A;ternative repo's for Automatic Updates ?

Question

Roughly once each month, Windows 8.1 updates itself here. The small updates (e.g. Security Essentials updates) all go okay. But the main Win8.1 update is typically very large and can literally take DAYS to download.

Is there somewhere where I can see details about the upstream repository? And are there different repo's to choose from - so I could see if any of them work better?

Answer 1

Let me check if I understand this...

Firstly (AFAICT) the Delivery Optimization feature is only available in Windows 10 (so that wouldn't help me for a Win8.1 system??) - but if Win8.1 can also offer some way to update by using a different machine (i.e. to do the actual download) I'd be happy to try it. I have 3 machines here, all networked together - one runs Windows 7, one is running Windows 8.1 and the other runs Windows 10. In all other respects, the Win8.1 machine works fine - I can access the internet okay and all other downloads seem to work fine.

As luck would have it, my December update finally completed yesterday (8 full days after its first attempt!!) But if there's a way to utilise one of my other machines (to provide the internet connection) I'd be happy to give that a try for next month's update in January.

Answer 2

Hi John,

Thank you for your reply.

If the issue only occur for one Windows 8 device, we could check download Windows 8 update package from Windows Update Catalog website on Windows 10 device or other Windows 8 device to monitor the download speed. This action could help us if any other issue about Server side or on this computer side.

If you have other Windows 8 device, we could use Delivery Optimization to download update package from other Windows 8 device to avoid bandwidth overload.

Windows Update Delivery Optimization and privacy

If the issue occur on all Windows 8 device or you just have one Windows 8 device, and that device is able to download other files as normal speed, we need to check details through CBS.log file located in C:\Windows\Logs\CBS to debug update download issue.

However as log debug is out of our forum support scope, we recommend to create a ticket for debug assistance.

Bests,

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Answer 3

A bit more information... if Win8.1 attempts to download one of the cumulative updates it'll just sit there saying "0KB downloaded - 0% complete". But throughout that time (which can last for days) Windows Update will be using maybe 70% of my CPU time or even more!!

But when it does eventually update successfully it's almost always when I try to power down the PC. At that stage, a message will appear on screen which says:- "Preparing to configure Windows - don't turn off your computer." And that's when (finally!) it usually installs. But generally speaking, that message only appears when lots of previous update attempts have failed. All attempts to download the update while Win8.1 itself is running are pretty much doomed to failure. Does that make any sense?

Answer 4

Thanks JoyQiao-MSFT - just to clarify... I'm enquiring about the upstream service (i.e. where the updates get downloaded from, rather than where they get downloaded to).

For each of the monthly cumulative updates, Win8.1 will literally spend DAYS repeatedly trying to download them unsuccessfully. The downloads never even start - so I'm assuming it's because of a bottleneck on the upstream download site (i.e. too many people already trying to download). It'll often be 6 days or more before my system eventually manages to start a download. The problem is that during those 6 days, Windows Update will totally cripple my machine's performance because it uses up so much CPU time. So I'm trying to find out if there's some other download site I could switch to.

What's weird is that this never happens for Windows 10 and it never happened previously with Windows 7 (before Win 7 stopped its updates). All 3 computers are using the same internet connection but Win8.1 is the only troublesome one.

Answer 5

Hi,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

According to your description, I am not sure I clearly understand your issue. If any misunderstanding about it, please correct me directly.

Some cumulative update package is huge than security update package, such as security only package KB4592495 about 20 MB, but cumulative monthly rollup KB4592484 are 500MB. Download speed to a great degree is based on your Network bandwidth.

If you want to know where those update files were downloaded, we could go to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download.

If you want to know the downloaded place, we could go to Windows Update Catalog website, it is a place to download all update packages.

If you want to know the details about downloaded progress, I am afraid there is no official measure could check for downloaded details progress except a simple progress bar.

Bests,

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