Compliance audit flagged a healthcare client for "missing critical patches." 23 of 47 workstations showed patches downloaded but not installed. Average fleet uptime was 34 days - users were hibernating laptops but never rebooting. One machine had been "up" for 97 days. Patches were there, just waiting for a reboot that never came.

Windows 10's Fast Startup was the culprit. When users clicked "Shut Down," Windows actually hibernated the kernel. The machine appeared to power off, but it wasn't a true reboot. Updates in "Pending Reboot" status never installed.

Fundamental problem: Windows Update can only restart a machine that's awake and online. Users who close laptop lids at 5 PM and open at 8 AM never hit the maintenance window.

Enforce reboots through RMM agent, which runs with SYSTEM privileges and can force restarts regardless of Windows Update's "smart" scheduling.

Key insight: RMM agent can wake machine from sleep to run scheduled tasks. Combined with this script, machines that "never reboot" now reboot weekly - automatically, during off-hours, with no user action required.

Deployed with 7-day threshold. Within one week, every machine had rebooted at least once. Patches that had been "pending reboot" for months finally installed. Re-ran compliance scan: 100% compliant.

Need automated patch compliance? We implement maintenance automation that keeps your fleet patched without disrupting users.