Windows Update - long time to check for updates

@Fly The same problems with Windows 7 problems exist with Vista too. On one of my Vista computers it took 12 hours to finish checking for updates.

 

Well at least this month they'll be plenty of documented cases for others to find. This will hopefully make it easier on people thinking there's something wrong with their system which was me last month. Updates are there for me, haven't done anything with them yet. I'm still set to "check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them," so at least I'm missing the slow checking portion overnight. This month I won't be surprised if the download and installation takes hours again.

 

It took me five reboots to finish installing 250 MBs of updates... that took several hours.

 

Same here.
Interesting thing is I have two machines running Win 7 Pro 64 bit and one updated in a heartbeat on Friday night (April 15).
The other one ABSOLUTELY would not download and install the updates - it found them, but they would not download.
I downloaded KB3145739 by itself, installed it, rebooted and ran a manual check for updates. It found all of the rest of them (16 important and one optional) in about 10 minutes and is installing therm as I write this . . .
Thank you! and Regards,
Bob

 

http://www.infoworld.com/article/30...tly-speed-up-windows-7-scans-for-updates.html

It was poster EP on AskWoody.com who nailed the magic incantation:

Install a COMBINATION of the following updates on Win7 SP1 -- KB3138612 AND KB3145739. I found out that patching KB3145739 alone without patching the WU Client for Win7 SP1 is not enough.​

 

There was a similar fix for people doing fresh installs of Win 7 SP1, just 2 updates like that, one being the latest WU Client, and it worked for the first update check. But then later, the slow update checking issue reared it's ugly head once again and was back. I bet this might fix it for this month, but then next month the same problem will return.

 

I'm afraid so.
Also, at AskWoody, Noel Carboni replied:

Edit: the URL referring to Noel Carboni's reply changed.

 

I've been having this problem for a few months now on Vista and 7. I found if I go to the M$ download center and get one update, install it and reboot, then Windows Update gets the rest of them okay. I'm starting to loathe Windows Update, even more than usual.

 

I installed the two KBs on clean install of Windows 7 SP1. After which, it took an hour and 15 minutes to check for the inital lot of updates. It's still way to long in my opinion, but obviosuly is much better than it taking many hours.

The second check for updates, took 1 hour and 10 minutes. Subsequent update checks took five minutes or less.

 

Face it folks, there is no current fix for 'slow WU' and it will keep coming back until it is fixed. Everyone (including Woody) is just guessing and poking in the dark when making recommendations.

 

This is exactly the situation. It won't be fixed until MS acknowledges the problem, and finally fixes it. And I'm assuming it CAN be fixed, but who knows for sure...

 

I am highly doubtful that MS has assigned any priority to enhancing the Windows 7 customer experience, or that that they ever plan to do so. Windows 10 is the prime focus for their current business plan. I have been hacking the patch solutions that have been shared and posted so far, with positive results. But , yes it's annoying :-(

My Windows 8.1 laptop has not experienced any of this slow update garbage so far, so it has me thinking that just maybe it's time to update my desktop to Windows 8.1. If I hit my limits of patience, that's most likely what will happen. But I really love my Windows 7, and that will be painful ...

 

I agree. Microsoft wants everyone on Win10.

 

Since months i have this problem too with Windows 7 (in a VM).
There is 100% CPU-load, and nothing is happening for ages (hours/days).

The solution (better: workaround) for me is to look at these bulletins each month, download the updates and installing them manually.
I tried all possible solutions i can find in the web or mentioned in this thread.
Nothing helps at the moment.

 

W10 always updates without any delays whatsoever. But W7 takes <1 hour just to check if there if are updates available (patch Tuesdays).
If there are no updates available the check routine is as quick as always, just a few seconds.
While this is slightly annoying I won't abandon W7. I suspect Microsoft has other means to convince users to migrate but this one's too easy.
I'm not budging.

 

I've done the April Updates on two W7 rigs this week ..... I always wait a minimum of 2 weeks , to allow
the real stinkers to show their true nature
In both cases , the " Check for updates" alone took over 90 minutes !
Both machines had Updates set to " Never" ( intentionally ) and both had MS telemetry turned off ( eg CEIP )

I've worked with W7 since it's release , and I've never seen the process run so slowly , I've only read about it.
On the second machine , just out of curiosity, I watched the network traffic ,and after the initial burst of action
in both directions , almost nothing happened for the next hour or so !

