W7/SP1 Windows Update stuck checking for updates

[RealBlackStuff]

Sick and tired of waiting forever for Windows Update after a fresh install of W7/SP1?

Here's the solution: http://superuser.com/questions/951960/w ... or-updates

Download and install the below 32bit or 64bit programs.
Reboot and then see the improvement when trying Windows update again!

Microsoft released a new WindowsUpdate Client Update to fix the slow Update searching/Installation.

Installing and searching for updates is slow and high CPU usage occurs in Windows 7
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3102810

Download:
32Bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... e462b91dd0

64Bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... 2b52533669

UPDATE-1: Read this first before you install W7 afresh: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 21#p777621

UPDATE-2: Ditto: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=121742

[MrMaguire]

According to the KB article for that update, it is from October 20th of last year. I tried installing that update, but I already have it. I just made Windows Update check for new updates and it returned results in less than a minute, so I assume the problem has been fixed. svchost.exe was certainly hogging CPU resources as recently as a few days ago, so I have no idea what has actually changed.

[Dekks]

I had to leave a w7 and a vista machine on all night this weekend for both to eventually update. That was after the new client.

[rkawakami]

Pinging this thread as I just ran into this problem last night with an X200 (with a fresh install of W7) that did a few updates earlier okay but now seems to search forever for new updates. Hopefully I can get some time to work on this tonight.

[Johan]

I've experienced the same super-slow Windows Update for several months, both on T60's and T42's (all running Windows 7 Ultimate, 32-bit). When this problem occur, one of both core's are fully loaded (by the process "svchost.exe", and more precicely by the Windows Update service "wuauserv" thread), and consume a large amount of RAM; sometimes even beyond 500 MB!?!

The problem is persistent (at least on all of my ThinkPad's) even after installing the Microsoft KB3102810. Some time ago I therefore came to the point where I got so annoyed by this, that I have therefore completely disabled Windows Update on all laptops (I just run it manually once in a while, with a month or two in between). Some say that this problem is linked to users who have the free "Microsoft Security Essentials" (MSE) installed (see e.g. here), and that the KB3050265 might offer a solution... but I haven't tried to follow those steps (I'm running MSE as well).

Would very much like to hear if anybody finds a solution to this annoying problem!

Johan

[RealBlackStuff]

If all else fails, run the Windows Update Troubleshooter:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9830262

[hhhd1]

Thank you sir for posting this.
My desktop windows 7 was not working properly, and made me think I needed a whole new OS installation.

[olex126]

Hi Gang.

I utilize a program called "WSUS Offline Updater" for my Windows 7 updates.

It is a zip program, burned to a DVD, that contains the latest MS Win 7 updates as of the date of the download. Contains MS Office and dot net updates as well.

Once started, the program takes an hour or better to install all necessary updates with no Internet connection required.

Check out the program and info here: http://download.wsusoffline.net/

(There is also a version for Win XP that includes the last MS updates for that version. It also includes MS Office updates for earlier versions of that program (Office 2000, 2003, etc.)

Hope this helps.

Regards.

Dave

[RealBlackStuff]

Thanks, I really could have used that WSUS only yesterday!

A friend of mine has an R61 with a 1TB hard disk, and originally W7-Pro 32-bit installed.
He's a DJ in his spare time, using that R61, so got a lot of music on that HD as well!
About 67'000 songs (~350GB), luckily he stored them on a separate partition!

And then one day W10 came along, without him paying attention and literally destroyed his W7-OS!
The 50GB W7-partition contained less than 300MB W10-data when he brought it to me to "fix" that blasted W10 Repair-loop!

That HD also still had the recovery partition on it, but that became rather moot when you look at the amount of music!
So, rather than run Recovery, which would destroy all that music, I installed W7/SP1 64-bit (from T420 recovery disks) on a different HD.
When done, I removed all the Lenovo bloatware.
Then I did all those 177 Windows updates, which took bleedin' ages!
That's where the above WSUS would have come in really handy!

Anyway, after finishing all the Windows updates, I took Acronis images of the System, OS and Recovery partitions of that new HD.
Then I 'restored' only the (64-bit) System and OS partitions back onto the R61 HD, thus replacing the damaged W10-junk.
(I left the original 32-bit recovery partition untouched so far).
Upon booting for the first time, Thinkvantage Recovery came on, frightened me at first, but only did an automatic Startup-repair.
(I guess to combine/link the System and OS partitions that came from a different drive).
Took about 30 seconds, then rebooted, this time into W7, yeah!
Wonder what would have happened, had I deleted that recovery partition...

