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Why are Windows 10 updates so slow?

Anonymous
2024-06-15T09:03:40+00:00

Having returned from a holiday I turned on one of my 3 PCs yesterday, simply to allow it to catch up with Windows updates. It was last updated 3 weeks ago.

The PC spec is as follows:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB

CPU: AMD FX-4130 @ 3.8GHz

RAM: 2x 8GB 240 pin DDR3 non-ECC

OS Hard Drive: Kingston A400 480GB SSD

OS: Windows 10 Home Version: 22H2 OS Build: 19045.4529 Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.19058.1000.0

Not modern or fast technology by todays standards, but adequate for my needs. It WILL NOT run Windows 11. Also, my internet connection is via 4G, so download speeds do not compare with fibre. I'm lucks if my download speed is 20Mb/s so I understand that a large download will take time.

However, my issue is with the size of the Windows OS, Windows updates and the time it takes to complete installation. After an hour or so I checked the Task Manager and found the PC was still downloading and the CPU and SSD were both still very busy. I found that it was downloading the Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 22H2 (KB5039211) so left it to continue. Once the download completed, it proceeded to install the update. Aprocess that was excrutiatingly slow. I watched the installation progress go from 20% to 44% then 45%, then 74% and finally to 100% ... and then back to 0% and continue SLOWLY to 100% again. The % shown doesn't seem to bear any relation to actual progress as it can can hold at one particular % for a very long time and then then jump. What is the logic of the progress % shown?

You will see from the screen shot below that 3hours and 22 minutes after switching the PC on it was still only 74% into the second phase of installing the Cumulative Update. It did eventually get to 100% but, even, then continued downloading something and did not prompt me to restart the PC. I decided to do that anyway ... and I was informed the PC was configuring Windows and not to turn off the PC! I turned off the monitor and went to bed.

Sadly this is not the first time I have had to endure excrutiatingly long Windows updates and I have to wonder why this is. It would take less time to do a complete clean install of Windows. My PC is dual booting but when I update Ubuntu it takes 10 - 30 minutes maximum.

As mentioned above, this PC will not run Windows 11 and, when the time comes that Windows 10 is no longer supported, I will happily continue with Ubuntu alone. I almost look forward to that day

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Windows update

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-06-19T14:58:03+00:00

    Hi Ramesh,

    having suceeded in completing the Windows 10 repair installation yesterday, I decided today to create a fresh Recovery flash drive, using the same 32GB flash drive as I previously used in 2022.

    Before doing so I checked for any Windows updates and found there were 5 available (KB5039211, KB5038285, KB5033052, KB4023057 and KB5011048). Having checked for updates just before switching off yesterday this almost surprised me. I didn't note the start time of the downloading but it took about an hour and a half, including one restart.

    Again I checked for updates and found there were two more (KB5038285 and KB5034441), which completed download and install in 28 minutes.

    At my third check for updates Windows it finally reported I was up to date.

    I then started creating the Recovery flash drive, which took 3 hours to complete! Windows Explorer shows the flash drive is 8.99GB used.

    So I'm still left with the feeling that Windows as an OS is very bloated and updates are large and slow to download and install, compared with Ubuntu. I have two virtually identical desktops running Windows 10 and they won't upgrade to Windows 11 so, when the time comes they will be running Ubuntu only. I do have a more modern desktop running Windows 11 so at least I can still use my Windows programs on that.

    Regards

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  2. Ramesh Srinivasan 79,055 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-06-19T15:01:20+00:00

    Thanks for the update. Yes, the component store is complicated and contains thousands of files and registry entries that the OS must verify when installing an update. Glad the original issue (or updates taking 3 hours to complete) has been resolved.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-06-18T13:52:36+00:00

    Hi Ramesh,

    thanks for your message. I couldn't look into it until this morning.

    Rather than download (slowly) the current ISO version I thought I'd first try using the Installation Media Version 22H2 that I created using the same PC on a different (purple) USB flash drive on 11 July 2023. I did not update the BIOS yet.

    I did a clean reboot and disabled the antivirus before running Setup from the flash drive. It took 47 minutes 35 seconds to get to the Install option.

    It did the first restart at 1:43:52 and at 1:45:00 commenced working on updates (after apparently getting updates earlier on - before I clicked Install).

    At 2:20:52 the updates completed and I got to the login screen, at which point I was informed "We've got some updates for your PC".

    Finally, at 2:23:29 I got to my desktop, althought the Task Manager showed high activity on the SSD and CPU until 2:28:46.

    Although it took a while, the repair/installation completed successfully. It suggests that the Media Creation Tool I downloaded from the Microsoft website to the green flash drive I used yesterday is faulty. A bit disappointing because I would have expected there to be a check what was on the flash drive before reporting "Finished".

    It will be interesting to see if this has cured the slow installation of future Windows updates.

    Thanks for your help. I won't indicate whether you have provided a solution because I don't know ... yet.

    Regards

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  4. Ramesh Srinivasan 79,055 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-06-15T10:00:55+00:00

    Hi Nomadic,

    I'm Ramesh, here to help you.

    An update taking 3 hours is very unusual, especially on an SSD. From the description posted, it appears the installation is stuck in a loop, perhaps due to SHARING_VIOLATION or a similar error.

    When this happens, the CBS log file sizes can grow huge (more than 1 GB usually.)

    Please do a repair installation using the Media Creation Tool. See:

    How to perform an In-place Upgrade with Windows 10 Step-by-Step Guide - Microsoft Community:

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/for...

    That should fix most of the component store errors.

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  5. Ramesh Srinivasan 79,055 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-06-16T17:43:27+00:00

    Hi Nomadic,

    How did the repair installation go?

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