Windows Update - long time to check for updates

@roger_m ... if you look at Kerodo's post at 6:05pm on Friday March 11 you will see that he is reporting that the results of installing the latest Windows Update Agent and KB3102810 don't last. I have been waiting for over 90 minutes for a laptop to check for updates right now. It was last updated on March 5th.
For posterity the specs are:
Core 2 Duo T6570 (2.1GHz)
32-bit SP1
2GB RAM
SSD
60Mbps internet

It has traditionally been my experience that the CPU is not the bottleneck for any system, the hard drive is. I just put Windows 10 on an old HP Core 2 Duo system that has an SSD and it runs like a scalded cat, also no waiting issues with updates on it so that is most definitely a Vista/7 issue. I don't recall this particular laptop ever taking this long to check for updates, they are most certainly creating a atmosphere that promotes migrating to 10. Of course the catch 22 with that is most manufacturers are not bothering to officially support Windows 10 on systems older than 4 years ... which is total BS, but good luck getting any traction there. I desperately wish that the anti-trust action against Microsoft could succeed, it would be really nice if people had at least one other OS developer to choose from. And don't start on the Linux cheering people, we all know that you need to be an above average user to go there. I am referring to a company that would have 24/7 phone and chat support like Apple, but isn't so uptight about only supporting configurations that use all Apple products.

Anyways, writing this reply took so long that the update check finally completed after 2 hours with 22 critical found. Forward into the breach, and a pox on Microsoft.

 

@dsnooks70 Having only 2GB of RAM will probably cause slowdowns, as Windows Update can use as much as 1GB of RAM at times.

A lack of manufacturer support is generally only an issue in the very rare case the compter needs a BIOS update to properly support Windows 10. I have Windows 10 installed on a 10 year old laptop and it runs really well.

 

Roger,

Nice work. I have a 10 year old laptop but Win8 and Win10 won't install due to the CPU. No NX bit.

 

I wonder, how Windows Update Mini Tool would perform on fresh installs. It works perfectly well on 10, even makes user to decide, when to reboot.

 

Indeed, the results are not persistent, the next month the update check took 2 hours. However, for anyone doing a clean install, installing the latest Win Update Agent and KB3102810 does save you that initial monumental update check time. Without the 2 updates installed, my machine was taking 5 hours to get that first update check done. This method at least saves you that initial time. But yes, subsequent checks are still slower than they should be. I assume that a later update to the update agent is overwriting the above 2 updates and screwing things up again, or something similar. I also do believe that this is just a bug in the updating mechanism and that MS could fix it, but is choosing not to for obvious reasons.

 

Has anyone tried this update, KB3138612, for this slow problem that was released in Feb. or March of 2016? I had this problem on my laptop just a few weeks ago. If you finally see what updates you need, it's not in the recommended or important updates but in the optional instead. I downloaded it and installed it and everything worked much faster and better after that. Either I was lucky or the update worked but I tried it several times since and it still works much better.

 

Hmmm thanks I will DL it.

 

How's this then (really annoyed fyi) i got a windows 10 update yesterday, blue screened every time it booted without fail, even with safe-mode boot and before windows has the chance to load....

Reinstall a fresh copy of win 7... Been checking for updates for 5hours so far... Look at my specs...


AMD FZ-9590 Octacore @ 4.7GHz
32gb RAM
1TB SSD
76Mbps Internet...

Wtf is wrong with windows update these days?


#Update, the checking took 6.5hours

 

It's looking like its a w7 thing, every one has this delay, applying MS update KB3138612 is suppose to fix it, I dl'ed it yesterday so we'll see if it helps.

 

First of all, welcome to Wilders!

