How broken is windows update for W7 users?

nightmare99 said:
Calm down dear, it was a serious suggestion as 10 does have a vastly improved servicing stack and would not suffer the same clean install & patching issue as 7.

If you insist on using 7 then make sure you have the servicing stack update, the convenience update released recently and you should be able to get up and running in only a few hours.
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Apologies if my /rant came across as aggressive, it was not intended to be.
It just seems when ever someone mentions the poor recent performance/support of WU with Win7 the 'default' reply is install Win 10 :D

I found all of those rollups to be of no use to my system, I simply sit their searching for updates for 2 hours, download 6GB in the background (via BITS) and then am presented with no updates except the nagware for win 10 or a definitions update, oh and of course all the language packs every time, even though I hide them :confused:
 
I've had this issue for a long time on my old pc running windows 7 64bit (last supported os on S939 cpu) Waiting x amount of hours to find updates then x amount of hours before it starts to download them. I have bits and windows update services disabled by default otherwise svhost would constantly consume an entire core slowing the system to a crawl.

Looking around for solutions, a lot just say to update to latest windows update components and ie cumulative update but it never changed anything. I did come across an article that suggested https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3161664 (security update for kernel mode drivers: June 14, 2016 ) and this one seems to have done the trick on the old machine. Fire up windows update and 10 mins later a list of about 30 updates was waiting and it downloaded them right away. I am not ready to leave win update running in the background though ;)
 
MadMatty said:
I did come across an article that suggested https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3161664 (security update for kernel mode drivers: June 14, 2016 ) and this one seems to have done the trick on the old machine. Fire up windows update and 10 mins later a list of about 30 updates was waiting and it downloaded them right away.
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Nice find. Windows Update found 171 important and 106 optional updates in the space of 10 minutes!
 
following up on your kb3161664 recommendation

quote June 14th, 2016 at 15:47

The Windows Update search/scan “forever” problem has once again resurfaced for Win7 SP1 as of June 14 (June Patch Tuesday). The KB3153199 Win7 updates are no longer doing the job. And once again a new win32k.sys security update (KB3161664) has been released (MS16-073), which supersedes/replaces KB3153199. Win7 SP1 users should now install KB3161664 to speed up Windows Update scans instead of KB3153199 as of today 6/14.

So far I have not gotten any Windows 10 upgrade offers on my Win7 computers as I already used GWX Control Panel and Never10 tools to permanently disable Windows 10 upgrades.
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June 21, 2016 at 6:22 pm
It looks like Microsoft has released a more permanent fix to the problem – KB3161647 which is part of the KB3161608 Update Rollup of June 2016.

If KB3161664 win32k.sys fix is not installed, try installing the KB3161608 update rollup, which updates the WU client.
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I have a lot to learn as those folks are also referencing mechanism to ensure w10 update blocked
 
Nice,
I just checked my update history and I grabbed that KB3161664 on 23rd June when I used autopatcher, decided to:

net start wuauserv
net start bits

Loaded up WU and got 24 updates in under 4 minutes! - It's a miracle, of course the nagware was all there again, namely:

KB3035583
KB295266
KB2990214

And all the telemetry spyware updates:

KB3080149
KB3075249
KB3068708
KB3022345

Good that it actually works again though I suppose :eek:
 
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For those that had done a clean/fresh win 7 install, did you note down driver versions off of the original install before you did this ? is there an automatic way to capture these.

[ for wireless card / sd driver / audio / gpu I have installed some specific dell specified drivers over the years and not saved them somewhere, equally when I previously updated a sony vaio from vista->win7 I had a spread-sheet where I collected best advice on driver versions and had then pre-loaded these on an sd card ready to run after the basic win 7 install ]
 
I cannot help with that, but what I do is:

Clean install Win7, do all the updates and install all drivers, install my most used programs (Firefox, add-ons etc) and get the system to a base point.
I then use Macrium Reflect to image the OS disk.

On a USB I have the winPE iso that runs Macrium.

Any problems with windows and then just boot to USB, repair the image and I am back in windows in 3 minutes with everything installed an ready to go.

If you don't need to repair it for 6 months or a year when you do all you have to do is update Firefox and any other essential progs and grab 20 or so windows updates.

I do that with every system I own, when I get new hardware I just repair from the USB, install new hardware then re-image it again for next time.

I havent installed windows from new since my first install of Win7 in 2010 :)

I am about to upgrade my system, so will have to do my first Win7 install from scratch in 6 years :(
 
groovesection said:
As it stands I am currently VM'ing Linux, if I can find the programs I need and support for my hardware then it's bye bye M$
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I'd be all over Linux if Lightroom existed on the platform and if gaming was as broad as it is on Windows but unfortunately as they are my main uses it kinda rules it out.

I used Autopatcher in the end and it worked.
 
