-
Installed a new Windows 7 SP1 VM.
-
Ran Windows Update.
-
“Checking for updates…” forever.
> “Checking for updates…” forever.
In my experience this is a bug in Windows Update implementation on Windows 7, looks like it is overwhelmed with a number of updates and a dependency tree. I had to use an utility to download all updates and install them offline. I don’t remember its name but you can google it.
Chris,
Take a look at
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsitpro/2016/05/17/simplifying-upda
tes-for-windows-7-and-8-1/ They have doen a rollup that actually makes it
quicker to update.
Don Burn
Windows Driver Consulting
Website: http://www.windrvr.com
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of
xxxxx@gmail.com
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2016 9:00 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Does Windows Update basically not work any more for Windows
7?
1) Installed a new Windows 7 SP1 VM.
2) Ran Windows Update.
3) “Checking for updates…” forever.
—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
Visit the list online at:
http:
MONTHLY seminars on crash dump analysis, WDF, Windows internals and software
drivers!
Details at http:
To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http:</http:></http:></http:>
“Don Burn” wrote:
> Take a look at
> https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsitpro/2016/05/17/simplifying-upda
> tes-for-windows-7-and-8-1/ They have doen a rollup that actually makes it
> quicker to update.
Agreed, the 500MB “get everything up through April 2016 in one
package” update saves time.
Note if you’re ever looking for “what if I want to fix why Windows
Update is so slow on Windows 7 SP1”, the update you want to download
and apply from the Windows Catalog site is KB3102810.
Alan Adams
Client for Open Enterprise Server
Micro Focus
xxxxx@microfocus.com
To Mr. Aseltine’s specific question, however, the answer seems to be “Yes”…
In our experience, we can vouch for the fact that Windows Update can be a strange and not so wonderful thing.
In our File Encryption Solution Framework (FESF, under which we support Win7 and later), we’ve been struggling with intermittent issues with WU sometimes not working. The test and dev teams have been driven insane. Why? Because sometimes it’ll work and sometimes it won’t. We look for problems in our code. We look at 2MB traces. Nothing looks askew. We retry the operation. It works. Sometimes. Or not. Sometimes.
Worse, we remove our FESF components from the system and try the same operations… and we have DIFFERENT intermittent WU problems.
It’s hard to know if WE’RE breaking WU or if WU is just sometimes intrinsically fucked up.
It seems to be the latter, but it’s hard to make that case to our clients when they remove our components and then WU works. Until it doesn’t.
Sigh.
Peter
OSR
@OSRDrivers
WU, being a PoS it is, relies on another PoS - BITS. BITS is prone to falling into an infinite loop, and
maybe other things. If BITS relies on a crypto provider to calculate hashes of transferred chunks, and your crypto package somehow interferes with that, than it could cause problems, of course.
In the old days, they used to call something like this SP2 ?
Sent from Mailhttps: for Windows 10
From: Alan Adamsmailto:xxxxx
Sent: September 22, 2016 2:53 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest Listmailto:xxxxx
Subject: Re:[ntdev] Does Windows Update basically not work any more for Windows 7?
“Don Burn” wrote:
> Take a look at
> https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsitpro/2016/05/17/simplifying-upda
> tes-for-windows-7-and-8-1/ They have doen a rollup that actually makes it
> quicker to update.
Agreed, the 500MB “get everything up through April 2016 in one
package” update saves time.
Note if you’re ever looking for “what if I want to fix why Windows
Update is so slow on Windows 7 SP1”, the update you want to download
and apply from the Windows Catalog site is KB3102810.
Alan Adams
Client for Open Enterprise Server
Micro Focus
xxxxx@microfocus.com
—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
Visit the list online at: http:
MONTHLY seminars on crash dump analysis, WDF, Windows internals and software drivers!
Details at http:
To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http:</http:></http:></http:></mailto:xxxxx></mailto:xxxxx></https:>
My 2? and experience, we have a HD security driver that we’ve chased WU issues with and I have come to the conclusion that it has nothing to do with our driver.
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of xxxxx@osr.com
Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2016 3:23 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] Does Windows Update basically not work any more for Windows 7?
