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I know for some of the patches to actually take place a reboot is required but my thought is if I installed it as soon as the patch comes out then any patch that doesnt requuire a reboot will be corrected and then next reboot I can also save time installing at that point. Is this bad or not recommended though?

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Until you reboot you are still vulerable. The patches are not applied until you reboot. Thus installing them serves no purpose until you actually reboot your system. – Ramhound Jun 20 '12 at 15:48
Also, if you're using Microsoft/Windows Update you can't scan for any additional updates you may need until the system has been rebooted. This means that you may wind up needing to reboot twice, when a single reboot would have done. – Harry Johnston Jun 21 '12 at 2:45

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Delaying reboot after doing security updates is not recommended, for a couple reasons.

  1. If libraries/dlls are changed, and something running relies on the old library/dll, "bad things" can happen, causing unexpected crashes and strange behavior.
  2. As mentioned in a comment, some of the things changed won't actually take effect until a reboot, so if something was resolving a weakness, that weakness may still be exposed.

I know that sometimes you can't reboot a system any time you feel like, and in those cases, I try to delay an update until just before a reboot can occur, to prevent any unexpected, possibly VERY BAD behavior from reason 1.

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In most cases, Microsoft Update puts the new versions of the files in a temporary location, and during the reboot will move them into their correct place. Ramhound's comment is more accurate than your answer. – Randolph West Jun 21 '12 at 0:20
@RandolphWest: in XP/2003, updates install each new file immediately unless the existing file is locked. This means file versions can be mismatched because some (and only some) have already been updated, which can cause instability. As of Vista, the update engine works differently, but to the best of my knowledge MS have never actually promised that update files will only be installed atomically. – Harry Johnston Jun 21 '12 at 2:43

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