Fix for windows 7 update

[hhhd1]

There are many threads with the same problem, here is the solution that worked for me:

1. disable updates, set it to never check
2. restart

3. install this manually: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3102810
(direct links
32Bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=fcd6bf5d-f004-4ca3-aa7e-1de462b91dd0
64Bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4fe566bd-31b1-4413-8c4c-412b52533669

4. restart
5. install updates normally now, either set to automatic check or manually check ..etc.

----

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

Installing and searching for updates is slow and high CPU usage occurs in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Issue 1
When you install updates by using System Center Configuration Manager, the installation takes a long time, and System Center Configuration Manager becomes overloaded.
Issue 2
The Svchost.exe process occupies 100 percent of CPU usage when you upgrade a Windows Update client to Windows 10.

 

[Omar F1]

Thank you, I wish I seen this earlier.

Last week, I did a format and that very long process to update Win7 was quite shocking to me - 1.30 hour to check for updates and perhaps another one for them to be installed.

 

[mikeymikec]

Sounds promising, I've just installed this on the laptop that I've had problems with before in this respect.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Sounds promising, I've just installed this on the laptop that I've had problems with before in this respect.

Actually, the KB___810 update was among several steps covered in a "Winhelp" web-site article several months old, and the discussion and priority occurs before the midpoint of the list.

It also included something like a KB____[710/706 . . whatever] independently downloaded update fix as a prelude. I think it had worked on one machine that gave me problems. The other one required the latest fix, which (I believe but the details are in a fairly young thread on this forum) -- involved similar download of a Win Update Client upgrade of March, and installation of a puzzling graphics WU update after that.

Doing that forced an actual download of 227 updates -- most of which had already been installed under WSUS-Offline (which circumvents the GUI of WU, among other things).

But it's fixed -- once and for all.

Maybe I should link that article:

https://www.winhelp.us/reinstall-windows-update.html

Actually, I fixed two machines three times. The latter I'd mentioned was set right with the Fix It 50202, but went south again.

I also see they've updated the article, but it still confirms my remark about a KB___710/KB__810 sequence.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Just have to add this question.

Why do I get the feeling that developing problems with Win Update may occur more likely on systems which sleep, hibernate and wake more frequently? The two systems that gave me trouble both fit the profile of frequent change in power states. [because . . . . that's the way I want them to work . . . ]

 

[mikeymikec]

I commonly see the core saturation issue on machines that aren't doing anything else often but being shut down. On the other hand, my main PC is often being put into sleep mode and I don't have that problem with it.

 

[postmortemIA]

We need a sticky for the fix, assuming this one stands test of time (like next few Patch Tuesdays).

 

[JackMDS]

i'll put it as a Sticky for a While.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

It's been several weeks on my HotDawg Rig. The laptop has survived now for a week or more . . . .

If you have a laptop, you connect through a router at home and you have Wireless-N on the machine in question, you should probably tweak the NIC settings in Device Manager for the best channel and the fastest speed. That would at least assure faster and more reliable update downloads.

The only alternative option that doesn't register with the WU GUI is WSUS-Offline. You can choose your updates pretty much the same as with WU through the Generator menus.

You would then disable the Windows Update Service in "Services." And you would also have to manually attend to WSUS-Offline updates once a month, probably between the 17th and the 20th. That's still a good reason to tweak your network access for the fastest speed.

 

[MustISO]

Just as a test and out of curiosity I installed 3 OS's under VMware today:
Server 2008 Enterprise SP2
Server 2008R2 Enterprise SP1
Windows 7 Enterprise Edition SP1

The server OS's ran Windows update right after a clean install and found the updates needed in less than 10 minutes (about 150-160 or so).

Windows 7, sat for 45 minutes and still searching for updates and still pegging the CPU at 100%. Finally just killed it.

Clearly Windows Update is fine under Server OS's. Not sure why Windows 7 is such as a mess compared to the others. Makes me wonder if it's on purpose.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Just as a test and out of curiosity I installed 3 OS's under VMware today:
Server 2008 Enterprise SP2
Server 2008R2 Enterprise SP1
Windows 7 Enterprise Edition SP1

The server OS's ran Windows update right after a clean install and found the updates needed in less than 10 minutes (about 150-160 or so).

Windows 7, sat for 45 minutes and still searching for updates and still pegging the CPU at 100%. Finally just killed it.

Clearly Windows Update is fine under Server OS's. Not sure why Windows 7 is such as a mess compared to the others. Makes me wonder if it's on purpose.

