Windows 7 will not update

Midlife Crisis · 6 Dec 2015 at 16:52

Just did a fresh install of W7 PRO and it is endlessly searching for updates, is there something I am missing? its been a long time since I installed W7.
The PC is connected to the internet

Rroff · 6 Dec 2015 at 16:55

Make sure system clock is correct time and date - if its out by more than a little bit WU will sometimes go into a loop and sometimes spit out a cryptic error.

Last few times I've updates Windows 7 systems its been ridiculous - a system with fairly recent updates took about 2 hours - a lot of it spent sitting on searching for updates and an old laptop not updated since just after Windows 7 release took like 2 days to finally get upto date (not helped by having a single core atom CPU).

Orcvader · 6 Dec 2015 at 16:57

Just leave it and wait, there were some cases where I had to leave it over night to find the updates.

Midlife Crisis · 6 Dec 2015 at 16:59

Over night christ on a bike it never used to take that long system time it spot on, thanks for the advise

nightmare99 · 6 Dec 2015 at 17:39

Yes due to the large number of updates it now takes a long time to check which updates are required. Did your installation media include service pack 1?

Rroff · 6 Dec 2015 at 17:41

Midlife Crisis said:
Over night christ on a bike it never used to take that long system time it spot on, thanks for the advise

I have a feeling MS want people to move to 10 and fixing issues with WU for 7 is a low low priority - so unless it completely breaks it probably won't get any optimisation for stuff slowing it down, etc. any time soon.

opethdisciple · 6 Dec 2015 at 18:02

Is this Win 7 SP1?

It might be the case it needs to be updated to SP1 for this experience to be smoother. You should be able to download SP1 from Microsoft directly as a package.

KIA · 6 Dec 2015 at 19:48

Orcvader said:
Just leave it and wait, there were some cases where I had to leave it over night to find the updates.

This.

Midlife Crisis · 6 Dec 2015 at 20:53

Has started the long process of downloading 170+ updates at last
Thanks for your help

Orcvader · 6 Dec 2015 at 21:50

Rroff said:
I have a feeling MS want people to move to 10 and fixing issues with WU for 7 is a low low priority - so unless it completely breaks it probably won't get any optimisation for stuff slowing it down, etc. any time soon.

Not to mention Windows 10 has cumulative updates, which should allow Windows 10 to avoid this issue in the future.

Midlife Crisis · 7 Dec 2015 at 08:09

is the free Win 10 upgrade still on offer?

ED209 · 7 Dec 2015 at 09:09

Midlife Crisis said:
is the free Win 10 upgrade still on offer?

Yes, till July 2016

Admiral Huddy · 7 Dec 2015 at 09:31

I've never understood why MS didn't release a cumulative SP2..

For future install then create an ISO image after the install and after all the updates but before loading any applications. Or use WSIM within Windows AIk to create and maintain your deployment image.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd349343(v=ws.10).aspx

Midlife Crisis · 8 Dec 2015 at 08:34

I used to slipstream all Windows XP's updates on to cd to install using a free program
I found on the web, cannot remember what it was called and I do not think it worked with 7 anyway.
The program is called nlite

Confused Stu · 8 Dec 2015 at 09:11

Last time I did a fresh Windows 7 install, I left it overnight and it was still searching for updates. Rebooted, left it another few hours and still searching. Then noticed I hadn't activated Windows yet (it was going to auto activate in a further 2 days at that point), so activated it and then the list of updates appeared within 10 minutes.

May just have been a coincidence, but it might be that the updates wouldn't show until it recognised Windows was activated?

Know I'm late to the party here as OP has already got the updates running, but just posting here in case the above helps anyone else looking into the same issue.

Midlife Crisis · 8 Dec 2015 at 13:59

it was activated, was the first thing I did