Java updates

[factor-fiction]

Maybe a question for chuckfickens or any other of you technical experts out there.

We have a couple of laptops we use. Both have Java installed. I very rarely get any Java updates and my PC seems to work fine. However Mrs Factor's PC seems to get Java updates on a daily basis which interrup whatever she is doing and takes maybe half an hour to finish.
1) Does anyone know why this is happening?
2) Can we cancel each update when it starts?
3) Can we/should we stop automatic updates?
4) What would happen if we unistalled Java?

Thanks.

[ChuckFickens]

1) goto the control panel, double click the java icon (you may have to change the view settings to see it, depending on version of windows) and then click the update tab and the the advanced button and the can set the schedule and behaviour of the updates there.

2) you can, if you set it to update at a reasonable frequency (I tend to have mine on monthly) It shouldn't be too much of a pain to let it do it when it wants.

3) yes, see answer 1

4) lots of things would stop working on various websites and possibly software installed on your PC.

As a side note, Java has a habit of installing the latest versions and not removing the older versions, if you goto add remove programs (or programs and features, depending on windows ver.) you can remove all but the latest version of java and free up a fair amount of hard drive space.

[ummmm]

Thanks.....I needed to know the answer to this question as well :-)

[ChuckFickens]

oh, 3 should have been you can, but you shouldn't unless you are prepared to manually update it every few weeks (there is a update now button in the java options on the control panel)

[factor-fiction]

Thanks chuckfickens. I'll change the updating schedule.
Yes there was an earlier thread about old versions of Java updates clogging up PCs so i checked ours at the time- there seemed to be only one old version of Jave - it was12 months old so I removed it and no problems occurred.

[Dodger666]

I had a Java update this morning.