist. The company resolved the infamous profile picture error but a couple of new bugs have popped up for the Enterprise users in the July 2024 security update.

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