Fix for windows 7 update

[corkyg]

This week the update for 7 tried to sneak in a few regurgitated baddies. I had to "hide" two of them.

 

[Kaido]

This week, MS again tried to slip KB 2952664 in among the updates, plus a new one that would try to impose the Win 10 upgrade,

Yeah, I noticed that because it bricked one of my BRIX a week or two ago...took me forever to figure out what happened. Basically that specific update ate the bootloader & re-assigned C: to the System Reserved & the D: to the boot partition. The drive wouldn't even show up on a USB dock, but I was able to clone it with Macrium & then do a quasi-boot through the USB dock to get into repair mode & fix things by doing bootrec in the console & restoring to an earlier system checkpoint. I was able to replicate the issue several times doing this. Very strange.

Microsoft said this update does not contain the GWX features. Not sure what they did other than enhanced telemetry; despite the name, it was digitally signed on 23-FEB-2017, so it is a "new" version of it. So...we get working Win7 updates, but have to trade out our privacy?

 

[JackMDS]

At his point Win 7 major bugs were fixed long time ago and there is Not going to be any New features.

Since last year the Updates included Security Update, and none stop attempt to sneak in the ""Telemetry Features"" of Win 10.

As oppose to Win 10 Firewall and Win-Defender the ones in Win 7 are not so great to write Home about.

So my suggestion to the "Winning Brigade", use good 3rd party Security and disable the Updates in Win 7.

 

[Kaido]

At his point Win 7 major bugs were fixed long time ago and there is Not going to be any New features.

Since last year the Updates included Security Update, and none stop attempt to sneak in the ""Telemetry Features"" of Win 10.

As oppose to Win 10 Firewall and Win-Defender the ones in Win 7 are not so great to write Home about.

So my suggestion to the "Winning Brigade", use good 3rd party Security and disable the Updates in Win 7.

Yeah, I just did a half-dozen Gigabyte BRIX this morning with Win7 retail, all ran updates just fine. Glad this isn't an issue anymore!

Win10 is a different story...soooooo many customer complaints about it, both business & residential (to the point where I am recommending Chromebooks to home users over Windows laptops). Lots of problems with updates & rebooting. Lots of boot errors where it will hang. Windows hasn't been this bad since Vista...and even though Vista is endlessly slow, I think Win10 has far worse system update installation issues. I see computers every week that either are hung after an update reboot, or take forever to install updates (on newer machines, even), or have to self-uninstall the updates because it didn't work properly. Had an engineer customer down for an hour because his brand-new laptop borked on the latest big Win10 update. Awfully frustrating. None of the blocking tools I've used have successfully, 100% turned off updates. Lots of legal issues cropping up because of that:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/27/woman_microsoft_windows_10_upgrades/

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/24/microsoft_windows_10_update/

https://www.courthousenews.com/class-sues-microsoft-windows-10-update/

Kinda scary as now 400 million computers are running Windows 10:

https://news.microsoft.com/bythenumbers/seven-wonders

Anyway, I'm happy sticking with Windows 7 as much as I can, and I'm happy that the updates are working properly again without any tweaks, hacks, or workarounds.

 

[Ichinisan]

Marked for later

 

[JackMDS]

@Kaido

We do not have a disagreement. We are talking about different aspects of the World.

While myself and family we enjoy using Win 10 for personal use.

I would trust it (as it is now) for serious professional use.

I actually keep using Win 7 for some professional use that I can Not entrust with the frequent OOps in Win 10.

Since its inseption Win 10 should really be called Win 10 EB (Eternal Beta).

As I said above with the use of a 3rd party security, Win 7 on going Updates can be skipped, unless something very specific comes up.

Laptops is another story. The first thing that I do for me, family, and friends, Is reformatting the HD/SSD and reload a clean install of Windows. The problem there is Not Windows but the Gotcha Junk that is loaded by the Vendors, and the need to change some Default settings for Indevidual users that are ignorant about how to do so.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I'm going to continue to adopt the 80/20 rule and believe that if 80% of the user base are only using 20% of said new features of a given OS version then forcing people to upgrade by these underhanded methods is only grow the resentment. It took me a while to overcome the inability to perform updates in Windows 7 and it wasn't because of me, my intelligence, or a lack thereof. Now I have to deal with this in Windows 8.1 for no reason other than M$ deliberately broke the system.

Just makes me want to stop using Windows based software and move permanently onto Linux.

 

[corkyg]

While optimizing my Win 10 drive, I found a large pile of Microsoft bloat - stuff for Xbox which I will never use. Got rid of it! My Win 7 drive never attracts that kind of junk.

 

[Dahak]

@Harley Ben --For the Net Framework error, there is a registry key you have to change, its so that the install will look and find that 4.0 is installed even if the newer ones are.

For WU in general, i did a win7 install last week and it seem to work like normal again...wonder how long it will last

 

[mikeymikec]

Got it. I believe the official support is till next year only. Then say a tearful goodbye to your Windows 7.

