Microsoft is bringing back Service Packs with Windows 11, under a different name

Windows 11 has been getting quite confusing to keep up with, especially when it comes to updates. Windows 11 and Windows 10 both receive their own separate patches, and those separate patches are in their own stages of testing. Microsoft has been working to separate certain features from the operating system itself, but with a recent announcement that the company would be switching to “Checkpoint Cumulative Updates,” the company seems to be switching back to the Service Pack style of updates that it used to use years and years ago.

What are Checkpoint Cumulative Updates?

Stop me if this sounds familiar

First and foremost, cumulative updates in Windows are updates that bundle previously released updates and patches into a single package. These updates are designed to simplify the update process, enhance system security, and ensure that systems remain up-to-date with the latest improvements straight from Microsoft. This basically means if you miss out on a few updates, you don’t have to go install multiple separate updates, and instead it can still be packaged all in one based on what you missed.

Most cumulative updates for Windows 11 today are over 700MB in size (over 800MB for Arm PCs), and that’s because each update contains all the changes that have been made to the OS since the initial release. Checkpoint updates aim to solve that problem, but the solution is essentially just like a service pack. In essence, you’ll get big updates that will serve as “checkpoints” and updates after this can be minor. Every time Microsoft wants to add something to the patch like a security update, it can upload a smaller patch to fix it, rather than needing to roll out several updates all in one massive package. These patches will only contain the changes made since the last update, and Microsoft claims this move will “save time, bandwidth, and hard drive space.”

Microsoft says the following:

Microsoft might periodically release cumulative updates as checkpoints. The subsequent updates will then consist of:

• The update package files associated with the checkpoints
• New update package files that contain incremental binary differentials against the version of binaries in the last checkpoint

However, back in the day, service packs were a way for Microsoft to do a very similar thing with Windows Vista and below. Back then, if you missed updates, you’d have to install each update individually. You’d download and install an update, then your PC would reboot and then download and install the next one too. It could take hours to get through a lot of updates, and that’s why Service Packs became a thing. They were a way to distribute a version of the Windows operating system up to a fixed point in time with all of the updates from before rolled into one. Service Packs for Windows 2000 that stuck around until Windows 7 are the same thing, conceptually, as Checkpoint Cumulative Updates in Windows 11 nearly two decades later.

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The best of both worlds

Though with some downsides

Back then, Service Pack updates were schedulable, meaning that a large update like that could be put off until a time when you were actually happy for your computer to be out of action. That doesn’t look to be the case with Checkpoint Updates, where it seems updates will eventually be forced. The problem there is that these updates are larger than typical updates that come out over time, which require a lot of processing and moving files around. As well, it adds yet another cycle in Windows updates to keep up with, which can be confusing for end users.

Of course, in actuality, it’s pretty much the best of both worlds. Service Packs did serve a purpose, and if it means that updates can become significantly smaller, users will probably save time in the long run. Microsoft definitely seems to be going back to older tricks when it comes to updates, but it’s not as if they’re reusing the same playbook without making any changes. Checkpoint Cumulative Updates combine the best of Service Packs with the best of cumulative updates, and I think that unless Microsoft manages to mess up the deployment of it, it’s a feature that should be welcomed.

Still, with Windows updates being as annoying and confusing as they are, it’s a hard problem to solve to simply make them better. This is a step in that direction for sure.