lnitial Windows 7 Pro 64 bit update takes days to complete

I have been building PCs for years now, and have noticed over the last maybe year, anytime I load Windows 7 Pro 64 bit from scratch, load motherboard drivers, then try to do Windows Updates, the initial Windows update takes 2-3 days to even show me what updates I need. I have heard this is Microsoft's way of telling people they need to be on Win 10. After the initial update has been installed, the rest of the updates run pretty quickly. I have tried first updating IE and .net, but that made no difference. Anybody know of any tricks to get this to go faster?
thx experts...
BobR

It isn't m$'s way of telling users to use another OS.

What you must do, is first make sure it is at SP1 level. After that install the newer update agent:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/949104

After that install the following KB, then reboot:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3102810

As an example, on Friday I installed Windows 7 on a core2duo, 2.66GHz, 3GB PC and installed the agent along with the patch. After that it took 15 minutes to list what updates were available and I could choose which ones I needed. The download and installations of those updates then took another 2 hours and the PC was ready for more...

The convenience update rollup mentioned by thinkpads above I can't recommend. Although it's installation doesn't take a lot of time, when finished it reboots, and then it tries to continue configuring the updates, and after some time it decides that the updates failed, and it rolls back. This has happened in 6 out of ten times when I tried it. If it didn't fail I went to update the rest of the updates after that rollup, and it would still take days, so it was no improvement. This happened in 3 out of 10 tries. Only with one of those 10 tries was there did it relly work the way it was supposed to.

The nliteos approach takes a lot of time and work to get ready, and it doesn't work for all updates so you will still have to run updates after that. It also requires a lot of maintenance as you will have to build new isos with fresh updates regularly. So I wouldn't really recommend that.

I wear a lot of hats...

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LVL 5

Davy ParidaensCommented: 2016-08-17

Hi Bob,

You can use Nlite to make an unatended ISO image and add hotfixes, updates,drivers,....
http://www.nliteos.com/

regards,

Davy

LVL 113

JohnBusiness Consultant (Owner)Commented: 2016-08-17

You can also try the convenience update (https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/kb/3125574). It often works, sometimes does not. But it is worth a try.

LVL 88

rindiCommented: 2016-08-17

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bobrossi56Author Commented: 2016-08-17

I appreciate all the suggestions, however I agree with rindi, the NLites is too much maint, John Hurst solution was tried to no avail, BUT...rindi....your 2 downloads worked!!!! I am keeping these on my jump drive for sure. After they were downloaded and I rebooted, I was able to get 245 updates ready to download in 7 minutes!!! Perfect...thx much

Something that can also help reduce the time if you have to do this regularly, is WSUS-Offline. With it you can collect the updates for different OS's before you need them, and then run the client on the PC's you need to update. That means you won't need any extra bandwidth for the repeated download. Even if you use this, it still helps installing the newer update agent and the patch on the PC prior to running the client:

http://wsusoffline.net/

lnitial Windows 7 Pro 64 bit update takes days to complete

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