Failed updates following fresh install W7

Sandycheeks · 24 Dec 2015 at 20:02

Installed W7 today and had a load of issues with failing to download updates then failing to install them properly etc...
Losing the will to go on.

Downloaded the Win 7 HP SP1 iso from GetintoPC and checked it with hashmyfiles and it passed that so assuming that's not the issue.

Sighn · 24 Dec 2015 at 21:51

Did you restart again and try to reinstall the updates?

Uther · 24 Dec 2015 at 21:53

Took me several days and about five tries to install all the updates last time I installed W7.

Sandycheeks · 24 Dec 2015 at 22:00

"failure to configure updates, reverting changes"

Just started to try and do them 3 at a time instead of all at once.

Trick · 25 Dec 2015 at 19:23

My fresh install of win7 pro just would not update either. svchost and the update service would chew up 500mb of ram and it'd just sit looking for updates. Did an install of win10 over the top of it and now it works perfectly.

Disco_P · 25 Dec 2015 at 23:55

I've done many fresh installs of windows 7 recently. Best way to approach updates is to check for them and then select them in batches. I keep recommended and important seperate (box is unchecked) and list the important ones by size.

Select the 10 biggest and install. Wait for it to finish and restart.

Then the next 10-20 and repeat.

After the biggest update is less than 10MB I just select the rest of the important ones and install.

Finally I do the recommended ones though I am cautious about the drivers that it recommends as sometimes they are buggy beta drivers.

Sandycheeks · 26 Dec 2015 at 00:09

Disco_P said:
I've done many fresh installs of windows 7 recently. Best way to approach updates is to check for them and then select them in batches. I keep recommended and important seperate (box is unchecked) and list the important ones by size.

Select the 10 biggest and install. Wait for it to finish and restart.

Then the next 10-20 and repeat.

After the biggest update is less than 10MB I just select the rest of the important ones and install.

Finally I do the recommended ones though I am cautious about the drivers that it recommends as sometimes they are buggy beta drivers.

Tried that earlier but it's not playing nice, going to start again when I get a couple of hours spare and do a clean install again.

El_Watcher · 26 Dec 2015 at 12:14

Personally, if you are having that many issues, just use WSUS Offline Updater to download all the updates and get it to install automatically.

I have found it works a lot more reliably than Windows Update to do large number of updates.

Blackjack Davy · 27 Dec 2015 at 22:50

Sandycheeks said:
Tried that earlier but it's not playing nice, going to start again when I get a couple of hours spare and do a clean install again.

Try deleting the contents of Windows\SoftwareDistribution first

deshepherd · 28 Dec 2015 at 12:54

Did clean install of win 7 on a laptop I was about to give away and found it was talking ages to work out what updates were available (left it overnight but from update info seemed to have taken 2-3 hours ... first attempts failed as this was longer than the default "switch off when idle" timeout). Assumed it would only do this first time when it was getting up to date but seemed to still do this a couple of days later. Anyway person who note has laptop did the win10 upgrade so probably no longer an issue

Rroff · 28 Dec 2015 at 12:58

Windows update seems to have gone to **** lately - often taking hours to do the simplest of things on Windows 7 never mind 10. People seem to have marginally better joy using a variety of external downloading/slipstreaming type options but that isn't always an ideal solution.

Which combined with the forced updates on 10 makes things an utter pain.

asim18 · 28 Dec 2015 at 20:41

I've had numerous reports of people's W7 boxes spazzing out due to Windows Updates. Even after repairing by clean install there is definitely something fishy going on with processes relating to Windows Update.

On a handful of machines I've seen evidence of the service host executable relating to WU not only reading, but analysing entire contents of people's hard drives. Last client had almost 200GB of data read and locally analysed.

Whether this is the work of some external attackers using the Windows Update processes as some sort of hook or whether this is an act of Microsoft themselves remains unsubstantiated. However I'm inclined to believe this has something to do with the Microsoft-NSA collaboration and the new data mining initiatives.

What can be confirmed is that Windows 7 users are just as vulnerable as Windows 8 and 10 users. Therefore I'd recommend people take all the necessary measures they would normally take with windows 8 or 10.

Rroff · 28 Dec 2015 at 20:52

^^ I believe the Windows 10 eligibility/compatibility update(s) for 7 does some significant poking around (not sure if it does anything that could be considered dubious) so it could be that.

Sandycheeks · 29 Dec 2015 at 01:46

Fresh install done earlier on but had many issues, beforehand...black screen with stationary cursor.
Reset bios 4 times and ended up having to change from HDMI to VGA for ? reason.

Had problems installing chipset drivers from usb so had to stick a dvd drive in for a bit.
Install seems fine and has found 187 updates so far.
I decided to download/install them in batches of 20 or so and up to now it seems to be working ok....although I have only installed the first 20 so I'll see what tomorrow brings.

Sandycheeks · 29 Dec 2015 at 11:48

Okay so problems again this morning seems to be starting from net framework 4.5, update hangs and fixit does nothing.
Downloaded repair tool...

Sandycheeks · 29 Dec 2015 at 13:32

Even more problems now grrrrr.......
Managed to download and install some more updates.
Decided to open up catalyst but it says its missing?
Downloaded the newer crimson and now the tv/dvd combi has stopped working altogether.