What are we to make of that ?
I can't help thinking that MS are either deliberately choking the update servers to non W10 users ,
or at the very least , not assigning anything like enough server grunt.

The brutal nagware campaign over the past year has clearly failed for them .
If anything it has only made the W10 " Refuseniks" even more determined to hold on to their OS of choice ,
and defend their right to do so .

This present issue look like yet another cynical tactic.

 

I wouldn't put it past M$ to deliberately choke non W10 users; but for me I can manually install one or two updates from the Download Center and after that WU works fine, it only takes a few minutes to get all the rest. Very strange.

 

I have been having the same problem for some time now. I rolled my computer back about 2 weeks ago, and checked for MS updates. Almost 2 hours had passed, and the update check still had not completed. I rebooted, and tried again. I left the update check running for another 2 hours while I was away, and it still did not complete. I tried multiple times over the next day with no luck. I searched on Google hoping to find a fix, or at least identify the problem with no luck. I will definitely have to check to see if KB3138612 is installed on my machine. Thanks for the heads up! It might save me a major pain in the ***!!

 

It turns out it is already installed on my computer. I think it probably was not at the time the problem occurred though. I will keep my fingers crossed when patch Tuesday arrives again.

 

KB3138612 doesn't fix the problem. It may have a placebo effect for some, but it does not heal..

 

Well, to add to what you said, the root "problem" is not about a specific patch. The symptoms have been recently relieved by installing a few specific patches that, when they are not installed, seem to trigger the "problem" during a check for updates.

When they are in the patch list, but not installed, Windows update apparently enters a lengthy loop (maybe a very deep recursive algorithm?) in order to check for all necessary patches, superseded patches, etc. WU then seems to run forever, sometimes hours, or even days, depending on the specific configuration.

This worked on two of my Win 7 PC's (not VM's) experiencing the symptoms, two months in a row. Same scenario, but with different patches each month. Same ones on both PC's. Once the offending patches were applied, searching for the rest of the updates then ran very fast.

I have been avoiding the "get Win 10" patches like the plague, and in doing so I have been delaying all of the latest updates, until the smoke clears and I can take a system image backup. Then I apply the trusted patches and test to make sure all is still working.

The symptoms of the problem, clearly are:
1. High CPU, typically one core. So 25% on a quad core, 50% on a dual core, or even 100% on a single core.
2. Low disk usage.
3. Low network usage.

This has all the signs of a code loop in WU. Bad code courtesy of Microsoft. Not a server load issue, or any of the tin foil hat conspiracy stuff floating around.

Will they fix it? Probably not, assuming they want to abandon Windows 7 as soon as they can, along with XP and Vista.

In my opinion, they should have put out a service pack 2 for Windows 7 a long time ago ... but that ship has probably sailed by now ... that would probably do a lot to improve the update process.

This is all really sad, considering that MS has committed to extended support for Win 7 until 2020.

Ironically, the only way to avoid this headache right now is to enable automatic updates, and take anything MS sends down the chute, LOL! (Well at least after the initial check on patch Tuesday each month)

 

@Tinstaafl On your last comment above, I have enabled automatic updates a month ago and still have this long updating issue. So either way, you're screwed. I enabled automatic updates because I switched to MSE, which needs that. And I also decided I'd just install whatever comes down the chute that's important/critical and remove any updates that turned out bad later. So far so good, but the check for updates last month took almost 4 hours, with 50% CPU usage. What a pain...

 

@Kerodo Turning on automatic updates, won't decrease the time it takes to find updates. But, it does mean you you will never need to manaully open Windows Update and check for updates if you don't want to (unless you ever want to install optional updates). You can just let Windows Update check for and install updates in the background when it decides to.

 

Yep, that's what I prefer at this point. If a bad one slips thru, I have images, and I can also just uninstall and hide it. So I'm good...

 

Yup, I agree. What I found out though, is if I set Windows update to check but let me choose, then I would go through that painful experience EVERY TIME I reboot, rather than just monthly. It seemed to lose track between sessions and start over from the beginning ...