Anyway, all done now!

[MrMaguire]

I'm actually still having the same problem. Seems that it only returned results quickly that one time.

[pianowizard]

Vista update is also incredibly slow. By contrast, Windows 10 update is super fast, leading me to suspect that Microsoft is dedicating most bandwidth to 10 at the expense of 7 and Vista. (I don't know about Windows 8/8.1 since I no longer have it on any of my computers.) But strangely, when I updated XP a month or so ago, it was blazing fast.

[MrMaguire]

I don't believe there's anything sinister going on with Microsoft. Besides, the problem is centred around CPU usage. The NT 5.x updating system has always been superior.

[TonyJZX]

My experience are that the actual Windows 7 updates come down fast (ie. the 10% 11% 12%... you can see the thing click over like a clock).

However the initiate stage where it compiles a list of updates is slow. As if the algorithm or whatever it uses to look into your hardware and install and THEN works out server side what updates you need.

[axur-delmeria]

However the initiate stage where it compiles a list of updates is slow.

Seems to be the case.
From what I know, it downloads a 150MB+ cab file which contains the list of updates, then the "working out which ones to download" part is what's excruciatingly slow.

[shawross]

I am not entirely sure about sinister or other intentions of Microsoft. And I am not sure what Microsoft and their software are actually doing.

I do believe Microsoft are honing their business model so to speak. Things changed for Windows 7 users after Windows 7 lost Mainstream Support.

YMMV

[RealBlackStuff]

Update Delay SOLVED?

Apparently there is another update required for a faster W7-install, namely KB3083710

According to ZDNet you can speed up a fresh installation considerably by following these instructions:

First download Micro$haft's updates KB3083710 and KB3012810 and copy them to a USB flash drive.
Install Windows 7 with SP1 and leave the network cable disconnected.
Install those two updates from the flash drive before connecting to the network and running Windows Update for the first time,
and you can cut that horrendous delay down to a matter of a few minutes.

More details here: http://www.zdnet.com/article/sticking-w ... -for-pain/

[Cigarguy]

Thank you RBS.

Did a fresh install of Win 7 on a T61 14" last week. Took a little over 18 hours to check for the first updates and a little over 12 hours to install said updates. I was expecting this and fortunately was in no rush.

[Cigarguy]

Wow! Huge difference in speed by applying these two updates first.

Just did a fresh install of Win 7 Pro on my X301. Checking for updates took 8 minutes. While downloading the updates, it only took 5 minutes to start the download. Much better than 16 hours and 8 hours (typical) previously.

[Pokrzept]

Well you all shall check your svchost service for CPU and RAM usage. Even with with the updates mentioned above installed, on most of my W7-based systems I had some serious issues with the overall performance. Windows Update service - which runs constantly on backgrond - causes high memory usage and utilises of the CPU threads in 100%. This leads to noticable slow-down of the OS and serious power consumption and high battery runtime degradation. It seems that M$ does everything they can to "convince" us to move to W10

[brucehe]

Hello,

Thanks for the lead on a great tool, WSUS offline updater.

I am currently having a tough time getting W7 update to happen on a T61 I maintain. It just will not get updates even after 12 hours. It just continues to say "Checking for Updates". I have tried clearing the cache. When I restart the Windows Update service it fills the cache to 1 or 2 gigs and does the same thing. It also runs svchost which consumes the cpu to about 50%.

I have used the W7 Update troubleshooting tool and it gives me a 0x800800005 error. I have run a file repair scan in the command window and it did fix one file, still no luck. I found a registry tweak that was supposed to fix this but no luck either.

I tried to reinstall windows inside of windows but could not get that to run. I don't really want to reinstall W7. Any ideas?

thanks,

Bruce

[RealBlackStuff]

The above only applies to FRESH W7 installs.
If you have updated W7 already BEFORE applying those 2 KBs, you're in trouble.
Time to start blaming Micro$haft...

[Cigarguy]

Hello,

Thanks for the lead on a great tool, WSUS offline updater.

I am currently having a tough time getting W7 update to happen on a T61 I maintain. It just will not get updates even after 12 hours. It just continues to say "Checking for Updates". I have tried clearing the cache. When I restart the Windows Update service it fills the cache to 1 or 2 gigs and does the same thing. It also runs svchost which consumes the cpu to about 50%.

