How long to wait for Windows 7 update?

Marcdaddy

2[H]4U
Joined
Feb 21, 2003
Messages
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Hey guys I just installed windows 7 Pro retail and its been 30 minutes in the Still Checking Updates, I switched to 10 awhile ago and don't remember it taking this long. Thoughts? Is there another way to do this?
 
I would download the latest Service Pack or at least Service Pack 1 if your edition didn't have it included. Also, there have been some changes in the update software since RTM, so that may be interfering with your ability to get updates.
 
Service Pack 1 has it included, its almost comical how long its going. Im in to deep at this point, I guess just turn off the moniter and move on. I even downloaded the windows Fix It Tool and seems like nothing is wrong.
 
You can also try installing Internet Explorer 11 manually first, so that it's not trying to update from IE8, and especially since it for some reason will insist on installing IE8 security updates first instead of just installing IE11.....
 
I have seen recently on a fresh SP1 install with IE11 and .NET crap installed the OS taking 2-3 hours (!!) to check for the updates. That's just checking, not downloading, not installing. It has gotten pretty stupid these days.
 
I have seen recently on a fresh SP1 install with IE11 and .NET crap installed the OS taking 2-3 hours (!!) to check for the updates. That's just checking, not downloading, not installing. It has gotten pretty stupid these days.

this. I just did this on multiple machines and it takes a good couple of hours to come back with updates ready for download. Expect 132 important ones or so.
 
Same thing, it took FOREVER when I installed Win7 in a vbox recently to check for updates.
 
This has been happening to me for months now too. On all my Win 7 machines. At home and at work. I think this is just how they are going to treat Windows 7 users now.
 
I tried one of those post-SP1 updaters that downloads all the updates and then tosses 'em onto a USB thumbdrive, you start it up, walk off and let it do its thing. Missed like 75+ updates and didn't honestly save me time. I tried one of those AIO updated .ISOs from you-know-where and it installed all but maybe 10-20 updates and I think that was because I was using the .ISO one month behind.

But yeah, waiting a few hours is freakin' nuts. :mad:
 
They tend to bundle the updates now. So instead of having "5 updates available" 20 times, you get "1560 updates available" and only have a few after that.
 
You could, of course, create your own updated ISO which is pretty easy to do and when that's used it installs the OS and everything is updated to the point you made the ISO itself - I just got done creating my latest one with all updates (except those retroactive ones pushing the telemetry crap from Windows 10 onto 7 as well as anything else related to Windows 10). I use the Update Pack from:

http://forum.oszone.net/thread-257198.html

Yes, it's a Russian site, it's very well known, this person has been creating the update pack for years now and it's never been an issue for me and many, many other people. I always run a full sfc /scannow pass after the installation to ensure all the proper Microsoft digital signatures are in place as well. If needed, use Google Translate to convert the content of the page to your chosen language and run with it.

Infinitely superior and more useful than installing Windows 7 SP1 and then manually doing the multiple reboots and downloading necessary to get fully updated.

You can use this 653MB updater to create a fully updated ISO that basically requires one reboot (about 15 mins start to finish) or you can do a straight install from the Windows 7 SP1 ISO and then do the 7+ reboots as well as downloading about 2.1GB of updates (probably 2+ hours complete).

It's not hard to realize which is the superior method. ;)
 
It popped up after I installed one of the nonimparative updates. Not sure which one, try those.
 
I think MS has shut down 75% of the Windows 7 and 8 update servers. Only 10 gets full capacity now.

Been taking ages for anything but 10 for the past 6 months.
 
This has been happening to me for months now too. On all my Win 7 machines. At home and at work. I think this is just how they are going to treat Windows 7 users now.

I do frequent reformats of my Windows 7 machines and noticed the same thing...doesn't take hours but it sometimes takes a good 30-35 minutes just 'checking for updates'...just another attempt by MS to force people into 'upgrading' to Windows 10 is my guess
 
Plot twist: Marcdaddy is still waiting for those updates to finish and has gone into a coma in front of the screen.
 
I seen this too on a win7 VM. All this to experiment with win10 in an "offline" VM. I haven't gotten my all my updates yet. I'm not dedicating time to it when I have other more pressing projects. Going to try these alternate updates, its a VM so no 'pain'. Thanks for linking them.

This is one of the reasons I created a disk image after installing my updates for my machine. *If* I have to 'reload' windows, i can restore my "updated" win7 and not have to dodge the gwx updates again and waste my bandwidth & time. I hit the brakes on updates when the Win10 updates started coming down the pipe. No updates since last March. I have installed a handful of KB hotfixes to fix some stupid problems here and there.
 
The other thing you have to watch out for is if rebuilding a 4GB ram Windows 7 machine, is to only install around 70 updates at a time. If you pull in the whole 200+ the machine runs out of ram around update 165 and then takes ages to install the rest as it churns on the HDD.
 
The other thing you have to watch out for is if rebuilding a 4GB ram Windows 7 machine, is to only install around 70 updates at a time. If you pull in the whole 200+ the machine runs out of ram around update 165 and then takes ages to install the rest as it churns on the HDD.

Mine ran out of memory and crashed in the middle ... never do all of them haha. I think I did 40 per batch.
 
I haven't had this issue recently and i've done 5 or 6 new installs over the last two weeks. All have been on an SSD or a VM with HDD. The HDD definitely took way longer than the SSD but nothing like what people are describing. The SSD install and full patch was quite fast. Also did a few Server 2008 and R2 and had no issues with either.
 