Eh? Try 2020.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet

 

[mikeymikec]

Well, I read it on PCMag that only security updates will be supported till 2020, the mainstream support will end soon.

(mainstream support) It already ended, for what that was worth; Win8.x is still in mainstream support yet has been dumped by MS in favour for Win10 (e.g. DX12). AFAIK the only enhancements Win8x has received was to make it suck less UI-wise.

 

[corkyg]

I have shifted to W10 very recently, after my recent built. I am liking 10 plus I am hearing more good things about Creators edition.

In a very round about way, I suppose that is a fix for Win 7 Update issues.

 

[FeuerFrei]

Just want to report all my Windows 7 updates are smooooth these days. Only one (Windows 7) pc, under my control, ever struggled with updates, as reported earlier in this thread.

 

[XSoldier77X]

Thanks. Have recently made a shift to Windows 10, thanks in part to the WannaCry .
But I'll be sure to cite it every time I see someone asking for help, here or elsewhere.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Interesting to hear that Win7 (64-bit?) has been updating "normally" for "clean installs" for people recently.

Seems to really point the finger at MS, that they might have intentionally caused this "issue" for a while, just coincidentally while they were strongly trying to push upgrade to Windows 10. Hmm. Makes you think a bit.

Or maybe, they propagated the code changes that they made to the servicing stack stuff, to the first "Update the Updater" update that Windows 7 gets, and then things move more smoothly from then on.

Or maybe, they removed some individual updates, instead, concentrating them in "roll-ups", reducing the overall count of updates that the Updater has to process?

 

[tcsenter]

Yep, just did clean install of W7 SP1 (integrated). With NO post-SP1 patches or updates, Windows Update processed and displayed updates in about 10 minutes (running Core i5-3470 and only 4GB RAM). 193 Important Updates and 12 Optional.

 

[tcsenter]

Yep, just did clean install of W7 SP1 (integrated). With NO post-SP1 patches or updates, Windows Update processed and displayed updates in about 10 minutes (running Core i5-3470 and only 4GB RAM). 193 Important Updates and 12 Optional.

Just did another clean install W7 SP1 (integrated) no post-SP1 patches. Can again confirm Windows Update processed and displayed updates in a reasonable amount of time (about 15 minutes), no patches or other rituals required to get it working except for that initial update to Windows Update Agent that has always been offered before.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I thought I'd go ahead and post here, which would mean less needless trouble for other general readers of this particular forum.

Here's the history. I built a dual-boot Win7/win10 system, creating two different OS-system volumes on the same disk. I was able to install NVMe drivers for Win 7 and then clone the dual-boot SATA drive to NVMe. Then, we had the Creators 1703 build, and I went through a couple weeks' trouble restoring the dual-boot functionality. No problems since. Win 10 Fall Creators 1709 is currently deferred for a year, while allowing "non-feature" updates. But today I encountered a problem with Win 7 Updates.

I may eventually remove Win 7. I believe I missed about two months of the monthly rollup package in Windows Update. So after those two months, I decided to boot into Win 7 and do any "maintenance."

I find Windows Update was broken. It tells me the service isn't running, but "Services" tells me that it is -- indeed -- running.

So . . . I came back here to see more recent posts. I had gone through all the misery people experienced between 2015 and 2016, but there'd been no problem after that until now.

I also did a more general search of "How to fix Windows Update problems in Windows 7," and HowToGeek popped up in the list.

Apparently, some tweaks had been made in Windows 7 so there's a link under "Troubleshooting" to "fix Windows Update." I ran it. Suddenly, the missing update "History" (symptomatically missing under these circumstances) was restored, 9 new updates detected, downloaded and installed.

Ho Hum. This still leaves one with a mild sense of discomfort. But -- I'm mostly using Windows 10.

[written, submitted under a Win 7 boot session and happity-joy . . .]

 

[fire400]

Backup computer first and/or clone/image system especially if the OS environment has crucial dependencies to needed hardware/software resources.

If need be, disconnect the computer from the Internet/networks/backup-systems before proceeding with some of the open-exposure tricks suggested on the web.

Run Microsoft safety scanner
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/products/scanner

CMD (Admin)
chkdsk /f C:

CMD (Admin)
sfc /scannow

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/10164/fix-windows-update-errors
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4027322/windows-update-troubleshooter

If you've tried nearly all of the other online fixes as well from search forums and random cleaning tools out there, problem may also be hardware related. Try unplugging modules on the motherboard and reinserting/moving them

Other resources to consider:

Further simplifying servicing models for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsitpro/2016/08/15/further-simplifying-servicing-model-for-windows-7-and-windows-8-1/

More on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 servicing changes
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsitpro/2016/10/07/more-on-windows-7-and-windows-8-1-servicing-changes/

Life cycle fact sheet
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet