The trials of updating both Win10 and Win7

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Field Notes

The trials of updating both Win10 and Win7

By Tracey Capen After a long delay, Windows 10 Version 1607 is starting to show up in Windows Update on many PCs. Windows 7 has its own updating issues; a recent post in MS Support provides one slow-update–scan solution a troublesome system.

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The full text of this column is posted at windowssecrets.com/top-story/the-trials-of-updating-both-win10-and-win7/ (opens in a new window/tab).

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Field Notes

The trials of updating both Win10 and Win7

Using Win 7 on one of my desktop computers and have no intention of updating it to Win 10 in the near future — and maybe ever. Have a “backup” machine (desktop system) that is still running XP. It is too underpowered, hardware wise, to update even to Win 7, and definitely to Win 10. I’ll keep running it until a major H/W failure. Both systems are running perfectly at the moment, and because I use the Win 7 machine for business also, I can’t afford to face the myriad problems that have appeared with Win 10 updates and the prospect of MS taking over my system. At some time in the future I may get a new Win 10 machine, but that would be way in the future. At the moment, I am seriously considering switching to a Mac. My business apps run very well on the Mac. For my Win 7 machine I’ve taken Canadian Tech’s advice: turned off all of Windows updating, installed the two fixes for slow scans, and let it download the last few updates from Sept that I needed. No more updates will save me hours on the weekend and will add to restful sleep. Ah…freedom from MS.

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I have a 5 yr old Win 7 desktop that I use as a home theater PC. I didn’t realize that it hadn’t updated since Jan, 2016. I found numerous online “fixes,” many of which were quite time consuming. Nothing worked. I don’t back this PC up very often since I don’t have anything of consequence on it. But, since nothing was fixing windows update, I installed my most recent full backup (4/15). I then let windows update run for many hours, but nothing happened. So I started trying fixes again. Then your newsletter and article appeared in my inbox. I had seen some of Canadian Tech’s fixes, but not the one you referred to. I gave it a try, and it worked! Windows Update is working again and is 92% complete in downloading 120 updates after I applied the July 2016 rollup. This article alone made my subscription very worthwhile. Thank you, thank you.

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No problems here in 8.1 land!

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Glad the fix worked for others.

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I have been reinstalling Win7 Prof on two different laptops. In both cases it was just impossible to get the required updates by using Windows Update. Trying out all kinds of solutions led to nothing–except frustration. Then I remembered a tool I used years ago to update XP. A new version can be found on the website of the German (technical) publisher Heise. Even for people without any knowledge of the German language this prescription should work.
Visit the website https://www.heise.de/download/ and type WSUSOffline in the search box. Then download the program with that name and extract the zip file. I put the whole on an empty USB stick. Start UpdateGenerator.exe and (un)tick the necessary boxes. The program uses English on an English computer. After downloading the updates, preferably to the USB stick, you can start the updating of your computer from the stick. Sometimes you will have to restart the updating if it stalls–but after some fiddling around both of my computers were able to download missing updates in the usual way.

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WSUS Offline English download page: http://download.wsusoffline.net/

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Ive not seen AU on either of my systems yet.

A friend got it a couple of weeks ago. The first round went in but sent the video to the Dsub port to the TV rather than the laptops screen. As the TV was off, it wasn’t apparent what was going on – just a blank screen. When that got sorted, it was discovered it was rolling back AU, probably due to not OKing it.

On the weekend, it went in again and was left overnight. In the morning, it was still churning away so they cancelled it. I doubt they want to try again.

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Some of the Windows Insiders, myself included, have been getting a different error code, regardless of which Windows 10 update their computer attempts to get. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the exact error, but I believe it was something like C00119f or something like that. In addition, we are all getting the notice that our computers will reboot every hour starting 10/1, and by 10/15, will not start Win 10 at all.

On the other hand, since I am happily back to running Win 7, I am not sure I’ll even try Win 10 again. In that case, I won’t care.

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This evening, I tried the Update download for my desktop. That failed with a 0x80004005 error. I went through a couple of fix lists to no avail.
I then tried the Media Creation tool. That seemed to go further. In fact it seemed to be being successful. Then expecting a restart notice, I got a failed notice, no reason.

Meanwhile, updating my tablet, I discovered it had added 1607 to the list after I’d started the updates. It then updated Defender. And then began the long shutdown and restart install cycle. And then more updates.

Well, at least this didn’t happen when I was traveling (shortly).

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No idea what the fuss is about. I was able to upgrade easily from Microsoft’s site, link in the story, all went perfectly. Then created an .iso of the “new” operating system and a recovery flash drive – just like last year. No issues at all and it is running perfectly. I really like Win 10 and always have. I moved up from Win 7 Pro but the changes weren’t significant once I got it tweaked to how I wanted it to behave. It is going to be around a long time, I think people had probably ought be getting ready to accept that at this point. :^)

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Might be a little fuss. Two days after upgrading, I got another update that took nearly as long. Upgrading the upgrade so to speak. All seems to be working well at the moment but that second one caught me by surprise and I’ve not read anything anywhere about it.

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This is the Cumulative Update for Windows 10 Version 1607 released on September 29, 2016. When installed you will be at build 14393.222

Mark

Win 11 home - 24H2
Attitude is a choice...Choose wisely

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I’m running a Windows 7 HP Pavilion model p6210f that I bought 7 years ago and have had very minor problems with this machine. I did Never 10 through Gibson Research several months ago after reading Windows 10 was going to oust the games I play and do away with my gadgets.
I installed these 4 updates this morning and started having server not found problems on at least 2 websites.
KB3175024, KB3177186, KB3172605, KB3182203
After tearing my hair out and running diagnostic tests I uninstalled all of the above updates and things are working normally again. I’ll probably reinstall these updates one at a time and see if any particular one is the culprit.

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Dohmixer, just wondering if you found out which of the patches caused the issue? I just noticed 3 out of the 4 appearing in my update list for Win 7/64 – important though not critical.

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Hello Tracey,
Win 7 update cleared up !
Many THANKS for this article: KB 3172605 ran beautifully ( after using the proper 64 bit file…) and updates ran smoothly thereafter.
One strange event concerning KB2952664 (it’s for Win 10 that I don’t intend to use in the near future ) : it didn’t allow LibreOffice to open. Once uninstalled, LibreOffice ran smoothly…!
My machine is a 5 year-old ACER with an AMD Athlon 2×220 64bit Processor under Win 7 SP1

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Tracey, I just wanted to express my profound thanks for this Windows Secrets article. I just used the tip in the story to correct a Windows Update problem with the third Windows 7 computer that wouldn’t update. Two were clean installs and one that just stopped updating. I spent so much time on one of the clean installs (the first one) and got so exasperated that I actually pulled the hard drive and had the computer sitting by the door to take it to a recycle drop-off place. After reading the article I just had to test it. After installing the 2 updates mentioned in the article I started Windows Update and within 5 minutes it displayed 109 important and 70 some optional updates. Thank you again, Ron

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