To Mr. Aseltine’s specific question, however, the answer seems to be “Yes”…
In our experience, we can vouch for the fact that Windows Update can be a strange and not so wonderful thing.
In our File Encryption Solution Framework (FESF, under which we support Win7 and later), we’ve been struggling with intermittent issues with WU sometimes not working. The test and dev teams have been driven insane. Why? Because sometimes it’ll work and sometimes it won’t. We look for problems in our code. We look at 2MB traces. Nothing looks askew. We retry the operation. It works. Sometimes. Or not. Sometimes.
Worse, we remove our FESF components from the system and try the same operations… and we have DIFFERENT intermittent WU problems.
It’s hard to know if WE’RE breaking WU or if WU is just sometimes intrinsically fucked up.
It seems to be the latter, but it’s hard to make that case to our clients when they remove our components and then WU works. Until it doesn’t.
Sigh.
Peter
OSR
@OSRDrivers
—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
Visit the list online at: http:
MONTHLY seminars on crash dump analysis, WDF, Windows internals and software drivers!
Details at http:
To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http:</http:></http:></http:>
I’m coming to this a little late, so this might have already been answered/discussed.
I often install fresh copies of Windows 7 in VMs for various development work for different clients or to completely isolate build environments. I have found that once the Win7 SP1 image is installed and Windows Update is run, it takes 2 DAYS (connected and running solid for 48 hours) for it to find all the updates and start the downloads. During this period there is no network activity. This must be something on Microslop’s server side causing this.
Are they intentionally trying to make it painful to create fresh installs of Windows 7?
Greg
“Gregory G Dyess” wrote:
> I often install fresh copies of Windows 7 in VMs for various development
> work for different clients or to completely isolate build environments.
> I have found that once the Win7 SP1 image is installed and Windows Update
> is run, it takes 2 DAYS (connected and running solid for 48 hours) for it
> to find all the updates and start the downloads. During this period there
> is no network activity.
This is my experience as well for the past 1.5+ years, and why the
pointed reference to KB3102810 was made.
I’ve built clean Windows 7 SP1 VMs as recently as last month, and they
were all able to use Windows Update successfully, and in a “reasonable
time frame” relative to the number of updates that had to be applied.
But it requires downloading and applying KB3102810 from the Windows
Catalog first, before allowing any actual Windows Update processing
attempt to be made.
Alan Adams
Client for Open Enterprise Server
Micro Focus
xxxxx@microfocus.com
xxxxx@osr.com wrote:
> This is my experience as well for the past 1.5+ years, and why the
> pointed reference to KB3102810 was made.That’s actually very helpful. Thanks.
For what it’s worth, I had the opportunity to test involvement of the
KB3125574 “Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 convenience
rollup update” during a clean Windows 7 SP1 installation today.
Unfortunately I found that the KB3102810 “Installing and searching for
updates is slow and high CPU usage occurs in Windows 7 and Windows
Server 2008 R2” update is_not included in the April 2016 rollup,
ostensibly because KB3102810 is listed as an “optional” update.
Meaning, after successfully installing the KB3020369 servicing stack
prerequisite, and then installing the KB3125574 roll-up and rebooting,
attempting to install the KB3102810 update at that point was also
successful, because the KB3102810 package was not already present.
So although the KB3125574 package alone will provide additional help
by keeping Windows Update from having to download a large fixed set of
updates, you unfortunately will still potentially have the “slow
Windows Update” issue until KB3102810 is also applied.
Note your initial Windows Update pass takes a bit longer if KB3125574
is present, presumably because there are more locally-installed
updates to now sort through when evaluating which of the online
updates are still applicable. This additional time in theory is
balanced by the fact Windows Update will ultimately determine that
none of the KB3125574 rollup updates need to be downloaded or
installed.
On this particular machine I was testing, it only took an hour to make
the initial Windows Update check with KB3125574 & KB3102810 both
already present, as opposed to just a few minutes to make the initial
Windows Update check if I used KB3102810 alone on this same machine.
(And as opposed to many hours / days if you omit KB3102810 entirely.)
Alan Adams
Client for Open Enterprise Server
Micro Focus
xxxxx@microfocus.com