Very nice hardware specs, by the way. One would think, with specs like that, Windows Update should fly through updates at every step of the way from downloading, calculating which updates are needed and which are not needed, and installing, replacing system files, etc. I would say that this is solid proof that Windows Update on Windows 7 (and possibly Vista as some mentioned) is flawed and buggy at this stage of the product lifecycle. It's difficult to say if the Windows Update problem is flawed from the ground up, whereas it was not too bad when there were only a few dozen updates, but now after the years there are hundreds up updates to organize and install. There is definitely a lot of inconsistency right now with updates, unfortunately.

Personally, I have still been using AutoPatcher on my Windows 7 VMs which has been great for preventing grey hair and such.

 

I use WSUSOffline to do Win7 security updates, and I had the same problems with waiting for updates practically forever. But somehow they managed to solve the problem in version 10.4, though I don't have any idea about their solution (changelog might provide hints...)

 

Thanks for the welcome and i was hoping this system would run practically anything fast so yea i agree windows update is hugely flawed... I will look into using the programs mentioned

 

Thanks, I'll try that on 7.

Looks like this changed the performance of the updates:

- Replaced superseded Windows Update Client February 2016 (kb3135445/kb3135449) for Windows 7 / 8.1 (x86/x64) and Server 2008/2012 R2 by Windows Update Client March 2016 (kb3138612/kb3138615) (Thanks to "harry")
http://download.wsusoffline.net/

 

@Nebulus

I ran version 10.5 on a clean Vista install and it failed to install any updates. The only way I could get updates to install was leaving Windows Update running for 12 hours, nothing else worked.

 

Looks like KB 3138612 installed in the last batch of March updates, so we'll see if it helps next month when the next bunch arrives...

 

Installed a fresh copy of W7 today, and looked for updates at 12:34 PM. Now it's 18:25 and it still haven't found any updates.

Looking at C:\Windows\WindowsUpdate, the last line says:

Code:

2016-03-16    13:45:11:754     836    ce0    DtaStor    WARNING: Attempted to add URL http://download.windowsupdate.com/d/msdownload/update/others/2016/03/20274682_4f9129dc80378bdfbcea1741a94cab9622579594.cab for file T5Ep3IA3i9+86hdBqUyrliJXlZQ= when file has not been previously added to the datastore

Nice, Microsoft

 

I tried it last night as I thought it was gonna fix this problem. Unfortunately, I don't think it did anything in my W7 32 bits to make things better. Before and after applying the update, Windows updates takes around an hour for available updates to be displayed in the screen.

Bo

 

I finally got to experience this Windows 7 update fun in a couple of VMs recently. My patience only allowed to wait for about one hour. svchost.exe had swelled up to about 1.5GB and CPU was staying around 100% much of the time. I am certain that, if I waited overnight, everything would have been fine and dandy. But I don't have that kind of patience. So I just opened a shared folder within my VM and used AutoPatcher to fully update the Windows 7 VMs in about 45 minutes. Microsoft really has got to fix this.

 

I did see a small inprovment on my system after KB3138612

 

I have to say, I'm really concerned when it comes to install software I don't know, but I gave this a shot. AutoPatcher is downloading 285 updates, it took a few seconds to start, and will take around 15 mins to finish.

I have to say, this software is the ***REAL*** solution for updating Windows Vista and 7. Forget about using Windows Update, forget about depending on Microsoft for this. Just download AutoPatcher

 

I think the update made it about 5 minutes worse for me.

This problem has not caused my CPU usage to go high. It stays normal. I am glad about that. And I expect the search for updates to last about an hour. I don't think I could handle it if it took 6 hours or overnight as some here have reported experiencing.

Bo

 

Mine usually took an hour, now it's under that for sure

 

It's been taking hours to find updates on my Windows 7 notebook, but last night I got updates in less than six minutes.

 

good to know that i am not alone in this. any concrete solution for this issue yet ?

 

Yes. Don't depend on Windows Update for updating your Windows It may seem like a commercial at 4AM, but "I used AutoPatcher and I'm not going back to WU. It took only a few seconds to detect which updates I needed to install and it downloaded all updates at my network highest speed".