Before Windows 8 was released, Windows used to save all the messages related to the automatic updates in a plain text log file. It was very easy to open and check what was happening with the automatic updates using this log file. But starting with Windows 8, all the automatic update related messages are archived using the Microsoft Event Viewer. You can launch the Event Viewer and filter the events to find out the events and messages related to the automatic updates in your PC. But if you prefer the old fashion way, you can convert the update events into a log file very easily. Here is how:
- Press the hotkey Win+X to open the power user menu.
- Select Windows PowerShell from the power user menu.
- In the PowerShell console type Get-WindowsUpdateLog and press Enter.
- After a few seconds, you will find a new file on your Windows Desktop named “WindowsUpdate.log”.
- You can open this log file in any text editor like Notepad++ to check all the entries and see what automatic updates has been doing in the background.
You have to repeat these steps each time you want to check the log file for Windows updates. The reason for this is that while the Event Viewer receives all the events from Windows Updates, the log file does not and becomes old after a few hours. You have to create this log file every time you want to check it. If you want to make the process automatic, then you can create a PowerShell script with the following code:
Get-WindowsUpdateLog -LogPath .\WindowUpdate.log notepad .\WindowUpdate.log
This PowerShell script will create the Windows Update log file and then open it in Windows Notepad. You can even convert this PowerShell script to an EXE file using Microsoft’s PS2EXE tool that can be downloaded from https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/PS2EXE-Convert-PowerShell-9e4e07f1.