Is anyone else experiencing problems with Windows Update?

[stuck]

You mention in your first post; laptops..... assuming then the link is wireless - don't forget to move them near the wireless router...

A valid point but not in this case. When I run updates I always use an Ethernet cable, even though the router is less than a metre away from where the netbook sits.

This issue is definitely a problem a Microsoft's end but I'm hopeful that it's fixed for now / until MS breaks it again.

Ken

[CData]

yes just a week or so past - I had 1 laptop that was in perpetual restart mode....for a day and 1/2....and yet at some point it cleared itself...I just let it keep cooking though turned it off over night.... had pretty much given up but yet it did resolve itself....weirdly it then also gave me a tour of Windows 10 as if it was a brand new install/upgrade rather than a routine auto upgrade (had been win 10 for 6 months)..that was pretty strange....

[John Gray]

I have been using both a wired and a wireless connection on the current laptop, and with one of Woody's suggested fixes (the other one failed installation) it worked to the extent that the I/O bytes count per second was non-zero, but even after overnight it failed...

The second night seemed to produce results, after a(nother) reboot this morning:
272 Windows updates (just a little under 2 GB in total size), plus 11 optional updates

These are (I hope) being installed at home, as I type at work.

[ChrisGreaves]

I've just down followed the advice in Woody's article and ...

Thanks Ken.
Once my podcast d/l is complete it's off to the noontime concert for me, than lunch with Cathy, and then off to Northern Districts library to put all this into practice.
So if y'all don't hear back from me until I'm with my netbook in Melun next September, y'all'll know who to blame

[Jay Freedman]

In addition to JoeP's suggestion higher up in this thread: An unlikely combination of two Windows updates can reduce scan times from hours to minutes.

I've just down followed the advice in Woody's article and Check for updates took only 15 mins to report back with a list of updates. First time it's been that speedy since before last summer I think.

Ken

I have a 12-year-old seriously underpowered laptop (it's maxed out at 1GB of RAM) that I keep around for masochistic purposes. It ran Windows 7 v e r y s l o w l y... Last October, after taking an image backup, I wiped it and put XP on it, hoping to use it as a trade-in, but never got rid of it. So a few weeks ago I put the Win7 image back on it, but Windows Update would never finish a scan.

I manually installed both of the updates Woody mentioned, but it still wouldn't finish after scanning for more than 24 hours.

Today I hit it with everything: I removed and reinstalled both updates, ran the reset batch file (Option 2 from SevenForums), and left it scanning for 4.5 hours. It's now in the process of installing 112 updates (3.4 GB -- really glad I have a good broadband connection!).

[stuck]

...I manually installed both of the updates Woody mentioned, but it still wouldn't finish after scanning for more than 24 hours...

In which case this might be relevant:
http://www.askwoody.com/2016/turn-off-w ... l-patches/
My little netbook has never had WU set at anything other than 'never check for updates'. It has only ever been updated when I've clicked 'search for updates'.

Ken

[Jay Freedman]

Yes, Ken, I did turn off the WU service before installing each of the two updates. That hint was somewhere in the comments on Woody's other thread. Thanks for the reminder!

[ChrisGreaves]

Hi CData; I am responding to your post because it is the latest in the thread AND it mentions WiFi speed.

More (draft) details here.
I rely on free WiFi in public buildings for access to the internet. I am retired and while that suggests I have all the time in the world, my life is rich with concerts, vacation, day-trips, meetings with friends and colleagues, book-reading, language-learning and walking in the sunshine.
In early April 2016 I abandoned an attempt to update Windows on my DELL Win7HP SP1 laptop after waiting over two hours while Microsoft “Checked for Updates”.
My latest attempts (Thursday, May 05, 2016 and Friday, May 06, 2016) to update my system resulted in around 90 minutes spent Checking for Updates. This is significantly better than over two hours with no end in sight, but significantly worse than some claims for 15 minutes.
The actual download of updates took me only 20 minutes.
Installation of updates took over 4½ hours.
Configuring the updates (“Do not turn off your computer” took 30 minutes, give or take.

EventTiming.png

Bottm Line: 8:30 to 15:30 is seven hours with the machine devoted to the processes. WiFi speed is not an issue since the actual downloading took only twenty minutes (as shown by screen snapshots and Bitmeter readouts).

