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See which Windows machines need a reboot - across your whole fleet

by Admin
Jun 9, 2026 11:08:03 PM

Roughly half of "my laptop is slow" help-desk tickets have the same root cause: the machine has been waiting on a reboot for two weeks, and nobody knew.

The teacher closed the lid. Windows cued up the next patch. The reboot prompt got dismissed. And dismissed again. Days pass. Performance degrades.

Until now, the only way to know which machines were in this state was to walk up to them, or to scrape together a PowerShell script and run it manually. We just shipped something better.

What's new

K12 Panel now collects Windows Update status from every Windows machine running our agent. The data refreshes at least once every 24 hours per powered-on machine — quietly, in the background — and surfaces in three places:

1. The /assets/ list

Two new columns can be set as visible on your main Asset list:

  • OS — the operating system reported by the machine (Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11 Enterprise, etc.). This finally answers the obvious question your list couldn't before.
  • Reboot — a warning indicator that shows up the moment a machine is waiting on a reboot.
  • Crit. Updates  — it shows pending critical/important security updates per machine.

Sort by the Reboot column and you've got an instant work queue: every machine in your fleet that needs to be restarted, in one place!

2. The per-asset Windows Update tab

Open any Windows asset, and you'll find a new Windows Update tab. It shows:

  • Overall status (up to date / reboot pending / critical updates pending / broken WU agent)
  • OS build and timestamps for last successful check and install
  • Every pending update, with severity and category
  • Every failed install in the last 30 days, with HRESULT codes
  • Recent successful installs

This is the right place to drill in when a specific machine is misbehaving. The HRESULT codes for failed installs are gold for diagnosing things like the infamous 0x80070643 cumulative update failures that historically plagued machines.

3. A new Reports → Windows Update Fleet Health page

The new fleet report tells you, at a glance:

  • % Reboot Pending — how much of your fleet is sitting on uncompleted updates
  • % Critical Updates Pending — your security exposure surface
  • % Broken WU Agent — the most overlooked metric. A machine whose Windows Update service is wedged is invisible to patching. It will quietly accumulate vulnerabilities while reporting nothing.
  • % Never Collected — how much of your fleet has yet to phone home with WU data

Below the headline cards: a distribution chart (how many machines have 0 / 1–2 / 3–5 / 6–10 / 10+ pending updates) and a worst-offender list with the 100 assets that need the most attention, sorted by critical-update count.

4. AI Search

If you're already using AI Search, the new fields work out of the box. Try queries like:

  • "windows devices that need a reboot"
  • "windows machines behind on security patches"
  • "assets with failed windows updates"
  • "windows devices we haven't successfully patch-checked in 14 days"
  • "windows machines with broken windows update"

These translate directly into filters against the new fields. Bookmark the result, share the URL with your help desk, schedule yourself a weekly review.