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Windows Update

Unified Update Platform (UUP)

The Unified Update Platform (UUP) is the update-technology that was introduced with Windows 10.

Update Session Orchestrator (USO)

Update Session Orchestrator (USO) is a Windows component that manages the sequence of downloading and installing different update types. (Store Apps are not updated by the USO).
The executable for the USO seems to be UsoClient.exe.

Update types

Windows differentiates between various update types:

• OS Feature updates
• OS Security updates
• Device drivers
• Defender definition updates

These update types are also reflected in the update history setting panel
Apparently, a user can opt-in to also manage Office update with USO

Note: Store apps are not updated by the Update Session Orchestrator

Update steps

Windows is continuously updated by the following steps:

• Scan
• Download
• Install
• Commit

Updating Windows from PowerShell

First, the psWindowsUpdate module needs to be installed.

Install-Module PSWindowsUpdate -Force

With this module, Windows can be updated like so:

Get-WindowsUpdate
Install-WindowsUpdate

Feature Update

When opening Windows Update Settings using start ms-settings:windowsupdate or clicking here, I found the following situation, which seems to indicate that feature updates are treated differently from ordinary(?) updates:

Performing a feature update, for example from 1909 to 2004, can be executed like so:

$destDir = "$env:temp\FeatureUpdate"
mkdir $destDir

$webClient =  New-Object System.Net.WebClient
$exe       =  "$destDir\Win10Upgrade.exe"

$webClient.DownloadFile('https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=799445', $exe)

Start-Process -FilePath $exe -ArgumentList '/quietinstall /skipeula /auto upgrade /copylogs $destDir' 

# check if still running:
while (Get-Process Windows10UpgraderApp) { start-sleep 1 }; 'Done'

# Check if updated
Get-ItemPropertyValue 'HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion'  ReleaseId

Quick Fix Engineering (QFE) update

A Quick Fix Engineering (QFE) update is a small system-wide update that is applied to the Windows Operating System and its components such as the Internet Explorer (IE), Windows Server Roles and features. Any (so called) non-inbox software, such as Office, Exchange Server etc. are distributed differently. See also wmic qfe