It’s time for Microsoft to fix glacial Windows 7 updates

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MS did it three years ago with Windows XP. Time to do it again. InfoWorld Woody on Windows
[See the full post at: It’s time for Microsoft to fix glacial Windows 7 updates]

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It’s perhaps worth noting that while I don’t have any issues with searching for Windows 7 updates, but do have occasional delays in commencing the downloads once I’ve decided which updates to install, over the period that the delay problems have been reported I have in any event been suffering intermittent delays in searching for and downloading definition updates for MSE, most notably but not exclusively when Windows updates generally have been notified but not acted on.

The whole MS patching system seems up the creek really, and not just in relation to Windows 7.

Incidentally, I don’t think I’ve installed any of the update system patches as (a) I’ve been sceptical as to their true nature given the prevalence of Windows 10 nagware updates and (b) I’ve seen various posts on multiple sites from people saying they haven’t made the slightest difference to their updating times.

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Good article on InfoWorld providing more information than is required for Microsoft to start fixing their Windows Update mechanism. In addition to cleaning up the supersedence tree, there seems to be a lot more which can be done in relation to the optimisation of the process svchost.exe itself as analysed by Bob(maybe)OrNot.

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Thanks for the article, Woody.

Wouldn’t it be nice if only the rest of the industry press and pundits would get with the program and help by publicizing the problem and turning up the heat on MS …

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@Woody, @All

So, after at least a 40 minute auto check for updates this morning, suddenly svchost.exe (described as Host process for Windows Services) started pushing CPU usage to 12-15% for no apparent reason. Been running like this for about 30 minutes.

It’s almost as if Windows Update is doing an auto check again. Anyone else see this after their check for updates?

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It took 1 hour, 20 minutes this morning on one of my Win7 machines just to search for updates. The download process is similarly slow. It seems to sit there running the green ribbon back and forth forever with no data transfer. I think they forget that over 50% of their customer base is still on Win7 – they’re not making friends.

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+1

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Ed Bott published an article about Windows 7 updates back in March. He expects that the situation will only get worse as time goes by. It’s because Microsoft wants everyone on Windows 10. Ed says it’s so much faster with the omnibus updates on Windows 10.

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Yes, I linked to Ed’s article. Cumulative Updates in Win10 certainly speed things up.

All we need is one cumulative update for Windows 7. Call it SP2.

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I don’t think there have been major changes in the updating mechanism for the last round of patches.
It may just be that Microsoft servers are overloaded immediately after the Patch Tuesday releases. There are similar reports about Windows 10 after all.

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@All,

Well, my CPU and fan finally went back to normal. The event was NOT a second windows update auto check of the day…however, it was a Windows telemetry event…for 45 minutes.

W7 SP1 x64 Quad Core

redmond is one **** ** organization.

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While SP2 sounds like a good idea the erosion of trust engendered by Microsoft’s behavior would make me watch and wait for a good long while before taking that plunge.

If you think back, the number of OS service packs has decreased sharply since the days of good old NT4. NT4 had 6, Win2K had 4, WinXP had 3, Vista got 2 and Win7 got 1. I’m not sure what to call the Win 8/8.1 debacle.

In any event, I don’t think we’ll ever see Win7 SP2 (or its MicroSpeak equivalent).

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Hi,

Nice to see I’m not the only one suffering this. Just wanted to update my March ’16 updates for April ’16. I have not had this S_L_O_W issue until April 11th. My February ’16 Updates went just fine. I did a Restore back to January ’16 when I knew everything was OK. Loads like cold maple syrup on a cold day!

I have 2 Windows 7 machines on Sandybridge architecture—Win 10 is not for me unless I put new CPUs in my machines.

Keep thinking about changing hobbies, buy me a boat and trailer and go fishing.

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@ch100

“It may just be that Microsoft servers are overloaded immediately after the Patch Tuesday releases.”

If that’s the case, why would MSFT schedule all the windows machines worldwide to “auto check” and “auto download and install” on patch Tuesday and the day after?? They can’t stagger machines, countries, zones to avoid all the bottlenecks?? They can’t get their heads around that concept??