I plan to study WindowsUpdates for my little Win7 Starter Acer Netbook, then repeat the study on a newly-installed Win7 HP SP1 on this DELL laptop.
Suggestions/Guidelines for my procedures welcomed.

[ChrisGreaves]

... and left it scanning for 4.5 hours. It's now in the process of installing 112 updates (3.4 GB -- really glad I have a good broadband connection!).

Hello, my respected superior. :doffcap:
You will, I think, have seen my summary of twenty minutes ago.
How confident are you that the lengthy process is caused by connection speed?
During my session last Friday, I saw a twenty-minute burst of serious d/l (600MB to 900MB/sec) followed by hours of no visible spikes at all in Bitmeter.
I did see little pieces showing up in Bitmemter that shows "42MB/s" or so for about a second.
I took those to be something other than Windows Update doing periodic checks across my WiFi connection.

Win7SP1Updates_BitMeter0937.png

FWIW here is a coarse-grained summary of my WiFi activity.
I now notice that Thursday showed some serious d/l avtivity, so maybe a good deal of the patches were d/l that day, leaving only 20 minutes worth for Friday.
However, I don't recall seeing the d/l activity while I was watching the "Checking for Updates" nonsense.

Which is why I plan to rerun the study late this week or early next week.
Thanks Jay.

[CData]

No disagreement. One really is managing links in a chain. The issue can be MS's servers, the backbone internet, the WIFI, or your PC (yes indeed your virus scan might be chewing up your CPU or maybe watching a video while waiting...)
So when it is slow - one does what one can....and in the case of WIFI there can be both noise and signal strength. This causes Ack/Nack errors and retransmissions - slowing things down. So what you want to do is try and be reasonably close to the transmitter to eliminate this possibility. ... that's it... that the WIFI was not the issue in one's slow experience doesn't surprise me but it could be in someone else's....

[Jay Freedman]

... and left it scanning for 4.5 hours. It's now in the process of installing 112 updates (3.4 GB -- really glad I have a good broadband connection!).

Hello, my respected superior. :doffcap:
You will, I think, have seen my summary of twenty minutes ago.
How confident are you that the lengthy process is caused by connection speed?

I mentioned my connection only because the 3.4 GB download took about 10 minutes, instead of the hour or more that it could take with a slower connection. It was a very minor part of the process.

Even after the steps I took to fix the slow scanning, it still took 4.5 hours -- completely unacceptable. And because I started from a restored image backup, the computer needed only the updates for the last six months, not everything since the release of Windows 7 (for which I might still be waiting ).

[ChrisGreaves]

... the 3.4 GB download ... was a very minor part of the process.

Thanks Jay.

[stuck]

And another possible solution comes to light...
http://www.infoworld.com/article/306969 ... oblem.html

Ken

[DaveA]

Yesterday before the Windows 10 system got updated my MS, I did a manual check.
It took over an hour to find any updates and then another hour to down load.
On the other systems Windows 7 32 and 64 bit, and Windows 8.1, it was just as bad.
So it appears to be ALL platforms are affected and NOT just non-Windows 10!

[ChrisGreaves]

Yesterday before the Windows 10 system got updated my MS, I did a manual check.
It took over an hour to find any updates and then another hour to down load.
On the other systems Windows 7 32 and 64 bit, and Windows 8.1, it was just as bad.
So it appears to be ALL platforms are affected and NOT just non-Windows 10!

So presumably the best ploy for the amateur patcher is:-
(1) Install Win7 HP SP1 from the factory DVD
(2) Install patches KB3138612 AND KB3145739, which are already d/l and available on the laptop
(3) Install patch KB 3153199 which in theory is all you really need in order to ...
(4) Run Windows Update from the Control Panel.
It being understood that backups etc are to be made, and it might be interesting to log durations of each phase for future reference.

[HansV]

Yesterday before the Windows 10 system got updated my MS, I did a manual check.
It took over an hour to find any updates and then another hour to down load.

On my Windows 10 PC, manually checking for updates takes about 10 seconds, so it seems to vary extremely widely...

[JoeP]

Running the latest Insider Preview build 14342 on a Surface Pro 3 i5 an update check took about 10 seconds.

Joe

[Jay Freedman]

I suspect that if Windows 10 doesn't have a messed-up Windows Update, checking for updates should always be very quick because it only has to look for the latest cumulative update. Earlier versions of WU, with hundreds of separate patches to check, will probably always take a few minutes at minimum. Still, anything more than about 10 minutes is excessive.