Think Last time I installed Win7 from scratch it took me about 6 hours to get fully updated, then another week to install all my progs and games and tweak it up to how I like it. PITA. Just bought a 2TB USB HDD just so I can back up my Steam folder instead of downloading them every time I do a fresh OS install. It is getting ridiculous as everything is getting massive, my BF4 install is now over 60GB alone. That is one of the reasons why I have decided to become a Luddite, getting sick of this stupid merry go-round and things are only going to get worse so off I get.
 
I just went through this last night with a laptop that had been powered off for several years. Try shutting down the windows update service and install these two fixes manually, after that it finally finished checking for updates, and started downloading them:

you can stop the service with net stop wuauserv at the command line

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/3102810

Just ran into this with a laptop I'm upgrading for a friend.

New install of Win-7 SP1 sits there all day "Checking for updates".
Tried manually updating the Windows Update Agent and the Windows Update Fixit, no help.

Stumbled upon that second link (kb3102810) and that fix did it.

Download the patch to a USB drive. Reboot the system and pull the network cable
or turn off wireless. You want to avoid letting the machine get stuck in a "Checking for updates"
loop before you can install the patch.

So after the patch, now the laptop found 210 updates in about 3 minutes.
Fixed.
 
Just ran into this with a laptop I'm upgrading for a friend.

New install of Win-7 SP1 sits there all day "Checking for updates".
Tried manually updating the Windows Update Agent and the Windows Update Fixit, no help.

Stumbled upon that second link (kb3102810) and that fix did it.

Download the patch to a USB drive. Reboot the system and pull the network cable
or turn off wireless. You want to avoid letting the machine get stuck in a "Checking for updates"
loop before you can install the patch.

So after the patch, now the laptop found 210 updates in about 3 minutes.
Fixed.

out of curiosity, was it activated? I notice if I do not activate windows first, it sometimes does what you describe.
 
>>out of curiosity, was it activated?

You have a good point there.... it was not activated yet at the time.

I did think of that, but also thought all should work well until the 3 days runs out.
I wanted to make sure everything was working well before burning the license with the activation.

I don't remember problems relating to not activating immediately before, but that may have been a
fix in this case too.... just activate it to get updates working.

Either way..... very good point, I'll have to remember this for next time.
 
This reminds me of exactly what happened with the Windows XP auto updater back when it was being phased out. That one was worse where it would use 99% of your CPU during the check making those already slow XP machines come to a crawl.

Anyway I just wanted to say yes the KB3102810 update solved this for me. I found this a couple weeks ago when reinstalling a Windows7 machine. It's unfortunate that this is a trend with these windows phase outs. We still have a long way to go from 2020 as well.
 
Hey thank you so much for this thread.

I have literally been trying all day to update W7 Pro.

The automatic function supposedly D/L 200 updates that took 3 hours and then something failed and borked the whole install:mad:

I did a fresh install and now have manual enabled but still was stuck in the forever loop of "checking"....

I D/L the KB 3102810 and installed it.

In literally 2 minutes I had 152 updates ready to D/L.

Thanks again!!!:D
 
I ran into this last night trying to clean install 7 Pro (SP1) on a Xeon E3 v3 based system. Hopefully KB3102810 does the trick because I'm about ready to hulk smash some expensive hardware.
 
I ran into this last night trying to clean install 7 Pro (SP1) on a Xeon E3 v3 based system. Hopefully KB3102810 does the trick because I'm about ready to hulk smash some expensive hardware.

I was feeling the same way.

At first I thought something was FUBAR'd so I reloaded the entire OS.

Trust me, it works, really well.
 
Thanks for the KB suggestion guys.
I too have experienced this up to the point of it getting ridicolous.
Also, it seems you're almost never done. Say you have 100 updates and the installation fails.
You retry - again.
So I uncheck like 2/3 of them and install them in parts - that seems to work.
However, once you have one set of them installed, all it takes is a reboot, a few minutes of waiting and you get another 100 updates. There's plenty of rebooting. On a 10 megabit crappy connection I have it could take a whole day.
Sticking a SSD oddly enough sped it up a lot.
 
I was feeling the same way.

At first I thought something was FUBAR'd so I reloaded the entire OS.

Trust me, it works, really well.
I tried to install 150+ updates in one shot. I figure an 4C/8T Xeon with 32gB of RAM should be able to handle that, but I could be surprised when I arrive home to see the results of that decision. :mad:
 
I tried to install 150+ updates in one shot. I figure an 4C/8T Xeon with 32gB of RAM should be able to handle that, but I could be surprised when I arrive home to see the results of that decision. :mad:

Once I stumbled on to this thread, I D/L 100 updates in literally a few minutes; the install was flawless.
 
Just did another laptop for a friend, same thing happened and it was activated this time.

Installed SSD and reloaded a Dell laptop with a Dell Win-7 SP1 OEM 64-bit disk and it sat there for hours "Checking for updates".

Worked fine after applying kb3102810, all updated now.
 
Once I stumbled on to this thread, I D/L 100 updates in literally a few minutes; the install was flawless.
The install of 150+ updates did go off without a hitch while I was at work. It seems a little ridiculous that you have to manually patch the system in order for it to work though. That should be the first patch the system automatically downloads.
 
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