And this is a company we rely on for our computing needs? Good grief…

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I agree PKCano-I am a fellow window 7 user and ALWAYS WILL BE. I want my patch updates ASAP than waiting ages for it to come. TOnight I am going to attempt to get my updates within 1 hr and 30 minutes or so. I will restart the computer, when updates appear I’ll install, shut down, allow all to be installed, then defrag and such. MICROSOFT IS NOT GONNA RUIN my day ever again-I’m mad as heck and this time it’s personal.

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I also faced slow-time in march with my updates. Somebody above mention the slow time with patches started in march and their starting slow for April.

This is a conspiracy

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Why do all these people want to see the latest patches if they’re not going to install them?

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Both my husband and I have laptops with Windows 7 on them and neither one of us want to upgrade them to Windows 10. I have installed the GWX Control Panel after discovering Woody on Windows and the recommendation there. I also have both laptops set to search for updates but let us decide when to install them. Today I decided to install just the security updates from yesterday’s list. It took an hour on my husband’s laptop just to download the updates and another half hour to install them and restart the laptop. It took only 10 mins to download them and 15 mins to install the updates on my laptop. The problem I had with my laptop is when I restarted it….it stayed on “configuring Windows – don’t turn on your computer” for an entire hour before it finished and actually restarted! That is the first time since buying the laptop 5 years ago that it every took that long. I have no idea why the two laptops acted so different even though I installed the exact same updates. I am in no way smart with computers and would be completely lost without Woody’s help so THANK YOU WOODY!!

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Remember the check for updates usually runs about once a day. The last thing you want in your recursive function that you call way too often is “busy waiting” code hogging the CPU. What correlation is there between check supersedence of old(installed) update(s) by new(not installed) update(s) (and/or new updates by other new updates) and calling a function to check the precision of the system’s “High Precision Event Timer”? Why check something so often that doesn’t change?

ntdll.dll!RtlQueryPerformanceFrequency / ntdll.dll!ZwQueryPerformanceCounter / ntoskrnl.exe!KiSystemServiceCopyEnd / ntoskrnl.exe!NtQueryPerformanceCounter / hal.dll!KeQueryPerformanceCounter / hal.dll!HalpHpetProgramRolloverTimer

I wonder what happens if someone with a motherboard that supports it turns off their “High Precision Event Timer”?

At the rate of increase for time to check for windows update (seeming to be some sort of exponential function), what happens in 12 months when it takes a solid week at 100% cpu to check once for windows updates? What about in 2018 when it takes 720 hours at 100% CPU to check for windows updates? What about as we approach 2020 and it becomes computationally infeasible for any computer (or groups of computers working together) at the current level of technology to do the calculations for windows update? What happens when windows 10 runs into the same problem because microsft will never issue a service pack because windows 10 is a (dis)”service” forever?

(by the way Microsoft, please do some caching on the supersedence info you are calculating not just on every install of windows update but every _check_ for windows updates) If I recall correctly the Windows XP slow Microsoft updates vs windows update issue was caused by something about scanning MSI stuff using an exponential function. Lets compare every MSI patch, installed update (superseded or not), not installed update, driver update, and anything else in the list with each other. That’s only big O complexity of “N factorial”, today’s computers are fast, we can get away with this forever right? This function won’t grow from seconds to billions of years, right?

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I second that. I’ve been trying for the past few days to download and install the updates WU has urged me to get. (My setting is to check + inform, nothing else.)

That had always been during the day, general US working hours. Just now, around 10 pm CET, it all went blazingly fast as soon as I tried it.

I had a problem with slow updates before, but a patch not that long ago took care of it. It was this one here:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3138612

Before that, it could sit there for DAYS and not do anything but tell me it’s checking.

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Hi, all. I too was having problems with Win 7 updates so I checked this site, and followed the below advice.