If you don't mind, I'll simply make a guess about it. There was never an SP2 update to Windows 7, but only an SP1 if you bought or acquired Win 7 without it built-in.

When I finally fixed my Windows Update on a system with a month-old Win7 installation, it had to identify and install 227 updates. The few hours that it took might have tried my patience and led me to bork the update.

So I suspect, without an SP2 roll-up, Windows 7 has just about been "updated to death."

 

[jaydee]

Worked for me, thanks. Just installed Win7 fresh on a machine and update wouldn't do a thing. Ran the msu file in the link and now it's happily updating (>1GB of updates...)

 

[mikeymikec]

Anecdotal: I just did a clean install of Win7 x86. After standalone-installing SP1, I set it on the job of Windows Update. First of all I had to beat it with a stick to get WU working (a string of WU check errors that led me to nuke SoftwareDistribution then uninstall and reinstall the Windows Update Agent, the latter fixed the problem), then it started saturating a core for hours.

I had it running for about two hours like that, set the sleep timer to 2 hours, (so it had another two hours to process updates) then this morning it wanted to saturate a core a bit more. I stopped WU and applied the KB3102810, restarted WU, then within about 10 minutes of high CPU usage but lots of disk activity, it had downloaded the updates and was ready to install them.

I think I may have to have these updates stored locally as the MS support site is very helpful in that it blocks IE8; I had to install Firefox to download the update.

- edit - A few hours later and 200+ updates installed, WU is again saturating a core and has been for at least an hour straight, so I'm not hopeful that the hotfix has fixed the problem. Admittedly I feel that a more fair test scenario would be if I get the computer completely up-to-date, then wait for a patch Tuesday (or three) and see how it reacts over time.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The update in the OP didn't help me much, but the PAIR of updates mentioned in the page linked in this post did WONDERS.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38193496&postcount=6

On a fresh install of Win7 64-bit SP1 off of a DVD or USB, I was looking at around 3-4 hours of waiting for Windows Update to show the first list of updates.

I installed those two patches, rebooted, started Windows Update, started the WEI benchmark because it hadn't been run yet, and got up and fixed myself a sandwich.

When I got back to the PC, it already showed the list of 160 updates!

And the WEI benchmark hadn't even finished yet!

AMAZING!!!!

Edit: I did 155 out of 160 updates, skipping the re-issued SP1, MSRT, and IE11. Took an hour to update, got up to 8.79GB of RAM used by the update process. Thankfully, this box has 16GB of RAM.

Anyways, checking for updates subsequently, also went quickly, up UNTIL I had finished installing the IE11 update. I'm doing a check for post IE11 updates, and it's taking... a long time. I wonder if the IE11 update reverts whatever patches were installed by those two hotfixes, that sped up the update process.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

The update in the OP didn't help me much, but the PAIR of updates mentioned in the page linked in this post did WONDERS.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38193496&postcount=6

On a fresh install of Win7 64-bit SP1 off of a DVD or USB, I was looking at around 3-4 hours of waiting for Windows Update to show the first list of updates.

I installed those two patches, rebooted, started Windows Update, started the WEI benchmark because it hadn't been run yet, and got up and fixed myself a sandwich.

When I got back to the PC, it already showed the list of 160 updates!

And the WEI benchmark hadn't even finished yet!

AMAZING!!!!

Edit: I did 155 out of 160 updates, skipping the re-issued SP1, MSRT, and IE11. Took an hour to update, got up to 8.79GB of RAM used by the update process. Thankfully, this box has 16GB of RAM.

Anyways, checking for updates subsequently, also went quickly, up UNTIL I had finished installing the IE11 update. I'm doing a check for post IE11 updates, and it's taking... a long time. I wonder if the IE11 update reverts whatever patches were installed by those two hotfixes, that sped up the update process.

Oh -- sure -- that IE11 update is sort of a bump in the road. I noticed it myself. But it didn't cripple the Windows Update fix you mention. Like I said -- a lack of patience is our undoing. It takes a lot of time "checking for updates" even when not stuck in an endless loop of "checking for updates." after that -- expect WU to work normally in the background.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Here is an update to my several posts on this topic so far.

No less than I could tell, the two-step fix VirtualLarry last mentioned might be the most reliable fix for this problem to date.

Once again, I had some mildly discomforting experiences with monthly update backlog that included Windows 7 and MS Office updates. The system-that-never-sleeps for 24/7 WMC TV feeds chose to reboot itself after download and partial installation of updates, and booted to Win10 before I could get control of the process from my keyboard. The default keyboard link through my KVM was set to a second machine, which had gone to sleep.

With two monitors hooked up to the first machine, Windows 10 is configured differently until I can sort out options for that TV link and an alternative to WMC, or the WMC "hack" that had been available at download sites since last year and seeming to have disappeared from those sites but for one or two.

So the system doesn't appear to post. A hard restart didn't register apparently because the system was stuck at the Windows 10 login screen (which I couldn't see, obviously.)

The second machine took a long time to download this month's updates, but succeeded.

My laptop, which had been the worst of the machines for solving the Windows Update process, is still "checking."

The laptop is only a C2D Penryn, so CPU-usage swings between ~50% and 100% or points in between.

So in addition to pressuring Win7 users to "move up" to Win10, there's a matter of older hardware still in use, and the burden of updates for Win7 using that older hardware. So it would be useful to track update progress and history of one OS installation against the other.

It would only be possible that Win10's Win Update strategy resolves this problem with older hardware. It would be just as possible that it doesn't. The only way to find out . . . is to . . . find out . . . .

UPDATE ON THE C2D Penryn LAPTOP: Some three hours later, it gave notice of the 17 updates, downloaded and installed them over another 15 to 20 minutes.

Anyone with a machine this old, monitoring Win 10 updates? If course, the comparison wouldn't be accurate if affected by a 7-year history of updates, as opposed to a Win 10 history of less than a year. It wouldn't be accurate if the history of updates affects the process of checking, downloading and installing any new ones.

 

[corkyg]

My Win 7 was updated normally last evening. 22 updates, mostly for Office and Net Framework. One for IE11, and a few for 7. 5583 was listed but unchecked.

 

[deustroop]

I set up a x64 Win 7 install and put in basic drivers and IE 11 .Bare bones thing to play Doom I started Update Windows but it never completes; today Update ran for over 2 hrs without displaying a single item. Is this covered by the files from MS ?

 

[Dahak]

Think this fits with fixing win 7 updates

Nerp posted here http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2473251

MS has release a Convenience Roll up that has a lot of updates post SP1 as well as adding that all non-security updates will be released as rollups going forward as well

This is optional and will not be available through windows update, so you would have to manually install it or inject it into your images

This convenience roll up does not include IE11 or .net Framework updates

 

[nemesismk2]

i just installed this and now my windows 7 is able to do updates now

 

[nemesismk2]

i reported that windows 7 had enabled updates but now it says my copy of windows 7 has not been activated. and is illegal copy

 

[BonzaiDuck]

i reported that windows 7 had enabled updates but now it says my copy of windows 7 has not been activated. and is illegal copy

This only happened to me once. I had a bad PSU, and RAM-stick went bad. Before I'd realized the source of the problem, I reinstalled the OS, which was a branded Dell Win7-64 SP1. And I was getting this activation problem. I had a downloaded and totally legal Win7, and thought to replace the branded version. Soon, Windows was telling me that the second OS installation was no longer valid, could not be run on that machine.

Eventually, I replaced the hardware with a used motherboard-CPU-RAM combination -- the seller providing me the white-box Win7 Ultimate. So I really didn't lose much on the OS fiasco.

So. I hope you get this all sorted out.

 

[nemesismk2]

This only happened to me once. I had a bad PSU, and RAM-stick went bad. Before I'd realized the source of the problem, I reinstalled the OS, which was a branded Dell Win7-64 SP1. And I was getting this activation problem. I had a downloaded and totally legal Win7, and thought to replace the branded version. Soon, Windows was telling me that the second OS installation was no longer valid, could not be run on that machine.

Eventually, I replaced the hardware with a used motherboard-CPU-RAM combination -- the seller providing me the white-box Win7 Ultimate. So I really didn't lose much on the OS fiasco.

So. I hope you get this all sorted out.

this was pretty much my experience as well so so changed so much of my pc i then decided to get windows 10 at the same time.

 

[mikeymikec]

After doing two updates yesterday, my machine today has been chewing on svchost.exe for at least 40 minutes today (there's about 15 updates to install today, unsure why the updates were split into two groups); so while I think this patch fixes some aspects of the core saturation issue (for example, I installed a Win7 machine, put this patch on immediately after, and it processed the initial slew of updates a heck of a lot faster than usual), it doesn't fix all of them.

 

[vailr]

BelarcAdvisor can determine what hotfixes are missing from Win7 in less than a minute, while Windows Update still takes 20 to 30 minutes or more to figure out what hotfixes are missing.
Something fishy is going on at Microsoft, regarding Win7 .