Why are Windows updates so slow (and long) with Windows 7

Question

original title: We'll search the Windows forum for an answerWhy are Windows updates so slow (and long) with Windows 7

I have a new netbook with windows 7 starter.

Last night when I tried to shut down, I got a message about updating and not to shut down.  If I recall correctly, the download consisted of 49 items.

Today when I turned the computer on, after I entered my password, the computer told me to not shut down and stage 3 was in process.

Then it switched to a "Windows 7 Starter" screen (Windows 7 Starter with the windows logo at the bottom of a patterned blue screen, the same screen I get when booting up before the password screen appears.)  There is no other info on the screen.

It has been a couple of hours since the screen appeared and nothing else appears to be going on.  For the first 40 minutes, the hard drive light was on almost constantly, since then there is an occasional "blink" of the hard drive light.

Is this normal?

If so how long should I expect the process to take?

If not, (how would I be able to tell), what happens if I turn the computer off (assuming I can), and is there any way of recovering?

Anything else I should do?

Suggestions:

1.  Provide the user with some indication that something is happening, and show progress so we know its not just locked up.

2.  Offer an option where the user can delay the long configuration (or whatever is happening) so that if the computer is needed for critical work related use, the user won't get fired.

Thanks

tom

Answer 1

Hi,

 It seems to be an issue with the updates installation.

Please follow the article mentioned below:

An update is not installed successfully when you try to install the update in Windows Vista and Windows 7

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949358

Answer 2

And it keeps happening:  In Feb 2016, updates to Win 7 on 2 64bit machines seemed to go OK, but a 32bit machine just hung there.  Restarted update after 45 mins - same result.  Shut down after an hour waiting.  Began again 4 hrs later, same result:  hung there waiting 0Kb 0% done 154Mb to go and 14 updates needed.  Shut down again after 1.5hrs.

From a user perspective - what **** **** customer service.  Win 7 is still a supported OS, so it's users should have the same support for update as the newer ones.  As to the MS commentary about problems with windows 7 then upgrade to windows 10 - the only problem  I'm having re windows 7 is the MS update servers can't handle it.  If you have a car that the dealer can't maintain in a timely fashion, why would you buy a new one from him?

Bring back Bill Gates.  This never happened on his watch.  And if it keeps happening his retirement funds in MS shares may well collapse as the users exit stage left.

Davidk03

Answer 3

Yesterday a friend asked to install a fresh copy of Windows 7 on his new PC. He does not like Windows 8 because it has the mess with the two kinds of applications and charms and start menu which require tweaks or third party tools, and he has many applications which are not yet ready for Windows 10, therefore Windows 7 is the best choice.

Installing Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit with SP1 was a breeze, it took less than an hour. And then I launched updates, but before that I disabled System Restore and antivirus to ensure fastest speed possible and I have 100 Mbps Internet.

Windows Update told that there are 144 updates available. And I agreed to install them. Oh my god, how stupid I was. Update is running for 12 hours already and it shows that it's installing 123 of 144. I noticed that .NET updates are especially slow. After some internet searches I found that I should have run some console commands to make updates faster because .NET is recompiling itself. And it seems, it is doing it after every update in the queue! Come on, Microsoft, why isn't update smart enough to see that there are multiple  .NET updates queued, and therefore it could run the compilation phase just once, at the very end!

So, that single update 123 is a security update for .NET 4.5 and it is taking an hour already. My friend is asking why it is taking so long to install and I don't know what to answer... "Because it's Microsoft Windows"?

What's strange - my resource monitor shows that the TrustedInstaller is using about 2GB of RAM (the machine has 4 GB) and is actively writing/reading to the disk, but the CPU usage is almost nothing. How does recompiling take so much memory and I/O activity but so little CPU? It almost seems that the Installer is just reading and writing the same files over and over again because in one hour it should be able to replace ALL of Windows files, but in 12 hours ... you guessed it, I could reinstall Windows on 12 other machines while this one is updating.

Is there some other way to make this process faster if I install Windows next time? Maybe downloading some pre-packaged updates and applying them at once instead of using Windows Update? 12 hours is crazy.

By the way, now when looking at today's update history, I see that most of them have status "Waiting" (most probably, waiting for reboot), but three .NET 4.5 updates have status Failed, error 643. These are 2972216, 3037581 and 3023224, and so I'll have to search the internet again to see what's going on. How can they fail on a completely fresh Windows 7 install and if they have failed, then why it takes almost an hour for each of them to fail? I'm afraid to think how much would it take for them to install successfully if even failing took so much time (being sarcastic here).

Ok, enough rant.

Answer 4

It seems windows update always download and install new update, but on system it doesn't seems any good changes, pc still go slowly without significant enhances.

When it face  PC performance  slow, I click onto start-up it seems update icon, what coming after new update! for what? nothing good! I'm  very disappointed with Microsoft!

Answer 5

It seems today Microsoft have release a new update, by the way I observe Notebook it start running slowly with HDD Led on.

Today system have updated 39696 files (complete windows installations files?), sorry I still don't understand Microsoft update policy, too many file where update with experience system becomes more slowly.

By the other side last update have been on Jan 15,2015 and again a new system update? it could conclude too many mistakes from Microsoft? because no added value have come with system update, I'm very sorry  but I think any mistake from previous update will release a new update and still so.

Sorry for said in these words,  I'm  very disappointed with Microsoft experience and product, unfortunately no chance of other OS, even  with Linux (have a wide of distributions).