W7 Windows Update hangs

Windows 7 update hangs at "Checking for updates", grabs 1GB extra memory and pegs CPU at 100%.

Googled, found "Windows Update Client for Windows 7: June 2015" KB3050265, installed it to no avail. Lots of posts about HUGE memory leaks re, Windows Update, bla bla.

Any ideas?

Best bet is usually to just let it run it's course, it will finish eventually. There are some common sense things you can do to speed it up. If you are talking about a fresh install of windows and office, do the windows updates first before you enable the setting to update other microsoft products also, as searching for office updates also takes extra time. You can also save time by installing any relevant service packs first. Install IE11 seperatly, so you don't waste time downloading tons of updates for IE8, etc.

Thank you. It's been running fine for 2+ years, did all the updates, but a couple of months ago it started stalling. I let WU run for 1+ hours, several times, it's not doing anything, no disk or network activity, it just pegs the CPU and grabs all the memory.

Start the update before going to bed and let it run overnight.

My go-to fix for Windows Update acting up is this:
1) Stop the Windows Update and BITS services
2) Delete everything under C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution
3) Start the Windows Update service

Give WU a few minutes to reinitalize itself, then check for updates again. Might be worth grabbing the latest WU client from here first as well:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/949104

The 1GB+ problem is supposed to be fixed in a recent client, and I know it definitely fixed the problem for me on a large number of servers and PCs at work, which were showing the same issue.

I'm having the same issue on my spare rig. I had installed Windows 7 Home Premium on it for some testing of different CPU's so it never got activated. When I finally got back to it the thing was giving me that software could be counterfeit crap so I wiped the SSD (did a firmware flash too) and re-installed Windows 7 exactly as it was before. Now it won't update. Its been sitting on the "checking for updates" screen for over 24 hours, I updated the installer with the KB949104, changed my DNS server, everything I could think of. Still no updates.

Thank you, I did the WU update, it still hangs. So I deleted the partition and re-installed it as a guest VM under Linux. I only boot w7 occasionally to test my software, and guess what -- it hangs in the VM as well...

MS may be killing w7 so people will switch to w10?