Tons of updates... necessary?

P

PNWSGM

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 9, 2012
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First off I don't know if this is in the right section, if not mods can you move it?

So I have a laptop that is 2.5 years old running windows 7. It seems to have close to 100 update packages installed. My question is, the computer is runs slow is there anyway that all these updates can be slowing it down?

If so can I work through deleting them or would it be easier to just take all my important information and install a fresh version of Windows 7 off a disc I bought a few months ago when I built my desktop?

Thanks!
 
No. No, no, no. No. Do not remove the updates. Several of them you probably can't remove, and the rest should under no condition be removed. They're not what's slowing your computer.
 
For Windows 7, I would install Service Pack 1, the Performance Update and then the Slow Boot, Slow Login patch.

Once thats done, fire up Windows Update and install all the critical security updates. If you want to speed the process up, you can manually install IE10 (assuming you're going to move to it) before doing any of this, that way you won't get the 8/9 updates, and then 10.

The updates shouldn't slow your machine down. They might cause some fragmentation on your hard drive. but I wouldn't expect to take a performance hit. A fully patched Win7 machine should run fine.
 
It's not even just booting and what not, just at idle the computer is slow. I will try installing the things you mentioned above.

A note: Idling the cpu is at 15%-25% usage and the memory is at 1.48GB used out of 2GB. I can't seem to figure out why, but software is definitely not my thing. Any ideas?
 
Also, is it weird that a "Graphics Media Accelerator Driver" for Intel is 37.1GB large?
 
Demon10000 said:
Performance Update
Click to expand...
That was included in SP1
PNWSGM said:
It's not even just booting and what not, just at idle the computer is slow. I will try installing the things you mentioned above.

A note: Idling the cpu is at 15%-25% usage and the memory is at 1.48GB used out of 2GB. I can't seem to figure out why, but software is definitely not my thing. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
Open up task manager (ctrl+Shft+esc) and click Processes tab, then click show processes for all users, then click the CPU column, at the top, to sort. You'll see a lot of 00 but if you click it again you will bring one to the top, which is the highest percentage usage application.
 
I've been looking for rollup updates for Win7 SP1 but there are very few.
 
Last edited:
bigdogchris said:
That was included in SP1Open up task manager (ctrl+Shft+esc) and click Processes tab, then click show processes for all users, then click the CPU column, at the top, to sort. You'll see a lot of 00 but if you click it again you will bring one to the top, which is the highest percentage usage application.
Click to expand...

And what will this tell me?
 
Demon10000 said:
For Windows 7, I would install Service Pack 1, the Performance Update and then the Slow Boot, Slow Login patch.

Once thats done, fire up Windows Update and install all the critical security updates. If you want to speed the process up, you can manually install IE10 (assuming you're going to move to it) before doing any of this, that way you won't get the 8/9 updates, and then 10.

The updates shouldn't slow your machine down. They might cause some fragmentation on your hard drive. but I wouldn't expect to take a performance hit. A fully patched Win7 machine should run fine.
Click to expand...

Nice catch on that SBSL patch. Makes me wonder why they don't openly advert that patch to non-blog-followers, otherwise I'd have never heard of it.
 
PNWSGM said:
And what will this tell me?
Click to expand...
To see what process is using the most CPU cycles (slow down your PC).

Skripka said:
Nice catch on that SBSL patch. Makes me wonder why they don't openly advert that patch to non-blog-followers, otherwise I'd have never heard of it.
Click to expand...
The patch primarily applies to Enterprise related things like Group Policy, etc. Slow boot slow logon related to group policy preference processing, etc.
 
Skripka said:
Nice catch on that SBSL patch. Makes me wonder why they don't openly advert that patch to non-blog-followers, otherwise I'd have never heard of it.
Click to expand...

The update is more geared toward enterprise customers as it addresses a bunch of stuff most home users probably won't run in to. Check out the hotfixes in the KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2775511/en-us) . We just put it on the blog to get the word out since most of our readers are enterprise customers ;)
 
mmtom said:
The update is more geared toward enterprise customers as it addresses a bunch of stuff most home users probably won't run in to. Check out the hotfixes in the KB (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2775511/en-us) . We just put it on the blog to get the word out since most of our readers are enterprise customers ;)
Click to expand...
Can you talk the big wigs into allowing more hotfix/security rollups? If we're not getting SP2 at least more rollups would be great! Also, what is the test procedure for rollups of this magnitude?

Thanks ;)
 
bigdogchris said:
Can you talk the big wigs into allowing more hotfix/security rollups? If we're not getting SP2 at least more rollups would be great! Also, what is the test procedure for rollups of this magnitude?

Thanks ;)
Click to expand...

lol, I'll see what I can do, though I'm just a lowly field engineer. Hopefully this type of thing is the strategy going forward.

As far as testing, this isn't official guidance or anything, but in my experience I would roll it out to a set of IT users, from there have "test" groups setup in WSUS and roll it out to them (making the helpdesk aware that the test/pilot group exists), then once I'm comfortable with it, roll it out enterprise wide. That's what I see a lot of my customers do.
 
if your machine is running slow, check for virus and malware... I got a 3+ year old dell studio with the original i5 and has no issues running windows 7. Neither does my 5 year old Dell Vostro 1400 with a core 2 duo 1.8Ghz
 
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