One of my problems with Windows 8 is that Microsoft recommends to keep Automatic Updates on the setting “Install updates automatically” while I prefer the setting “Download updates but let me choose whether to install them”. (Actually I don’t really want to choose whether to install them but rather when to install them.)
It’s possible to change this setting, but Windows Defender then won’t download its signature updates because that’s bound to the same mechanism as Windows Update. So every day I get a message on my boot screen, that there are important updates available and that I should start Windows Update to install them. This is annoying like hell.
Thankfully with a little bit of googling I found a solution. There is a tool that that checks for signature updates (an supposedly downloads them, I couldn’t try it yet because I just updated them using Windows update). It must be called like this:
"C:\Program Files\Windows Defender\MpCmdRun.exe" -SignatureUpdate -MMPC
So adding this command to e.g. task scheduler should solve yet another Windows 8 annoyance for good.