I have used the W7 Update troubleshooting tool and it gives me a 0x800800005 error. I have run a file repair scan in the command window and it did fix one file, still no luck. I found a registry tweak that was supposed to fix this but no luck either.

I tried to reinstall windows inside of windows but could not get that to run. I don't really want to reinstall W7. Any ideas?

thanks,

Bruce

Yes wait. Eventually it will stop checking updates. On my T61 it took 18+ hours. Let it check for updates (yes it will use a lot of resources) then walk away and wait. On a fresh install, installing the above 2 updates first makes a huge difference.

[brucehe]

This is an existing installation of W7. I did not install the 2KB's. I guess I can leave it run for a couple of days and see what happens.

Bruce

[Cigarguy]

This is an existing installation of W7. I did not install the 2KB's. I guess I can leave it run for a couple of days and see what happens.

Bruce

Just finished updating my T60 which was left alone and not updated since Aug 15, 2014. It took 14+ hours to finish checking for updates and about 8 hours to install said updates (about 170ish). Fortunately, I have a few Thinkpads to choose from. Once the updates are applied, checking and installing recent updates takes minutes instead of hours. Then you got to carefully check off Win 10 and telemetry updates.

[brucehe]

OK, I waited about 6 hours and it found the updates. I had waited 12 hours before with no updates. Maybe something I did helped, but since I did so many tweaks hard to say. The good news is the updates took and the updater is happy and not consuming all the resources.

Bruce

[Boy2006]

oke it worked now.

[axur-delmeria]

Looks like it works. Just reinstalled Win 7 on a client's machine today, and the two KBs cut down the "Checking for updates" stage to around one hour, perhaps less (didn't really try to time it).
It's much better than last time, where I told my client to "just leave the computer running and call me tomorrow when the update finishes".

[IbmPad]

Here is a simple in-memory patch to reduce a little the time needed to check for updates. When there are many updates—like on last month's Patch Tuesday—it can probably save some hours; I don't know if it will be as useful tonight.

Below is a copy of the Read me file found in the archive:

Code: Select all

            Reducing (a little) Windows Update's calculation time
                                 May 10, 2016


DESCRIPTION
===========

Based on this comment :

http://www.askwoody.com/2016/checking-for-updates-still-takes-forever/comment-page-1/#comment-80228

The Windows Update client repeatedly calls QueryPerformanceFrequency,
especially in the function CUpdatesToPruneList::AddSupersedenceInfoIfNeeded,
which can sometimes take hours to complete.

These unnecessary function calls can account for ca. 40 % of CPU usage,
especially on systems using the HPET or PM timer for perf. counters.

Until this gets officially fixed, significant time and a few watt-hours can be
saved by removing the calls to this function, since the timer resolution will
not change after the system has started.


This simple program calls QueryPerformanceFrequency once and for all and
then patches the IAT of the Windows Update client ('wuaueng.dll' module in the
corresponding 'svchost.exe' process) in memory so that all calls to
QueryPerformanceFrequency be redirected to a simple stub that returns
immediately the timer resolution retrieved before.


USAGE
=====

 — Start the Windows Update ('wuauserv') service if it is not already running;
 — open an elevated command prompt and run 'PatchWU32' or 'PatchWU64'
depending on your architecture;
 — run the 'Check for updates' process.


NOTES
=====

 — The program does not modify the DLL on disk; it must be run again when the
 Windows Update service is restarted;
 — the program does not detect whether the patch has already been applied;
 — the patch can be applied at any time, even if WU is currently searching for
updates;
 — this is intended for Windows 7, but can probably be used also for Windows
Vista or 8/8.1;
 — as usual, no warranty of any kind is given.

[Hans Gruber]

My mule T61 Vista 64 business machine was stuck in the update loop overnight. I am applying the updates using "WSUS Offline Updater". I will let you know how that goes. Win7 updates were slow but not like this Vista system. I ran chkdsk thinking the hard drive was bad. I tried Microsoft Fix and several other methods but nothing worked.

This update method works on Win7 the same and I saw that someone mentioned this method earlier in the thread but found it on another windows update specific forum. Basically the program is a zip file that is self executing on the machine. I am @ 199 of 255 updates as I write this.

[UMPC2024]

Yeah, I noticed that the Windows Vista x64 Business updates were also pretty slow around the same time the Windows 7 updates got slow. Did you just get the WSUS offline updater from download.wsusoffline.net?