Windows Update - long time to check for updates

Check back in this thread it was mentioned at one point don't remember where but as I said it DID help my PC.

No article..

 

Try just doing a manual update see what it does, when I do it the results are less then 5 mins.

 

Yes, I made a few changes here today and have done the manual update check about 3 or 4 times, and each time it's under 5 minutes, very quick compared to what was going on before. If it holds up on next months updates, then we'll know it's fixed for sure.. at least that's what I'd consider the real test.

 

Before the KB update a manual update would take forever, so yea we will see.

 

Yes, it was mentioned several times in this thread, but there is no clear information regarding whether KB3138612 was the fix for the delays in Microsoft updates for Windows 7, but only personal experiences, which appear to differ.

 

Well not sure what to tell ya but it helped 2 of my W7 machines and that made me a happy camper!

 

Well, whether it was that one or not, I don't know, but it was evidently one of the updates from March that seems to have fixed it. But time will tell.

 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3138612

"This update contains some improvements to Windows... "Update Client"

Dunno if this is anything but..

 

Well, I tried that update [KB3138612] recently, to see if it would improve the delays in Microsoft updates for my Windows 7 Pro SP-1 (x86) desktop.

Checked for updates again today, it still takes almost an hour for it to check and return a list of available updates.

So I am still thinking it may be something else ... Annoying ...

I have updates set to manual, "Never check for updates". With "Give me recommended updates the same way I receive important updates" unchecked.

If I let the updates check automatically, it locks up one CPU core for an hour after a reboot. That kills PC performance, so I shut it down, and check manually when I don't need to use the PC.

 

I'm wondering if it's fast now when there are no updates available, but then maybe it'll take hours again when the next batch of updates come thru?

 

All may not be lost maybe you had something running in the back ground or something, keep an eye on things in the coming updates.

 

Nope.

I use Autoruns to lock down processes and services. And Process Explorer to see what threads are running. I know my PC and what's running at all times. This Windows Update appears to go into a hard loop using one core of CPU maxed, with very little to no disk or network access. It is most likely a lousy algorithm checking a database against the hundreds of updates calculating the supersedence of the patches in memory, since SP-1 was released...

 

KB3138612 installed here on Windows 7, and the update time is back to normal.

 

I have not installed KB3138612 Windows Update Client for Windows 7 March 2016 (nor have I installed KB3112343 Windows Update Client for Windows 7 December 2015, nor KB3135445 Windows Update Client for Windows 7 February 2016), but I see the same: checking for updates is fast. As I have KB3138612 not installed, I see no reason to think it is because of KB3138612 that checking for updates is fast.

(By the way, I have not installed those Windows Update Client updates since and including the December 2015 version, because of this information regarding the December version: "This update enables support for additional upgrade scenarios [...] to Windows 10", and because Windows Update Client versions may probably be cumulative, so that installing a recent version may probably also give you the previous versions contents, e.g. "enables support for additional upgrade scenarios [...] to Windows 10" that was in the December version.)

 

Luckily this thread saved me from continuing to rip my PC configuration to shreds attempting to fix this problem. For my part, I thought I'd share that KB3138612 had zero effect on the problem. I was once again able to have a manual "check for updates" complete in about 8 minutes after I applied all the 3/8/2016 updates. This is down from about 1.5 hours. If you're having this problem, you just need to tough it out through the 3/8/2016 updates or we could all go through this again when April updates are available. Time will tell.

Here's the whole story for me, which I thought I'd document in case April brings problems again. My options are set to "check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them." I do updates on my own time while watching the process and like to know which ones and when in case a problem develops afterwards. As a side note, I'm thinking this issue is not being discussed very much since automatic updates at 2am probably went unnoticed by the general public with automatic installation turned on.

I had skipped February essentially and noted that I had about 30 updates waiting around noon yesterday (3/25/2016). The last update check had completed the night before. I selected the bulk of them and noted that the "downloading" status stayed at 0KB, 0% for an excessive amount of time. I define excessive as approaching 20 minutes, since I've never seen my PC come close to this, ever, to at least start and show some download progress. Skipping a lot of details, I started to pull logs, stop services, Internet research the problem, rename Windows and System32 folders, and use some of Microsoft's "FixIt" utilities. Every time the download seemed to hang, I would abort and try something else.

Then I found this thread which suggested it was perhaps a new norm for checking and installing updates to be a multi-hour effort. It also mentioned KB3138612. I put my configuration back together, and let Windows Update sit, and sure enough I was given a list of updates after about 1.5 to 2 hours. I also noted the constant CPU usage of <svchost.exe> during this time with little HDD or network activity. It effectively still looked hung, but delivered in the end. I installed KB3138612 by itself.