Fix It 50202 works in Windows XP, Vista and 7 only.
If the first option did not help, Microsoft also has the very powerful Fix It Tool 50202 that completely reinstalls Windows Update components. This one is especially helpful in cases where Windows Update is not able to check for updates (for example, error 800700C1) or installs the same updates all over again (several cases with infinite loops of .NET Framework updates).

Because Microsoft just loves to move the tool randomly around (and its site search is not helpful either), I now provide direct download link to Fix It Tool 50202. Please save the file, do not run it automatically!

https://www.winhelp.us/files/MicrosoftFixit50202.msi

It speeded things up for me and download and install only took around 10 minutes.

I hope the tool works for you, too.

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For about a year now the wuaueng.dll will take about 50% CPU permanently, from the update Tuesday till all the updates are dealt with (on win7pro with all updates-sans win10 leads).This returns to normal once all the updates are eventually either installed or hidden.The activity can be stopped via procesexplore without any apparent consequence, which is what I routinely do if it interferes with my work.

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http://news.softpedia.com/news/windows-update-hanging-when-downloading-april-12-patches-502886.shtml

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Point very well taken! 🙂

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It’s too bad the folks who write this stuff don’t check their facts first. I couldn’t believe it when, after commenting on the svchost spike issue they reverse course and suggest “Most likely, this is a server-side issue that’s going to be addressed soon…”

This kind of journalism does more harm than good.

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@Woody, @All,

W7 SP1 x64 Quad Core

Booted up this morning and the machine went into an “auto check for updates”. 1 hour later the CPU went back to normal and the fan finally stopped. I am thinking about using “Never check for updates” until someone finds a solution.

Question, if you choose the “Never check for updates” setting, can you manually check for updates with the “Never check…” setting in place, or do you have to change back to “Check for updates but let me…” before engaging a manual check?

Thanks.
P.S. if I leave it on “Check but let me choose….” and these hour long auto checks continue every day…if MS burns out my fan will MS send a tech over to replace it? Thought so.

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Here are my experiences in case they help anybody.

My work machine had been slow updating; I fixed that a while ago by installing KB3102810 which I’d originally blocked out of paranoia. It updates from WSUS and has been fine since.

On my wife’s machine at home (single core, 64 bit) I’d turned WU off altogether. It has the latest WU path (KB3138612) but when I turned WU back on the CPU was at 100% again. I didn’t leave WU on for obvious reasons.

My laptop (dual core, 32 bit) has KB3138612 and runs with WU enabled. It had picked up some patches earlier without trouble, but one core maxed out last night and there was no sign of updates after several hours.

My home workstation (8 cores, 64 bit) is the joker in the pack. That also has the latest WU patch, and offered the Patch Tuesday updates without a problem. Ironic since with 8 cores, it hardly matters if one maxes out. 🙂

I’m going to wait a while before I try the troublesome machines again, to see if it is simple congestion.

However the workstation is a puzzle – it doesn’t seem to be Microsoft giving priority to corporate users (the conspiracy theory) since it uses the same domestic update that all my other machines do, in the same house, on the same ISP, at the same time on the same day. I doubt it can be congestion (the pragmatic theory) since it worked immediately when nothing else did. I had Resource Monitor running for other reasons so I’d have seen if netsvcs was taking a lot of CPU.

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Nope, you can run a manual check for updates any time you like, regardless of the Auto Update setting.

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Hello

To resolve this issue : first install KB3145739.
Next you should restart and then you can check for updates in manual mode.
It takes between 5 or 10 minutes.

It worked for me on Windows 7 x86 and x64.

More informations on this site http://sm.krelay.de/wu/ !

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@Woody,

BTW…is there a safe way to actually stop a “check for updates” once it has started?

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I gave up on this “download” after 1 hour and cancelled it. Green bar keeps moving yet no progress appears.

Maybe I will schedule this when I go on a 2-3 week vacation.

Another case of MS total ineptness.

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Sure, just “X” out of Windows Update.

