It is no doubt that the world heavily relies on technology and electronics which are made from complex pieces of engineering, an ordinary man cannot phantom.

Nevertheless, this hardware is controlled by a set of instructions that are bonded together to form software, and this set of instructions guides this complex machinery that benefits us in almost every aspect of our lives.

And god forbid these machinery or computers evolve to develop a self-consciousness because anybody with a little bit of knowledge about pop culture knows what Skynet did to humanity!

In my opinion, however, it would be better for these computers or laptops to be limited to the authorized operating system, and not have any artificial intelligence.

However, just like everything else, these operating systems often are either flawed or outdated and must require updating, or else you may find yourself in the dark with your obsolete laptop.

This is why staying up to date is highly necessary as advised by the manufacturer and the computer experts, because they provide and patch the essential files that enable your laptop to run successfully without any jitters.

But these updates are too time-consuming and may slow you down while you are on your way to being productive but don’t get any bright ideas like Can I close my laptop while updating? Because you may face some unwanted consequences!

What Sort Of Consequences?

It is quite obvious disrupting your laptop while it’s updating can impact its performance or even wreak some havoc which may render your laptop almost disabled.

Some of the listed consequences are described below,

1. File Corruption

File corruption is one of the last things you would want to happen to your laptop, not only does it corrupt your update files but also kills other files which work in conjunction with your operating system.

File corruption ranges from a simple program malfunction to a full-fledged boot image of your operating system disabled which prevents your laptop from starting up.

Since corruption of files is quite random and almost undiagnosable if you don’t have any knowledge, the damage done by it can be quite devastating and you may lose your data in the process.

2. Boot Sector Damage

Since these files are stored on the hard drive of your laptop, oftentimes due to sudden shutdowns the read and write process gets aborted, which causes permanent or temporary damage depending on your luck!

Getting your boot sector damaged can have a massive impact on the performance of your laptop and you notice painfully slow boot-ups and loading times which eventually leads to your laptop hard drive dying altogether causing you to lose all your data.

3. Partition Malfunction

Normally, data stored in your hard drive is scattered through different sectors. If more and more boot sectors are affected, you might notice your partitions getting malfunctioned.

This sort of malfunction renders your partition inaccessible due to irreversible damage and you might need to format your partition in order for it to get back to its normal state.

So Can I Close My Laptop While Updating or Not?

Nothing is stopping you to close the lid of your laptop or press the power button to turn it off, however, if you really want to smack the lid because you feel impatient during your fortnightly updates, you can change a couple of settings that won’t simply turn off your laptop.

Since, by default, lowering the laptop lid causes it to either go to hibernate or a complete shutdown mode, you can tinker into your windows update settings to prevent that from happening.

1. First of all, click the start button, which will be most probably present at the lower left part of your screen.
2. Now type the control panel and click on it which will present you with a plethora of options that you might already be familiar with.
3. Now click on hardware and sound and open your power options.
4. You can now change the options that say “Choose what closing the lid does“ to simply “Do nothing“
5. I believe “do nothing“ is pretty much self-explanatory, you can now click apply and happily shut the lid, make sure you aren’t harsh on it because no options or workarounds can prevent physical damages.

Bottom Line

In the end, consider these updates beneficial even though they might take up half of your day to patch up any nasty bugs behind the scenes. However, if it’s by any chance an emergency and you want to pack up quickly, changing the options mentioned above might sort your queries about “Can I close my laptop while updating“.

That being said, have a lovely day.