Windows 10 May update super slow install

Golf1.6 · 25 Oct 2019 at 12:26

I'm installing the may update due to some issues I have with the current windows I have. It's developed a bug where it won't wake up from suspend and I'd have to do a hard reset to get it out.

I've made 3 attempts to install windows, each time it failed around 24%.

I cleared up free space and have 50GB free space on the hard drive.

Right now it's working it's way through. I set up the install around 7pm last night, got stuck at 24% and very very slow it's working up slowly maybe 4 hours to move up 1 percent. It's currently at 27%.

Anyone know or have any idea what happens around 24-27% to slow the install down so much. The laptop isn't bad, it handles windows 10 fine. The pre-install checks suggested it would take the upgrade easily. My only guess would be it's some driver issue during this time. At what point do you reckong it will get past the driver issues and continue the install at normal speed?

ShotInTheAss86 · 25 Oct 2019 at 13:54

is this 1903 feature update you're installing?

Be interesting to know the spec of the device. I found 1903 to be rather fast compared to previous feature updates and also the most stable to use

Golf1.6 · 25 Oct 2019 at 14:07

It's not a system spec issue, it's some sort of driver conflict i think

Dell e6230 laptop
8GB DDR3
300GB SSD parition (50GB free)
Intel Core i3 (3rd Gen) 3120M / 2.5 GHz / 3 MB Cache

Golf1.6 · 25 Oct 2019 at 14:08

The appdata folders have balooned ridiculously large. Maybe it's now time to do a clean install.

A lot of help files suggest doing a install from a windows CD with the may update pre-installed.

Golf1.6 · 25 Oct 2019 at 16:04

oh progress, it's on 87% now. it got stuck around 24-27% for a day.

ShotInTheAss86 · 25 Oct 2019 at 16:31

I agree its not a spec issue, unless you got an old mech drive for the OS partition and its on the way out, I've seen older devices withmech drives take over an hour to install a feature update, now I just bin mech drives and put in a SSD if i come across anyone using one. But spec would help to identify chipset for drivers. The time it's taking is ridiculous.

45mins tops for feature update to progress through from the initial restart back to sign-in screen for a slower spec device such as an mobile core i3.

Wonder if it puts any useful data into event log around that 24% mark of the install

darael · 25 Oct 2019 at 17:15

Golf1.6 said:
The appdata folders have balooned ridiculously large. Maybe it's now time to do a clean install.

A lot of help files suggest doing a install from a windows CD with the may update pre-installed.

Golf1.6 said:
I've made 3 attempts to install windows, each time it failed around 24%.

Were these three attempts not clean installs? How did you try and install Windows, using the Update Assistant?

Anyway, after one hour of installing I'd have questioned what was wrong. After two hours I would be giving up, making a complete backup and doing a clean install from a USB stick - and this is what I would do if I were you.

You can easily reinstall programs and restore your settings in a day, let alone the two days you've spent so far.

Golf1.6 · 28 Oct 2019 at 14:58

darael said:
Were these three attempts not clean installs? How did you try and install Windows, using the Update Assistant?

Anyway, after one hour of installing I'd have questioned what was wrong. After two hours I would be giving up, making a complete backup and doing a clean install from a USB stick - and this is what I would do if I were you.

You can easily reinstall programs and restore your settings in a day, let alone the two days you've spent so far.

yeah, should have done a clean install. Windows needs it after a few years. The appdata folder baloons out of control and there are no third party apps that declutter it. No choice but to reset the system.

I succeeded with the update assistant install, but there were some underlying issues, (system wont wake up from sleep, it would just freeze). In the end just went for a clean install.

I wish windows a bit more like mac with time machine - it effectively takes a snapshop of all your files and settings and you can just do a clean install and time machine restore and you've got your files back exactly how you left them.

snips86x · 28 Oct 2019 at 14:59

Update 1903 took about 35-45 mins to do last night, must have been pretty big.

Rroff · 28 Oct 2019 at 15:07

I doubt it is a spec issue - I've had a very varied experience across a range of adequate specs updating to 1903 - I was trying to do someone's laptop recently which was an i3 IIRC with 8GB of RAM and it took almost exactly 48 hours in the end to go from 0 to 1% installing - after the first time it was stuck a 0% for ~6 hours I did all the stuff like cleaning out winsxs, etc. and basically put it back to a clean install with just their data and in the end I had to just leave it 2 days before it started making progress - then it jumped up within 5 minutes to 10-20% and completed in another couple of hours or so. Other systems took 30-40 minutes to do 1903 and one of my tablets took around 6 hours.

Windows update is a ****** disgrace IMO - sure it generally works OK but too often it doesn't and when it doesn't you have poor ability to take control of the process.

EDIT: The hardware platform is same chipset, etc. as your Dell e6230 so maybe some kind of issue related to that - they hadn't used it in around 18 months or so - so I assumed it was some how related to that.