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Getting the Patch Tuesday stuff is bad enough, but now MS Security Essentials is stuck in the download queue. Our laptop went right away, but the desktop machine is stuck. Gave up after an hour, rebooted, and it’s repeating.

If this goes on, I’m going third party for AV. Any recommendations? I’m already using Malwarebytes Antimalware.

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Please don’t speculate when actual information is so easily obtained. These things are easily measured – and they show quite clearly that there is no justification!

After requesting Windows Update to start, Windows 7 ‘s TrustedInstaller.exe initially does a WHOLE bunch of work (minutes of CPU time and lots of disk I/O) at first, with NO network I/O. I presume this is what’s needed to characterize the system.

http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win7/SlowUpdate1.png

BUT then…

Svchost.exe (the one hosting the wuauserv service, specifically) begins a hard CPU loop on one thread, in which there is NO network or disk I/O.

This is MOST DEFINITELY NOT a server load issue!

http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win7/SlowUpdate2.png

The hard CPU loop with NO network I/O and NO disk I/O consumes a single core on a high-end Xeon x5690 for almost 40 minutes!! Only THEN do you get to see the available updates!

http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win7/SlowUpdate3.png

Then, once updates that have once been hidden have been hidden AGAIN, finally the download and install can commence. That part, unlike in past iterations, at least moves along and takes only a few minutes.

All in all, on a very powerful system Windows Update took well over an hour to complete. That’s a full hour of wasted resources, reduced system responsiveness, and overall aggravation. Thanks loads, Microsoft!

http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win7/SlowUpdate4.png

As a career software engineer I would bet my paycheck that there is NO WAY a hard CPU loop like this could be anything other than intentional on Microsoft’s part. If nothing else, it’s been well known by them for months now, and they have done nothing to fix it!

Why would they do this?

Maybe to push more and more people entirely off of doing updates, so that their older systems gradually become more and more vulnerable?

Maybe to burn a few systems out because of the heat generated by looping the processor so hard?

Maybe to corrupt them because of people not being able to wait around for such a horrendous waste of resources to finish and just shutting the machine off in the middle of the process?

Maybe just to put a bad taste in the mouths of the users of Windows 7?

Are we seeing no less than Windows 7 Deprecation As A Service?

You decide.

-Noel

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Nope. I use Microsoft Security Essentials and manually run Malwarebytes a couple of times a month.

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Deprecation as a Service. LOVE IT!

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@Noel, @Woody

“Maybe to corrupt them because of people not being able to wait around for such a horrendous waste of resources to finish and just shutting the machine off in the middle of the process?”

Could you expand on this a bit?
IOW, if one is an hour into checking for updates, has to leave and doesn’t want to leave the machine on unattended…if the machine gets shut down during the “checking for updates” process what will-could be corrupted? The updates themselves? The Update client?

And further info on this would be most helpful. I’ve often thought about just shutting down the machine during a very long “checking for updates” but wasn’t quite sure of the implications, if any-if even known.

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Installing KB3145739 also worked for me. After rebooting from that patch, WU only needed a few minutes to check for updates and has behaved normally since.

https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30698000-

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I plan to check next wednesday night to see if the updates will update normally OR WILL be in “ETERNAL SLOWNESS”.

Microsoft wasted my time for the last time. FIRST IT WAS TAKING UP AN AFTERNOON, THEN disrupting my morning routine and now it has the right to give WIN 7 users SUCKY CHECKUP UPDATE speeds and eternal slowness to download/install UPDATES!? I don’t think so….THEY BETTER GET THEIR ACT TOGETHER, FIX THE PROBLEM THIS WEEK AND HAVE US ALL GOING TO INSTALL.

Oh and it seems WIN 10 didn’t have issues-a computer at walmart on display got its update yesterday! YESTERDAY-THEIR FAVORING WIN 10 OVER ALL OF US THOSE B******S!

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hattip to SilenceIsGolden for the link. After installing and rebooting the update list appeared in about 3 minutes. 151 updates awaiting plus another 62 optional.