Agreed.
I can get drivers for my HD dual TV tuner for Linux, but DVBViewer is such an awesome program I could not use anything else.
Over 8000 recordings since 2012 and not one failure and that includes dual full MUX recording both 40Mbit HD streams at once ;0

I looked into running Linux and a VM with win7 as the guest, but VM cannot directly access the hardware (PCI-E) . sigh
 
jpaul said:
For those that had done a clean/fresh win 7 install, did you note down driver versions off of the original install before you did this ? is there an automatic way to capture these.

[ for wireless card / sd driver / audio / gpu I have installed some specific dell specified drivers over the years and not saved them somewhere, equally when I previously updated a sony vaio from vista->win7 I had a spread-sheet where I collected best advice on driver versions and had then pre-loaded these on an sd card ready to run after the basic win 7 install ]
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You can use Double Driver to capture the actual drivers and then restore them later if that's easier. Double Driver is a bit old now, but it even works on W10, so I can't see any issues with W7.
 
lurkio said:
get wsus offline and try it instead
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Tried that, although it does do better than MS it still only installs about 30 updates and there should be over 200.
I just keep getting errors and then reverting the updates.

I'm trying to set up a pc for a friend and getting nowhere fast.


Obvious what they're up to and really shouldn't be allowed, next they'll be coming around with baseball bats.
 
F2kSel said:
Tried that, although it does do better than MS it still only installs about 30 updates and there should be over 200.
I just keep getting errors and then reverting the updates.

I'm trying to set up a pc for a friend and getting nowhere fast.


Obvious what they're up to and really shouldn't be allowed, next they'll be coming around with baseball bats.
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A clean install?

1) Disconnect the network cable
2) Install Windows 7 with SP1
3) Install KB3020369
4) Install KB3161608
5) Reboot
6) Connect the network cable
7) Scan for updates

Took my single core virtual machine five minutes to find the initial batch.
 
KIA said:
A clean install?

1) Disconnect the network cable
2) Install Windows 7 with SP1
3) Install KB3020369
4) Install KB3161608
5) Reboot
6) Connect the network cable
7) Scan for updates

Took my single core virtual machine five minutes to find the initial batch.
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Thanks, Ill check those next time.

Yes it was a clean install, that was also a pain as every time I installed the OS and tried to run it I got a "read error" I thought my nice new drive was knackered but it turns out to be a common problem that nobody has 100% fix for.

This morning I did another fresh install, I also used a fresh image on my USB Device in case it was corrupt.

I tried update and nothing but later it installed two hotfixes but then nothing.
I did try installing a couple of recommend KB files not sure if it was those two you mention but still nothing.

I tried Fixit from MS to fix update errors but still got nothing found from updater.
I tried "windowSupdateAgent" but still nothing after a couple of hours messing about I went back to WSUS using a fresh download.
While waiting for it to download I got a popup message saying windows needs to install a critical update.
I installed it but still got nothing found from Windows Update.
Sometimes it gave red error message with codes but they kept changing.

So I gave in and retried WSUS, it started well installing 21 updates and then just kept getting stuck trying to get the security fixes.
However Just as I was about to give up Windows Update suddenly found 222 files and started working.

It wasn't easy getting them to install they hung a few times, how long do you wait on a file before knowing it's stuck.
Anyway after a few restarts I have most of the updates about 6 just won't install.

I have a feeling Update only works when it feels like.

Before doing any more I want to make an image, I don't like using the Windows Image tool as I find a lot of the time it doesn't work and I also get a nag screen about restoring files every time I boot up.
That's for another day I need a rest right now as I've been on this since Friday.
 
MadMatty said:
I did come across an article that suggested https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3161664 (security update for kernel mode drivers: June 14, 2016 ) and this one seems to have done the trick on the old machine. Fire up windows update and 10 mins later a list of about 30 updates was waiting and it downloaded them right away.
Click to expand...
This works, just give the PC about 20 minutes to find the first lot of Windows updates.
 
From my experience it's very broken. I had Win7 on my laptop until recently and noticed that Windows update would just get stuck trying to find updates. Also the Windows Update service was maxing out a whole thread on the CPU so obviously something was very wrong with it. I tried various "fixes" but nothing worked, so did a clean install of Win10 which I was planning to do at some point anyway (I know, that's not a solution for most people).
 
Before updating using above process I am also planning to install the GWX control panel and Never10
to make sure I do not after 7 updates, inadvertently update to 10 - maybe most folks goal is to get that update however ?
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With only two weeks of the upgrade offer open why bother?
 
you are right probably not necessary, even if I start turning windows update on more regularly they will hopefully not give me an unsolicited 10 upgrade and nagware messages should stop.
I have had windows update switched off for the last year partly because of update issues, but also I think if you have good browser practices better off not letting MS mess around with your environment, so will probably turn it off for another year ! (saying that my employers, on work PC, were deploying regular win 7 patches, but they had a cast of 1000's checking MS had not done something stupid)

[time is probably better spend understanding how I disable the updates on the other partition where I have a clean win 10 install !]
 
Wow, they have only gone and fixed it. Connected the lappy up to it's charger this morning expecting the usual several hours/days trying to find this months updates and it found them in less than a minute!! Amazeballs!!
 
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