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Windows 7 updates take several hours on new install

I've installed 2 new Windows 7 computers. On the first one, after installing from CD, and ran the Windows updater. Ultimately, 202 updates were applied. However the download/update took over 5 hours! This was from my office which has a 20/20mbit upload/download fiber optic link.

The 2nd computer I took to home so I could let it run without having to hang around the office. It also took about 5 hours to update -- odd since the office download speed is at least 3x faster than home.

Today, I got a call from a colleague working at a computer repair store complaining about the same thing. I've search and found similar complaints on the Internet -- no real solution there other than running an update repair tool, which I can try.

Does anyone know if something is up with Microsoft on this? Are they deliberately throttling the download speed of updates? Is the problem rather with the computer being updated in that actual updating is inefficient?

Any insight would be appreciated.

n2fc

1) Since WIN7 does not get any more "service packs", the number of updates is inordinately large... Even worse if you use a "base" install vs. SP1

2) If you do this frequently, you might consider using a "slipstream" tool that installs the updates onto your INSTALL disk... This way they are already applied when you do the install, speeding up the setup process!

Some slipstream tools and info:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/239634/how_to_speed_up_windows_7_installs_with_slipstreaming_and_usb.html

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/157021-win-7-64-sp1-updates-3rd-party-slipstream-tools/

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/software/operating-systems/10-tools-for-creating-custom-windows-installation-discs-679477

John

I have seen this before. You are limited by the speed of the Microsoft download supply. There is not much you can do about it. Sometimes off-hours is faster. Grin and bear it.

Alan Henderson

There could be a bottleneck anywhere between your town and Microsoft's source which could vary from day to day or hour to hour. Dependant upon many things, but particularly if there's a big release of updates for any Windows versions or MS Office.

John

Microsoft Office 2016 had a big update last night and it took a long time. I could tell from DU Meter that the download was slow from Microsoft. Lots of people using their update servers.

FOX

You need this my friend. I've been where you are plenty of times.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=20858

*this one is for x64 , there is a separate install for 32 bit.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Peter Hutchison

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rindi

This is normal, and it doesn't have much to do with the connection speed. More important is the speed of the PC. The download actually probably doesn't take a lot of time, but first to find which downloads you need can take very, and also after that to install them takes a lot of time. Newer, faster PC's tend to take less long.

Mark

ASKER

Thanks all! I've got a brand-new Windows 7 computer purchased today. I'll try these (some of) these suggestions over the weekend and see if it mitigates the problem.

rindi

I've just installed a 2008r2 server Box, which is basically the same as Windows 7. I used the WSUS offline utility which was mentioned earlier, so the downloads of a lot of updates were already done. The updates which could be done with that alone took 5 hours (around 130 updates or so). After that I searched for updates normally, which turned up further 98 updates. This took another 4 hours (and those updates needed to be downloaded).

So whichever method you use, it'll take a long time, and also on new hardware it will take long. It is absolutely normal.

Mark

ASKER

I used the wsusoffline update tool. It did take a long time to download the updates, but I was able to do that remotely from the comfort of my home office and not have to baby-sit the target machine. I must have done that during off-peak times because I recall it only taking a couple of hours to create the update disk -- also I only downloaded Windows 7, not everything. The downloaded files occupy 5.9GB. I downloaded them to a NAS directory. I then mapped the NAS drive from the new WIN7 machine, ran the UpdateInstaller.exe and it finished in a little over an hour, including new updates not on the wsusoffline download.

This tool did the job for me. I shared it with a friend who runs a computer repair shop (he was having the same problem) and this is now one of his main tools.

Thanks all for your help.