I’m guessing that people are choosing not to install the Windows Update update after the constant bombardment of weekly ‘Upgrade to help smooth future upgrades,’etc makes them shy away form anything to do with updating one of the most important gateways into ones computer.

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As long as it is not installing something you are good to do whatever you want with your computer (well, don’t just unplug it while booted, that’s never good).

Unless you have windows updates set to automatic, then you are always good to do what you want (watch out for the “install updates and shutdown” option)

If you have automatic updates on (or just are running windows 10) then its never a good time to install other software (you can’t be sure the updates aren’t about to start installing), I suppose it won’t hurt to shutdown your computer, even an installing update should finish (although the computer will be unusable until it decides that it is done).

Now that patch Tuesday is the 2nd Tuesday (normal updates) and the 1st Tuesday otherstuff / office, and the 3rd Tuesday is “oh yea we forgot these updates here you go”, and the 4th Tuesday is the “we broke something this month, today we fix it”. When do we install other software?

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Thank you for this. I can verify this worked on 2 machines here.

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I have no idea what could be corrupted by stopping an update process mid-stream.

But the Windows Update database DOES get corrupted for many folks – we hear many reports of that. SOMETHING’s causing it.

Microsoft isn’t known for their software robustness. Usually it takes years of bugfixes and patches to where the software runs substantially without error even doing normal things.

-Noel

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Yeah, if only SP2 would be all the updates except for the list worthy of being hidden and never installed.

It’s not hard to imagine expanded telemetry and “readying of the system for the next OS” would be built in, amongst other less than desirables.

-Noel

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What do you mean by “these people”? That sounds somewhat condescending.

Trust me when I tell you that however smug you feel, you really don’t know better than some of “these people”.

I’ve practiced keeping Windows systems up to date since there was Windows, and before that I maintained mini-computer and mainframe operating systems.

I’m reasonably conservative and there actually IS a small list I avoid for Win 7 – because frankly I KNOW I don’t want to “upgrade” to Windows 10 yet. I know it because I test it in a virtual environment.

But it’s only a small list that I hide, and it’s primarily focused on avoiding being nagged about Windows 10.

Frankly, anyone who at this time is just blindly accepting all the updates Microsoft wants to push into their system is being irresponsible.

-Noel

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Uh, no, it’s not that simple.

I have KB3145379 on all my Win 7 systems and they still saw the delay today when I ran Windows Update.

-Noel

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MSE will update itself even if Windows Update is completely shut off, so there is no need to worry about the Windows Updates in the list.

And don’t forget, “Windows Defender definitions” updates reappear all the time as new information is added. It might not be stuck, it might just be showing you that an even newer one has been made available.

-Noel

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I was referring to Woody’s people in the article: “In the past two days, AskWoody.com has been flooded with even more complaints. … They’re people who keep their machines up to date and simply want to see the latest Win7 patches.”

How did my question indicate that I was feeling smug? I’m just trying to figure out why so many seem to be ignoring Woody’s advice not to install updates at the moment. And why “people” moan about getting updates and also moan when they can’t get them.

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Of course the windows defender definitions reappear all the time every tuesday and friday. 🙂 I mean they update the windows defender every week so that’s no problem.

Hopefully in May-the patch is much faster than the april one which has been a disaster and I don’t care if it caused event 1001 due to windows update on event viewer-EVERYONE else must get that event too when checking information. It isn’t our fault we had to restart/shut down because of Microsoft am I right?

SO we don’t need to worry about the April Patch-I mean we can survive a few weeks until the May patch to see if things are better. AND THOSE with Microsoft Office-there will be a patch for the office at the first wednesday of the month so were okay.

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I don’t understand why, but KB3145739 worked for me, twice. On both machines (one 32 bit, one 64) I verified that netsvcs was still maxing out a CPU core. Then I installed KB3145739 from a manual download, and both were fine again. Windows Update came up with the remainder of the Patch Tuesday updates within a few minutes. The proof of the pudding is in what happens next month, I guess. Maybe MS slipped an undocumented fix into that update, but as @Noel Carboni says, it doesn’t work for everyone. I’d previously tried Fixit 50202 without success.