I broke the process down into discrete steps with lots of reboots since I was chasing a concurrent problem with not being able to boot after a bad update or combination of updates. I suspect I may have included the optional ones at one point, and it would seem at least one of them has a nasty conflict with my system. I have yet to apply the optional ones from the last few months, but I don't think this issue was related. Point is, I wound up applying these updates multiple times because I had to keep going back to restore points before their installation, so I got a good view of the issue.

After the installation of KB313861, a subsequent manual check for updates still took 1.5 to 2 hours. No help there. I proceeded to install all the 2/9/2016 updates only. The process took quite a while, but ultimately no problems if I let it sit. I ordered another manual check for updates, which once again took 1.5 to 2 hours. From here I installed the remaining important updates from 3/8/2016. After this, I was able to have a manual scan take about 8 minutes, which is still high to me, but nowhere near 1.5 to 2 hours. I also noted that CPU usage of <svchost.exe> was not present during the check.

So it could be that it runs faster with no updates to apply, or something in the 3/8/2016 took a long time to scan for. I guess we'll see in April.

 

That is what I have experienced. no updates - not a problem. Updates available - slow.
All fixes applied. Win8 is starting to get slow too. Vista is really bad.

 

Yes, I actually have seen the update check going quickly before too, but each time a fresh batch comes out again on patch tuesday, it's back to the slow check... on my machine, when it's slow, it takes around 2 hours. Very annoying.

 

I won't even begin to try to figure all that out!

I'll just wait and see how it goes next patch tuesday. If it's slow, then I suppose I'll just have to live with it like other have..

 

@emmjay

Finally! They should have done that years ago.

(Too bad about Win10's spying habits though.)

 

Yeah, this is one great feature of 10 that I really like. If I do a clean install of 1511 today, then there will only be about 5 updates that I have to install. It's great. On the other hand, there's so much ridiculousness going on in 10 that I find I can't really use or trust it for daily use. So.....

 

Win7-sp1. I decided yesterday to watch what's with this slowness.
After enabling Windows update service I went to the place where March and few earlier updates are listed that I haven't yet installed.
I selected several to install, perhaps 5 of 20.
The screen said "downloading updates", as usual. The counter hasn't moved for over an hour.
I watched the router's log. After about an hour and a half it finally made first connection to windowsupdate.com.
Then the updates started coming in. Very slowly, but things moved. This disaster repeated of course for the next group of updates
My internet speeds are 25 both up and down.

So all that time, Windows spends time reviewing stuff on my computer (200+ existing updates) and it LIED about "downloading".

 

I never have any issues with the actual downloading... once the check is done and it shows the updates, then the rest of the process is fast and normal. It's the checking that takes hours for me.

 

I haven't seen thus far, proof of Microsoft spying on its 10 users.

Of course you have telemetry stuff in Windows 10, like it was with the previous Windows. Nothing really scary there.. however you can opted-out of these.

In regards to ' Diagnostic and usage data ', previous Windows also has a basic form of this. When installing / upgrading to Windows 10, I believe you had controls offered to customize this and other privacy features.

.. nothing scary with this, and if you want, you can go with basic via Settings or hack to disable this completely. Read all about it - ' Diagnostic and usage data ' http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows-10/feedback-diagnostics-privacy-faq


It's alright if people wishes to post “ Microsoft is spying on Windows 10 users “, however without actual evidence of this, I'll be one of the people who think these people posting such comments, as ignorant folks. Or until actual proof is provided, which I haven't seen thus far. Perhaps I've missed something and someone can update me on what I've missed.

 

I think the real truth about all this is, we just don't know what MS is doing OR what is really going on in Win 10. There is only speculation, and near zero facts. I personally don't much care about the supposed "spying" (if it really is happening or not), but I find in using Win 10 that there is just too much "going on" at all times. I sat and watched the disk i/o light for a few hours while doing some other work, and I couldn't believe it, it's as if the machine is truly no longer in my control, and that it's doing whatever (who knows what) it wants to do, not what I'm asking it to do. If you use 10 for a while, and then put a linux distro on, the difference in sheer pc activity is like night and day. It's unreal.

So, while I have no idea exactly what Win 10 is doing, I come away from it with a strong gut feeling that a whole lot of *something* is going on constantly. This, I just don't feel comfortable with, and I also don't know if I can fully trust it. So I have opted to use linux or Win 7 for now...

Bottom line: Nobody but MS knows what Win 10 is really doing. And they're not saying...

 

I don't want to hijack the thread. I just want to mention one last thing. Windows 10 is running very smoothly and speedy and very easy on resources. However every once in awhile Cortana, because of how it works causes spikes with CPU. I don't have the need for it on my desktop, so I've disabled that. You also want to disable P2P Windows Updating.

However lot of people had issues with disk and higher CPU activity because of Cortana.

Softpedia: Windows 10 High CPU Usage Fixes