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Install these updates:

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

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/3135445

in the above order reboot after each one, and voila!

I found this fix on another forum. This was after doing a fresh install of W7 32 and W7 64 on numerous machines and hitting this problem. I factory a lot of machines and can confirm this actually works.

After installing those 2 updates, within 5 minutes, 200+ updates found, then the usual time to install.

Someone mentioned the first update previously, just thought I’d add my experience.

Make sure you download and install the correct 32 or 64 bit ones, in the order I posted.

This issue appears every now and then with updates taking forever and a day to even search and find any updates, and it’s particularly painful after doing a factory.

MS really don’t seem to care.

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Perhaps I misinterpreted your point of view; if so I’m sorry.

Woody gives good, conservative advice, intended to help people avoid pitfalls. Bravo for that!

However, that doesn’t preclude that there are those people who, using their own knowledge and experience, do their own evaluations of the Windows update process as well. I suspect Woody is happy to hear the experiences of others. I know I am.

-Noel

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FYI, based on my experience earlier today with a Win 8.1 system, the problem does NOT afflict Windows 8.1.

I was able to bring a system (that had been on manually-initiated updates for quite a few months and neglected) right up to date – with over 100 updates listed – literally in just a few minutes.

I went through 3 reboots and installations of smaller and smaller lists of updates each time until it reported “Windows is up to date”. Never did it exhibit CPU looping behavior.

I know this thread is about Windows 7, but I thought I’d just mention this as a data point.

-Noel

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@TCM: The KB3102810 & KB3135445 patches are superseded/replaced by KB3138612:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3138612
Therefore, the 3102810 & 3135445 updates are no longer needed as long as 3138612 is installed.

Install KB3138612 and KB3145739 (MS16-039) instead.

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Of course Win8.1 AND Win10 systems are not affected, Noel; these OSes are still relatively new (though I have Win8.1 on my dad’s Toshiba laptop that he got in late 2013 with at least update 3 [KB3000850] installed)

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This update (the last version) is in the April patch.

Have you try to disable Windows Update Service and to reload it before installing ?

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After spending much of the last two days struggling with Win 7 updates and trying almost everything Ask Woody posters have suggested… without success, “Deprecation as a Service” must be Don Nadella’s offer Win10 holdouts can’t refuse.

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Ah ok EP, I didn’t know that. So if I install KB3138612 FIRST then updates will appear? I will try that when I factory again on Monday. Thank you for that.

If it doesn’t work I’ll also report back.

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Just to add, I found this site:

http://sm.krelay.de/wu/en/

It may help someone, I haven’t tried it yet, but I will eventually.

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Searching for solutions, I saw a post on another forum about Autopatcher.

Gave it a try.

After selecting the appropriate options, it immediately started downloading the updates.

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Who wouldn’t want to be one of “Woody’s People” — it’s a great bunch! 🙂

And it’s “a broad church”, as they say in the UK.
(“a group or movement which embraces a wide and varied number of views, approaches, and opinions” http://www.dictionary.com/browse/broad-church)

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I like to think of the group here as the Baker Street Irregulars…

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I once lived in a tiny studio apartment the next street over from “the real” 221b Baker St., which, at the time, was a theoretical address subsumed by a large bank. The Sherlock Holmes Museum was a few doors down from that, and every day to get to the tube station I’d walk by it and see the actor they’d hired to stand on the sidewalk in a Sherlock costume to try to get passersby to visit the museum [well, half the time, I’d see an actor, the other half of the time, I’d see a big “help wanted: actor to play Sherlock” a-frame sign on the sidewalk, because it wasn’t a job that anyone did for long!]
Do you watch the current PBS/BBC “Sherlock” with Cumberbatch?
My favorite Sherlock is Jeremy Brett.

Oops, drifted off on a little tangent. 🙂

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Cumberbatch as Sherlock is positively breathtaking. I know it isn’t for purists, but it’s a truly remarkable series.

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